YOU | Q1 2025

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Overview

• Non-GAAP EPS of $0.26 beats by $0.05.

• Revenue of $211.4M (+18.1% Y/Y) beats by $3.38M.

Takeaways

Clear Secure (YOU) delivered a solid first quarter, with healthy momentum across all segments of the business.

Total bookings grew 14.8% to $207 million, and free cash flow rose 17.6% to $91 million. With that, operating income came in at $37 million (a 17.7% margin), and adjusted EBITDA hit $52 million, representing a 24.7% margin.

The company ended the quarter with $533 million in cash and marketable securities, even after returning $168 million to shareholders via buybacks and dividends.

CLEAR+ active members grew 9.1% year-over-year to 7.4 million, while total members on the platform jumped 42.3% to 31.2 million, driven in large part by the expansion of CLEAR1.

For Q2, the company expects revenue of $214–$216 million and reaffirmed full-year free cash flow guidance of at least $310 million.

CFO Jen Hsu emphasized the company’s continued focus on growing members, bookings, and free cash flow while expanding operating leverage. Though gross dollar retention dipped slightly to 87.1%, this was largely due to price increases taken in 2023 and early 2024, which are expected to normalize over time.

CLEAR is now present in 59 CLEAR+ airports and four mobile locations, reaching about 74% of U.S. airline passengers. And with TSA checkpoint traffic on the rise, CEO Caryn Seidman-Becker emphasized how travelers’ want for predictable and efficient airport experiences continues to drive demand.

A recent survey from the U.S. Travel Association found that 64% of travelers cited long security lines as their biggest pain point—and over half waited more than 20 minutes in line. CLEAR believes biometrics are key to solving this, and their tech is designed to meet that need without compromising security or privacy.

The company continues to roll out new tech aimed at streamlining the travel experience—including its EnVe enrollment pods, the ePassport digital enrollment tool, and automated eGates. All of these feed into CLEAR’s broader “Lane of the Future” vision: an end-to-end, frictionless security experience at the airport.

Among the new tools, ePassport is perhaps the most notable. It allows users to fully enroll from home by scanning their passport chip through the CLEAR app—a major step toward reducing friction at the airport.

EnVe pods, now rolled out across the network, improve both verification speed and labor productivity through facial recognition.

And eGates, a newer hardware-software combo built for speed and scalability, are currently being tested at select locations.

CLEAR’s TSA PreCheck efforts are also scaling pretty fast. The company now operates 165 enrollment locations (up from around 90 last quarter) and is driving growth in both new signups and cross-sells into CLEAR+ subscriptions.

A new Passport Lookup feature also allows travelers to enroll without having their passport physically in hand—a feature expected to boost PreCheck adoption further.

On the enterprise side, CLEAR1 continues to gain traction. The identity platform now serves over 31 million members and is being deployed across sectors like healthcare, finance, and real estate.

A new partnership with DocuSign will allow identity verification directly within digital document workflows—a move that could meaningfully increase trust and security for high-value agreements.

CLEAR is also seeing growing demand in healthcare, especially around account recovery, insurance verification, and patient check-in.

In workforce applications, the need for strong identity solutions is increasing in light of rising concerns around cybersecurity and critical infrastructure protection.

Overall, the CLEAR team sees automation—especially through EnVe, eGates, and ePassport—as a key lever for continued efficiency growth and scalability. And with most of the heavy lifting on infrastructure and fixed costs now behind them, the company believes it’s in prime position to deliver on its long-term growth and profitability goals.

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