Q3 2022 Angi Inc and IAC Inc Joint Earnings Call
Good morning, everyone and welcome to be IAC, and Angi <unk> third quarter 2022 earnings conference call.
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At this time I'd like to turn the floor over to Christopher helping.
Executive Vice President and CFO of <unk> AC Sir Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, Christopher helping here and welcome to the IAC and Angi <unk> third quarter earnings call. Joining me today is Joey Levin CEO of IAC, and CEO and chairman of Angi, Inc.
Similar to last quarter supplemental to our quarterly earnings releases IAC has also published its quarterly shareholder letter, we will not be reading the shareholder letter on this call and it is currently available on the Investor Relations section of <unk> website.
I will shortly turn the call over to Joey to make a few brief introductory remarks, and then we will open it up to Q&A.
Before we get to that I'd like to remind you that during this presentation, we may discuss our outlook and future performance. These forward looking statements typically may be preceded by words, such as we expect we believe we anticipate or similar statements.
These forward looking views are subject to risks and uncertainties and our actual results could differ materially from the views expressed today.
Some of these risks have been set forth in IAC and Angi <unk> third quarter press releases and our respective filings with the SEC.
We will also discuss certain non-GAAP measures, which as a reminder include adjusted EBITDA, which we'll refer to today as EBITDA for simplicity during the call.
I'll also refer you to our press releases the IAC shareholder letter and again to the Investor Relations section of our websites for all comparable GAAP measures and full reconciliations for all material non-GAAP measures with that I will hand, it over to Joey.
Thanks, Chris and welcome everybody and welcome back to our simplified earnings call format.
As Chris said I am very pleased to be here in two different capacities CEO of IAC and now CEO of Angi <unk>.
I'm running angi right now because given the performance of the business. We all agreed it was time to make a change I love the opportunity for this business and I want to make sure we nail it.
I've only been in the seat 30 days, so I'll have more to share in February but the big strategic vision has not changed we're here to bring homeowners and service professionals together, we're here to make that process more consistent more reliable and less hassle that means we will continue to offer a mix of advertising leads and services but.
Some things will change and the thesis the theme around change is is simplicity and balance.
The exposure and presence of services and the organization is going to be more balanced.
I think we've overcomplicated the product not just in services, but I think we've over complicated the product a bit and I think we need to simplify both for homeowners and for service professionals and I think we're also going to be more disciplined on expenses. Our opex growth. The last few years has outpaced our gross profit growth and only part of that is marketing relate.
To the rebrand.
I think we can get back to a much better balance there.
We also have a lot of talent in this organization and I think everyone's ready to be energized and uplifted and focus on delighting. The customer I've spent time in New York I've spent time in Denver I've spent time in Indianapolis and I've met a lot of people who are really excited about delighting the customer and I think we have a tremendous.
This opportunity to do that.
Than we've done in the past as far as the rest of IAC, we have work to do it as Meredith, but nothing we've seen yet is undercut the fundamental thesis.
And I know you all have a lot of questions so let's get to them.
We'll ask your forgiveness in advance if I won't be able to answer all your Angie questions right now and they're working to the details of the business and nail down a concrete plan. If I can answer it now I will have an answer by February when we're together again, Mark let's start with the first question.
Okay.
Okay. Thank you operator, let's go to the questions.
And ladies and gentlemen at this time, we will begin the question and answer session.
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Once again that is star and then one to join the question queue, we will pause momentarily to assemble the roster.
And our first question today comes from Eric Sheridan from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead with your question.
Thanks, so much for taking my questions and hope everyone on the team as well.
Joe I wanted to come back to your sort of comments there to kick off the call.
With the changes in AMG wanted to maybe hone in on two issues number one.
Why do you and the board think you're the right person to run that business at this point in time, considering you're already running you see on a day to day basis. So maybe you can talk a little bit deeper on the decision process, there and why you feel you're the right person to take over that challenge at this point in time number one and then number two was.
As you referenced there is a lot of ambition and a lot of market opportunity and AMG and as you said in the letter we've been through a lot of Ceos over the last half decade, how should we be thinking about your broader business philosophy is and you're going to be run for growth because it can be run for a balance of growth and profits how should we be thinking about striking the right balance there.
Air to amplify returns when measured against the market opportunity. Thanks, so much. Thanks.
Thanks, Eric.
In terms of why me and I guess I can weave in the answer to your second question in that.
First.
<unk> been involved in this business in one way or another for a very long time I know the things. We've done have worked I know the things we've done that haven't worked and so I'd say it.
Significant working knowledge of the category the product.
The customers.
Second.
Some of the fundamental things that we need to accomplish at angi are very consistent with things we've accomplished at other businesses, adding handle search to handle monetization. Thanks.
Optimized for in conversion and I think that experience is going to be very relevant to angi here that would be to other internet businesses.
Third I believe in this business I think it's important to have a leader who believes in the business and I believed in this business for a very long time, and I know that we can create enormous value here.
We also have to move quickly I think that we've made some recent mistakes that we need to fix and I.
I don't want to say the CEO of convenience, but I did happen to be available very quickly to do this and.
I think that that allows us to make the change that we want to make faster than a longer process.
And the last thing is and this gets to your second question is I think the organization needs to be more disciplined.
And disciplined means balancing the short term and the long term any leader I think can optimize for the short term and any leader I think can optimize for the long term I think the right.
Manager the best managers and the right operating philosophy is to be balancing the short term and the long term I think we have to deliver for 2023 and I think we have to deliver more profit for 2023, and I think we are totally capable of doing that.
I think we have to focus on the long term and make sure that what we're doing for our customers our homeowners and our service professionals is something thats going to keep them.
Around working with us for a very long time, and and we have to balance those things I think that is totally possible to do.
Think we perhaps drifted from some of that balance.
In short and long term I think we drifted and some of that balance from profit and growth.
Growth and I think that we can run this business in a much more balanced way, which will be healthy for everybody in that Angie ecosystem.
Great. Thanks Joey.
Thank you. Our next question comes from John Blackledge from Cowen. Please go ahead with your question.
Great. Thanks to.
Two questions first on.
Todd Meredith digital revenue could you just discuss the trends in <unk> that led to the.
The AD declines, particularly around brand versus performance.
Key verticals and then what did you see in October does that.
And that leads you to believe that digital revenue could be flat in the first half and then turning positive in the back half of the year and then just second question on the EBITDA. If you can unpack the new guide of $2 $40 million to $250 million.
Bridges from the 300 is it all revenue shortfall and then thanks for the color on the 23 Rev trajectory, just any thoughts on EBITDA in 'twenty three perhaps framing.
And EBITA margin range would be helpful. Thank you.
Thanks, John It's Chris.
No.
We spent.
A real time in the letter trying to frame this out.
Which I'll refer to as we go through it.
There are two dynamics to.
Dot Dash Meredith digital revenue that are just key overhangs on our performance this year.
And that ties both to third quarter trends what were seeing now.
And where we are on an EBITDA to your to your second question. The first is the integration and those specifically that migration of the Meredith digital properties to the Dot Dash platform and then the second is macro and overall.
AD market.
I'll take those.
One at a time.
The migration, we said in the last quarter.
We were we were overly aggressive on our expected.
<unk> of the migrations. So as a reminder to those who are newer to the story. This is the acquired properties Meredith Meredith was about two thirds the size of dot dash in a serial fashion moving those properties over to the <unk> platform and that means.
Much faster site speeds reduced ad inventory.
And <unk>.
Eliminating old content and producing better content.
And we will go into more depth on this call those delays.
Pushed us from expected completion say around the fourth of July have all the sites two of all the major sites to where we are now which was we completed the migrations.
By the end of September early October .
Two things happened one because the sites were not migrated we could not drive the traffic increases we expect from migrated sites.
As early and capture as much of that in this year as we expected. The second is we were not able to run as we call. It the dot dash playbook and integrate performance marketing and e-commerce into the Meredith sites and all the additional revenue sources that we expect to drive that was one overhang from.
From migration challenges the second is our.
Our expectation was that the early migrations would be very comparable to the later migrations.
In terms of complexity AD, serving et cetera, that's true with historical performance. Unfortunately, and this is Ben.
A challenging journey through the summer thankfully.
Heavily behind us.
But it was.
We found that with some of the larger related sites there are idiosyncrasies to AD serving.
Two.
Surfing activities.
That led.
Led to underperformance and we had to make tweaks.
The case of.
Our lifestyle sites, we saw we needed to constantly update the AD performance at the edge every performance.
We're now on the other side of and for example in food and recipes.
We've continued to need to optimize AD load relative to pricing uplift. Those are just things that happen when you move a lot of properties.
<unk> Dot Dash Meredith management is feels very good.
Where we are in early November .
With 90 plus percent of the sites and all of the big sites migrated.
Those challenges are behind us, but those were definitely drags on Q3 performance. Additionally, we just had some some sort of break in fixes on AD serving.
On E Commerce integrations and those were drags as Youll see in the Q on pro.
Performance marketing in the quarter.
The market overhang, we talked about this previously.
May June July we saw a rapid decline in.
Demand from retail CPG.
And home as well as some smaller sub categories.
That continued through the summer, but we actually saw a couple of categories, including retail come back in back to school and while they're not back to last year levels. We've seen strength. Unfortunately, we've seen other categories.
Beauty Tech telco really soften year over year, so it's a choppy ad market.
So what we'd say broadly to your question on brand versus performance, there's not a lot of brand in the Dod dash portfolio there were some in Meredith.
All of everything about the playbook is moving our pitch to advertisers and our reporting to performance, but the AD market is choppy wed expect brand to be.
Week next year and it will only the car market will only accelerate.
Performance in ROI and clarity, but.
We don't have a significant brand portion in our portfolio in terms of the EBITDA decline it is.
All driven relative to the $300 million initially.
Initially put out after the first quarter is all driven by digital revenue.
Declines.
Print is solid.
Expenses are in good shape and.
Corporate expenses are in a good spot post combination.
The margins the incremental margins on digital revenue, we've always set a very high as well as on ecommerce et cetera, we expected to have the migrations go more smoothly.
Then we did especially over Q3 and we expected.
A more solid AD market and not a great AD market, but a more solid AD market in this quarter and we have now.
<unk>.
A choppy one through the rest of the year. So that is that as the dynamics when we look forward to 'twenty three we.
We talked in the letter.
October .
Traffic volumes are down about 5% a big chunk of that is just going back to go forward on the big sites. We've recently migrated we expect to continue to improve that we also expect to take share on the AD sales side.
We said that we'd look to get back to flat in the first part of the first half of 'twenty, three and just more specific to our own opportunities grow for the entire year in terms of numbers. We're in the midst of business planning and we'll be coming back to you all in the next earnings call with.
Greater clarity on our.
Plan for the 23 financial year. Thank you.
Thank you.
And our next question comes from Cory Carpenter from J P. Morgan. Please go ahead with your question.
Thanks for the question Julian wanted to ask for an update on what Youre seeing in the macro environment across the portfolio, maybe both on the consumer and the enterprise side and how that informs your outlook into the holiday season.
And then secondly on Angi, just hoping you could give us an update on where you're at with the roofing turnaround and how this could impact growth for the rest of the year. Thank you.
Sure.
The.
Mostly what we can see is the consumers are still spending I mean, the clear thing in travel, which I think has been well covered.
We see turo, an MGM doing phenomenally well.
That's direct spending, but also where we see and as Meredith consumer spending through ecommerce performance marketing type stuff.
Is that they are still spending on good now some of that spend has shifted from certain kinds of goods to other kind of goods, but still spending I mean people are opening crypto accounts anymore. So that that kind of thing has come back, but the general spending is still happening as far as we can see.
Really everywhere on the consumer side, there's some things in AMG to make it a little bit harder to read in terms of how we're adjusting our marketing demand I would say that the demand has lightened.
<unk> generally.
But again there is a bunch of noise in that both when looking at comparable sort of exceptionally high comparables in the prior year and specific changes, we're making around our marketing.
So it's an imperfect picture, but I'd say still reasonably strong on the on the consumer side on the enterprise side, you heard Chris said on advertising.
And what we've talked about generally on advertising, we think spending.
Certainly people are pausing right now there is when there is uncertainty in AD markets people hold their spend.
That is I think that once whether we settle in at a high market or a low market.
<unk> spending to come back on advertising, but it's the uncertainty piece that I think is driving.
Pullback in Ad spend.
And we can see that across other of our businesses.
On on care it is interesting.
We're seeing utilization go up on the consumer side, sorry, as it relates to our enterprise business and care, we're seeing utilization among employees go up which is a good thing for our business.
And that should long term be a good thing for enterprises because of the enterprises will realize that the consumers really are their employees really like this product.
And so hopefully that should translate to growing enterprise strength in terms of new sales.
But that is I would say in aggregate what we can see from from our picture. Your second question was Angie growth and Angie roofing.
Well we went from.
And Andrew roofing, just sort of fixing some fundamentals to hurry a literal hurricane came through and hit.
All of our main offices actually in Florida, that's actually I mean, that's a terrible thing in general it's a reasonably good thing for roofing in the sense that we happened to have a lot of people and a lot of capabilities to deal with.
Roofs that were damaged by the hurricane in that area. So we saw a huge surge in demand that of course papers and then we have to work on fulfilling that we're still working through some of our fulfillment issues there, making sure we've nailed down materials, making sure we've nailed that labor, we've scaled up labor meaningfully and now we need.
To make sure we can put all that together and deliver on fulfillment I think debt is net of a good thing for that business.
And and.
How we execute that I think we need to prove over the next couple of quarters, but having.
A significant increase in demand over a short period of time is for sure a good thing for that business for now.
I don't think its a.
Material change to Angie overall or the business overall, but just as it relates to this moment in time I think the hurricane hitting where it did for that business was a positive.
And Cory the only thing I'd add in for the group on roofing.
Relative to the timing of the storm at the end of the month of September .
Essentially.
The patterns were the last 10 days or so very little activity in the roofing.
In terms of actual installation orders as people age.
Manage their own safety, but b <unk>.
Held off doing any activities until they understood what the roof would look like after the storm and then following that two week period, where.
They were much bigger priorities than in.
Those markets then organizing.
Roof reconstruction, just baseline health and safety activities going on.
So.
From a revenue perspective.
Hurricane would be a headwind in both September and October there's now the very large backlog that Joey spoke about and that will be worked out through the next.
Say four plus months.
And it's really just around fulfillment and staffing.
I think that answered Corey I think that covered all your questions.
Yes. Thank you both thank you Gregg next question. Please.
And our next question comes from Brent Thill from Jefferies. Please go ahead with your question.
Hey, Good morning, guys. This is David on for Brian . Thanks for taking the questions. Two if I may. The first question could you maybe just talk a little bit about the sale of blue crude to employee bridge, maybe any color you can provide on the cash received in the equity you have of the combined company.
That would be helpful. And then second I wanted to.
That's on capital allocation.
Do you guys have any updates on how you guys are thinking about assets in the public markets, maybe the private markets.
And maybe we saw that you guys bought some MGM and bought back some stock doing that.
Quarter any color on how you kind of thought about pairing the two would be helpful. Thanks guys.
Sure, It's Chris I'll start on Blue crew, and then hand to Joey on capital allocation.
We.
We have sold the business into employee bridge, which is the industry leader.
In.
In light staffing.
Proceeds were about $50 million in cash and then equity in the pro forma company, where we are minority shareholder with a board seat. We're very excited about the combination of combining employ bridges scale with blue cruise technology software and client base.
And then also we were investing heavily in that business.
As we disclosed in the letter.
Ed.
An EBITDA loss of $26 million on an LTM basis, which you can pro forma out following closing with that I will hand, it over Julien yeah.
Yeah, I'll, just add that I think that Blue crew employ bridge combination is a really interesting one and it'll be it'll be fun to see that vision executed on a bigger scale.
<unk>.
Capital allocation.
Yeah.
We are always as you know looking at what to do with our cash and evaluating external opportunities against the internal opportunities.
The landscape.
Landscape of things, we consider hasnt changed so we prioritize our internal businesses both through the P&L am through.
Tack on M&A, where we think we have a significant advantage and then when we look externally.
And of course, we look at share repurchases and there's a big surface area for share repurchases for US right now in the sense of there's IC that is Angie.
MGM to some extent and there is zero to some extent all of these things are things that we evaluate very regularly and we will continue to evaluate regularly we're not going to make a prediction right now.
A proclamation right now on which ones will buy and when or whether but we'll just tell you that we continue to evaluate that very regularly and thats a very important part of our capital allocation process. I think generally speaking in public markets are pretty attractive right now I think that you can buy.
<unk> four that.
That have risk, where you can get a significant reward for taking that risk.
And I think Thats pretty interesting I think that private markets are still not there yet and they've always lagged and they'll continue to lag and eventually there will be an adjustment.
Probably don't want to be a private company, who needs capital right now, but if you are a private company, who doesn't need capital at the lovely place to be right now because you got to make up your valuation and nobody else gets to do that right now.
But if there's opportunities I think they're more likely public, but who knows we'll continue.
To look at both and.
That's kind of how we've always been and will continue to be on capital allocation.
Thanks, David Let's do next question.
Our next question comes from Ross Sandler from Barclays. Please go ahead with your question.
Hey, guys just a couple of follow ups on Dod best Meredith So.
On the growth rates for next year.
How much.
Baked in in terms of the digital AD market industry growth into your forecast. So if the AD market continues to tank how much sensitivity do we have around that forecast.
We look at the Meredith properties. It seems like most of the portfolio will be kind of in that 10% traffic growth zone.
Based on that chart in the letter.
I know youre shifting some of the AD sales from program programmatic to premium and <unk>.
Performance as you mentioned, so could you just bridge like traffic to revenue and kind of what kind of monetization you're baking in.
To that forecast thanks, a lot.
Yes sure. Thank you.
In terms of growth rates and tie in industry.
<unk> said in the letter that we expect to get back to flat in the first half and then growing for the full year without a improvement in the AD market and that confidence and some of it is tied to your second question as well of the linkage between traffic and revenue that confidence ties.
To sum some specific factors to dot dash Meredith the integration and where we are.
One is that.
The migration was challenging journey, but we.
Our predominantly on the other side of it heavily on the other side of it.
And feel like the drags that occur the integration related drags that occurred.
On volumes.
On.
AD serving et cetera.
We will lead to easier comps year over year.
The second is that we expect to grew.
Grow sessions on the migrated sites now that we can run the Dod dash playbook.
Which at the end of the day audience times price is the.
The revenue model on the advertising side, so we expect consumption and audience to increase as we push these sites forward and they perform better with faster sites fewer ads and improve content.
The third is that Neil and team view just core opportunities too.
Like to like improves cpm's across the portfolio as we move the Meredith sites onto the platform and have better AD, serving technology have better pricing models et cetera, and just certain.
Conventions that we can.
Imposed and then finally as e-commerce and performance marketing, where the Meredith sites have trailed I think.
The team had been dying to get their hands on those Meredith properties and brand names to to do the dot dash.
Performance marketing playbook, and we can go from there.
Overall.
We are we are not.
Sanguine on the AD market, especially in the first half of the year.
And so we are focused on our knitting, improving our sales driving the consumption increases and we're really in that fine tuning mode.
Of content AD, serving e-commerce on the merits sites.
I think that's it thanks Ross operator next question.
Our next question comes from Jason <unk> from Oppenheimer. Please go ahead with your question.
Thanks, everybody Joey can you just talk about the shortfall.
Over the last call it 12 months.
18 months.
At services versus lead and what have you learned that gives you confidence in the current strategy as opposed to kind of making another pivot.
Sure, Jason I guess the.
Services that we mentioned in the letter we've done $1 billion in services revenue that has a tremendous amount of revenue to do in this category is not a lot of service professionals have gotten to that volume.
We did that across a lot of tasks and we did that across a lot of geographies.
What we learned in that process, whether there is some areas and types of tests that we I think can do very well.
And there is some some that are harder to complete.
What we also learned in that is.
There's customer experiences that work out really well for customers and some that work out less well and we are now taking that learning and honing down to what we think is a great consumer experience that consumer experience melds when done perfectly Melbourne.
Very well with the ads in Leeds experience, meaning a homeowner it comes in a homeowner makes a choice a homeowner understands the choice.
Clearly between one path than the other and get the job done on the way that they wanted to get a job done I've talked about for a very long time.
Consumers in this category can be very different and can have very different needs of consumers as I. Just want you to do all the work <unk> is the consumer who says I want to do all the work myself, because I don't trust anybody else to do it and when I say do the work I don't mean lay.
Lay down the tiles I mean find the person who is going to do the work and negotiate with them and figure out price and decide.
Evaluate whether they are capable or not.
We have those consumers and those consumers are very passionate about which one of those paths they want to pursue.
And I think that we know having served a lot of services can do a better job honing, which customer should go down which path and help them make that decision.
That's probably the biggest learning and that's also likely to be the biggest change in terms of how we present those opportunities to homeowners in how we present those opportunities to close I think I guess embedded also in your question is.
How what's the outlook for both of those businesses both of those businesses have substantial upside relative to where we are it is possible that in services. We readjust what we're doing there in a way to start from a different area to grow again.
And we're working through that as it relates to our 2023 plan.
But we are I believe both of those businesses have are very good businesses can very much serve homeowners and service professionals and can grow substantially from where they are over time.
Does that answer your question Jason.
So there are going to assume yes, we will go to the excellent thanks, Kevin our.
Our next question comes from Dan <unk> from the Benchmark Company. Please go ahead with your question.
Great. Thanks, good morning.
If I could just sneak one more structural I mean, I think we've gotten enough data now to suggest that in general monetize volt queries and actions across network sites Theyre just way down so forgetting the macro for a second I know you said you don't think there is anything structurally wrong.
EDM, which obviously you know.
We generally agree with but there has clearly been a shift in recent times to retail media and I'm. Just wondering how you are kind of viewing sort of intermediaries versus direct to what's becoming increasingly digitally native organic traffic.
Impact.
And then on on Angi, you, probably just answered this question but.
For what it's worth local even staying at home improvement up.
Like mid teens as a category right now so just structurally how you're thinking of growing ads leads as a share of a pie, which seems to be one of the few bright spots.
Robert Murphy.
Pro backdrop.
I'm not sure I understood. The first question, but I'm going to try which is I think that the.
Digital media properties added an absolute torrent of traffic.
Floods of traffic in.
2000, 22021 and that has abated.
I think that was the first question, but im not positive is that.
I'll refrain literally goes like I think there's kind of a view out there that digitally native brands.
Everyone's they're kind of taking share just through organic direct traffic rather than.
Consumers utilizing intermediary sites and I'm, not obviously, implying that really got us into more of a network market, but just trying to understand how you think structurally.
Yes, I don't we don't see that and I think we see the exact opposite of that which is the number one that consumers are looking for intermediaries to help make these decisions and those intermediaries are adding value and thats validated by the behavior, we're seeing on the people who.
Want.
The end result of that traffic, meaning.
The folks who are paying for our ecommerce traffic or performance marketing traffic and increasingly eager to engage with that audience as we're helping them make decisions and divine intent. So.
That is not a trend.
Obviously, you worried about Amazon in any capacity and the Big Tech Giants have lots of levers to pull in all kinds of areas, but generally we think that we're in a good place there relative to homeowners and the partners on the other side.
Yeah.
Got it.
Quick question the performance of the overall home segment.
Yes, sorry, okay.
Ads and leads is a I believe a very good business and a very long term business.
Aye.
Hi.
I think that number one it's generally we've talked about this before it's reasonably hedged in this market in the sense that as demand comes down interest among service professionals for our product goes up.
It's a good thing that's probably the opposite of the services business, which is an excessive demand environment. The services business is.
No.
Very important solution.
So those things are somewhat opposite but I.
Loved the ads and leads business and the services business and believe both have had significant growth from here or was there something more specific in and the question.
Sorry, Joe I think you can probably follow up it was really more just around market share given real strength in kind of local and some other channels. We're hearing yes got it okay.
That one is I think we have got work to do on share and that's something I'm very focused on making sure that we fix.
I think that speaks to Joe's comment about.
The need to focus more beyond services, where there are attractive market opportunities available to AMG.
In ads and leads and that can be driven through real focus and prioritization given what we see in the broader market.
Got it that's super helpful. Thanks, guys.
Thanks next question.
Our next question comes from Justin Patterson from Keybanc. Please go ahead with your question.
Great. Thank you very much and good morning.
With just the AMG business could you talk about the confidence level in terms of fixing traffic acquisition. This hasnt been the first time that there's been challenges with that I realize it's now one brand in there but talk about just some of the.
Levers you have to improve that over the coming quarters and how we should think about that timeline. Thank you.
Yes. This is an area, where I have a lot of confidence and Youre right just and we've made some mistakes on here in the past I think that the mistakes have been.
<unk> kind of similar so in the case going.
Going back a while where we combined Andy list in home advisor a lot of stuff change in traffic in that and masked some some things that werent happening underneath the surface.
I think that the rebrand was a similar story, which is we.
Did the rebrand that was a massive shift in traffic and brand exposure and that debt a lot of small things got.
Consumed in the story of the Big thing.
And I'm really focused on the small things, which is what matter in generating traffic and I think if we execute against the small things.
Ought to deliver significantly in traffic.
And I believe that as I've seen us do it in other places and this now has very very high priority in the organization. If you talk to anybody who has interacted with me at AMG over the last few weeks. They will tell you that same thing back which is we are focused on fixing this and we are doing all the things necessary in the organization to make sure.
Sure that we are.
Getting the traffic back we have the things that win in traffic long term is having obviously, having the best content and having the best experience. We've seen this over and over again in search engines, sometimes they get it wrong for awhile, hopefully long term they get it right and we can we can.
Deliver getting it right the things that matter for getting it right. In this category are we have full listings of service professionals, we have ratings and reviews on service professionals. We are closed loop reviews, we know whether it's service professional and a homeowner actually work together and whether they met and so we can use that as an extra verifying set.
We have cost guidance, we actually know what was paid in many cases directly and the that.
That cost data is really important.
And the last thing is we allow the consumer to take the action on our site, which means that combination of things combined with a reliable and trusted brands ought to be winning in search.
But we've given up ground, there and we've given up ground because we've held some of those things back we've given up ground because we havent totally focused on the fundamentals, we've given up ground because I think sometimes we focused on some shiny objects that we didn't need to this is very much blocking and tackling we have.
Great New leader here, who is focused on execution. We have started to take a few examples just to prove out the thesis and we've proven that out with a tiny handful of examples now we just need to scale it.
Systematize the scaling of that which is something that we know how to do and that we will get done and I'd be very surprised and disappointed if we can't fix that.
Over time, the other thing that's a factor and sorry to go on here, but I'm passionate about this topic and I think we have a lot of opportunity here is we've let conversion decline in some areas to I think a good business doesn't lead conversion decline really.
In any area over time, everything we should be doing should be driving up conversion over time.
And there could be b teams and disciplined focus on driving up conversion.
As I have gotten into some of the details I've seen some declines in conversion that I didn't really expect to see and I believe that most of what I've seen is fixable with focus and when you get those things going up then again all the other channels start to flow start to flow through so.
Again, sorry for the long winded, but I feel very good about our opportunities there.
Thank you next question. Thank you.
Okay.
Our next question comes from Logan Reich from RBC. Please go ahead with your question.
Mr. <unk> is it possible your phone is on mute.
Let's go to the next one and come back to Logan.
Our next question comes from Tom Champion from Piper Sandler. Please go ahead with your question.
Thanks, Good morning.
Joey the letter highlights the sum of the parts and.
It seems like clearly there's a disconnect with.
Sure.
Yeah.
The assets in totality and where the stock is trading what do you what do you think.
Is the primary source of the disconnect and what what kind of addresses that.
Ultimately.
And maybe one more if you could just.
Update us a little bit on Vivien and some of the investments made since the capital raise thank you.
Sure I think the primary source of the disconnect is execution and then the other source of the disconnect is.
As is the case in adding some of the parts where people are focused on is the ability to access the par.
And there is probably a perceived time gap between now and ability to access the parks.
Something I've talked about a lot that doesn't really worry me and everything that we have we maintain that optionality that optionality that option has value the value of that option doesn't really decline and so we don't feel pressure to exercise those options, but the thing that we have done and realizing value on those things over time is we have certainly.
<unk>, an ability and willingness to exercise those options and tax efficient ways right now thats not a high priority focus for us the focus for us is execution against all of our businesses.
And then those those options will become available or more more exercisable overtime.
And that usually shrink the discount.
The discount is something that I've talked about a lot and that I find interesting and an opportunity and the bigger the discount is the more exciting.
The opportunity is there.
Second question was Vivien capital raise.
The activities.
<unk> been doing performance.
Vivian is Vivien is doing great I mean, there is two two.
Two things going very well for Vivian.
One.
The.
And a tremendous market, which is the healthcare Marvin.
Health care Labor is a significant supply demand imbalance and we are serving that and I think we are serving that very well.
We are also delivering a a I'll say bespoke product for the category, meaning most of the platforms that have most of the share are delivering generic products that cover lots of categories with Vivien is doing very well is nailing a category specifically and this is stu.
As travel nurses and its going broader to more health care, but the thing that it accomplishes is it serves the job seeker with exactly the data that they need in that category and it serves the employer with exactly the data that they need in that category and being in that position is.
As I say, a good place to be in a market, where there's a lot of employers looking for looking for workers there.
And the only thing I would add relative to the sum of the parts and the.
Stub or nonpublic value pieces.
Dash is a major element of value there.
It has been.
Throughout the year.
Through the migration as well as the advertising downdraft, we really tried to provide.
Insight and color on the performance and dynamics, there and bifurcate what is.
Integration merger related versus macro.
And we will look to continue to do that but we also believe across care.
Vivian.
Turo and elsewhere, there are tremendous value sources in the IAC family that the market is not recognizing.
One more question.
Operator, one last question.
And our final question today comes from Youssef Squali from Suntrust. Please go ahead with your question.
That's true.
So couple of questions maybe.
Joey can you maybe just contextualize, where you are with dash Meredith relative to your initial expectations, both operationally and obviously the $450 million segment EBITDA for next year is now off the table.
How far are you behind your initial expectations and then in the letter on Angi I think you talked about your intention of being more balanced I'm assuming that means between service isn't hasn't leads practically what does that mean are we just talking about the marketing spend.
And conversion that you've talked about.
Dressing.
Question.
Asked earlier or is there something else beyond just the go to market.
Our strategy was.
With marketing thank you.
Sure <unk>.
Reverse order.
Got it.
The balance of services versus adds and lead actually runs all throughout the organization.
No.
First just how we expose the various products to consumers.
And when we expose the various products to consumers that will change.
<unk> be more balanced second is.
How it exists inside the organization.
Right now our historically I'd say.
The decisions were made to prioritize services.
In all kinds of.
Organizational decisions and that will be more balanced.
<unk>.
It it.
The organization was operated in a way that was I would say.
Services first and I'd say going forward. It's services is very important and serves as a great service for homeowners, but it will be services ads and leads and it will be homeowner first.
In terms of how to think about our operations and how to think about the customer experience.
The.
Second question was that as merit and how far.
Behind we are.
Ah.
Think.
Realistically were probably one to.
One five maybe years behind schedule.
I think there is one the delays that we've talked about extensively in the integration and that was probably an aggregate of six month delay and then I think that the AD market on top of that is certainly not helped.
And I think just generally being delayed in the integration led to exposure of more issues that needed to be addressed so I think in aggregate has put us on maybe that roughly that timeline.
Not I really don't think Theres, a single thing that we've seen yet it says the fundamental thesis is flawed.
But the surrounding environment is a tough one and that's made all this slower and harder for us and self inflicted wounds over the last six months.
Added to that too.
Thanks Julien.
Thank you well. Thank you all for joining us this quarter and look forward to talking to you next quarter. When hopefully we'll have a lot more to share.
And ladies and gentlemen that will conclude today's conference call and presentation. We thank you for joining you may now disconnect your lines.
Okay.