Q4 2024 Match Group Inc Earnings Call
[music].
Welcome to the match group fourth quarter 2024 earnings Conference call. All participants will be in listen only mode should you need assistance. Please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero.
After today's presentation there'll be an opportunity to ask questions to ask a question you May Press Star then one on your telephone keypad to withdraw your question. Please press Star and then two please.
Speaker Change: Please note. This event is being recorded I would now like to turn the conference over to T. N E. Shelburne Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Speaker Change: Thank you operator, and good morning, everyone. Our press release executive commentary and supplemental financial materials are posted to our Investor Relations website yesterday afternoon for reference.
Speaker Change: As a reminder, we will not be reading the executive commentary on today's call.
Speaker Change: Today I'm joined by our New C E O sensor Ras Clos as well as our president and CFO, Gary Tillett, there and incoming CFO Steve Bailey.
Speaker Change: Sensor, Gary and Steve will make a few brief remarks, and then we'll open the line up to questions for approximately 30 minutes.
Speaker Change: Before we start I need to remind everyone that during this call. We may discuss our outlook and future performance. These forward looking statements may be preceded by words, such as we expect we believe we anticipate or similar statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties.
Speaker Change: Actual results could differ materially from the views expressed today.
Speaker Change: Some of these risks have been set forth in our earnings release or periodic reports with the SEC.
Speaker Change: During this call we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in our press release and commentary on our IR website. These non-GAAP measures are not intended to be a substitute for our GAAP results with that I'd like to turn the call over.
Speaker Change: <unk> just been Sir.
Speaker Change: Thanks, Dan and good morning, everyone. I appreciate you joining us today I'm honored to step into the CEO role at such a dynamic time for match group I want to thank BK for his commitment and his contributions to match group.
Speaker Change: Served on the board I've seen firsthand the company's commitment to innovation and its portfolio of iconic brands that continue to redefine how people connect.
Speaker Change: Match group thrives because of its ability to experiment boldly and scale new ideas to millions of users as we look ahead I'm excited to work closely with our teams to foster a culture that prioritizes creativity and continuous innovation, ensuring we remain at the forefront of shaping the future of dating and relationships with that I'll turn it over to Gerry and Steve.
Speaker Change: Talk to your results.
Gerry: Thanks, Spencer and welcome to the company, it's great to have you here.
Gerry: Good morning, everyone. We're excited to share our Q4 and full year 'twenty 'twenty four results, which slightly exceeded our expectations at the time of our Investor day as we finished the year strong driven by a solid start to peak dating season, which runs from the day after Christmas to Valentine's day.
Gerry: At our Investor Day in December we outlined our strategy to leverage innovation, especially driven by AI to improve the product experience and reinvigorate growth or.
Gerry: Our 'twenty 'twenty four efforts laid a solid foundation that has positioned us for success in 2020 five and beyond.
Gerry: Executing this strategy to meet evolving user expectations drive sustained growth and deliver long term shareholder value remains our focus.
Steve Bailey: When he twenty-five is a critical year for execution at match group and we're confident that the product Roadmaps. We've developed at our business units will help us achieve our goals with that I'll hand, it over to Steve.
Steve Bailey: Thanks, Gary let me start by thanking Jerry for his many years as CFO of match group. This is his 37th earnings call at our company, which is an extraordinary tenure I have big shoes to fill and I'm grateful to him for his hard work and many contributions as our long term.
Steve Bailey: <unk> President.
Steve Bailey: I'm very happy to be joining today's call and look forward to many more ahead.
Steve Bailey: This is the first call with this new earnings format, and we hope everyone finds it helpful.
Steve Bailey: In 'twenty 'twenty four match group delivered total revenue of $3 $5 billion up 3% year over year or 6% on an FX neutral basis.
Steve Bailey: Despite lower revenue growth than we expected at the beginning of the year, we achieved our full year E O Y margin target of 36%.
Steve Bailey: Reflecting our continued focus on cost discipline.
Steve Bailey: Looking ahead, we remain committed to executing against the financial goals, we outlined at Investor Day.
Driving steadily improving revenue growth.
Steve Bailey: Three points of margin expansion by 2027.
Steve Bailey: Strong free cash flow generation.
Steve Bailey: And a target of returning at least 100% of free cash flow through dividends and share repurchases.
Steve Bailey: We believe we're well positioned to execute and deliver on these plans in the quarters ahead.
Steve Bailey: With that let's open it up for questions.
Steve Bailey: We will now begin the question and answer session to ask a question you May Press Star then one on your telephone keypad, if youre using a speakerphone. Please pick up your handset before pressing the keys.
Steve Bailey: To withdraw your question. Please press Star and then two.
Ross Sandler: Our first question comes from Ross Sandler with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Steve Bailey: Yeah.
Steve Bailey: Great.
Speaker Change: I think I'll start with the strength of your question. So Spencer I think everybody on the call here is excited to see you.
Steve Bailey: Step into the arena again.
Steve Bailey: So what what inspired you to join match group and what's your perspective on the state of the online dating industry.
Speaker Change: Thanks, Ross gets it here from you like those of you who know me know that I'm, a mission driven leader that I get fired up about creating and growing category leaders in huge digital industries, which solve fundamental human needs. I started my career in tech 25 years ago in the online travel industry by co founding Hotwire, we sold hotwire to Expedia to creative.
Speaker Change: Speedy group and then I ran the hotel vertical there for several brands like Hotwire, Expedia and hotels Com and then I left to start Zillow, which grew in the Zillow group as we acquired an incubated many brands in the digital real estate category. So just to double click on mission.
Speaker Change: At Expedia group's mission of helping people explore the world through travel was motivating to me during my five years, there and Zillow group's mission of helping people find a home that they love was inspiring for my 15 years, there, but match group's mission of connecting people is probably the most important mission of any company globally because.
Speaker Change: The way I'd think about Ross is finding a home to love us create but finding a person to love is even more important so to answer your question why am I here why am I back in the saddle for me it starts with mission.
Speaker Change: I'll add to that that I was also attracted to the strength of match group's brands just to give you a sense of the power of the brands yesterday I got hundreds of congratulatory emails from friends and most of them included some version of I met my person on tinder or on hinge or on match or on one of your other apps and that includes my brother and sister both of whom found their person on our apps. So.
Speaker Change: Yeah, that's amazing if that doesn't get you to jump out of bed and run to work in the morning, I don't know what does and then in terms of timing.
Yeah, I believe that this Cambrian explosion in AI is going to allow match group you have the same kind of business inflection that the shift from desktop to mobile created for our category in other categories around 10 years ago, when mobile exceeded desktop we've seen other AI driven consumer mobile apps from Tictoc to Instagram and Snapchat have step changes in engagement.
Speaker Change: And retention from brilliant adoption of AI features on mobile I see the same potential for us and then Oh.
Speaker Change: Lastly, I would just focus also on Tam so I'm optimistic that someday, we're going to look back at online dating in 2025 and realized that the Tam was much larger than people expected and there is some pattern recognition here, where we've seen other categories become digitized and offline substitutes become an anachronism from e-commerce to transportation to travel booking to real estate search.
Speaker Change: All of which are almost entirely online now.
Speaker Change: Those categories are online in a way that data is just not fully online yet and we intend to change that so for all those reasons, that's why I'm back in the saddle totally fired up about our mission our brands our Tam our scale advantage, our potential with AI and let's go.
Speaker Change: Next question please.
Benjamin Black: And the next question comes from Benjamin Black with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Benjamin Black: Great. Thank you for the question just.
Benjamin Black: Just a follow up there you know why is this the right time to make the change in leadership in sensor I guess you know how is your strategy on it.
Benjamin Black: All from BK and are you, taking any steps to sort of ensure.
Benjamin Black: Smooth transition without a meaningful disruption. Thank you.
Benjamin Black: Yeah, I mean look this is and will be a smooth transition I was already on the board of directors I was already in the building I already had a key card that worked like I I know the team here I'm familiar with the strategy Amphenol here with the company and also match group is very similar to Zillow group, where I had a very successful tenure as CEO, there, both multi brand or category leading digital.
Benjamin Black: Places that are around the same size as scale. So I think as CEO transitions go I think this is going to be as seamless and smooth as possible and as is.
Benjamin Black: Seamless is youll see regarding the strategy and the financial targets from Investor Day, I stand behind those I was you know I was on the board when they were prepared and was involved in their preparation and I'm here as CEO to make sure that the plans get executed and then some.
Benjamin Black: I'm, bringing urgency I'm, bringing accountability and prior experience to the role and I'm ready to rock.
Benjamin Black: Next question please.
Speaker Change: And the next question comes from Curtis Nagle with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Curtis Nagle: Great. Thanks, so much for taking the question maybe.
Speaker Change: Maybe could you.
Speaker Change: Extrapolate on the comments, so I think a couple of times in the press release that you'd observe solid start the dating season.
Speaker Change: But once you guide at least from like a payer and revenue perspective.
Speaker Change: I've split out and even take into account some of the FX headwinds.
Speaker Change: Question.
Speaker Change: Yeah. Thanks, Chris So let me take that one yes, youre right peak season, the user trends have been solid at Tinder, and hinge, which is a leading indicator of future Mou and revenue trends.
Speaker Change: But it only has a modest impact on revenue immediately.
Speaker Change: It does give us a lot more confidence in our 2025 revenue trajectory, which calls for improving year over year trends as the year progresses.
Speaker Change: On revenue and really margin too there is a disconnect between consensus for Q1.
Speaker Change: Compared to our expectations, which really haven't changed since investor day aside from FX.
Speaker Change: There's really you know this is really because we didnt share color on the cadence for 2025 at Investor Day, We really wanted to focus on the long term trajectory of the business and you know we said we'd provide more details on this call. So let me give you some more color.
Speaker Change: Our Q1 total revenue expectation.
Speaker Change: It was really impacted by declines in tinder is year over year direct revenue growth.
Speaker Change: Which reflects stabilizing but still negative mou trends as well as planned trust and safety initiatives, including biometrics in Canada, which we talked about in the materials.
Speaker Change: And while it might seem like a small thing. The fact that last year was a leap year also reduces year over year revenue growth by about a point in the quarter.
Speaker Change: And you know I would say, while we didn't give quarterly expectations at Investor day.
Speaker Change: We did review the timing of tenders product initiatives and indicated.
Speaker Change: That we would test and launch these features throughout the year.
Speaker Change: And that would gain traction as the year progressed.
Speaker Change: And therefore have a bigger impact on the second half than the first.
Speaker Change: In addition to these product initiatives, we laid out at Investor day.
Speaker Change: Schindler has planned a number of monetization initiatives as well throughout the year that will gradually improve year over year revenue growth that's pretty typical for us.
Speaker Change: And so we have high confidence in our ability to deliver on those those revenue.
Speaker Change: Generating monetization initiatives.
Speaker Change: So aside from Tinder, we also expect other brands to deliver improved revenue growth throughout the year.
Speaker Change: They execute on their product roadmaps and delivered their monetization initiatives.
Speaker Change: In particular, we assume that hindrance revenue growth strengthens in the second half of the year as user growth continues to be strong and they execute on their product roadmap.
Speaker Change: So collectively between what tenders are expected to deliver what the other brands, including hinge you expect to deliver and the solid start to new users to start the year and we're confident we can deliver gradually improving year over year total revenue growth throughout the year and achieve our full year total revenue.
Speaker Change: Outlook.
Speaker Change: Next question.
Speaker Change: And the next question comes from Chris <unk>.
Speaker Change: Qintar itch with UBS. Please go ahead.
Speaker Change: Great. Thanks for taking my question.
Speaker Change: Just any update around tenders, Apple App store ranking and whether the current stake could allow tender I may use to return to year over year growth from 2025.
Speaker Change: Why don't I jump in and take that one.
Speaker Change: So we have seen some real improvement in tinder MAU trends globally over the last few months as the effect of what happened on iOS has begun to dissipate. If you look at it on a month by month basis.
Speaker Change: Globally Tinder MAU in October were down about 10% year over year and that's when we saw the bulk of the impact of what happened with the iOS impressions. Since then we've seen some steady improvement.
Speaker Change: Tinder Mou globally were down about 9% in November and again in December and then January has come in at about 8% year over year. So there has been some real progress on that front over the last four months and as Steve mentioned, we've seen a solid start to dating peak season.
Speaker Change: New users and so that's helping the year over year Mou trends as well now this is only a few months of data there relatively modest improvements. So I don't want to you know kind of over exaggerate them, but obviously, we need to make progress on year over year Mou trends, that's what's in our outlook for the rest of the year.
Speaker Change: So three or four months of those trends going in the right direction.
Speaker Change: Is a very good sign for us and obviously at a critical time of the year as well so as Steve said it gives us confidence that we're going to see over the course of 2025 steady improvement in Mou trends, which ultimately should also help us translate that into improvement in year over year revenue growth trends.
Speaker Change: In terms of growth for the year on the Mou front at Tinder, that's not what's currently included in our outlook. We're focused on improvement from where we are we've got a ways to go from down eight or something.
Speaker Change: Much better than that so our focus is on delivering that I'd love to see us get back to growth, but I think we have to take the baby steps first we got to roll out these product initiatives see them drive improved user trends. So our forecast isn't assuming that but obviously, we'll have to see as we roll out. These various features.
Speaker Change: You know what impact they actually make on user trends and as we roll out each one will be able to give you a much more fine tuned estimate of the expectations around user trends, but but we feel good about the start to the year and we're on track against what we've been expecting.
So hopefully that's helpful and we can move to the next question.
The next question comes from Cory Carpenter with J P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Cory Carpenter: Good morning. So you mentioned several Ala Carte features that are being tested.
Cory Carpenter: Could you provide an update on the progress there and your expected revenue contribution this year as well. Thank you.
Cory Carpenter: So why don't I take that thanks Corey.
Cory Carpenter: We did rollout first impressions.
Cory Carpenter: For those of you don't know what that feature is it allows users to send contextual messages on specific profile elements.
We rolled that out in December and we are seeing good results.
Cory Carpenter: User adoption has been solid and users who send a first impression are likely to get more and more likely to get a match. So the product as it features effective.
Cory Carpenter: Through further iterations since we first tested first impressions, we were able to reduce cannibalization impact, which we've talked about on previous calls.
Cory Carpenter: Being being a blocker and it is adding incremental revenue which is great on.
Cory Carpenter: On passport, we plan to continue to iterate, we'll take a similar approach to first impressions, where we optimize for the user experience and minimize cannibalization of our existing offers offerings.
Cory Carpenter: I do want to point out that the expected contribution from the revised ALC features at Tinder on 2025 revenue.
Cory Carpenter: It is relatively small.
Cory Carpenter: And it's it's really monetization optimizations like package mix of merchandising that are accounting for the bulk of tenders expected revenue trend improvement alongside some improvement and an Mou trends like we've been talking about.
Cory Carpenter: Next question.
Speaker Change: The next question comes from E L. Iranian with Citi. Please go ahead.
Cory Carpenter: Okay.
Speaker Change: Hey, good morning, guys I just wanted to talk about our margin outlook for 2025 and how you're.
Cory Carpenter: Thinking about investments.
Speaker Change: I think if you look at the guidance the.
Ann: Hi, Ann.
Speaker Change: Kind of maybe have lowered the high end, but I think the commentary also talked about the margin outlook being largely the same as it was at the Investor day. So if you just clarify on that and what you're seeing is giving you a conviction to invest more to create upside to the targets how do you get to the targets.
Ann: Just help us walk through that thanks.
Yigal: Yeah. Thanks for the question Yigal.
Yigal: We're committed to delivering at least 50 basis points of margin expansion in 2025.
Yigal: It could be higher than that but we're committing to at least 50 basis points.
Yigal: This is at the lower end of the range, we provided at Investor day.
Yigal: Really because of worsening FX headwinds primarily at Tinder.
Yigal: It's not due to incremental investments.
Yigal: Would you have to understand as tenders cost base is almost entirely in the U S.
Yigal: And as you know a significant portion of its revenue comes from outside the U S.
Yigal: So FX headwinds at Tinder really create both a revenue both revenue and margin pressure.
Yigal: And so we wanted to give ourselves the room to make the planned investments in product innovation at Tinder. So that we can achieve our three year revenue growth objectives.
Yigal: And at least 50 basis point expansion target allows us to do that.
Yigal: I'd also say, we're still highly confident in our ability to achieve our three year margin target of 39%, we talked about at Investor day, and we have a clear plan to do that so that as that is unchanged.
Yigal: And let me just take a minute to also talk a little bit about the quarterly cadence of margin.
Yigal: Now there is a typical seasonal pattern, we see in our business. Most of you know this the margins are typically lowest in Q1.
Yigal: As we spend up on marketing during peak season, and then they typically improved throughout the year and are generally highest in Q4, where we tend to pull back on marketing during the holiday season, and I just want to be clear that we expect similar trends.
Yigal: And the cadence of margins this year as well.
Yigal: Next question.
Yigal: And the next question comes from.
Yigal: Strata, Okay, Julia with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.
Julia: Okay. Thank you for taking my question and I have one on tinder.
Speaker Change: You mentioned.
Speaker Change: In your letter that Tinder declined I expect it will lessen.
Speaker Change: And I guess my question is which specific initiatives in your view could be the biggest needle mover and what kpis related to those initiatives that you're tracking to measure progress you've kind of touched on this a little bit, but just wanted to double click thanks a ton.
Speaker Change: Yeah.
Gary Tillett: Hi, It's Gary why don't I try to jump in and take that and people mess up my name all the time too so I'm sympathetic.
Speaker Change: You are right our outlook calls for improving.
Gary Tillett: Now.
Gary Tillett: At Tinder through the year, and that's going to be driven primarily by product as Steve has talked about in a couple of his responses and I just want to point out it's not going to be one specific thing. It's really a number of things. We have three areas that we've talked about at tinder, where we need to see progress we've talked about.
Gary Tillett: Fostering a cleaner ecosystem, improving user outcomes and bringing the fun back to dating and we really need to make progress in all three areas. Obviously the trust and safety area is critically important at Tinder and so that's a major area of focus and emphasis but all three really have significant initiatives planned and.
Gary Tillett: They are collectively what's needed to help us improve the user trends and the revenue trends.
Gary Tillett:
Gary Tillett: Look if I, if I had to pick one or two I think we highlighted at Investor day. The we demonstrated the AI driven matching feature that gives feel something other than swiping as a way to meet I think that's very exciting for us we're really excited to get that out into the market and see what that does to user growth. So.
Gary Tillett: We're working very hard on delivering that.
Gary Tillett: And Oh look all of these products are going to require some level of testing an iteration and refinement. So it's not just going to be get them out to the market see the results and be done it's really this back and forth to get these products.
Gary Tillett: Refined and perfect. It and so I think you should expect to see that and obviously, we expect that over time that will help us build improved <unk> trends.
Gary Tillett: In terms of the Kpis. If you go back to the Investor Day presentation. There was a slide on each of these three areas that I just went through and what metrics, we're expecting to move.
Gary Tillett: I'm not going to kind of go back through all of that but as an example, if you look at the AI enabled discovery feature that I just referenced we want to see what the level of adoption is obviously, we're going to roll that out as a as a complement to swiping, we want to see a significant number of people engage with that feature and give it a try so that's going to be really important.
Gary Tillett: We also want is the improvement in quality matches, we want to see that product really deliver for people in terms of enhanced quality matches that will improve the perception of the product, which should help us drive user growth. So that's the flywheel Wanna get going.
Gary Tillett: And we're gonna be watching key metrics on all of these different product initiatives, whether its trust and safety ones or new ways of discovery to drive the improvement at Tinder from a user perspective, which we would expect to follow if there's high adoption and satisfaction with the features so hopefully that addresses your question.
Gary Tillett: I'll ask the operator to go to the next one.
Speaker Change: And the next question comes from Nathan Feather with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Nathan Feather: Hey, everyone. Thanks for taking the question for Kinder you talked about the impact of prior accustomed safety changes in user trends, particularly back half of 'twenty three additional puff Bang at features like photos and biometrics, how should we think about that cultural impact on user vertical 25, and then as you remove bad actors in the ecosystem.
Speaker Change: How should we track underlying qualities.
Hi, Nathan why don't I jump in and take that one as well so you know.
Speaker Change: You're right to point out that as we focus on fostering a clean ecosystem of Tinder Rolling out These trust and safety initiatives do you have a fact on both users and some on revenue as well and so that's something that we're monitoring very closely and obviously, what we're trying to do is iterate on these.
Speaker Change: Trust and safety features to maximize their impact on trust and safety, meaning get out as many bad actors out of the system as we can and minimize their effect on good users and on revenue. That's what we're trying to achieve and so that's the constant iteration and set of trade offs, we're making on these trial.
Speaker Change: And safety features and just like I described to sweat our it's a constant effort to make sure we pinpoint those and have their effect be as precise as possible and so things that we're monitoring as we roll. These features out is.
Speaker Change: Do the reports of bad actors decline due the interactions with bad actors that are user have.
Speaker Change: Improve so that we see that they are being effective and.
And we are able to monitor that quite quite effectively so we're going to continue to monitor all of those kpis and make sure that those features are as effective and have as little bad knock on effects as they possibly can that's why we're testing biometric so extensively in Canada our outlook right.
Speaker Change: Now includes the effects of biometrics in Canada in that one market and we're also working through face photo requirements in several markets and we've included all of that within our full year outlook. So.
Speaker Change: Right now as how we're analyzing things and we'll report back if our view on these trust and safety features changes, but right now that's what's included in our outlook and I just want to point out that well, it's obviously very important.
Speaker Change: Early ethically for us to have as clean and ecosystem as possible. There is also real business reasons to do so you know it.
Speaker Change: It is important to the health of the brand. It is important to driving word of mouth, it's important to retention and overall user growth, which are obviously beneficial to the business and so that's why we're willing to have these short term effects of a lower user base or even some lower revenue because overall, it's critically important.
Speaker Change: The success of the business that we foster that clean ecosystem and see the benefits on kpis of doing so.
Speaker Change: Gary if I can just jump in it you know.
Speaker Change: But we've seen this movie before with plenty of other digital social networking or user generated content apps like Youtube and Facebook that have worked to clean up their ecosystems and improve trust and safety.
Speaker Change: You think back to the 20th six when Google about Youtube Youtube with a cesspool of pirated illegal video content at the time and Google worked hard to clean up the ecosystem and improve user satisfaction and also monetization because youll recall advertisers did not want to get anywhere near it at the time and now obviously Youtube Youtube and Facebook at the same problem.
Gary Tillett: <unk> thousand 16 to kind of 2019, or so I they removed over 2 billion fake accounts in a single quarter in 2019, So that's an ecosystem cleanup, which Facebook are embarked upon and for US as Gary said its mission critical our users can feel safe and secure when connecting with people through our apps.
Gary Tillett: And I think as Gary explained this clean ecosystem that drives real business outcomes right. It improves net promoter score drives positive word of mouth, it improves retention and it lowers our customer acquisition costs. It creates positive network effects. So it's not just a nice to have it's a must have it's why it's one of our key pillars for 2015 or sorry 2025.
Gary Tillett: And even if in the short term it has the effect of potentially reducing some topline user metrics. We think it's the right thing to do for the business just as it was right for Youtube to remove pirated videos of his right for Facebook to combat spam and scams and that's why we're so focused on trust and safety.
Gary Tillett: Next question please.
Mark Kelley: The next question comes from Mark Kelley with Stifel. Please go ahead.
Mark Kelley: Great. Thank you very much good morning, everyone I just wanted to ask a quick one about.
Mark Kelley: The new matching algorithms.
Mark Kelley: <unk> talked about in the letter.
Mark Kelley: Is that something you might look to.
Replicated across your brands or do you feel like that's something that's going to be.
Mark Kelley: Need to the hinge experience thanks very much.
Mark Kelley: Let me take that one thanks, Mark the short answer is yes, we can leverage at the point of.
Mark Kelley: The pop plus initiative, we've talked a lot about recently is that there are advantages to <unk>.
Mark Kelley: Scale technology, and our multi brand portfolio that allows us to leverage shared learnings across the brands more effectively.
Mark Kelley: We've seen this happen I E.
Mark Kelley: They're all there are consolidation efforts over the past couple of years. We've also seen it with features like AI photo finder as an example.
Mark Kelley: So we think theres a lot of opportunity to also continue to enhance the matching algorithm from here.
One example is improving the alagoas by providing better feedback loops, which hinge is doing with its personal interview feature.
Mark Kelley: And we think Theres a lot of other examples of improving the matching algorithm by leveraging AI.
Mark Kelley: Can potentially be deployed at all of our brands.
Speaker Change: We just need to account for the distinct user experiences that each of them, but we do think there's a lot of opportunity a lot of opportunity here, Steve just to just to add this is one of the things that excites me about this company. So it's scaled right. It's global it's multi brand and those are all things that are competitive advantages. So we're absolutely going to leverage.
Speaker Change: Across brands in lots of ways, we've done a little bit of that to date, but there's a lot more that we can do and we ran this playbook at Zillow group with great success with Zillow Trulia and renamed it Zillow group.
Speaker Change: We share best practices in areas like digital marketing and search engine optimization email marketing, we did a lot of cross brand AI personalization of the sort order of homes or photo ordering all of that where all of us where AI innovations that we innovated on different brands and then scaled across the whole portfolio. So that's absolutely the playbook that was already in motion.
Speaker Change: Here with the power portfolio initiative, the populist initiative in that playbook will be executing this year.
Speaker Change: Alright, Thank you very much.
Speaker Change: And the next question comes from Jason.
Speaker Change: <unk> with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.
Speaker Change: Thanks.
Speaker Change: Spencer good to reconnect one aimed at the U S.
Speaker Change: Any thoughts about focusing more on kind of monetizing.
Speaker Change: Tinder hinge users.
Speaker Change: He either higher prices for current paid users or kind of moving the paywall. So that there's less free users I guess, it's like are you, leaving economics on the table when non paying users given the market's focus on.
Speaker Change: Kind of the payers metric.
Speaker Change: Kind of or maybe that Netflix apotex.
Speaker Change: Hey, Jason good to reconnect and great to be working with you again.
Speaker Change: Conversation reminds me a lot of the.
Speaker Change: Number of Premier agent advertisers times Premier agent revenue per month that something that you and I spent lots of time discussing and as I always told you. There we were focused on maximizing total revenue not on the number of paying real estate agents and it's very similar here. So we're maximizing and optimizing for total revenue.
Speaker Change: And that is how how we run the business I'll, let Steve go into little bit more detail on your question, though because I've only been here for a half a day.
Speaker Change: But that's my overall take is revenue trumps.
Speaker Change: The revenue per or number of pairs, but over to you Steve Yeah, No that's exactly right Spencer.
Speaker Change: We have match group has an incredible track record of innovation when it comes to monetization.
Speaker Change: Overall I think we're you know we're one of the best in class. It is a major strength of the company. It's another advantage of our multiple brands operating multiple brands at scale.
Speaker Change: And.
Speaker Change: We've said many times our primary focus like Spencer said is on maximizing revenue that is not new not specifically our P. P or payers, we're constantly testing and trying to optimize for revenue regardless of the impact of those two men on those two metrics specifically.
Speaker Change: And you know as you look across the portfolio.
Speaker Change: In terms of monetization, we're very advanced.
Speaker Change: Tinder for example, but always still refining and improving through optimizations.
But then there are other brands like hinge that are still in the earlier stages of of monetization optimization because they're in the earlier stages of their business lifecycle and you have rightfully focused more on user growth in our monetization to this point are you know.
Speaker Change: I'd expect we're going to continue to focus on driving user growth at hands, but there's there's a lot of opportunity to increase our focus on monetization optimization moving forward as well, but again it will always be in the in the vein of mass maximizing revenue not one particular metric.
Speaker Change: With that let's turn it over to the next question.
Speaker Change: And our final question comes from John Blackledge with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.
Hi, it's Logan on for John.
Speaker Change: At the Investor Day, you mentioned that given the mix shift emerging and evergreen overall topline growth can turn positive at some point in the back half of 2025 could.
Speaker Change: Could you update us on that outlook and discuss some of the emerging brands, which maybe are driving that growth.
Speaker Change: Sure welcome to the call Logan I'm happy to try to take that.
What you said is exactly right, we're expecting that over the course of 2025, we're going to see moderating declines at the evergreen brands and we're going to see continued nice strong growth at your emerging brands.
Speaker Change: Such that those things should roughly offset each other as we get through the year, which will allow <unk> to be a nice contributor over time from a growth perspective to match group again, and we're looking forward to that it will have a nice impact on our overall financial picture.
Speaker Change: In terms of which emerging brands you know the thing that's happened is we've rolled out more and more emerging brands because they are mainly demographically focused and so we've been.
Speaker Change: Targeting demographic groups kind of one by one we started out with <unk> and BLK on the Hispanic and black communities and those have continued to be very strong growers for us very solid businesses and so they are definitely a key part of the story and then we'd move to other smaller demographic groups as well and we just keep adding those and that's helping to offset.
Speaker Change: The decline from the ever Green brands and so for example, we recently acquired a brand called salons, which focuses on the Muslim community and we've seen really good growth in that business. We've expanded its revenues by about 50% since we made the acquisition. So theres going to be a continued strategy for us to grow and build and buy.
Speaker Change: These various demographically driven brands.
Speaker Change: And get us to the point, where the <unk> businesses as a whole can be a revenue contributor to match group I. Just also want to point out on this topic that.
Speaker Change: Any discuss the build once deploy everywhere strategy at the Investor day, and we're implementing that throughout 2025 and that has some real benefits in the business as well because it enables us to quickly and effectively roll out new features and operate these smaller demographically focused brands at very attractive margin.
Speaker Change: And so it's not just a revenue play, but theres a real prop.
Speaker Change: Profitability focus as well in that business. So we feel good about what's going on at any and you'll hear more about this as the year progresses.
Speaker Change: With that why don't I turn the call over to Spencer for a few closing remarks. Thanks Gary.
Spencer: I want to thank Steve Gary Tanner and the rest of the team here at match group for welcoming me yesterday, it was a great and energizing.
Speaker Change: Jay It's also great to see so many familiar investors and analysts on the call and I look forward to working with you here as I did for so many years in my last CEO role as you can probably tell I'm extremely excited about match group and our potential as a vote of confidence and also because I believe it's a good investment I'm going to be buying personally $2 million worth of match group stock in the open market tomorrow when.
Speaker Change: The trading window opens to me I'm committed to building long term shareholder value I'm Super excited to get to work and I look forward to talking with you. All soon thanks so much.
Speaker Change: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation you may now disconnect.