Match Group, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Match Group fourth quarter 2021 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 will 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 then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Bill Archer, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead.

Bill Archer Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Today's call will be led by CEO Shara Dubey and CFO and COO Gary Swidler. They'll make a few brief remarks, and then we'll open it up for questions. 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, and our actual results could differ materially from the views expressed today. Some of these risks have been set forth in our earnings release and our periodic reports filed with the SEC. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Shar.

Thank you, Bill. Good morning, and thank you all for joining the call today. You know, this past year has been remarkable for Match Group in many ways, even though the broader world has been a bit disorienting at times. And as much as we'd hoped to be done with COVID in 2021, the recent Omicron surge is a reminder that we aren't quite at the end yet, although I sure hope we're close. So our business grew 25% in revenue, despite the waves of Delta and more recently Omicron. And this latest Omicron surge has impacted peak season behaviors and dating sentiment in parts of the world. And because these surges have had varying effects on our business, I thought I would start by sort of level setting where our business is in the context of the pandemic. So if you recall back in 2020, in the early days of the pandemic, Our business took a hit during the global lockdowns, and it then stabilized by late spring. And at that time, both user activity and propensity to pay slowly recovered. And as we've dealt with different waves of COVID since, usually the mobility restrictions are generally impacted dating activity. And now fast forward two years, while much of the Western markets, including the U.S., are seeing less and less impact to activity and propensity to pay with these ongoing surges, several markets, particularly in Asia, are still disproportionately impacted. Japan, for instance, has now dealt with three periods of state of emergency last year, all of which has had a meaningful impact to mobility and general dating sentiment. And there seemed to be a glimmer of hope after that last one was lifted. But again, Omicron has them back in a quasi state of emergency, at least until February 20th. And all of this has led to a level of anxiety and fatigue, particularly in these winter months. And we're seeing the effects of this in Japan and parts of Asia. Now, beyond these geographic differences, As we said before a few times, while active online daters and propensity to metrics have largely recovered in Western markets, there is still a hesitancy among new users who have never tried dating apps before to break into the category. Now, these are usually largely driven by word of mouth, and that, of course, depends on normal levels of socializing, which hasn't yet happened. And if you've resisted online dating until now, the pandemic hardly seems the right time to start. So this past year, we have seen periodic uptakes in new entrants when COVID is not dominating the news cycle. But by and large, that has not fully recovered in a sustained way. So unlike categories like, say, online groceries, for instance, where pandemic pulled forward new users, for us, non-users breaking into the category, even at a normal cadence, is still to come. And we feel optimistic that if Omicron truly is what causes the shift from a pandemic to endemic, and if things do indeed return to more normal in spring and summer, we are well positioned to be able to capitalize on it. We've made significant progress in building out our portfolio of products that appeal to different demographics and intent. We've innovated on many pain points, everything from trust and safety to more authentic discovery and getting to know each other experiences. We've been disciplined and measured in our marketing efforts given the macroclimate, but we're ready with several creative and optimistic campaigns to re-energize dating sentiment as soon as we are in a new post-pandemic normal. You know, romance and love may be just the thing that shakes us out of this collective malaise. Now, Tinder, beyond a 22% revenue growth, in 2021, Tinder released its biggest update since the invention of the swipe feature, and this was the launch of Tinder Explorer. Explore provides Cindo with additional flexibility to expand use cases to more dimensions of discovery and social life experiences. Explore enhances responsiveness, offers surface and opportunity for regionally tailored experiences, has exciting media video dating hybrids such as swipe night, wedding dates, concert festival mode, and it's clearly had a productive start with almost 70% of users adopting this experience. The 2022 roadmap has many more enhancements planned along with new monetization opportunities later in the year. Hinge has had an impressive year where they've more than doubled revenue They're also seeing a strong start to 2022 in markets they've been around at, like the UK and Australia. And the voice prompts feature they launched late last year has really resonated with users, not to mention the social virality this has seen. Turns out people's life goals, dating styles, and their best dad jokes are both entertaining and insightful. Our 2022 plan for Hinge to expand internationally beyond English-speaking markets remains intact. We're also making progress at HyperConnect in stabilizing the core business, and we plan to return them to growth later this year. They have recently launched Azar Lounge, their live streaming feature, and Hakuna City, their interactive and immersive new discovery experience. And they continue to experiment with metaverse elements, both in dating and social discovery contexts. We've also successfully integrated HyperConnect's live video and audio tech on a couple of our platforms. And the teams are making progress, enabling our other brands to leverage their technology more broadly to build new immersive discovery and live experiences. much remains to be done at HyperConnect, we're actually very confident it is on the right track. And it is pushing us forward in a number of areas that are critical to our long-term growth. As I reflect on last year, what jumps out to me has been our ability to find opportunities in the face of uncertainty. And despite this latest Omicron surge and all the uncertainty it may create over the next couple of months, I am hopeful about 2022, how we're going to use technology and innovate product experiences, tell our story with ever more creative marketing, and most importantly, profoundly change many more lives around the world. And with that, I will hand it over to Gary to provide some color on the quarter and the full year.