Match Group, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Match Group first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star then zero on your telephone keypad. We will be facilitating a question and answer session towards the end of today's call. As a reminder, this call is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the call over to Bill Archer, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Development.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. Today's call will be led by CEO Shardube and CFO and COO Gary Switzer. 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 Char.

Thank you, Bill. Good morning, and thank you for joining the call today. On our last call in Feb, I made a comment that this past year has been remarkable for Match Group in many ways, even though the broader world has been a bit disorienting at times. Coming out of this first quarter, the world is in a very different place than the beginning of the year. Our business is not immune to the macroeconomic headwinds, such as the war in Ukraine, the strengthening US dollar against foreign currencies at levels we haven't seen in a while, and lingering variants of COVID-19. And despite it all, our business grew 20% in revenue in the first quarter of 2022, with strong growth across the portfolio. It is this strength in our core business that reminds me what makes our position in the online dating category so unique and resilient. Online dating is not an overnight fad. It is a category and a business model that has built and grown steadily over time. This is not serving a fickle user need. I often say this, if you look at Maslow's hierarchy of human needs, Right above food, shelter, and security is love and relationship. The need for relationships and dating is not going to go away. The market opportunity for a head for dating is massive. Over 700 million connected singles around the world are eligible to use our products, and only half of the eligible TAM in the Western markets of U.S. and Western Europe have ever tried a dating app. And that number is much lower across the rest of the world. And while we have grown users every year that we have been a public company, there is still so much more to go do. There's really no reason why people who are single shouldn't be using dating products. But people have broken into this category steadily but slowly. Once they try it, though, they not only use multiple apps at a time, that number's around three and a half on an average in the U.S. today, they also keep coming back when their life circumstances change and they need us again. So I remain incredibly bullish on the category as a whole, and the opportunity is still ahead. Now back to our current business. Even with all the macro uncertainty, it is our job to execute. And by and large, we are on schedule with what we planned to deliver in 2022. Tinder, beyond solid 18% revenue growth in Q1, the team continues to make progress on its product roadmap, whether that is adding new experiences into Explore or innovating on new monetization features. Our 2022 plan for Hinge to expand internationally beyond English-speaking markets remains intact. They will be launching in Germany and dark markets before the end of the second quarter, and a few more markets before the end of the year. And HyperConnect continues to build momentum, both with its current products and with the integrations its technology is bringing into our portfolio. Finally, we are encouraged to see more and more green shoots around the globe as COVID fears continue to ease. Seeing improvements in markets like Japan coming out of their most recent quasi-state of emergency restrictions has us cautiously optimistic about several trends we are seeing. And before I hand it over to Gary to provide more color on the quarter, I want to address the other news. After 16 years of an incredible journey of building this category and this business, I feel privileged to be able to step down from day-to-day operational role and have the time and flexibility to focus on the next chapter of my life, which I'm hoping will be the give back chapter and allows me to do things I've wanted to do for a while but didn't have the time and headspace to. As I said earlier, the opportunity before the company is immense. The vast majority of single people around the world have yet to try dating apps. While Match has steadily grown users, payer penetration, and revenue per payers, only a small mid-teens percent of our nearly 100 million active users are payers today. And they pay less than the cost of a cup of coffee a week. There is ample runway for our brands to continue to drive growth across all of these three metrics. And there remains a huge barrier to entry into the category, both in terms of the amount of trust and safety investment needed, but also the unique characteristics of the network effects of a successful dating pool, where balance of gender, age, other demographics, Geography and intent all matter in order to produce successful outcomes for users. And there is no one better position to continue to capture this important opportunity than us. Which brings me to Bernard and why I think he is the right next leader of the company. Bernard has a proven track record as a business, product, and people leader. with 20 years of experience in mobile entertainment and gaming. Not only was he instrumental in Zynga's turnaround and expansion, he drove player engagement and monetization strategies into one of the best live services in mobile today and helped grow Zynga's market cap by Forex. He has operated a business that's very similar to ours, multi-brand, multi-platform, global markets, different lifecycle brands, and has driven growth successfully, both organically as well as some very successful acquisitions. He has dealt with similar challenges as ours, from regulations to app store to talent recruitment. He has a phenomenal reputation, deeply cares about products, people, and culture. For the last six years, he's been working on the mission of connecting people through games. Now he gets to build on our mission of connecting single people through more fun digital experiences in their quest for dates, love, relationships, and marriages. I feel very good about the future of this company. With Bernard's energy, fresh thinking, and mobile consumer experience, Combined with over 70 years of dating category and business experience among the match group leaders and brand CEOs we have, I'm ever so excited about the next phase of this company and the category at large. Also, I'm not going anywhere. I will stay on the board, continue as an advisor to the company, especially be able to focus on areas of the business I actually love, product, strategy, solving problems, customer problems. Finally, I want to thank all my colleagues at Match Group, Gary and the rest of the management team, the board, and you all for your support through this 16-year journey. I came to this country alone 30 years ago in search of opportunities and a richer set of experiences. This journey has far exceeded all my expectations. Thank you. With that, I will hand over to Gary.