Match Group, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Match Group Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. All participants are 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 touchtone phone. To withdraw from the question queue, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tani Shelburne, FCP of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. Today's call will be led by CEO Bernard Kim 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 BK.

Thanks, Tani. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call. I'm delighted to be on our second earnings call at the company. The time has flown by, and I attribute that to the team coming together, making decisive calls, and taking real action to accelerate momentum. As our third quarter results demonstrate, we have a lot to be proud of. When you exclude FX Impact, we saw double-digit growth. There is still a lot of work to do, and while the macroeconomic environment is proven more challenging, we have a great team and an excellent portfolio of brands. That makes me optimistic that we can create significant long-term shareholder value. After just a few months, the team at Tinder is gelling well together and there has been a palpable change in the culture. We have made some big changes to improve organizational efficiencies and operations to get the team shipping product and accelerating growth. Some examples of this are bringing the revenue and product teams together so they're collaborating and supporting one another as one team in our shared mission. The marketing team is also working with and challenging the product teams to ensure that we're building features that users can get excited about. Whenever reorganizations occur, there's always a risk of attrition. But with this new team in place, we haven't seen any. That's promising. We aren't dealing with massive disruption. Instead, we are getting more products into testing, working together to eventually return Tinder to previous growth levels. That won't happen overnight, but we are moving in the right direction. I am excited about how our 2023 roadmap is beginning to take shape, which centers in four key areas. Providing our women users more tailored experiences, targeting Gen Z through various product initiatives, evaluating virtual goods and coins to unlock untapped power users, and finally, creating more targeted monetization opportunities, including an expanded focus on users who have not previously paid. Additionally, we have let the market tell the brand narrative about Tinder for too long. We recognize that a powerful Tinder narrative is a critical component to accelerating growth again. Going forward, we are working to activate levers across global marketing brand campaigns to bring to life the endless Tinder success stories over the past 10 years. The marketing team is working hand-in-hand with product to redefine the narrative for the next generation of singles. While it will take some time to see measurable changes overall, I fully believe in the team's ability to experiment, learn, build, and ultimately deliver the best dating experiences for our users. Tinder has transformed the dating category over the last 10 years, and I am committed to making the next 10 even more exciting. Our search for a full-time CEO at Tinder is ongoing. We've met a broad set of talented and diverse leaders with a deep bench of consumer digital experience. I'm leading the charge on the search, but it's worth pointing out that we've already done a lot of the hard work that a new CEO typically has to do, like establishing the leadership team, making the organization more nimble and increasing collaboration. It is critically important to me that this new leader can seamlessly move into the role and work with the current team with minimal disruption, with a focus on growth and profitability. This is a role that I want to be very deliberate about. So in the meantime, I will remain interim CEO. The business plans are moving forward and I'm expecting execution and performance will continue to improve over the next coming months. Hinge continued to be a bright spot this quarter. They are delivering on their localization strategy to grow users and market share globally with a successful launch in Germany and reaching new markets throughout Europe. In October, Hinge hit record downloads in both the U.S. and globally. In the U.S., where Hinge has quickly become the third most popular dating app by downloads, the brand continues to innovate on the product experience. After the successful launch of audio prompts last year, the team was quick to roll out video prompts and prompt polls, giving daters more ways to express themselves and hopefully land a date. Later this month, Hinge will start testing a new premium subscription tier. We have decided to hold back the full launch of the new tier till Q1, the peak season for dating. I'm really excited about how it's coming together and I'm confident that it will resonate with the user base and provide an opportunity to drive RPP meaningfully higher. As a company, we have achieved a lot in a short amount of time. We have worked diligently to right the ship at Tinder, push forward with our growth plans at Hinge, and have continued to navigate the current challenging operating environment. At the same time, there is a significant amount of work to be done and innovations to be built that will further accelerate our growth. We are currently in the middle of our planning process for 2023 across the portfolio, and I look forward to sharing more during our next earnings call. One thing I did want to call out as I've spent more time with the business is we have different brands in different stages of growth. Given the current macro environment, we must focus our investment in brands that are growing and pull back in areas that are not driving growth. This has become a strategic imperative for us in 2023. I'll be able to share more on this strategy after we complete our strategic plans for next year. Our world has never been more connected, and I'm so proud that we are continuing to deliver on our company's mission of connecting millions of people around the world in meaningful ways. As I've told everyone before, I'm passionate about people, culture, and product, and look forward to improving the overall user experience across the portfolio with our talented group of technologists around the world. And with that, I'll turn it over to Gary.