LendingTree, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the LendingTwee Incorporated Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Trent Ziegler, CFO. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thanks to everybody for joining the call this morning to discuss LendingTree's second quarter 2021 financial results. On the call with me today are Doug Lebda, LendingTree's chairman and CEO, and JD Moriarty, president of LendingTree Next. As a reminder to everyone, we posted a detailed letter to shareholders on our investor relations website earlier today. And for the purposes of today's call, we will assume that listeners have read that letter and will focus on Q&A. Before I hand the call over to Doug to give his remarks, I want to remind everyone that during today's call, we may discuss LendingTree's expectations for future performance. Any forward-looking statements that we make are subject to risks and uncertainties, and LendingTree's actual results could differ materially from the views expressed today. Many, but not all, of the risks we face are described in our periodic reports filed with the SEC. We will also discuss a variety of non-GAAP measures on the call today, and I refer you to today's press release and shareholder letter, both available on our website at investors.lendingtree.com, for the comparable GAAP measures, definitions, and full reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to GAAP. And with that, Doug, go ahead.

Thank you, Trent, and welcome to your first earnings call as CFO, and thank you to everyone else for joining the call. The second quarter results demonstrate the sustained momentum we're seeing across all aspects of our business. We once again substantially exceeded our prior guidance, and our prior perspective on the remainder of the year is improving as we execute against our strategic growth initiatives and our COVID impact businesses return to health. In our consumer segment, which has been the most impacted by the pandemic, The recovery is well underway as consumer credit markets begin to normalize and we deliver increasing value for our partners. Our personal loans business, which is particularly profitable for us due to its alignment with my lending tree, was especially strong in the quarter. We have cultivated a deep network of lenders that is as strong as it's ever been. And as consumer demand for this product returns, we're well positioned to win. Inquiry volume in personal loans was up 40% sequentially over the first quarter, and revenue increased 70%. In credit cards, where we've been consciously endeavoring to rebuild that business at lower margins than we've historically seen, those efforts are paying off in continued revenue growth and expanded margins. In home, the strength of our market-leading position was on full display in Q2. Despite the fact that refinance activity in the broader market was down considerably relative to Q1, our home segment delivered segment profit that was in line with our first quarter results. The resiliency of our mortgage business is a testament to the longstanding relationships we've built with our lenders and the value that we add throughout any cycle. And our insurance business continues to perform consistently well as a market leader at scale. and is clearly less susceptible to macroeconomic conditions such as credit risk or interest rate cycles. We continue to diversify and strengthen our insurance business by expanding into new traffic acquisition channels, expanding our carrier network, and growing into adjacent categories, further adding to the durability of our business as a whole. And finally, we continue to pull all of these businesses together to into a more holistic consumer-centric offering in MyLendingTree. While new user adoption has remained strong throughout the pandemic, we are encouraged to see an uptick in engagement and usage of the platform as demand for many of our core offerings return. Our efforts to syndicate the MyLendingTree platform as well as our core marketplace assets in what we're dubbing Powered by LendingTree are also gaining traction. we've launched five managed marketplace integrations in Q2, and our integrated MyLendingTree partnerships accounted for more than 50% of new signups for the quarter. In closing, we're very proud of this quarter's results, and our confidence is only increasing as we enter the back half of the year. Our leadership realignment is helping to crystallize our priorities, and we're executing very, very well. Our business continues to become more diversified and more durable, and we intend to fully capitalize on those competitive advantages to drive future growth. And with that, operator, we can open the line for questions.