LendingTree, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the LendingTree, Inc. 3rd Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference. 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 keypad. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. And without further ado, I would now like to hand the conference over to one of your speakers today, Mr. Andrew Vessel, Head of IR. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Vic. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on the call this morning to discuss LendingTree's third quarter 2021 financial results. On the call today are Doug Lebda, LendingTree's Chairman and CEO, J.D. Moriarty, President of LendingTreeNext, and Trent Ziegler, CFO. 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 definitions and full reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to GAAP. And with that, Doug, please go ahead.

Thanks, Andrew, and thank you to everyone joining us today. Before we get to questions, I'd like to discuss the sustained momentum we have seen across most of our businesses and the diversification benefits we enjoy from the various financial industries we work with. Our deep network of lenders across both the home and consumer segments help us to achieve the high end of our revenue guidance despite the temporary partner spend declines occurring in the insurance industry. In addition, our new credit facility and strong balance sheet allow us to remain on the offensive while many of our competitors are struggling to operate profitably. The recent monetization of a portion of our ownership in Stash provides us with additional liquidity. All capital allocation options remain on the table, including further investment in the business, share repurchases, and exploring inorganic growth opportunities. This quarter, the home segment generated record VMD, up 65% over last year, as low interest rates led to sustained refinance opportunities and improvement in the purchase market. Mortgage revenue per lead was up 78% over the prior period, an indicator of the value we deliver to our lending partners every day and our ability to survive multiple different types of interest rate cycles. The consumer segment also generated impressive results, as the recovery from the trough experienced at the outset of the pandemic continued. We have more lenders on our personal loan platform than ever before, and our credit card partners remain eager to acquire new borrowers as the effect of sustained government stimulus wanes. We have new initiatives rolling out, which will help sustain momentum in the consumer business as we move into next year. My lending tree is benefiting from the realignment of our management team that we put in place earlier this year. We added 1.1 million new users in the quarter, bringing the total to 20 million. We see an incredible opportunity to add product and functionality to MyLendingTree, which will help to provide a best-in-class customer experience that will, in turn, attract additional partners to the platform. We look forward to discussing more about our plans for MyLendingTree and all of our businesses at our upcoming Investor Day early next year. Now, operator, we're happy to open the line for questions.