LendingTree, Inc.

Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the LendingTree, Inc. First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker 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 assistance during the conference, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Andrew Wessel, Head of Investor Relations.

Thanks, Andrea, and good morning to everyone joining us on the call this morning to discuss Running Tree's first quarter 2022 financial results. On the call today are Doug Lebda, Running Tree's chairman and CEO, J.D. Moriarty, president of Marketplace and COO, Trent Ziegler, CFO, and Scott Puri, president of insurance. 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 risk 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 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 all for joining us today. Our business again performed well in the face of a difficult macro environment. Our lending marketplace grew revenue in VMD year over year despite rapidly increasing rates. Improving demand and unit economics across purchase mortgage, home equity, personal, and small business loans helped to offset shrinking demand for rate and term mortgage refinance. As expected, our mortgage lender partners have increasingly relied on us to provide them with new customers as the refinance wave recedes. Improving RPLs across our other mortgage offering proved this business is resilient, helping us to outperform declines in overall origination volumes. The consumer segment of our marketplace has continued strong growth, as personal and small business loans performed tremendously well, and the credit card business returned to pre-pandemic RPAs. Insurance has begun what we project will be a robust recovery in its financial performance after dropping in the fourth quarter of last year. I'm happy to have Scott join us on the call to explain how we differentiate ourselves from our competition and why we have a more positive outlook for the remainder of the year than others. Our updated guidance for 2022 acknowledges the rapid increase in mortgage rates that we have seen so far this year, as well as continued inflationary pressure our insurance partners are navigating. Lowering our outlook is not something we take lightly, but the economy has been more volatile than we predicted when we first issued guidance at our investor day. The underlying strength of our business model and our balance sheet position allows us to continue investing in our growth initiatives as well as our brand. We expect these investments to generate very attractive returns by driving increased value, engagement, loyalty, and trust with our customers, positioning LendingTree as the best digital consumer shopping experience for financial products in the market. I founded the company over 25 years ago, and LendingTree has continued to evolve and expand its product offerings to address almost every personal finance need a customer has. Harnessing the unmatched depth of our partner network with an improved digital experience will delight customers, provide access to the broadest array of offerings in the industry, and foster lasting relationships with our customers. Highlighting some of the progress on our strategy, we are now able to present embedded bindable insurance quotes and pre-qualified loan officers to MyLendingTree members digitally. We have a solid pipeline of lenders and issuers looking to access our TreeQual platform to acquire new borrowers. The improved conversion rates and unit economics from TreeQual will help drive revenue and margin growth in our consumer segment, and we look forward to further integrating our insurance agency and our mortgage partners as we move forward. The team has rallied around our growth strategy, and we are all excited to begin seeing the early results of all that hard work. I look forward to discussing our progress on this call as well as future ones. Now, operator, we're ready for questions.