LendingTree, Inc.

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 1-1 on your telephone. To remove yourself from the queue, you may press star 1-1 again. I would now like to hand the call over to Andrew Wessel, SVP, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Lateef, and hello to everyone joining us on the call to discuss LendingTree's third quarter 2024 financial results. On with us today are Doug Lebda, LendingTree's chairman and CEO, Scott Pari, COO and president of the marketplace businesses, and Jason Bangle, CFO. As a reminder to everyone, we posted a detailed letter to shareholders on our investor relations website before the start of this call. And for the purposes of today's discussion, we will assume that listeners have read that letter and we'll focus on Q&A. Before I hand the call over to Doug for his remarks, I remind everyone that during this 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 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, for the comparable GAAP definitions and full reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to GAAP. And with that, Doug, please go ahead.

Thank you, Andrew, and thank you to everybody for joining us today. We are happy to announce that we generated $27 million of adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter, a 23% increase from last year. The quarter was highlighted by another standout performance from insurance, along with encouraging signs of growth across our home and consumer verticals. We have continued to benefit from very strong consumer demand for auto insurance quotes, with segment revenue increasing an impressive 210% from the third quarter of last year. Insurance earned $41 million of VMD during the period, a record result, and we believe there is room for further margin improvement. A small number of carriers are still driving the bulk of spend on our network this year, and some large population states are still seeing limited demand from carriers due to concerns over rate inadequacy. As more carriers return to historical spend patterns on our network and insurers begin to target consumers in those lower demand states, we see opportunity for additional upside. Our consumer business grew revenue 6% and VMD 4% sequentially, a third straight period of sequential improvement. Initiatives in our consumer business were the cause. First, on our small business product, we enjoyed consistent demand from lenders looking for high-quality borrowers, and this is the consistent highest margin unit on our network. We grew our concierge sales group to better serve our customers, and these additions have helped improve our customer satisfaction and loan close rates, which has allowed us to invest more in marketing to capture additional high-intent customers searching for financing. Second, in March of this year, we also made the decision to lean into our personal loan product, implementing a similar playbook as we had used with insurance during the industry downturn last year. At the beginning of 2024, as lender demand on our network had stabilized and we felt confident growing our marketing spend would lead to more closed loans and thus better financial results, we're happy to report that this decision has paid off, with both revenue and VMD growing sequentially again in Q3 for the second quarter anyway. Conversations with lenders on our network have indicated that credit conditions may loosen as we approach late 2024 and early 2025. We expect the business to produce strong results next year. Our home segment has been operating at trough levels due to various macroeconomic factors, including higher mortgage rates and a suppressed home sale market. However, home equity now accounts for two-thirds of segment revenue. generating 5% of revenue growth from the prior year. We believe home equity is well positioned to continue steady growth. Now operator, we're happy to hand it off to questions.