LendingTree, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the LendingTree, Inc. first quarter 2025 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 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ender Wessel, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead.

Thank you, DeeDee. And hello to everyone joining us on the call to discuss our first quarter 2025 financial results. On with us today are Doug Lebda, Leading Tree's Chairman and CEO, Scott Puri, CEO and president of our 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'll 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 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'll also discuss a variety of non-GAAP measures on the call, 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. With that, Doug, please go ahead.

Thank you, Andrew, and thank you all for joining us today for our first quarter update. All three of our business segments generated solid revenue growth in the first quarter. Adjusted EBITDA, however, came in just below our forecast, driven by temporary regulatory headwinds in our insurance business and one-time expenses related to benefits and legal fees. We are now one month into the second quarter, and we are seeing improvements in those areas. As a result, we are still forecasting strong adjusted EBITDA growth at 15% at the midpoint of our annual outlook that we updated today. As we discussed last quarter, our insurance segment was impacted by the FCC's pending one-to-one consent. An appeals court rescinded that rule, and subsequent rulings have eliminated the possibility that it will be resurrected in the future. We expected a sharp recovery once we reverted back to our previous customer experience, but it has taken longer than anticipated. This disruption, combined with a marketing correction in the quarter from one specific carrier, led to a somewhat softer insurance performance than we had forecasted. Despite the challenges, insurance still grew revenue 71% year over year in the first quarter, and we continue to forecast annual revenue and VMD growth for the segment. In lending, the consumer segment again benefited from growth in our small business and personal loan products. Our investment in the concierge sales team for small business has delivered significant benefits to our unit economics. Conversion rates have increased, and we have captured higher levels of renewal and lender bonus revenue as a result. We expect small business will generate record revenue for us in 2025. Thanks to success in home equity lending, our home segment continues to produce great results in a difficult environment. Increased demand for home equity loans from both consumers and lenders is driving home segment performance. Prevailing high mortgage rates continue to suppress demand for new homebuyers and refinancing. However, slower growth of home prices and an increase in inventory of homes for sale should be helpful for the housing market going forward. As I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks, we had some one-time items and operating expenses in the first quarter. Going forward, we have offset those unexpected costs with savings identified in the zero-based budgeting process from last year. We remain committed to carefully managing our operating expenses while maintaining the ability to invest in specific growth initiatives, enabling us to produce positive operating leverage on future revenue growth. I know tariffs are on everyone's mind, so I want to address that here quickly. Obviously, we are a fully domestic company, and we don't expect tariffs to have any direct impact on our business. Obviously, there could be secondary effects with interest rates or significant inflation that may impact our business, but we've stayed very close to our insurance and lending clients, and we don't have any immediate concerns. And now, operator, we're happy to answer any questions.