Grindr Inc.

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Beau, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Grinder fourth quarter 2023 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star two. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Tolu Adiafe, Grinder's Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Thank you, moderator. Hello and welcome to the Grinder earnings call for the fourth quarter and full year 2023. Today's call will be led by Grinder CEO, George Arison, and CFO, Vanna Krantz. They will make a few brief remarks and then we'll open it up for questions. Please note, Grindr released its shareholder letter this afternoon, and this is available on the SEC's website and Grindr's investor page at investors.grindr.com. Before we begin, I'll remind everyone that during this call, we may discuss our outlook and future performance. These forward-looking statements may be preceded by words such as we expect, we believe, we anticipate, or similar such statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and our actual results could differ materially from the views expressed today. Some of these risks have been set forth in our earnings release and our periodic reports filed with the SEC. During today's call, we will also present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Additional disclosures regarding non-GAAP measures, including a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures, are included in the earnings release we issued today, which has been posted on the Investor Relations page of Grindr's website and in Grindr's filings with the SEC. With that, I'll turn it over to George.

Thank you, Togo, and thank you everyone for joining us today. 2023, our first year as a public company, was a success by every measure. We made significant improvements in our product, increased monetization through our weekly subscription and boost a la carte, and exceeded our financial guidance. We continue to welcome more users to Grindr, with average mile growth of 8% for the year. The engagement has remained best in class, with more than 121 billion chats sent between users. These strong results speak to the hard work of our team and also to Grindr's enduring relationship with the gay community, as we help users all over the world finally connect with one another. We also embrace a deep commitment to service in the global gay community, most notably through our Grindr for Equality initiatives, including connecting users to more than 235,000 HIV test kits in the U.S., an effort we are striving to bring to many more countries. In 2023, we also laid a strong foundation for long-term growth, such as developing a robust product roadmap, which includes some great work we are doing on AI, and adding outstanding, highly accomplished leaders to our team. In November, we completed a landmark step for Grindr with the refinancing of our debt, closing a new $350 million facility with some of the world's leading financial institutions. Debt refining seems to occur routinely in the business world, but when the first public company serving the LGBTQ community can execute this type of transaction, partnering with A-list institutions in a tough industry environment, it highlights not only the strength and credibility of our business, but also signals that we can help drive a more open and welcoming financial ecosystem. This is very important to our mission, and I want to thank BANA, our team, and our banking partners for their work and support in making it happen. Further details about our performance and 2023 focus areas can be found in our shareholder letter, which I encourage you to read. Next, I'd like to outline our three key priorities for 2024. Given the robust nature of our free offering, to increase monetization over the long term, we need to provide new, value-added features to our users that they're willing to pay for. To do this, We need to build features and products with a better understanding of our users' intent. We know that the vast majority of Gwendoly users use it for casual dating, but we also know that the same users use it for much more. As a primary place to find long-term relationships, a source for networking, for finding information about what's going on in the community, where the safe places are to go in different countries, and much more. Building features that better serve users' specific intent will allow us to cater to the needs of our customers. creating value for them, and opportunities for monetization for Grindr. Our second priority focuses on our brand and ensuring that we proudly tell the story of Grindr's great legacy of serving and positively impacting millions of people in our user community around the world. Legacy perception of Grindr rooted in societal, cultural, and historical prejudice, sensationalism, and shame, reinforced by long since resolved issues and inaccuracies about our product, are still present all around us and live in our audience's heads. Left unaddressed, these inaccurate perceptions can have negative long-term effects on our business. We recognize that creating value for our users and shareholders means taking these issues head on. In 2024, we're focused on amplifying the crucial and impactful work that is at our core by telling the true story of Grindr's role and culture and the real relevance and success of our product both within and outside of the community. And our third priority is to build a performance-driven culture of excellence and innovation. To start out with our return to office initiative last summer, we believe strongly that the combination of an important social mission with a workforce plan to win is what creates great companies. We are focused on building out our team and key functions with high performance, and we believe that the strong performance-driven culture will help drive strong long-term growth for Grindr, starting with the 2024 guidance we are providing today. I'm excited to share more on all of these initiatives and much more about Grindr at our first investor day, which will be held on June 26th, 2024 in New York City. The event will be a fantastic opportunity to gain deeper insight into our company and engage with leadership. Registration details will be shared soon. With that, I'll hand it over to Vanna to discuss our financial performance.