MediaAlpha, Inc.

Good day, everyone. My name is Kellyanne. I'll be your conference operator for today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the MediaAlpha Q3 2022 earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded. 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 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, you may press star 1 again. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Ms. Denise Garcia of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Thank you, Kellyanne. After the market closed today, Media Alpha issued a press release and shareholder letter announcing results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2022. These documents are available in the Investors section of our website, and we will be referring to them on this call. Our discussion today will include forward-looking statements about our business and our outlook for future financial results. including our financial guidance for the fourth quarter of 2022, which are based on assumptions, forecasts, expectations, and information currently available to management. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause future results or events to differ materially from those reflected in those statements. Please refer to the company's SEC filings, including its annual report on Form 10-K and its quarterly reports on Form 10-Q for a fuller explanation of those risks and uncertainties and the limits applicable to forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on assumptions as of today, November 3rd, 2022, and the company undertakes no obligation to revise or update them. In addition, on today's call, we will be referring to certain actual and projected financial metrics of Media Alpha that are presented on a non-GAAP basis. This includes adjusted EBITDA, which we present in order to supplement your understanding and assessment of our financial performance. Non-GAAP measures should not be considered as a substitute for or superior to financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in our press release and shareholder letter issued today. Finally, I'd like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded and will be made available for replay via a link on the Investors section of the company's website at investors.medialpha.com. Now I'll turn the call over to Steve and Pat for a few introductory remarks before opening the call to your questions. Go ahead, Steve.

Hey, thanks, Denise. Hi, everyone. Welcome to our third quarter earnings call. I'd like to make a few observations about the quarter before turning the call over to our CFO, Pat Thompson, for his comments. Due to ongoing inflation-driven underwriting losses, auto insurance carriers continue to limit their variable marketing investments in Q3. and that spend remains extremely depressed relative to normal levels. Recently, these profitability pressures on P&C carriers have been compounded by the large insured losses from Hurricane Ian, which we expect to lead to a further pullback in marketing spend by carriers in Q4. On the positive side, carriers continue to pursue and gain approval for rate increases in many states, which will ultimately lead them to resume their growth focus as profitability improves. As a result, we anticipate improved performance in our P&C verticals when the industry begins to emerge from the current hard market cycle and carriers once again turn to MediaAlpha to help them meet their growth objectives. In our health insurance vertical, we expect transaction value to be down slightly year over year as robust spend from our carrier partners is offset by lower spend from brokers. We continue to be very optimistic about the long-term growth outlook for this vertical, which is in the very early innings of the shift to online shopping and enrollment. Given this difficult marketing environment, we are continuing our disciplined approach to expense management while maintaining our capacity to outgrow our peers coming out of the P&C hard market cycle. Our outstanding team remains strongly engaged and committed to our mission. While this has been a challenging year, we remain as bullish as ever regarding our prospects for long-term profitable growth once market conditions improve. The secular shift to direct-to-consumer distribution and digital marketing continues across all of our insurance verticals, and our marketplace remains unparalleled in its scale, scope, and capabilities. With that, I'll turn the call over to Pat to say a few words before we open the call to your questions. Great.