MediaAlpha, Inc.

Thank you for standing by. My name is Pam and I will be your operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Media Alpha Inc. second quarter 2024 earnings 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 one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Alex LaLoya. You may begin.

Thanks, Pam. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. With me, our co-founder and CEO, Steve Yee, and CFO, Pat Thompson. On today's call, we'll make forward-looking statements relating to our business and outlook for future financial results, including our financial guidance for the third quarter of 2024. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q for a fuller explanation of those risks and uncertainties and the limits applicable to forward-looking statements. All the forward-looking statements we make on this call reflect our assumptions and beliefs as of today and we disclaim any obligation to update such statements except as required by law. Today's discussion will include non-GAAP financial measures, which are not a substitute for GAAP results. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the corresponding GAAP measures can be found in our press release and shareholder letter issued today, which are available on the investor relations section of our website. I'll now turn the call over to Steve.

Hey, thanks, Alex. Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Our performance in the second quarter was the strongest in our history across many of our key metrics with transaction value and adjusted even the reaching record level and exceeding the high end of our guidance ranges. For those newer to the Media Alpha story, I'll start today with a brief overview of the company. We're an advertising technology company that operates what we believe are the largest online customer acquisition marketplaces serving the P&C and health insurance industries. We do not sell insurance policies and we don't earn commissions on the sale or renewal of policies. Our product is a transparent and scalable programmatic advertising platform that enables insurance carriers and brokers to reach high intent insurance shoppers in real time. We primarily facilitate these connections through our network of hundreds of third party publishers where we earn a percentage of the value of each advertising transaction. We also operate our own websites that represent a small amount, less than 15%, of our overall transaction value. Now, turning to our Q2 results, our P&C insurance vertical achieved record transaction value, growing over 300% year-over-year. We saw strong growth in marketing investments by an increasing number of our P&C carrier partners as auto insurance underwriting profitability continued to improve. we expect carrier spending in our marketplaces to further increase in the third quarter, with P&C transaction value growing well beyond normal seasonality. Moving forward, we expect P&C market conditions to remain favorable well into 2025, given that many carriers have yet to resume normal levels of marketing investments. In our health insurance vertical, we delivered solid second quarter growth consistent with our expectations, Given the strong performance of our P&C business, our health vertical is expected to generate approximately 20% of transaction value for full year 2024. As we've discussed previously, we continue to cooperate fully with the FTC Civil Inquiry, which has been ongoing since February 2023. We've conducted an extensive review of our marketing practices, and while we can't predict the ultimate outcome of this matter, we continue to believe our practices comply with legal and regulatory requirements. Our goal is to resolve this matter as soon as possible, and we'll provide an update when we have one to share. Given recent market dynamics, I want to briefly acknowledge a short seller report that was published about our company last quarter. Our view is that the report fundamentally misrepresents our business model and business practices. Contrary to the report, neither my co-founder, Eugene, nor I sold shares in the recent secondary offerings. We continue to collectively own nearly 20% of the company, and we're more excited today about our growth opportunities for our shareholders, partners, and team members as we were when we founded the company in 2011. With that, I'll turn the call over to Pat for a more detailed review of our second quarter performance and third quarter guidance.