LendingTree, Inc. (NASDAQ:TREE) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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When we’re talking about something that is pre-approved, it is being — it is converting at an 80% approval rate. So that’s the definition of higher conversion, that is what we’re focused on with TreeQual and there are different paths for TreeQual with every partner. Partners, what we found, what we’ve learned over the last years, partners want to work with us in different ways, all of which we view to be an improvement over the current status quo. And so card, if you look at our — each of our big businesses, it is the one that needs the most work in terms of what I’ll call the structural margin profile. As we fix that, we think we’ll be able to take market share, but take market share in a way that does not hinder our financial performance.

Douglas Lebda: And the only thing I’d add to what J.D. said is on the SEO front as you move from our compared — from the primary domain name for SEO being Compare Cards and you move that content over to LendingTree, we expect that you have to take a dip first on your SEO traffic and then as that builds up we think the LendingTree domain will yield much better performance in SEO overtime.

Youssef Squali: Thank you.

Operator: Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Jed Kelly with Oppenheimer. Your line is now open.

Jed Kelly: Hey great. Thanks for taking my questions. Going to insurance, I think at the end of your shareholder letter you sort of gave — you gave an outlook for insurance, sort of that you’re waiting for the carriers to sort of come back. Judging by how some of your competitors have reported, it seems like carrier’s kind of spending is sort of accelerating. So can you just talk about the arc of the recovery we should be expecting? And then can you just help us around the unit economics with Win Card? Thank you.

Scott Peyree: Yeah, hi, this is Scott. I’ll start on the insurance first and then throw it back to the rest of the team for the Win Card. But yeah, on the recovery of insurance, what I would call it and what I’ve been calling it is we’re in the very early innings of the recovery, literally like the first inning of the recovery, it is happening. Revenue is going up. There’s one large carrier in particular is spending more aggressively than the rest in general. A lot of the rest of the carriers are still proceeding with caution at this point, but the conversations are more and more optimistic. There’s more conversations, there’s discussions of when and how the spinner is going to go up. There’s testing in certain states with the carriers.

But we’re seeing pretty good growth in our auto insurance segment quarter-over-quarter going from Q4 to Q1. And as we’ve been talking about, we’ve been focused on the unit economics and the BMD of our insurance business instead of trying to over deliver on budget which the clients are practically asking for. We’re focusing on the quality of traffic we’re sending the clients and the profitability of that traffic. I think we’re doing a very good job of that because carriers in general even the carrier that’s gotten a lot more aggressive at some level there’s still conservative and concerned about profits, very concerned about profitability and it’s not just like pedal to the metal. So, I do expect the recovery to continue. It’s going to probably take 9 to 18 months in total for like the entire industry be fully back at a full board, but it is happening, yes.

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