MediaAlpha, Inc. (NYSE:MAX) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Steve Yi: Yeah. Sure. So we are seeing the same results roll in, and certainly, I think, it is carrier specific in terms of the tenor of the conversations that we are having with each carrier. There are carriers who have posted stronger results than you see them with a clear trajectory to restoring profitability and you can easily see those carriers coming back into the marketplace in three months to six months and you see other carriers who really are indicating that 2023 or the vast majority of 2023 will be focused on getting their pricing right. So in terms of the unexpected development, I don’t know that that we are seeing the same thing or we are hearing that from carriers. I think what you have seen is over the last six quarters, rate increase is really outpacing increase in loss cost, which really means that the industry is finally digging out and you are seeing other things, like, California starting to improve rate increases for the first time in years.

And so, I think, overall, when you look at the broader industry, there are some negative signals coming from carriers. But as a whole, I do see the entire industry really starting to dig out and we — this is reflected in the tenor of the conversations that we are having with each of the carriers, which is far more constructive and growth oriented than they were in past years and so we take that as a really positive sign. And there will be some carriers that are laggards that will probably come back into the marketplace in the first half of 2024. But I would characterize the majority of the carriers that we are talking to as expecting a return to the marketplace sometime in 2023.

Pat Thompson: And Cory, this is Pat. To answer the second question just on — for our guide for Q1 for P&C and the sequential growth as compared to Q4, how much of that is seasonality versus recovery. I think if you look at our results over the last couple of years for Q4 versus Q1, you would see that in a typical year for us — for P&C, it would be up 10% or 15% at the low end, 30%-ish at the high end. So you can think of that as probably being seasonality, just the consumers shop more in Q1 than Q4 and the balance of it being recovery trends be that volume or price.

Cory Carpenter: Great. Thank you, both.

Steve Yi: Thanks, Cory.

Operator: We will take our next question from Meyer Shields with KBW.

Meyer Shields: Thanks so much. A couple of, I guess, small numerical questions. The G&A expense in the quarter was higher than it had been running and I was hoping you could talk through whether there’s anything unusual in that?

Pat Thompson: Yeah. And the — I would say, nothing overly unusual on that. I think there were definitely some items that fell into that, that would be excluded from adjusted EBITDA in there. And so I would say that is, we really think of kind of managing the business to the adjusted EBITDA number and the G&A number kind of as we — that feeds into adjusted EBITDA has been pretty non-consistent over the last couple of few quarters.

Meyer Shields: Okay. No. That’s helpful. I guess on a related note, Pat. Can — you mentioned in your prepared remarks ramping up investments and I was hoping you could talk through sort of the time line of that, I think, tied to P&C carrier spend?