John Blackledge: And congrats, Jeff.
Jeffrey Kip: Thank you.
Operator: Your next question comes from Cory Carpenter with JPMorgan.
Cory Carpenter: On the Angi CEO transition, Joey, why was now the right time? And Jeff, it’d be great to hear your vision and strategic priorities as CEO? And then I have a follow-up but I’ll let you answer that one first.
Joseph Levin: Sure. Thanks, Cory. First of all, just having a full-time CEO is obviously better. And so as soon as we could do that, we were — I was especially excited to do that. And one of the things that — besides sort of improving the business’ fitness and customer centricity over the time I was there, I wanted to understand in-depth the issues and the opportunities. And one of the things that became very clear in my time there was what had been accomplished in the international business and what continues to be accomplished there. And that was a product of Jeff and an incredible leadership team in the international business that goes deeper than Jeff and realizing that both we had the talent there and the depth there created the opportunity to elevate Jeff to run the whole business. And I think he’s going to do a fantastic job but I’ll let him comment on it.
Jeffrey Kip: I don’t think that there is really a change in strategic vision. I think Joey has rightly put the customer at the center of what we’re doing at Angi and we’re really focused on delivering a better experience online and then most importantly, delivering jobs done well on both sides of the marketplace.
And so the work he’s done with removing, let’s call it, empty calories and moving the business forward in terms of being customer first is what I hope to continue. I hope we deliver more jobs done well each year from here on out. We plan to and there’s no real change.
Joseph Levin: Cory, you had another one?
Cory Carpenter: Yes, maybe perhaps for Chris, just could you give us an update on your Angi revenue expectations this year? And if you think you’ll need to reinvest ultimately to return the business back to growth?
Christopher Halpin: Sure. Thanks, Cory. Well, second part first. We definitely don’t think we need to invest more incrementally in the business at Angi to get revenue stabilized and back to growth. And in fact, Jeff can talk to it and continuing a lot of the work that Joey has done. We continue to see opportunities on the cost side and is why we’re confident in our adjusted EBITDA forecast and continued margin improvements even with the revenue declines.
On a revenue outlook basis, for the next quarter, second quarter, we guide towards similar percentage revenue declines for total revenue at Angi, in and around what we’ve seen in the last 2 quarters, sort of that mid-teens level. I’d note we took further actions to eliminate low-value revenues at Angi this quarter. One specific action we’d highlighted was to shutter an acquisition that was done 11 years ago called CraftJack. That had its own small pro network that was — that ran alongside the Angi network.
We thought it would be a nice add-on but as Joey and Jeff and [ Rusty ] dug in there, we realized it was not profitable and essentially was a drag on the business. So we’ll see some incremental loss of revenue and most notably for our external metrics with respect to service professionals, you should expect a decline of about 5,000 pros there but we expect to recapture many of the leads generated through CraftJack previously directly and view it as a margin-accretive shutdown.
As far as total revenue outlook, looking beyond next quarter, we want to allow Jeff to continue to develop his own view of the forward path of the business. He talked about how the strategy continues but the specific application of that and what revenue opportunities as well as cost opportunities he identifies. All in though, we’d say this is in the confidence that we have in our — or in the context of the confidence we have in our guidance of $120 million to $150 million of adjusted EBITDA for the year and similar improving margins to the first quarter throughout.
Operator: The next question comes from Jason Helfstein with Oppenheimer.
Jason Helfstein: Two questions. The first, given the stronger first quarter EBITDA at both Dotdash and Angi, why not raise the full year guide? Are you seeing anything in your outlook that has given you pause?
And then second and this will be multiyear repetitive, you talked in the letter about being frustrated with the stock price. What’s the takeaway? Are you implying that you’ll lean into buybacks if the stock does not start to improve? And just do you think about like the MGM stake as a source of capital or leverage if you need it? And welcome back, Jeff.
Jeffrey Kip: Thank you.
Joseph Levin: Chris, do you want to do the first one and I’ll do the second?
Christopher Halpin: Perfect. On full year guidance, on Dotdash, we feel confident in the momentum and outlook for the business between the revenue growth we are seeing, the OpenAI partnership and visibility on margins. Given the seasonality of the business, however, the full year is always heavily weighted towards the second half. So we thought it prudent at this point to get deeper into the year before revising guidance. That’s why we’re reaffirming our $280 million to $300 million of adjusted EBITDA for the year, while making targeted investments in areas like content, D/Cipher and performance marketing. But we would say we are — we feel confident about being in the higher end of that range and we’ll continue to update the market as the year progresses based on what we’re seeing.
On Angi, we produced strong profitability in the first quarter despite declining revenues. To us, that demonstrates that many of the revenues that we’ve removed from the business truly produced limited profitability and value. There’s still more work to do in improving both the consumer and professional experience. That’s a key priority. So we want to continue to remain flexibility, to build the best business for the future. We’d say we feel good about $30-plus million a quarter of adjusted EBITDA for the remainder of the year. So we’re keeping the guidance at $120 million to $150 million. Do you want to take…
Joseph Levin: Yes. So on buybacks, Jason, the — maybe a few things. One, let’s talk about kind of the evolution of thinking about buybacks and what goes into that. And certainly, buybacks are on the table, I guess, would be the shortest answer to your question. But the first step was really getting our operations in order and making sure we have very healthy business fitness. I think we’ve accomplished that. There’s still other things we want to accomplish along those lines. So I think we made real progress there.
