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

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Douglas Lebda: Yeah, so we’ve seen kind of under the hood growth in two areas. One, unsurprisingly, with the deposits business, as interest rates continued to rise there’s more interest in shopping around yields on checking, savings, and CD rates. So that’s — the relative scale of that is not huge but that continues to be an area from a macro standpoint, that we continue to see opportunity. The other area is in our credit services business. So we have both credit repair and debt relief where folks come to us and express interest in a personal loan or in another product, perhaps don’t meet the criteria for those loans. We offer subsequent solutions to them in the form of credit repair or debt relief based on their needs. And that’s been an area that has grown a little bit throughout the last year.

John Campbell: Okay, that’s helpful. And then from a strategic standpoint, I guess, also from a modeling standpoint, I saw you guys mention you are discontinuing the reverse mortgage business, I guess, first, why now and then secondly, how much revenue did that contribute in 2022 and any kind of kind of discussion on segment margin or VMM impact?

Trent Ziegler: Yeah, John, that business was one that we stood up several years ago, and the opportunity there has been declining over the last several years. The regulatory environment there is not particularly supportive. And to give you some sense, that was a business that was doing some 5 million in revenue for the last several years. So it’s really not a needle mover, when you think about strategically sort of where we are as a business. We’re really trying to simplify the business in many respects and focusing on the core value drivers. And that’s one that relative to my comment earlier about raising the hurdle rate didn’t quite meet it. And so that’s just a business where we can streamline focus and resources into bigger priorities.

John Campbell: Okay. Go ahead J.D. Sorry.

J.D. Moriarty: John, I will just get that. I mean, as Trent said financially it’s not a needle mover, but what we’re doing is looking at all of our businesses and saying, okay, what’s the natural margin in this business, what’s the opportunity in the business relative to the partner set. And then what does it do in terms of burden on our fixed costs or impact on our fixed costs, right. So when we talk about our cost structure, these things are closely aligned. We’re trying to make sure that we’re in the right segments, where we’re getting maximum leverage off of our fixed costs. And if there is a cost, a hidden cost aspect associated with being in a business that’s not delivering a big impact, we want to redeploy those fixed costs or cut them. And so it’s obviously reversed in of itself, it is not a big impact. But it’s indicative of the scrutiny that we’re putting into the whole business.

John Campbell: Makes sense. Thanks, guys.

Operator: Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Rob Wildhack with Autonomous Research. Your line is now open.

Robert Wildhack: Good morning, guys. You called out some competitive factors on the credit card side, obviously a lot going on in that space, whether it’s TreeQual or competing products, different business models, and now you even have a competitor paying out consumers who don’t get approved. Bigger picture, can you just share how you think about the competitive landscape and positioning there and really the rationality of it all right now?

Douglas Lebda: Rob, can you just — can you repeat the last part of that question, I apologize. It’s nearly killed off.

Robert Wildhack: Oh, sorry. Yeah, just kind of curious how you’re thinking about the competitive landscape in credit card, and really the rationality of it with all these different offerings that are out there?

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