MediaAlpha, Inc. (NYSE:MAX) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Thomas McJoynt: Got it. Thanks. And then just a second question here. From your perspective, have you seen a lot of unbundling of customers in terms of looking to separate home and auto and kind of how has that impacted, what carriers are kind of willing to bid for customers who are looking to acquire?

Steve Yi: Yeah. I mean, I think that that’s — I mean, that’s certainly something that a lot of people are talking about the dynamic in the marketplace. Just because both auto and home have had its own issues in terms of dislocated markets and large pricing increases. And so I certainly believe that that is happening in the marketplace. So we don’t really have visibility into that. Our marketplace is predominantly auto, and home is a smaller part of our marketplace. But what we are seeing is, increased demand for home that I think is reflected or resulting in part from some of the issues that the carriers may be having with retaining some of their bundle customers.

Thomas McJoynt: Makes sense. Thanks.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Ben Hendrix with RBC Capital Market. Please go ahead.

Ben Hendrix: Great, thanks, guys. Congratulations on the quarter. Maybe a couple of quick ones here. First, just if you could follow-up on this opportunistic partner spend in Medicare? Can you remind us kind of the nature of that arrangement, kind of what you saw in terms of magnitude this quarter and how should we think about that going forward?

Patrick Thompson: Yeah. And Ben, this is Pat. So I would say that on the Medicare side, there were a couple of carriers that kind of in late February and March unlocked some spend with us. And I’d say that presumably they liked what they saw in terms of market opportunity and returns, and so they spent into that and the feedback from them was generally positive on they felt like they got a good return on that spend. The thing I would say is that, kind of given the size of our health vertical in Q1, and the spend and kind of the growth outperformance, we had relative to expectations like it wasn’t that much spend, it just ended up driving 6, 8, 10 percentage point beat versus expectations. But clearly positive from our perspective.

Ben Hendrix: Got you. And just also we saw a suboptimal rate notice for Medicare Advantage next year and we see some of the MA leaders, Humana and CVS talking about protecting margins, curtailing benefits for next year. It seems like the shopping setup is just getting incrementally better. Just want to see kind of if you agree and how you see the transaction value opportunity shaping up for OEP this year.

Steve Yi: Yeah, and I would say that, I think you did a — you had a nice summary of a lot of the market forces that have been at play. And I think, one of the things we’ve seen over time with, both Medicare and our under-65 business is that, regulatory and, market shifts can have an impact on the business, say over the long-term, totally confident that the industry will successfully adapt to whatever — whatever changes come. Near term maybe hiccups may be positive surprises we’ll kind of see on that. And I’d say that, we’re excited by the long-term opportunity. We’re hearing decent things from our advertising partners and on the publishing side and I think we’re feeling okay about Q2 and I think we’ll provide more guidance as we get closer to the time and get a little bit more clarity on exactly what folks are thinking. But we’ll see how things shape up and where we will, as always, be ready to do the best we can and react to whatever may come our way.

Ben Hendrix: Thank you very much.

Operator: And there’s a follow-up question from Mike Zaremski with BMO Capital Markets. Please your line is now open.

Michael Zaremski: Thanks for fitting me in. Just one quick follow-up. And I think you might have used a bit of this out, thinking on the property and casualty insurance segment. I believe if we go back is a — prior to the industry profitability was that — the revenue was very concentrated with one or — with a smaller number of carriers in terms of the largest carrier. Is — if we think about the first half of ’24, is it — and I believe it defragmented after that. But maybe I’m wrong. When we think about first half of ’24, is it still very — is it back to like being very concentrated and you expected to deconcentrate or maybe you could just unpack that a little bit?