MediaAlpha, Inc. (NYSE:MAX) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And again, it’s been in that positive in terms of the carrier’s receptivity to these new ideas and to iterate with us to come up with new ways to do things in this space.

Michael Graham: All right, great. Thanks for all the color, Steve.

Steve Yi: No. Thanks Michael.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line from of Luismario Higuera with Citigroup. Your line is open.

Luismario Higuera: Hey, this is Luis on for Daniel Grosslight. Just had a quick question on, do you have any update on how Medicaid redeterminations have impacted your health business? Thank you.

Pat Thompson: Yes. So Medicare redeterminations and impact on the health business, the thing I would say is that I think some of the redeterminations there’s been a series of back and forth around that. Would say that I think the numbers probably shook out on the higher side of what was being discussed, which was I think generally positive for us. And I think that the thing we would say on the Medicare piece is that, these are fundamentally programs that are really attractive. The carriers like the business because there’s a lot of premium dollars there, and they make money off of it. And I think in the redetermination range, they’re feeling good about it. They’re a win from a consumer standpoint because you’ve got zero premiums in certain cases, zero co-pays, great formularies.

And it’s a market that we have really helped kind of come online in terms of marketing. And it’s a product that has 50% adoption. That adoption is going to be continuing to go up into the right. And we feel like it’s a pretty attractive place to play over the intermediate to long-term. And we’re pretty bullish on what it could look like in the years to come.

Luismario Higuera: Thank you.

Steve Yi: Did that answer your question, Luis?

Luismario Higuera: Yes.

Steve Yi: Great.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Meyer Shields with KBW. Your line is open.

Meyer Shields: Thanks. A question I guess coming from, because they talked a little bit today about some regions or maybe some sub-sectors of policyholders where they think that they’re adequately priced. When we look to your third quarter back half guidance, does that contemplate any sort of partial recovery? I know, Steve, you talked about a broad recovery, not likely.

Pat Thompson: Yes. And Meyer, this is Pat. I can tackle that question and would say that, as we look at the landscape of spend on P&C, the largest carrier spent a lot in Q1, cut through a lot of Q2 and would say the trends have been probably reasonably stable for a couple months with them. The bucket of everybody else has been kind of pretty stable since the start of the year. And we get positive news out of some and negative news out of others, but there is – the puts and takes have been pretty balanced and wouldn’t be surprised if there are some carriers that go, hey, we’ve taken enough rate and we feel good about this state, or we feel good about premium customers, or hey, people that are homeowners, we want to lean in a bit on it.

And there are others that may be trying to buoy short-term profitability through reductions. And so, would say our guidance, we typically guide to what we have a high degree of confidence in. And so that’s this quarter and we know the trends we’ve been seeing for a while. And we probably say generally expect those to kind of continue for the balance of the quarter.