MediaAlpha - Earnings Call - Q3 2025

Executive Summary

• Q3 delivered strong topline and profitability: revenue $306.5M (+18% y/y), Adjusted EBITDA $29.1M (+11% y/y), net income $17.6M; Transaction Value (TV) reached $589.3M (+30% y/y), with P&C TV up 41% to $548.2M.
• Results beat Wall Street consensus: revenue $306.5M vs $283.4M est; Primary EPS 0.404 vs 0.202 est (S&P Global). Management exceeded the high end of its Q3 guidance and authorized a new $50M share repurchase, after buying back 3.2M shares for $32.9M in September.
• Mix and margins: Gross margin 14.2% (vs 15.1% y/y) and Contribution Margin 14.9% (vs 16.0%) on higher Private Marketplace mix and lower under‑65 health; Adjusted EBITDA margin 9.5% (vs 10.1% y/y).
• Q4 guide: TV $620–$645M (+27% y/y midpoint), revenue $280–$300M (~4% y/y decline midpoint) and Adjusted EBITDA $27.5–$29.5M (~22% y/y decline midpoint) as under‑65 health remains a headwind; take rate expected ~7% with Private Marketplace ~54% of TV.
• Stock catalysts: continued broadening of P&C carrier demand (potential mix shift back to Open Marketplace), stabilization in health and any signs of take-rate inflection above ~7% in 2026, plus capital returns via the $50M buyback authorization.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • P&C momentum: P&C TV +41% y/y to $548.2M; management sees early stages of a multi‑year soft market with robust carrier growth budgets and expects continued gains.
  • Beat vs consensus and guidance: Revenue and EPS exceeded S&P Global consensus; Q3 results exceeded high end of company guidance; management highlighted stronger demand and share gains.
  • Capital Rolling capital return and strong cash generation: Free cash flow $23.6M in Q3 (81% of Adjusted EBITDA per letter) with net debt/Adj. EBITDA <1x; new $50M repurchase authorization after $32.9M repurchase in Sept.
  • Management quote: “We delivered record third quarter results… More auto insurance carriers are focusing on growth… We expect sustained growth in our P&C vertical…” — Steve Yi, CEO.

• What Went Wrong

  • Mix pressure on margins: Gross margin fell to 14.2% (15.1% y/y) and Contribution Margin to 14.9% (16.0% y/y) on lower under‑65 and higher Private Marketplace mix in P&C, compressing take rates.
  • Health vertical down: Health TV fell 40% y/y to $33.5M; under‑65 health expected to contribute only $1–$2M in Q4 and remain mid‑single‑digit million annually near-term after FTC‑driven compliance reset.
  • Q4 guide implies margin pressure: Despite TV growth (+27% y/y midpoint), revenue guided down ~4% and Adjusted EBITDA down ~22% y/y (midpoints), reflecting mix shift and under‑65 drag; take rate guided ~7%.

Transcript

Speaker 4

Good afternoon and welcome to the MediaAlpha, Inc. Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. I am Franz, and I'll be the operator assisting you today. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press *1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press *1 again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Alex Liloia, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Franz. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. With me are Co-Founder and CEO, Steve Yi, and CFO, Pat Thompson. On today's call, we'll make forward-looking statements relating to our business and outlook for future financial results, including our financial guidance for the fourth quarter of 2025. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, for a fuller explanation of those risks and uncertainties and the limits applicable to forward-looking statements. All the forward-looking statements we make on this call reflect our assumptions and beliefs as of today, and we disclaim any obligation to update such statements except as required by law. Today's discussion will include non-GAAP financial measures, which are not a substitute for GAAP results.

Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the corresponding GAAP measures can be found in our press release and shareholder letter issued today, which are available on the Investor Relations section of our website. I'll now turn the call over to Steve.

Speaker 8

Hey, thanks, Alex. Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I'm pleased to report that we delivered record third-quarter results driven by continued momentum in our P&C insurance vertical. Growth in the quarter was fueled by increased marketing investments from leading auto insurance carriers, who continue to lean into customer acquisition in what remains a highly favorable operating environment. With underwriting margins at unusually high levels, carriers are in a strong position to pursue policy growth. Importantly, peak underwriting profitability does not mean that carrier advertising spending has peaked. To the contrary, we're seeing an increasing number of carriers turn their focus in earnest to capturing market share, and our marketplace continues to be the most efficient and scaled platform for them to acquire new customers. These dynamics give us significant runway for continued growth in the quarters ahead.

In our health insurance vertical, our results were impacted by our recent reset in under 65, which was in line with expectations. Our partnerships with leading Medicare Advantage carriers continue to perform well, and we expect digital advertising to capture a larger share of health insurance distribution spend over time. As these secular tailwinds play out, we believe we're well positioned to restart growth from this new baseline. As we look ahead, we're encouraged by the strength of our P&C business, the long-term potential of our Medicare vertical, and the expanding opportunities we see across digital insurance distribution. In our P&C vertical, we believe we're in the early stages of a multi-year soft market characterized by strong carrier profitability and robust market share competition, which we expect to sustain healthy marketing spend for years to come.

The combination of strong industry fundamentals, deep partnerships, and the efficiency of our platform gives us conviction in our ability to deliver sustainable growth. We'll continue to balance investment and innovation with disciplined capital deployment, ensuring that we build enduring value for our partners and shareholders. In addition to favorable industry fundamentals, powerful technology shifts, particularly those related to AI, are likely to reshape how consumers discover, evaluate, and purchase insurance. In the near to midterm, it's foreseeable that AI may disrupt traffic patterns and monetization models for some of our publishers, while also creating entirely new supply-side opportunities. Because our marketplace spans hundreds of publishers across multiple formats and media channels, we expect our ecosystem as a whole to adapt well to these changes, preserving a resilient and diversified supply base.

With materially greater scale than our competitors and growing network effects, we expect to remain the partner of choice for both publishers and advertisers and to continue gaining share as AI adoption accelerates. We're also highly focused on leveraging AI to enhance the productivity of our organization and better serve our partners. We believe we're just scratching the surface here and look forward to keeping you updated in the coming quarters. With that, I'll hand it over to Pat.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Steve. I'll start by walking through the key drivers of our Q3 results. Transaction value was $589 million, up 30% year-over-year, driven by 41% year-over-year growth in our P&C vertical. In our health vertical, transaction value declined 40% year-over-year, consistent with our expectations. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $29.1 million, an increase of 11% year-over-year. Our efficient operating model and disciplined expense management allowed us to convert 64% of contribution to adjusted EBITDA, up from 63% in the prior year. Excluding under 65 health, our core business performance was very strong, with year-over-year transaction value and adjusted EBITDA growth of 38% and 31%, respectively. Our take rate, defined as contribution divided by transaction value, decreased year-over-year as expected for three main reasons. First, our under 65 sub-vertical, which was historically at high take rates, has declined.

Second, our largest P&C carrier partners have continued to represent an outsized share of spend in our marketplace. These carriers were among the first to restore underwriting profitability, which has given them a head start. We are confident that other carriers will enter the race in a more meaningful way. Lastly, our take rate was impacted by large-scale new supply partner wins. These factors together have increased the percentage of transaction value from private marketplace transactions, which carry lower take rates. Importantly, our open marketplace take rates have remained relatively stable. The pressure we're seeing is primarily a function of mix shift. Looking ahead, we expect our Q4 take rate to be approximately 7%, with private marketplace transactions representing approximately 54% of total transaction value.

As we plan for 2026, our current base case assumes we will start the year with a take rate roughly consistent with Q4 levels before the broadening of carrier demand has a meaningful impact on our take rate. Given the strong momentum we are seeing in carrier spend and our usual OPEX discipline, we believe we are well positioned to deliver adjusted EBITDA growth and maintain strong free cash flow generation next year. Longer term, we expect an uplift in take rates as more of our carrier partners ramp up their marketing spend to compete for policy growth, resulting in an increasing percentage of spend being transacted on our open marketplace. We expect record fourth-quarter transaction value as we benefit from continued strong demand from the largest carriers in our marketplace. Accordingly, we expect P&C transaction value to grow approximately 45% year-over-year.

In our health vertical, which includes both Medicare and under 65 health, we expect transaction value to decline approximately 45% year-over-year, driven primarily by under 65, which is stabilizing at a lower baseline. On a year-over-year basis, we expect fourth-quarter transaction value and contribution from under 65 health to decline by $34 to $38 million, or 61% to 68%, and $8 to $9 million, or 80% to 90%, respectively. To provide additional insight into the new baseline for our health vertical, similar to last quarter, we've included in this quarter's shareholder letter both transaction value and contribution for our under 65 business. As a reminder, we expect 2025 under 65 transaction value of $95 to $100 million and contribution of about $10 to $11 million, with around $1 to $2 million of that contribution coming in the fourth quarter.

Looking ahead, we expect that under 65 will generate annual contribution dollars in the mid-single-digit million, reflecting the reset in both scale and profitability for this sub-vertical. Moving to our consolidated financial guidance, we expect Q4 transaction value to be between $620 million and $645 million, representing a year-over-year increase of 27% at the midpoint. We expect revenue to be between $280 million and $300 million, representing a year-over-year decrease of 4% at the midpoint. We expect revenue as a percentage of transaction value to decrease meaningfully year-over-year as private marketplace transactions, which are recognized on a net basis, are expected to represent around 54% of transaction value, up from 41% in Q4 of last year.

Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $27.5 million and $29.5 million, representing a year-over-year decrease of 22% at the midpoint, including $8 to $9 million of impact from an expected year-over-year decline in under 65 contribution. Excluding under 65 health, we expect adjusted EBITDA to be roughly flat year-over-year. Finally, we expect overhead to be roughly flat to Q3 levels. Turning to the balance sheet, we generated $23.6 million of free cash flow in the third quarter. We ended the quarter with a net debt-to-adjusted EBITDA ratio below one times and cash of $39 million, plus restricted cash of $33.5 million. Earlier this month, the restricted cash was used to make the initial FTC settlement payment, and the remaining $11.5 million is payable in Q1 of 2026.

Excluding these settlement payments, we expect to convert a substantial portion of adjusted EBITDA into free cash flow, providing us with continued financial flexibility to support our strategic priorities. Given our confidence in our strategy and long-term growth opportunities, we think our stock is an attractive investment, and share buybacks are an accretive use of excess cash, particularly at current levels. During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 5% of our outstanding shares at a discount to market for $32.9 million. In addition, earlier today, we announced a new share repurchase authorization of up to $50 million, consistent with our disciplined approach to capital allocation and focus on maximizing shareholder value. With that, operator, we are ready to take the first question.

Speaker 4

Thank you. As of this moment, I will now go ahead and proceed to the question and answer session. At this time, I would like to ask everybody to please press *1 if you want to join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press *1. If you are called upon to ask your question and are listening via loudspeaker on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. Your first question comes from the line of Amelia Wicks from Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Hi, good afternoon. This is Maria Ripps. Thanks for taking my questions. It seems like a lot of investors are focused on carriers' profitability and sort of peak margins currently. As you know, one of the largest carriers recently recorded a sizable credit expense to reflect excess profits. Can you maybe talk about sort of your view on how sustainable current profitability levels are and what that might mean for customer acquisition spend overall?

Speaker 8

Hey, Maria. I appreciate that question. Yeah, as you're alluding to, we've been getting that question a lot as well. It's good to be able to clear things up with what people are doing with regard to conflating peak profitability for carriers with either peak of the soft market cycle or peak of advertising spend. The short answer to that is, conflating those things couldn't be further from the truth. To understand this, I think you really need to take a step back and think about hard markets and soft markets, how they work. We just emerged from what, a two and a half, three-year hard market cycle. Hard markets get kicked off when there is reduced profitability because of higher than expected loss ratios. What ends up happening is carriers start to get tighter underwriting restrictions. As they raise rates, they pull back on marketing spend.

What happens during a hard market is actually you have a baseline where you start from low margins, and then you see margin expansion as the hard market progresses. Now it starts to tip over into a soft market. When those margins start to peak and get to adequate levels, carriers then start to get more competitive. They get looser with their underwriting guidelines, start to reduce pricing, and then invest in customer acquisition. All of that has the impact of actually compressing margins during the course of a soft market cycle. When we hear things about carriers being at peak profitability, in a lot of ways, what that tells us is that we're just kicking off the meat of or the heart of the soft market cycle. What you can see from our marketplace is that demand remains very, very top-heavy.

On one hand, we have 13 carriers who spent more than $1 million a month this quarter. That's the greatest number that we've had in history. We're seeing a lot of nascent broadening of demand. Again, we're as top-heavy as ever with some of the leading carriers who are early to take rate, stepping on the gas in terms of marketing spend, that continue to dominate our marketplace. With rates starting to come down, with profitability starting to come down as well, I think what you're going to start to see are a lot more carriers really stepping on the gas in 2026 and beyond, as we really enter into the meat of the soft market cycle and a broadening of demand that I think will continue and be a tailwind for us for the years to come.

I do think it's worth pointing out that soft market cycles tend to last a lot longer than hard market cycles. Hard market cycles tend to be in about two to three-year increments, and soft market cycles historically have been two to three times that, so about five to seven years on average. What we're expecting is several years of tailwinds in terms of carrier advertising spend growth. We also expect to see the next level of growth in advertising spend really being from a broader set of top carriers in the top 25, with a lot of that spend, as Pat Thompson mentioned, coming through the open marketplace again as demand broadens out. I hope that explains our position and what we're hearing in the marketplace about peak carrier profitability. Certainly, that doesn't concern us at all.

If anything, that gets us excited that really the heart of the soft market is just beginning.

Speaker 3

Maria, this is Pat. I'll just add one thing to what Steve said there, which is that we've got, we're kind of two years into an improving operating environment, and our guidance for Q4 envisions 45% year-over-year transaction value growth for us in P&C. We feel like we've got the wind at our back right now, and we've got pretty nice operating momentum going into 2026.

Speaker 6

Yeah, that's great and that's very helpful. Thank you. Can you maybe share a little bit more color on the transition within your health vertical? Is that largely complete at this point? I guess, how are you thinking about the long-term opportunity within that vertical sort of outside of under 65?

Speaker 8

Yeah, I'll take that. I'll take the second part first, and I think Pat can go to the first part of your question, which is, I mean, what we're looking within the health insurance vertical is really focused on Medicare Advantage. We think that's a very strategic vertical. Again, I'll reiterate that it's a half a trillion-dollar industry, really new to direct-to-consumer advertising. We see a ton of opportunities there over the long term. It's a challenging market environment right now with medical loss ratios being elevated because of high utilization rates. What you're seeing is a lot of planned redesigns and carriers pulling out of certain markets. We have our own version within the Medicare Advantage space of a hard market that we saw in the P&C insurance space. I think most people are expecting the market to recover, I think, starting next enrollment period.

Certainly, we anticipate carriers starting to reinvest in growth during that time. For us, it's about the long-term opportunity that Medicare Advantage offers just because of the market size and really where the carriers are in terms of their adoption cycle of direct-to-consumer advertising and direct-to-consumer platforms. We see a lot of opportunities for integrated solutions to really help that space navigate the transition to a direct-to-consumer distribution model.

Speaker 3

Maria, I'll tackle the shorter-term portion of that question and the nearer-term financial outlook. In under 65, we've taken a number of actions to rebaseline that business. We think Q4 is approximating that new baseline for us. For the quarter, we're expecting plus or minus 65% year-over-year decline in transaction value with contribution down 80 to 90%. It's a business that should make us $1 or $2 million in Q4, and we believe it'll be a mid-single-digit million-dollar contribution business for us next year. From a compliance standpoint, we've already implemented effectively all of the necessary changes. There hasn't been a whole lot of cost that we've had to layer on to do that. Actually, we've embedded some AI technologies into that framework, which has allowed us to automate a lot of the monitoring that historically would have been labor-intensive.

We feel like we're in a spot where, towards the middle of next year, the comps for the health vertical will start to normalize.

Speaker 6

Great. That's very helpful. Thank you very much.

Speaker 8

Thanks, Maria.

Speaker 4

Your next question comes from Cory Carpenter from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Speaker 0

Hey, Steve, Pat, thanks for the question. I was hoping you could drill down a bit more into what you're seeing in the discussions you're having with carriers. I think, Steve, last time we talked, carriers kind of hit the pause button a little bit, just given the tariff uncertainty started to ramp in Q3. Now you're guiding to accelerating growth in Q4. Maybe just talk about some of the dynamics you saw interquarter. Also, you know, how much visibility do you have into year-end budgets at this point in the cycle? Thank you.

Speaker 8

Sure. Hey, Cory. Yeah, I think that when carriers hit pause, it was related to the uncertainties around tariffs. That pause was relatively short-lived. The carriers who were spending aggressively prior to Q3 resumed their levels of spend and we're continuing to see them grow their spend right now, as you can see from our estimates and our forecast. In terms of visibility into Q4, obviously, we're sharing that with the guidance that we have. There has been a tendency in these types of markets for there to be sort of excess budget being made available to us as the quarter starts to wind down. Because we're a very efficient source and a very trackable source, that excess budget does tend to accrue to us. It's not something that we're planning on right now.

Our Q4 estimates really have our best estimates to what the carrier budgets are going to be for the remainder of the year. We are starting to have some early discussions about 2026 budgets, and those discussions have been highly encouraging. They really support the narrative that up till this point, the recovery of the ad spend market coming out of the hard market has been very narrow and robustly driven by a narrow set of carriers. What we're doing is having discussions with everyone else and starting to see that there really will be a meaningful broadening of demand in 2026. The timing of that is going to be hard to gauge. Certainly, those carriers that we're talking about who have an early lead have taken a sizable lead.

It will take a bit of time and a few quarters for the expansion or the broadening of demand to really start to have a positive impact on our take rates. Certainly, we've been very encouraged by the early discussions that we've had with a lot of the major carriers, outside the top couple. We really do anticipate that 2026 is going to be a year where we're seeing meaningful broadening of demand within our P&C marketplace.

Speaker 0

You answered my second question, which was in the early 2026. I'll turn it back over. Thank you.

Speaker 8

Thanks, Corey.

Speaker 4

Your next question comes from Tom McJoynt from KBW. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Hey, guys. Thanks. A couple of questions on your comments around the take rate. Can you remind us, is there a seasonality in Q4? I just want to confirm that you're expecting both those quarters, or the fourth quarter and then the start of 2026, to be 7% take rate. Your expectation about increasing the take rate over time, is that a function of a broader array of demand partners or supply partners or both?

Speaker 3

Perfect. Tommy, I can get started on that question, and then Steve and I can potentially tag team the last one. On seasonality, historically, we had a good bit of seasonality in our business on take rate. That was when P&C was a smaller percentage of the total mix and our health vertical was significantly larger. Now we're in a spot in Q4 with under 65 having stepped down pretty meaningfully, where there is a lot less take rate seasonality in the business because the Medicare portion of that looks pretty similar to P&C overall. To tackle the second part of the question, yes, our guidance for Q4 is for around a 7% take rate. As a reminder for us, take rate is contribution divided by transaction value. Our view is that 7% plus or minus is kind of the right benchmark for the next couple of quarters.

Moving to the opportunity to drive take rate over time, a broadening of demand would be the primary driver of that happening. Obviously, broadening supply could help as well, but we believe that the demand side is the bigger opportunity. As a reminder, the largest advertisers with us tend to be relatively more private, and smaller advertisers tend to be either fully open or very, very heavily open. As we see more people come into the marketplace and more people start to spend seven figures a month, we would expect to see the business start to shift more to open over time.

Speaker 8

Yeah. What I'll add is that as the demand starts to draw now, which will be the key driver of take rate improvement on our end, one of the reasons that will primarily flow through the open marketplace is that the next set of carriers who are underrepresented in our marketplace need a lot of help from us, right? They leverage our managed services and our machine learning algorithms to optimize their campaigns on their path. They leverage our platform solutions and integrated platform solutions in order to help host and optimize certain parts of the conversion experience. We're putting a lot of effort behind those services that will better support and accelerate a lot of these carriers' journeys to really embracing direct-to-consumer and embracing our channel, being successful in our channel. All of those services are available really only through the open marketplace.

That's why as demand starts to draw now and we see other carriers within the top 25 really start to punch their weight in terms of allocation of advertising dollars to us, the way we make them successful is through these integrated solutions and managed services. Most of that spend is going to flow through the open exchange, which will have over time a very positive impact on our take rate.

Speaker 5

Got it. Thanks for that. Switching over to some of our expectations for the overhead expenses, do you guys have any plans to either add account managers or technology headcount, or make any other major new technology investments that we should be thinking about as we enter 2026 and think about the fixed expense leverage in the business next year?

Speaker 3

Yeah, and Tommy, thanks for the question. I would say, you know, over the last couple of years, we've been consistently investing in the business, but doing so in a thoughtful and measured way. You know, we are a business that we've always run lean. We've got about 150 employees today. We're a bootstrap business. Efficiency is in our DNA. We will continue to invest to support the growth in our business, but we would expect to be a business where we would see leverage on those overhead items over time. When I say leverage, I mean the mapping from contribution to adjusted EBITDA being flat to increasing over time.

Speaker 5

Thanks, Pat.

Speaker 8

Thanks, Tommy.

Speaker 4

Your next question comes from Andrew Kligerman from TD Securities. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Hi, good evening. This first question is around open versus private. As private becomes a bigger proportion, I think the first nine months, it's now 48%. Steven, Pat, how do you see that kind of playing out long-term, maybe three years out, five years out? Where does that mix kind of settle down if it ever settles down?

Speaker 8

Yeah, I think it's a good question. I think we're at unusually high levels, favoring the private marketplace right now. I think that's really the nature of how the market has recovered on the heels of this generationally difficult hard market cycle. What we had was a couple of leading carriers who were early to take rate, step on the gas, a full year and a half or so ahead of everyone else. These are carriers that are very sophisticated in direct-to-consumer advertising, very sophisticated in experience in our marketplace. The private marketplace product was designed to support advertisers like this and their relationships with some of our biggest publishers. I think the way that the market has recovered has really lent itself to us being over-indexed on the private side.

As the long-term plays out, as the industry and the recovery and the demand start to broaden out, not just because carriers who are later to take rate and get to rate adequacy start to spend in advertising and growth again, but because the whole secular trend towards direct-to-consumer advertising, which means online advertising and greater budgets allocated to measurable sources like us, as that starts to really take foot again, or take hold again, what we expect are just more and more of the top 25 carriers allocating a greater % of their overall customer acquisition spend and converting, in effect, a lot of commissions that they're paying to agents and to advertising dollars that they spend with us as they prioritize their direct channels.

This growth, based on the support that they'll need and being relatively new to this channel, the services and the platform support that they're going to require to be successful in our channel, we believe that it's predominantly going to flow through the open exchange. I think what you're going to see over time is this shift back to the open exchange. We don't have any views to exactly what that level should be. Certainly, I think internally what we think is that the private open mix is kind of at a high watermark because of the unusual nature of the heaviness of the demand right now, which is really a byproduct of how this market recovered after the most recent hard market cycle.

Speaker 7

I see. Maybe even next year, it could start to inflect more toward open again?

Speaker 8

I think that's our anticipation. I think what we're expecting is that for the next few quarters, the take rates will stay about where they are, right? We do anticipate that next year, the demand will start to broaden out. You're going to see carriers 10 and 11 and 12 and 15 and 20 really start to spend more in our marketplace. That's going to flow through the open marketplace. Over time, that's really going to start to skew that mix back towards open from, I think, what we internally see as a high watermark right now.

Speaker 7

Got it, Steve. Thank you for that. In your shareholder letter, you talked about how most carriers were investing well below their full potential. There is this kind of analysis where you say that the investing was below 2019 levels last year, 2024, even though premium was up 44%. I'm kind of, here we are a year later. Premium has kind of leveled out year over year, I think. Where are we versus 2019 and where carriers are investing? I'm kind of curious as to where we are now as opposed to the '24 number.

Speaker 8

Sure. Let me try to answer the question. Tell me if not answering it, the question that you're asking. I think where we are versus 2019, I think we've highlighted that stat just to show that even though the overall volume has gone up within our marketplace, with a couple of leading carriers really investing heavily in growth in 2024 and 2025, the vast majority of other carriers, again, top 25 carriers, really weren't back to the pre-hard market levels of 2019 and 2020. That's one of the reasons that we're still, we're top-heavier now than we were in 2020. If you're asking where the carriers are like now versus 2019, what I'll tell you is that I'll point back to the stat of having 13 carriers spending more than $1 million a month. That's an all-time high for us.

I know that sounds a bit paradoxical of what I just said. What that means is that, A, our marketplace has scaled tremendously, as everyone knows. B, we do see more carriers now than 2019 and 2020 who are really ready to adopt this channel. We have more integrations with more carriers than before to enable them to be successful in this channel. We see the nascent broadening of demand. We see a lot of encouraging signs from the discussions that we're having with these carriers. We see more carriers than ever before really poised to be able to grow in this channel and to advertise and punch their weight in this channel than we have ever seen, and certainly a lot more than what we saw in 2019 or 2020. Now, Andrew, did that answer your question?

Speaker 7

Yeah, it did. It feels like directionally, there's still a lot of momentum there. Is that kind of the right take on what you're saying?

Speaker 8

100%. That's absolutely right. I think because of what happened with the pandemic-related hard market cycle and now transitioning to a soft market cycle, what's in some ways gotten lost in a lot of that is just the secular shift that the whole industry is undergoing, right? Really, at the heart of it is that people are shopping for insurance online. The best way to connect with these consumers and sell policies to these consumers is through advertising online and enabling policy sales online. Yet still, two-thirds of policies are still sold offline, where the main expense, distribution expense, is commissions paid to agents. What you would expect to see are the advertising budgets continuing to go up over time, because what you're essentially doing is converting commissions that are paid to agents, which are in the neighborhood of, you know, for U.S.

personal auto, like $17 billion, $18 billion a year. You would expect to see more of that being converted into advertising dollars as more and more carriers really adopt direct-to-consumer marketing as a necessary part of their distribution strategy. It's that secular story that I think got lost in the cyclical story that we've had over the past few years. We're seeing that play out. Again, we're seeing that play out in the form of having 13, 15, 20 carriers at this point who I think are really well poised to start to grow in our channel over the next several years during the upcoming soft market cycle.

Speaker 7

Super helpful. If I could just sneak one last one in, do you, with all the turbulence in Medicare Advantage over the last three to four years, and it's been brutal, do you ever see that business getting back to, like, because I think a lot has shifted to med supplement now, do you ever see that business getting back to what it looked like in 2021 or 2020 or 2019? I forget what year, but it's been a rough number of years.

Speaker 8

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great question. I think people in the industry don't expect a return to the frothiness that you saw in those markets when, quite honestly, the Medicare Advantage payers or the carriers in this case were probably making a little bit too much from Medicare Advantage policies. There's been a resetting of payment rates, a resetting of a lot of the plans. The fact remains that it's a half a trillion-dollar industry, right? Medicare Advantage policies are still profitable and big profit centers for these major carriers like UHC and Humana, just because in the past, it used to be two to three times as profitable to sell a Medicare Advantage policy as another policy.

The fact that it's probably going to come down to be maybe nearly as profitable as other health insurance policies they see, I mean, certainly, I think the frothiness will go away. I do think that as that market matures, you're going to start to see it evolve more like the auto insurance industry, where a lot of the carriers, depending on how they're feeling about their plan design, start to get aggressive about advertising and taking market share away from other carriers. We do see the market start settling down over time. One that's going to look a lot more like the auto insurance industry than it does today. Certainly, I think a lot of the frothiness that you saw in the early period probably will be gone for a while.

Speaker 3

Yep. And.

Speaker 7

Super helpful.

Speaker 3

Steve, yeah, and this is Pat. I'll probably just add one or two things to what Steve said on that, which is, I think the consumer penetration of Medicare Advantage plans continues to tick up a point or two every year. I think this year, for this plan year, 54% of the enrollees chose it, and the estimates show that number going up to about 64% by 2034. The other nice tailwind we think we have in the Medicare market for a number of years to come is online shopping. As you get 65-year-olds aging into Medicare, they are much more internet-savvy than the average Medicare consumer. We think that trend is going to be continuing every year, and we're going to have more and more internet-native seniors coming into the market, which should be very, very good for our business over time.

Speaker 7

Super helpful. Thank you.

Speaker 8

Thanks, Andrew.

Speaker 4

Before we proceed, if you want to join the queue, simply press *1. Your next question comes from Ben Hendrix from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Hi, this is Michael Murray on for Ben. Congrats on the strong results. It looks like, normalizing for the under 65 segment, adjusted EBITDA grew 31%. Looking at your guidance, you expect EBITDA to be flat on transaction value growth of 38%, excluding the under 65 segment. Is there a level of conservatism baked in there? Any color on the puts and takes would be helpful. Thanks.

Speaker 3

Yeah, Michael, this is Pat. I would say that our philosophy from a guidance standpoint is we guide to, you know, kind of based on what we know as of today and what we have a high degree of confidence in. I think our track record against guidance has been pretty good over time. We're guiding based on 28 days of actuals we've seen in this quarter and our view on how things are going to play out. I think our goal is always to deliver the best numbers that we can, and we're going to be looking to do that this quarter. I think we'll have more to report when we come out with earnings in February. We try to be realistic and put out numbers that we believe we can achieve.

Speaker 2

Okay. Just shifting gears, a large Medicare Advantage payer recently indicated that they would be suspending their relationship with a large telebroker, which had high complaints to Medicare and also, you know, the least engaged members. Do you see any opportunity to gain share here, just given payers' increased focus on quality leads? Thanks.

Speaker 8

Yeah, I do. The way I see it is that I think there is a growing trend with payers to actually start to acquire customers directly and rely less on brokers and telebrokers. It's unfortunate that these types of things happen, right? Certainly, I think one of the reliance on telebrokers of this industry is that a lot of the carriers within the Medicare Advantage space are really new to direct-to-consumer and certainly new to online customer acquisition. I think as that industry gets more well-versed in that area, there will be a shift from reliance almost entirely on brokers and telebrokers and e-brokers to sell policies, and a greater shift to carriers selling policies directly. That's something that you saw in the auto insurance industry in the early days. We expect that trend to take hold within the Medicare Advantage space over time.

Speaker 2

All right. Thank you.

Speaker 4

Okay, there are no further questions at this time. That's all for now, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you all for joining. That concludes today's conference call. All participants may now.