Match Group Inc at Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference Summary

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Nathan Feather - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : <_ALACRA_META_ABSTRACT>For those who aren't familiar with you, can you give us an overview of your background and the perspective you bring to the role?

Question: Nathan Feather - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Well, Match announced today that Gary is stepping down as President, and Hesam Hosseini will be promoted to COO. Can you provide some color on the driver for that change and what will Hesam's primary goals be in the new seat? I think now that Match has a new CEO, CFO, and COO since the Investor Day, all of the company, but it's slightly different capacities. What if anything has changed from that road map? REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. MARCH 03, 2025 / 6:00PM, MTCH.OQ - Match Group Inc at Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference

Question: Nathan Feather - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Well, I want to start a little more high level here. There's been some industrywide pressure on user growth, particularly when it comes to Gen Z initiative here. What's your diagnosis of that weakness, the primary issues and what are the potential solutions you're working on?

Question: Nathan Feather - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Now let's switch over to Tinder. You outlined a robust 2025 road map at the Investor Day. If we jump forward 12 months from now, how does the experience feel different to users? And what does that translate to from a KPI perspective? And to get there, what are the biggest challenges you see on the way? REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. MARCH 03, 2025 / 6:00PM, MTCH.OQ - Match Group Inc at Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference

Question: Nathan Feather - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : And speaking to MAU growth, at earnings, you called out a strong start of the year at both Tinder and Hinge. Have those trends persisted as we've moved through the quarter?

Question: Nathan Feather - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : And want to talk about some of the features on that road map that you hope to get MAU growth to accelerate through the year. And one of those, you started talking about testing new forms of discovery outside of the traditional swipe model. REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. MARCH 03, 2025 / 6:00PM, MTCH.OQ - Match Group Inc at Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference And in short term, what are the main goals of trialing some of these other formats? And long term, could shifting away from the swipe format make sense? And are there any historical parallels you'd draw here?

Question: Nathan Feather - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Another key debate here has been to the extent which you can monetize further. It's interesting to hear. In what areas do you believe Tinder could offer additional value add paid options for users? And in 2025, what are the primary monetization initiatives you're working on?

Question: Nathan Feather - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Now we talked a little bit about products, a little bit about monetization. Another one of Tinder's key priorities for 2025 is fostering a clean ecosystem. And so part of that is increasing the bar to sign up with things like liveness checks and requiring face photos. How do you find the right level of friction during the sign up experience, balancing profile quality versus quantity? And do you expect these changes to have a meaningful impact on user growth for the year? REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. MARCH 03, 2025 / 6:00PM, MTCH.OQ - Match Group Inc at Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference

Question: Nathan Feather - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : And one more on Tinder before we move on to some other brands. Can you give an update on Tinder's unbundling efforts with pass forward and likes you? And what are the key learnings you've unlocked to date? And how does that inform your a la carte strategy going forward?

Question: Nathan Feather - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Now let's talk Hinge. It continues to be one of the best performing brands in the space, and with that being said, revenue did decelerate a touch as we move through 2024. What drove that and how do you gain conviction in the ability to reaccelerate growth as we move closer to the $1 billion revenue target in 2027?

Question: Nathan Feather - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : And I want to dig into the touch there. Can you give me more detail on what some of those monetization initiatives are? Is it more so on new features and subscription tiers or about really optimizing that paid experience?

Question: Nathan Feather - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : And then one more on Hinge here. International expansion has been a key tenet of that story over the past few years, especially as we think about kind of continental Europe. Hinge plans to expand to a few new markets, particularly in LatAm, over the course of 2025, particularly the back half. How should you think about the magnitude of investment and impact to back half AOI as you make some of those early investments in scaling up markets?

Question: Nathan Feather - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : I do have a few questions on GenAI where you've been increasingly active. What areas of the online dating experience do you believe GenAI can really transform? And then what do you see as, let's say one, the most underappreciated opportunity? And two, the most underappreciated challenge as you start to launch and integrate more GenAI features within the product?

Question: Nathan Feather - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : And then talk to me about those challenges and where you think that Match really needs to focus on as you start to launch some of these? And then what are kind of the key opportunities, maybe most underappreciated opportunities?

Question: Nathan Feather - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : A lot of opportunity there. But also associated with especially some of these GenAI features comes real investment. And so do you feel you have the right engineering capabilities to meet your pipeline? Are you hiring? And then in some of the early GenAI features you've launched, how is the ROI compared to a more traditional product development?

Question: Nathan Feather - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : And what would lead to upsides to the extent you're able to drive, above that 50 basis points margin expansion? Yeah.

Question: Nathan Feather - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Can you walk us through the puts and takes of your 1 revenue guidance as well? You know what would lead to the high end or the low end of that range you shared your ears?

Question: Nathan Feather - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Okay. Now we've talked a lot about Tinder and Hinge, but obviously the Match Group portfolio is much wider than that. Outside of those two, what brand are you most excited about over the next year and then if we zoom forward over the next 5?

Question: Nathan Feather - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Capital allocation. So you plan to return at least 100% of free cash flow to shareholders in the next 3 years with the new dividend. How are you thinking about the relative size of the buyback versus the dividend? And that Match has a long history of acquisitions, as you just noted. And given that high return to shareholders, what's the appetite to do additional M&A from let's say the smaller to acquisitions to maybe something a little larger?

Question: Nathan Feather - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Okay. Well, we've covered a lot of ground here, a lot of different topics. Bringing it all together. What are the one or two things you think investors most underappreciate or misunderstand about the match story?

Question: Nathan Feather - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Okay, that's over there, Steve, thanks so much for joining us.