Good morning, everyone. I'm John Blackledge, Internet Analyst at TD Cowen. We're happy to have Chris Halpin, CFO of IAC, joining us today. Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
Good to see you. So maybe I'll just kick off on Dotdash Meredith, 1Q revenue beat, which was great to see. Could you just unpack the growth across the advertising performance and licensing segments?
Sure. Yeah, it was a good quarter for us and continued a lot of the momentum we'd had. There are three main revenues, elements to Dotdash Meredith: advertising, performance marketing, and licensing. Advertising was strong. It, the monetization was excellent. Overall revenue grew 13% and digital advertising at 19%, and that was a combination of both monetization and traffic. And it really is both quantity and price that we, we aim to drive, and price is the product of performance. So, traffic was up, core was up 8% year-over-year. These are our top properties and continue to see success in the investments we made in those properties, the improvements in content, site speed, et cetera. And then monetization, both direct/premium and programmatic, was excellent, leading to that revenue growth.
Performance marketing slowed down to 3% growth. That was really pulled down by the services side of our performance marketing segment, overwhelmingly financial services, insurance, brokerage accounts, categories like that. We know the improvements we need to make there, so we're focused. Performance marketing for goods or commerce, as we call it, grew about 18%, and we continue to see opportunity there. And then another real bright spot was licensing, which has been a headwind for really the last two years. That grew 9%. Great performance with Apple News, as well as some syndication partners, and we've really worked through some pandemic highs that were built into the licensing number.
On a go-forward basis, we'll talk about OpenAI, but our licensing partnerships with OpenAI and likely other LLM partners will appear in that revenue line item starting the second quarter to come. But overall, feel very good about the performance and where we're headed.
That's great. Maybe we could talk about the rest of the year at DDM.
Mm-hmm.
Within advertising, how should we think about the shape of the year on the top line, given the outperformance of 1Q? And then, D/Cipher, I think, Joey called out, you guys called out in the letter, was, I think, in, like, half of the premium deals?
Yes.
Will that be, will that be a driver the rest of the year?
Certainly. Overall, for the year, we've, we continue to guide towards 10%+ digital revenue growth, both on a quarterly basis and for the full year. That'll be the confluence of advertising, performance marketing, and licensing, all of those contributing to growth. Right now, traffic is solid. There's this headwind, which we referenced in, that brought down Q1 a little bit from the 10% traffic session growth we had in Q4, which is loss of traffic from Facebook. We've been experiencing that, anticipating that, and are fine with it. Even with small incremental impact of that, we continue to see traffic growth and expect to see traffic growth throughout the year. And then monetization shows no sign, no signs of slowing down.
Performance marketing, expect to get that to back to stronger growth over time. And then licensing, you know, we expect to have strong growth and the incremental driver of the generative AI licensing partnership. So, we aren't giving specific guidance quarter to quarter, but looking forward to double-digit growth this year. And then, the second question, the second end of that question was?
The D/Cipher paths.
Yeah. D/Cipher we view as a real competitive advantage, and it, it's a credit to Neil and the CEO and Jon Roberts, our head of data science, that they've—it was a concept behind buying Meredith, but also something that they have really developed through deep data science and predictive analytics of the ability to map intent without knowing any personal identifiers on an individual user based on the content they're looking at, predictive analytics around optimal advertising to offer. And some of them are intuitive. If you're looking at painting a newborn baby room, you can... The person's likely having a child and offering them paints and cribs and all types of e-commerce.
But there's a lot of really intelligent elements related to predictive analytics around something if someone's planning a party or researching wine, marketing stain removers and those types of things to them, and then a whole host of more complicated elements, including on travel and others. So we feel very good about that product, especially as the focus on cookie-less and privacy-friendly marketing advances with brands and agencies. We've done case studies, we've talked about these with major brands and agencies, and we D/Cipher, which is the productization of that intent-based targeting, beats cookie offerings consistently across whatever metric the client chooses, and then blows away cookie-less environments like iOS and where we think the Google platforms will end up eventually. But D/Cipher is in over half our premium deals.
We view it as a real piece of differentiation and, you know, is included in our new partnership with OpenAI, where they're gonna be contributing to advance it, both adding video and image capabilities, both in processing and in targeting. So understanding if someone's watching this video or these images around it, not just the text, how to optimize ad placement and performance. And then also in terms of the breadth, we've crunched a lot, obviously, our own properties, but also the broader internet for D/Cipher, but the scale that OpenAI can bring is even greater, so we're excited about that.
That was an interesting component of the deal. Let's talk about the OpenAI deal. You've mentioned a bit, maybe fill in the gaps at a high level, and then, you know... And you also maybe just refer to it, but should we expect further deals with Google Gemini, with Anthropic? And if a deal isn't struck with those players, can they train their models on the DDM content?
Yeah, so a number of elements in there. The OpenAI partnership, we're very excited about. We've been in discussions with a host of different LLM developers, who are really in varying stages of the five stages of grief, of accepting, to your last question, that they will need licenses to utilize this content, to train, to serve, and to, you know, exploit copyright-protected IP.
OpenAI has been a, you know, a leader in the space, and we were thrilled to get to an agreement with them where they will, they have access to Dotdash Meredith's full database, and portfolio of content, to augment their models, and also they will serve it, in their answer, their consumer-focused search answers, or the broader search answers, which we believe will drive traffic. As in return for that access to our content, they are paying a licensing fee, very consistent with what you've seen in the press about a variable and fixed component. It's a multi-year agreement. We feel very good about the economics there. We've been a good partner in terms of not leaking those financials per confidentiality, as evidenced in certain articles.
Others are leaking, but you know, it'll appear in our licensing revenue line item in the coming quarter or so. We feel good about the economics, and then there's also the element of them supporting the development and advancement and capabilities of D/Cipher and some related credits there that we think is a win-win.
You just kind of referenced it, but when we saw the deal, just kind of curious, like, if it would impact engagement, and how are they gonna link the DDM sites in the results? You guys are comfortable that it should be a tailwind for engagement, perhaps?
Yeah. So they are going to be revealing more of their consumer strategy, you know, on an ongoing basis in productization there, including attribution and linkage to third-party partners such as ourselves. And we are working with them on that integration and in the getting appropriate attribution. From a traffic perspective, it's purely additive because we get, you know, nothing from ChatGPT today. And so we're excited given their user base and growing user base, and you've seen the increased capabilities they have in 4o and others, that they will become more and more of a consumer player. And we're excited to see the engagement they'll have on their platforms.
Okay. There's been... In the press, there's been talk about them training their next model. Assuming with this deal that the content will be included in the training of their next model or their next models?
Yeah, it's very much a multi-year strategic partnership. Yes, sir.
One more on DDM, the EBITDA. You beat in the quarter, maintained the full year. I think there was about 50% incremental EBITDA margins. Just how should we think about margin trajectory at DDM for the rest of the year?
Yeah. So, I mean, obviously, we have, incremental upside from the OpenAI partnership, and, you know, we'll see continued progression this year. We maintain guidance of $280 million-$300 million of adjusted EBITDA, but did say we, we now feel confident at the high end of that range. But in terms of revising guidance or the like, given, when you look at the year, it's roughly a 2, 1/3, 2/3 weighting of the front end to the second half. We just thought, let's get through another quarter before we adapt guidance. On a, on a profitability basis, we have, there, there are a few elements there. So on the full year $280 million-$300 million, we've said that pretty much represents digital EBITDA as well.
Print and print-adjusted EBITDA and corporate will roughly offset. Corporate exceeded print-adjusted EBITDA in Q1. As the year goes on, corporate will stay pretty static, and you can, based on that, interpolate that second half, print-adjusted EBITDA will exceed corporate. That's mainly driven by seasonality, just when revenue tends to fall on a fixed cost base, a relatively fixed cost base in print. On the digital side, which is really the story, we've guided towards about 30% incremental EBITDA margin, adjusted EBITDA margins in Q2. That's a little bit... We're making specific targeted investments in D/Cipher, in content, in performance marketing, where we see great growth opportunities long term. Also, a year ago, cost structure was probably at its most efficient in Q2 of 2023.
Then we'd expect 50% incremental Adjusted EBITDA margins in Q3 and Q4, and that gets us to our guidance. So pretty much as we as we thought at the beginning of the year, and, you know, relative to full year guidance, as we get deeper into the year, you know, get through the second quarter, see the trends, through the summer, you know, we'll revisit. Yeah.
That's great. Maybe I'll switch gears over to Angi. Jeff Kip was elevated to CEO. You know, we've known Jeff for a while. He's been there. He's been at IAC for quite some time, CFO, and then moved over to Angi International. How do you think Jeff will kind of put his stamp on the Angi business?
Certainly. He's, you know, been getting up to speed. He was president for a few months, and it's a credit to him of the how well he drove performance in the European business, the international business. He took over. He was CFO of IAC Corporate. Before that, knew the HomeAdvisor business well before the Angi merger, but knew HomeAdvisor well. Went over and took over HomeAdvisor, and now Angi International. And he inherited a disparate set of businesses that have been acquired through consolidation, different platforms, different levels of penetration of digital home service acquisition by country, and did a great job.
And also built a team, upgraded marketing, upgraded product, and consolidated them all of them on the same platform and did it through COVID and the Ukraine war, and people can see in the results that of international both the growth and margins. He'll bring that experience. He also has awareness of what's different about Angi U.S. A lot of them are strengths of much greater scale, both on the pro side and the consumer side, multiple arrows in the quiver of ads, leads, and services to offer consumers, large marketing budget.
But also, he, you know, core things like continue to improve and build on a lot of the progress Joey made as CEO of improving the consumer experience, improve the pro experience, both of them, those actions will drive, in the first case, repeat rate, on the second rate, on the second case, retention and, deeper share of their ad spend, and then, continue to consolidate the platforms. We've really got three different platforms between ads, leads, and services. There is overlap between pros and some of those. There's overlap in, we as a, you know, consumer, will move between services, ads, and leads, depending on the nature of the job and the context. So driving greater back-end consolidation, a unified experience, and then a unified, product, and then improving both of those experiences.
They're very core to what, Joey was driving, but, Jeff's done it. On the flip side, he's very much taking a, you know, first 100 days approach. The good news is there's existing change management in place, but, analyzing where things stand, opportunities on marketing, very focused on improving SEO and our SEM efficiency and other marketing channels. And he's just gonna keep driving it forward.
Okay. I'm gonna merge two questions together. This is, this is a similar question that I had on the segments at, at, DDM. Just we think about zeroing in on this year, the remainder of the year, top line expectations at Angi, and then also EBITDA. I think despite top line, we have it down for the year. I think we, at the midpoint of the range, it implies three points of margin expenses. You, you guys have done a great job of improving the margin profile at Angi. So how should we think about, you know, kind of the rest of the year at Angi, top line and EBITDA?
On the top line front, we've guided for Q2 revenue to be down at or around Q4 of 2023 and Q1, so mid-teens. We haven't given guidance for revenue for the rest of the year at Angi, partly 'cause we just wanna let Jeff get in there. We don't wanna, you know, put the onus on him, as he's getting up to speed at a deeper level. What I'd highlight, we've had these revenue declines. You've highlighted the margin improvement and the profitability and cash flow improvement. The confluence of that speaks to how many, as Joey would say, empty calories there were in the revenue stream.
There was a lot of marketing spent inefficiently, and some of it were derived from activities that were done five, six years ago, that the world had moved on and the margin was no longer there, but were still occurring. Others were driven by lack of full loading of expenses associated with a given marketing activity, so your ROAS was off. And then, others were just contributing to a poor pro or consumer experience, which we took the pain on eliminating. We also highlighted something like our CraftJack business that we'd acquired over a decade ago, was a good little business.
The reality is, the market had moved away from it, and it was actually unprofitable, but people hadn't really run the ruler over it until Joey and Rusty, the CFO at Angi, refocused on it, so we shut that down as well. We feel good about what we're doing and the long-term value that it'll create for the business and shareholders. Clearly, you can't cut your way, you know, to Shangri-La, so we've got-- we're gonna have to start growing revenue at some point. We'll be coming back to the market with guidance on when that's likely to be, and what the cadence of that will be as Jeff gets in there and fleshes out his plan, but not ready to put that forward today.
That makes sense. Have some other questions here, about 4 minutes left. Try to get through them. Google, just going back to the whole generative AI area. Google, on May 14, released their AI Overviews. How are you guys thinking about that, as it relates to engagement at Dotdash Meredith, at Angi? Any, just any color?
Yeah. So IAC has, you know, tremendous history of seeing Google changes and algorithmic changes, product changes, et cetera, and seeing some that have significant influence, impact, some that don't. We've been following the generative AI elements, including their SGE product experience, which they announced a year ago, closely. On these AI Overviews, we're, you know, definitely intrigued, monitoring it. They've said it net increases clicks. We're happy to, you know, explore that and verify it. We're definitely going to protect the value of our content and have, you know, had those discussions with a number of LLMs and Google. If they're ingesting and putting out answers, we will wanna make sure that our IP is protected, as it should be, and as others are acknowledging.
We haven't seen any real trends yet. You can also see it's, you know, as far as this is more me as a consumer, but also talking to others, sort of an opt-in experience right now, you have to be logged in. There's the whole blitz of responses on Twitter and others over the weekend of inaccurate answers, and we would highlight, that's a function of the quality of data that you're putting into, and content that you're putting into your LLM, will produce, when it is synthesized and making a generative answer, will influence what you see. So if you use a lot of unverified user gen content that is just being fed in, you are going to be exposed to trolls, bad actors, or people who are just wrong.
If you have best-in-class brands that are trusted, that actually do all the work, a lot of the things that Google has focused on in their search algorithms to date, that you actually tested the product, that you actually baked the pizza, that you've gotten incredibly positive references, that you've done. You have experts verifying your health advice that should be rewarded as it has been historically and should in synthesized answers. And we think that's an acknowledgment by OpenAI of the value of our content and the importance of that in producing generative AI answers.
Yeah. Let me... That's super helpful. Maybe just we have less than a minute left. On capital allocation, MGM—you guys have a, at this point, I think a 20% stake in the company. It's about 60% of the equity value of IAC. How should we think about the duration of the holding from here? And if you—if IAC were to exit, could it... And we've gotten this question from investors a bunch: Could it do it in a tax-efficient way?
On the second question, you know, we have over $1 billion of NOLs, which can be used to offset a gain on those on MGM. And then there are other structures we could pursue and have analyzed that would not even utilize those NOLs. So we feel good about that. On the relative to 10, you know, term of holding, we view MGM as a-