Good day, and welcome to the QuinStreet First Quarter Fiscal 2023 conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Lane Yonker. Please go ahead, ma'am.
Thank you. Thanks to everyone for joining us as we report QuinStreet First Quarter Fiscal 2023 financial results. Joining me on the call today are Chief Executive Officer, Doug Valenti, and Chief Financial Officer, Greg Wong. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that the following discussion will contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those projected by such statements and are not guarantees of future performance. Factors that may cause results to differ from our forward-looking statements are discussed in our recent SEC filings, including our most recent 8-K filing made today and our upcoming 10-Q. Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions as of today, and the company undertakes no obligation to update these statements. Today, we will be discussing both GAAP and non-GAAP measures.
A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures are included in today's earnings press release, which is available on our investor relations website at investor.quinstreet.com. With that, I will turn the call over to Doug Valenti. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Lane, and welcome everyone. The September quarter was a good start to our fiscal 2023. We again delivered good results in a complex environment, and we expect to continue to do so. Fiscal Q1 performance included yet another quarter of strong double-digit year-over-year revenue growth in our home services and credit-driven client verticals. Strength in those two verticals, both of which are now over $100 million in annual revenue, largely offset auto insurance. The good overall financial results in the quarter reflected the strength and resilience of our business model and footprint, as well as excellent execution across the company. We also continue to invest in and to make great progress against our enormous long-term market opportunity. Our positioning and capabilities have never been better, which bodes well for the future, including the back half of our current fiscal year.
Looking ahead, we expect the trends of the past couple of quarters to continue in the December quarter, our fiscal Q2. Strength in home services and credit-driven client verticals is expected to continue to offset auto insurance. We also continue to expect a significant positive inflection in auto insurance beginning in January as loss ratios reset, carriers benefit from rate increases, and consumer shopping intensifies in response to higher rates. The auto insurance inflection is expected to quickly impact our results, leading to a return to strong revenue growth rates and re-expanding EBITDA margin. Revenue in fiscal Q2 is expected to be generally flat year-over-year and about in line with typical seasonality sequentially, with a little added conservatism for auto insurance as carriers fully absorb the effects of Hurricane Ian and otherwise finish out a challenging calendar year for that industry.
We expect fiscal Q2 revenue to be between $120 million and $130 million. We expect adjusted EBITDA in fiscal Q2 to be approximately break even, well in line with the expected seasonal decline in top- line operating revenue and consistent with our planning and expectations, including, of course, our commitment to continue to invest in important growth and product initiatives through this transitory period in auto insurance. For the full fiscal year, we continue to expect revenue and adjusted EBITDA results to be generally flat with or better than last year. Just as we indicated in last quarter's call. Our balance sheet is strong with almost $90 million of cash and no bank debt, and we still have $20 million remaining in our authorization for share repurchases.
Now, as I did last quarter, I wanted to make a few comments on the macroeconomic environment. Obviously an area of some uncertainty and concern right now. Most importantly, we have done contingency planning for a possible recession. In the event of a recession, we would still expect current full fiscal year revenue to be flat or better versus last year, and that we would still deliver nicely positive cash flow and EBITDA. We have grown profitably through both two previous recessions. Our market penetration opportunity is likely to continue to offset much of any reasonably expected effects from a macroeconomic slowdown. Also in our favor, performance marketing is often one of the last budgets to be cut by marketers as the economy softens because by definition, spend can be tied more directly to revenue.
Further advantaging us in this environment, as in the past, our business helps consumers better shop and save for needed products and services, something they do more of when times get tougher. In particular, consumer shopping for auto insurance, our biggest client vertical, tends to increase in a softer economy as consumers look to save on this non-discretionary expense. Increased shopping results in more traffic to our marketplaces. With that, I'll turn the call over to Greg.
Thank you, Doug. Hello, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. As Doug stated earlier, the first quarter was a good start to fiscal year 2023, with total revenue of $143.6 million. Adjusted net income was $2.5 million or $0.05 per share. Adjusted EBITDA was $4.8 million. All of our businesses, except insurance, delivered year-over-year revenue growth in the first quarter. Non-insurance client verticals represented 58% of Q1 revenue and grew 20% year-over-year. Looking at revenue by client vertical, our financial services client vertical represented 66% of Q1 revenue and was $95 million. Insurance carriers continue to experience combined ratio challenges due primarily to inflation and are working through a drawn-out re-rating process.
We continue to expect a positive inflection in carrier insurance revenue in January as loss ratios reset, carriers benefit from rate increases, and consumer shopping intensifies in response to higher rates. Within our credit-driven client verticals of personal loans and credit cards, we continue to be pleased with our performance and execution in Q1, growing combined revenue 23% year-over-year. Revenue in our home services client vertical grew 17% year-over-year to $46.7 million or 33% of total, a record quarter for the business. As we've discussed in the past, home services may be our largest addressable market, and our strategy to continue to drive growth here is simple. One, continue to scale our 16 existing service offerings, examples of which include window replacement, solar systems, and bathroom remodeling, all of which are still early in our market penetration.
Two, expand into new service offerings. We believe we see the opportunity to serve dozens more. This multipronged growth strategy is expected to drive double-digit organic growth for the foreseeable future. Other revenue was the remaining $1.9 million of Q1 revenue. Adjusted EBITDA for fiscal Q1 was $4.8 million. Turning to the balance sheet, we generated $5.7 million of operating cash flow in Q1 to close the quarter with $88.4 million of cash and equivalents and no bank debt. As a reminder, in May, we announced a share repurchase program reflective of the expected transitory nature of the insurance industry challenges, the strength of our underlying business model and financial position, and confidence in our long-term outlook for the business.
To date, we have repurchased over 1.9 million shares of common stock or 4% of shares outstanding at a total cost of $20 million. As we look ahead into Q2, I'd like to remind everyone of the seasonality characteristics of our business. The December quarter, our fiscal second quarter, typically declines about 10% sequentially. This is due to reduced client staffing and budgets during the holidays and end-of-year period, a tighter media market, and changes in consumer shopping patterns. This trend generally reverses in January. The March quarter is generally our largest of the fiscal year as staffing levels and marketing budgets renew. For fiscal Q2, our December quarter, we expect revenue to be between $120 million and $130 million and adjusted EBITDA to be approximately breakeven.
In closing, we feel great about our long-term business prospects and financial model. Growth in our non-insurance client verticals of 20% in the first quarter should support a period of strong total company growth when we get to the other side of the environment in insurance. With that, I'll turn the call over to the operator for Q&A.
Thank you, sir. A reminder to the participants, if you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, press star one to ask a question. We'll pause for just a moment to allow everyone the opportunity to signal for question. We will take the first question from Jason Kreyer from Craig-Hallum. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I wanted to start out talking about profitability and the guide that you gave, the break-even guide that you gave December quarter. You know, in the time we've covered you guys, like, we have not seen a break-even EBITDA quarter, you know, that's through COVID, through kind of volatility in education and things like that. I'm curious if you can talk about what's different this quarter, or maybe if there's just a higher degree of conservatism that you're applying to the guide right now.
Hey, Jason. Yeah. I think what's different is the top- line pressure we're getting from the insurance industry issues, and combine that with the December quarter seasonality, and we're just at a revenue level where, with the expense base we have, we're willing to go down to break even. Because what we don't want to do, given that we know insurance is coming back, actually is gonna be coming back, we think, quite strongly starting in January, we don't think it makes sense to cut expenses and cut our investment in growth initiatives across the board. You can see those are paying off. So it's no more than that. We, you know, we expect to be ramped back up to the kind of levels of EBITDA you would expect from us, within a quarter or two.
Beyond, frankly, as we get that leverage back from insurance and get that volume back. Right now, it's just a volume-related thing, and a loss of top-line leverage while wanting to carry a normal expense load and normal investments in the future instead of cutting costs and cutting investments in the future because of a temporary issue in insurance. If you do a kinda top-line leverage analysis, you'll find that it's all very consistent. There's no degradation in our media margin, which of course is what, you know, variable marketing margin, whatever you wanna call it, which is really what drives our gross margin in our business. In fact, it's up sequentially, and it's flat year over year.
Good margins, despite some degradation in insurance because of the weakness there, and because of the strength in the other verticals. As insurance comes back, this, you're gonna see a, you know, the spring kinda get unloaded here, both in the top line and in EBITDA margin expansion right back where you would expect it for the revenue levels we'll be generating.
All right. Thank you. I'll always appreciate the color, Doug. I also just wanna talk about Hurricane Ian a little bit. I mean, are there any changes or notable trends in your, sorry, in your business that changed, you know, from before the hurricane hit until after? Or maybe the same question just in terms of carrier dialogue, if there's been kind of any, you know, short-term pauses from carriers as they try to kinda recover from the losses that brought in?
We would have beaten by even more if it hadn't been for Ian. Ian did kinda set the carriers back even more in terms of combined ratios, which are now loss ratios, of course, and caused a number of carriers to pause further and cut budgets. When I say pause, they tend to kinda shut down states where they have the where their economics are least attractive. There were incremental budget cuts and state pauses due to Ian and the impact Ian had on combined ratios. Again, we would have beaten by even more this quarter if it hadn't been for that.
It has not affected what we've heard from the carriers with respect to their outlook January forward, because as you know, combined ratios reset on a calendar year basis. The carriers themselves have made great progress in the re-rating in getting their rates increased against the inflationary backdrop and the ones that are furthest along, and some of the biggest ones are quite far along and pretty much done, are in really good shape financially and seeing super results in terms of rate versus costs and claims, and have given us very strong indications of their intent to be aggressive beginning in January. Just as we expected, and we just have more confidence of it going forward.
Yeah, Ian had an impact, but it was a kind of a backward-looking impact at this point.
Just one-
At least at this, I mean, with respect to January quarter. December, definitely this quarter is weaker because of Ian and the end of, and last quarter was weaker in September because of Ian at the end of the September part of it.
As we sit here kind of in the early November timeframe, have you seen that start to, I mean, you mentioned some carriers pause certain states?
Yeah.
Have you seen that now normalized a month or so after the hurricane?
Not so much, no. I mean, that it's affecting this year through December. We still expect that. It's reflected in our outlook. Auto insurance is going to be even weaker than it was going to be because of inflation in the December quarter because of Ian. Again, given we just gave you the guide for December, you know, the January forward, it does not have an impact. December-wise, it is gonna have an impact on this quarter, but we've fully reflected that in our guide.
I don't expect that the carriers are going to recover or add more budget through December, partly because of Hurricane Ian and the impact it had on loss ratios, but it does, you know, what they're all now focused on really is January forward as those loss ratios reset, and they get ready to ramp into what they expect to be a very strong new year, given that they've gotten rates increased appropriately for inflation and given that they expect consumer shopping to be very, very aggressive due to both the higher rates and potentially due to a softening economy. Both of those things will drive consumer shopping, which drives volume in the insurance market.
I always appreciate the commentary, Doug. Thank you.
Thank you, Jason.
We will take the next question from John Campbell, Stephens Inc. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Congrats on a good quarter.
Thank you.
Sure. Doug, you know, I've known you long enough to know that you... I mean, obviously you expect a lot out of your team. You've got some big aspirations around where you can, you know, you can take this insurance business over time. Just thinking about this, you know, near to kind of medium term, do you feel like you've got the necessary things kind of lining up to get back to the, you know, those past peak insurance, you know, revenue levels again? You know, maybe that's just on a run rate at some stage, you know, next year. Before you enter that, don't worry, I'm not gonna, you know, necessarily put that in the forecast, even if you are feeling pretty confident about it.
I'm just trying to get a better sense for how you're feeling about the extent of the rebound in insurance and maybe how long do you think it takes to kind of get back to past prior levels?
Yeah, no, it's a great question. You know, we don't know for sure because we haven't been through something like this before. If you look at the indications from the clients and you look at some of the data that we have in terms of what they spent last January, and what they intended to spend this year, had they not gotten tangled up with inflation and then Hurricane Ian, I'd say. You combine that with the list of initiatives we have going on and the things we're working on to continue to expand in insurance, because insurance is not nearly as mature as you might think or folks might think.
There's still an awful lot to be done in insurance when it comes to moving budgets effectively to digital and effectively to performance marketing the way performance marketing ought to be done. There's really a lot more there. I would say I've never been more confident. I mean, we'll absolutely get back to prior- year run rates, to prior peak run rates. Our expectation of ourselves, when you look at all that together, is that we will, you know, that we can grow insurance to way beyond that.
Our aspirations in insurance are still to be, you know, to double our previous peaks over time as we look at adding more footprint, bringing more client budget online, taking that budget to the kind of performance levels and performance approaches that it ought to get to, and then implementing new product initiatives like QRP and all things related to QRP, 'cause there are a lot of new opportunities springing off of QRP. All of this has been kind of slowed down and kinda stunted by this past year with the inflation effects on carriers' economics. That's all gonna, you know. That's a short-term thing. We're re-rated now or mostly re-rated. The carriers are gonna continue to finish up that rerating process.
The good news is the carriers that have gotten mostly through it are seeing great success, and they got the rates right, and they're getting their economics are back, and they're, you know, and they're very much in growth mode. That again, combined with our market expansion, budget expansion and penetration and new product initiatives gives me great confidence that we'll get way past previous peaks in insurance.
That's very helpful. That's a great answer. Also on the personal loans and credit cards, I think pretty clearly with the results this quarter, they held up very well. It seems like it offset a lot of the insurance decline. I'm just curious about kind of how that trended, you know, if you can break it out by both types, credit cards and personal loans, kind of how it trended in the quarter. Maybe if there's any kind of clarity or an indication on how that looked in October. Maybe just bigger picture, how you think those businesses hold up in a softening macro.
Yeah. No, it's a great question. Personal loans, I think we're 35% year-over-year in the quarter. That business is doing extraordinarily well for lots of reasons. One is we're just executing well. We're very much in market share gain, market expansion mode there and in implementing the latest product and optimization capabilities we have, which we're still a long way from fully getting implemented in personal loans. What we did see in the quarter was some tightening of filters by the lenders, and that affected some of the budgets on the lending side.
What we saw was a mix shift when that happened over to more some of the credit repair, credit services, credit counseling, debt management services that we also provide to match consumers to. That well offset some of the softening on the lender side. You know, that business is in really good shape going forward. Our folks just came back from a big industry conference, I think it was Money20/20 or something like that. But the
They report that the lenders are all saying that they feel like they're in great shape, that the changes they made to their filters and to their underwriting criteria to reflect, you know, inflation and a bit of a weakening in the economy have put them in great shape. They all report being very stable, having good sources of capital. Good, you know, the cost of capital are up, but the rates they're charging are up. That industry seems to be weathering it very well. Again, a little bit of tightening, a little bit of a mix shift. We kind of are hedged because we do have those other services that we also offer to match the consumers.
Those are some very good services for us. Personal loans, we expect to continue to have a lot of momentum for those reasons, for all that stuff combined. Credit cards is doing really well. That market is super healthy right now. Travel is up dramatically, as you know. We're most leveraged to travel in our credit card business. We're most leveraged to prime consumers in our credit card business. We have very little exposure to the lower end of the credit spectrum. The lower end is what's getting hurt right now. The upper end's in really good shape. You've heard that from the economists. You're hearing that from the big banks. You know, I think delinquencies haven't even yet reached pre-pandemic levels for consumers.
The core consumer base that we serve in credit cards is in very good shape. In fact, that market is very strong right now, with a lot of good limited- time offers, a lot of very attractive limited- time offers, a lot of aggressive marketing by the banks, and a consumer that's in really good shape looking. Again, travel is just extraordinarily strong right now. You know, I'd say that in both of those cases, and you heard Greg, you know, those businesses together, I think, combined grew about 23% year-over-year.
Credit cards wasn't as big as personal loans, but it wasn't that credit cards wasn't as strong. It's just that it had such a tough comp from last year, 'cause last year was a really strong quarter in credit cards with some really unique limited- time offers that kind of, kind of pushed that business way beyond what an even a normal high growth rate would expect. So we expect to be able to that those businesses are gonna continue to weather well. Now, if we have this recession, we have in our recession planning, we have said that this, you know, instead of growing and continuing to progress like we think we can in credit cards and personal loans, that those businesses are gonna, in particular credit cards is gonna.
We've got it down pretty dramatically in a recession scenario, and I think more than we need to for that contingency planning. I think, you know, so I think if it's a recession, we've said we still expect to do more revenue than we did last fiscal year. I still expect to be nicely positive in cash flow and EBITDA. That includes taking a pretty big haircut to credit cards in that contingency or in that plan. I don't think it's gonna happen. Not at the levels we've taken, not if you look at the strength of the consumer, and if you look at how we're leveraged to the prime consumer.
I just don't see a recession having that as big an impact as we reflected in our contingency planning on that segment.
Okay. All great to hear. Thank you, Doug.
Thank you, John.
We will take, Eric Martinuzzi from Lake Street. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yeah. I wanted to revisit the Q2 guide with regard to the flat revs and the roughly break-even on the adjusted EBITDA. If I go back to Q2 a year ago, you know, the $125 million that generated nearly $6 million of adjusted EBITDA. Could you help me better understand that $6 million or $5.6 million delta? What are we investing in here now that we
Yeah
that we weren't a year ago?
Yeah. No, it's a great question, Eric. I mean, as I indicated a couple of times, you know, we're not stopping our investments across the business and new product initiatives, and we're investing very aggressively in the businesses that we can grow in this environment, including personal loans, credit cards, banking, which is a part of our business we don't talk a lot about but is on fire, which is a source of funds account, a service we provide to financial institutions, particularly banks, and home services. We have a lot more expenses in the system right now for continuing to invest in growing those businesses at the rates we're growing them now for the long term than we had last year.
In auto insurance and insurance generally, we have this, we have the same expense base we had last year despite that business being down, you know. I don't know, Greg, what was it down year-over-year on the quarter? 30%-40%, something.
Yeah
Something like that. Because we know it's a temporary thing. What we don't wanna do is stop investing there, when we know that the industry and the market's gonna come right back. We have got even more investments in QRP and in the products around QRP. You know, those investments are in the future and represent extraordinarily big opportunities and tons of economic and financial leverage to the company. You know, we have continued to invest there. As I indicated, we've got kind of new opportunities springing off of that. Those are enabling that we'll talk more about in future calls, that are also very big.
It's just continuing to invest aggressively across the business and in the non-insurance side as well as in the insurance side, because we know that the insurance issues are temporary, and we wanna keep growing fast and get bigger and bigger over the next few years, and we didn't wanna slow that down. Given we were in the fortunate position to be able to do it. I mean, we can do all that, have a quarter of only $125 million in revenue because what's going on in insurance and still be at least cash flow break even and still have over $90 million in cash in the bank and no bank debt. We think it's a period where we should do that because most of our competitors don't have all those advantages.
We don't think it's a time to back off. We think it's the time to push forward.
Okay. Greg, what percentage of revenue was Progressive in the quarter?
Progressive was about 25% of total revenue in the quarter.
All right. What leading indicators, you know, Doug talked about given indications of their intent to be aggressive in January? Is there any you can share with us? Maybe not Progressive specific, but you know, auto insurance, leading indicators.
Yeah. The most important indicator, Eric, is that the rerating has gone well. The carriers are reporting that their new rates match up well with their economics that they're seeing in the business, and that gives them great confidence and wherewithal to really put the pedal to the metal in January. Then we have gotten direct indications, of course, from certain carriers of their intention to be aggressive coming in January as that gets closer. We don't have specific. We have some specific budget indications, but all of the indications we have gotten have been very positive regarding January forward. Again, it's the underlying factor in that is that the rerating has gone well and that it worked that they got it done.
There are some carriers who are almost through, completely through that process and have already begun to spend pretty aggressively, relatively speaking, and are chomping at the bit for January first.
Got it. Thanks for taking my question.
Thank you, Eric.
We will take the next question from Chris Sakai from Singular Research. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, Doug and Greg.
Hey, Chris.
Just had a sort of a macro question. How do your different segments do in a rising interest rate environment?
Yeah, rising interest rates in and of themselves, I don't think we could, you know, have that direct an impact. Let's go through them. Insurance, generally speaking, in a rising interest rate environment, they make more money because, as you know, they invest the float. Interest rates being low has been hard on a lot of insurance carriers because they dominantly invest in fixed income. In most cases, insurance economics get better in a rising interest rate environment when it comes to that part of the business. When it comes to the core side of their business, the operating profit side of the business, rising interest rates to the extent that they put pressure on consumers will drive consumers to shop more for insurance. We've seen that in the previous two recessions.
The carriers will tell you the same thing, the industry will tell you the same thing. To the extent rising interest rates and/or inflation impact consumers, we tend to see more consumer shopping for insurance because they're trying to find any line item they can in their monthly budget to reduce. Usually, if you shop for insurance, you save on insurance because it's such a difficult, complicated market in which to shop. We expect that as part of what could happen next year, although it hasn't really been included in our planning. We haven't said, "Here's a factor for increased shopping." We're really thinking we've done our planning, we've really been more focused on client economics, client rerating, and therefore client budgets and what they're willing to spend.
Both sides of the market ought to be helped by that in insurance. In home services, rising interest rates tend to slow down new home purchases. Most of our business in home service is existing homeowners making improvements to their existing homes. What we saw in the last recession was that that was flat through the recession and through a softening housing environment, mainly because you have puts and takes. You have, on the one hand, consumers doing more to their existing home because they can't go buy a new home, or they can't sell their existing home, and so they're gonna stay there longer.
That kitchen remodel or that bathroom remodel they've been putting off, they're gonna go ahead and do it because now they gotta stay in that house anyway and 'cause they can't sell it or they can't buy a new one. On the downside, if it's something more discretionary and there's economic pressure on a consumer, they will postpone jobs. They will put off jobs. Now, as I said about credit cards, by definition, in home services, we're leveraged to prime consumers. These are homeowners. They are, at this point, in really good shape financially and balance sheet-wise and home equity-wise, even in a in even with declining prices.
The expectation is that they will weather a recession certainly better than non-homeowners or lower income, lower credit folks, and probably pretty well if you look structurally at where they are going into this, going into an environment of higher interest rates, inflation, and/or recession. Our two biggest businesses look pretty good in a rising interest rate environment. Turning now to personal loans. The personal loans folks, as I said, what we have seen is continued good momentum. That's not surprising because what's gonna happen is as consumers have issues with credit card debt and rising interest rates on their credit card debt, more of them are gonna look to consolidate that credit card debt to get a lower monthly payment, and that's a personal loan. By the way, you can refinance personal loans.
You can just get another personal loan to replace the old personal loan if you have to in the same way. Then we have credit repair, credit counseling, debt forgiveness, debt settlement, all those services in our personal loans business, which you will, you know, you could see more demand for the same reasons. Right now, and again, as we went through the analysis of recession with that business, that management team came back and said, listen, again, puts and takes. We're gonna have some tightening. We're gonna have some folks having issues, but then we're gonna have more consolidation.
We're gonna have more services on the credit and debt side. Net, net, you know, we think kinda low-flattish versus our 35% growth rate year-over-year, which is what, you know, what we just delivered, is probably a recession scenario. I know you asked about rising interest rates, but I'm taking the rising interest rates broadly to try and take the direct effects and some secondary effects like potential recession or other pressures on consumers.
I would say that business again is in pretty good shape going into it, and we understand the mix, and we just heard from the clients that they feel very good about where they are, just coming out of a conference last week, in terms of where they are with their rates versus their cost of capital, specifically, which was really good news and was helpful. Credit cards, you know, I think it kinda is gonna be one of those, the direct effect on the consumer. How much of an effect on it? On the prime consumer, you're probably not gonna see much effect because a lot of those folks pay off their bills, their credit card bills monthly, and don't carry a balance.
If you carry a balance, you're gonna have higher rates. What you also see in a rising interest rate environment is consumers often having pressure on the household income and household economics and having to use their credit cards more. You know, again, we made an assumption that rising interest rates, if it led to a recession, would have a pretty big impact on credit cards. We did our contingency planning, and I think we feel good that we more than covered any potential downside there. I think if you're on the credit card side, it's a little bit unlike the other business, it's a little bit up, a little bit down. The good news, again, is we're leveraged to the prime consumer in credit card.
We have very little exposure to non-prime consumers in credit cards, and that puts us in really good shape relative to any, you know, inflation, rising interest rates, recessionary-type scenarios, relative to anything else. Our banking business is on fire, not surprisingly, right? I mean, we've had this business for a long time. I think it was our best- performing business last quarter. If you look at margin growth in media and or just margin dollar growth, and Greg, correct me if that's not correct. But the reason for that is rising interest rates. It's finally attractive to put your money into a CD or put your money into a savings account. In fact, it's more attractive right now given the volatility of equity markets.
The banks need more sources of funds as the Fed tightens. That market has a lot of vectors of tailwind behind it. It's performing extraordinarily well and growing really rapidly for us. You know, again, it was a knife fight for years there because interest rates were so low. We like that business a lot. It's probably gonna be bigger in terms of media margin dollar production this quarter, or very soon than even credit cards, which is a good business for us. That one is actually, you know, does better in a rising interest rate environment and is growing very rapidly for us and getting to good, you know, pretty good scale.
Okay. Thanks for that answer. Just a question on the auto insurance side of things. If you're expecting a bump up in the second half, do you have any inkling for potential acquisitions in this area? How are valuations concerned?
Yeah, that's a great question. It's one of those things where everybody's valuations are down. On the private side, of course, expectations haven't gone down as much as the valuations have gone down. You always have that issue. The private market tends to lag and tends to be pretty resistant to these kind of periods. On the public side, the valuations are down. You know, the owners therefore have no interest in talking about selling because they too know that the market's gonna come back and why would they sell at the bottom? I would say that not a likely thing to happen.
It's unlikely we will buy or merge another insurance company in the near term because they're all gonna wait for the market to come back, and then they will expect appropriately that when the market comes back, they'll perform better, their valuation will go up, and they're not gonna sell. Unless they're in distress, they're really not gonna sell in this environment, particularly again, given that, you know, the relief is right around the corner. I don't know of anyone that we would have any interest in acquiring that's in distress. I think that's where we stand there.
Okay. Okay, thanks, Doug.
Thank you, Chris. Did we lose the operator? Nash, are you there?
Sorry, sir. The line was cut off for my side. Just a re-prompt. If everyone have any other question, please, press star one on your phone keypad. We'll wait for just a few second. It appears that there is no further question from the participant. A replay of the conference call will be available beginning approximately two hours after the completion of the call by dialing 1-866-583-1035. It's toll-free. Using the passcode 2194847#. That concludes today's event. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.