Thomas J. McInerney
Analyst · RBC Capital
Thanks, Greg. Just before we jump with the Q&A, let me spend a few minutes on supplemental information as it relates to the quarter and looking forward. Overall, it was an outstanding quarter. Consolidated revenue increased 25%. Reported OIBA was impacted by $10.4 million in discrete items. $5.5 million related to the Meetic acquisition and $4.9 million related to the exit of a small direct sponsored listings business. And I'll explain each of these further in a minute. But excluding these 2 items, OIBA was $84.6 million or 48% above the prior-year and reflecting an increase in margin on the same basis of 290 basis points year-over-year. In the Search business, first, let me just clarify what it is, the businesses that we're exiting that's giving rise to this $4.9 million charge I just mentioned. And this is being booked in -- the charge is being booked in those Search segment results. The business operates a small sponsored listings network that is non-core and unrelated to the rest of our Search business. The charge is a noncash write-down of assets in connection with the planned sale for a small sum. There'll be no ongoing earnings impact from this. The business was approximately break even, and we'll now be out of it. Now to the core Search business. We continued to see strong top and bottom line growth and balanced contribution from our key activities. Destination sites, B2B and B2C downloadable applications and CityGrid all saw a strong double-digit top line growth, and we saw a great earnings flow through as OIBA growth was 73%, excluding the aforementioned $4.9 million charge. This year-on-year margin expansion was a function of the prior-year restructuring at Ask, general operating leverage across the Search businesses and a somewhat easy margin comp as we had some investments in Search in Q3 a year ago. Going forward, current business fundamentals are good. We see no discernible negative macro impacts and key growth drivers remained intact. That said, in Q4, the top line comps begin to get tougher. Q4 a year ago, revenue growth was 29% versus about 20% to 21% for the first 3 quarters of last year. So the bar is clearly getting raised a bit, and 33% revenue growth is not sustainable, but we're still feeling quite positive. Match. Match had another very good quarter, although it's noisy from a numbers perspective due to the closing of the Meetic transaction. So first, let me just explain the transaction effects. We consolidated Meetic for one month in the quarter, so we picked up one month of Meetic's revenue and earnings, with both being materially impacted by purchase accounting convention, which requires you to write off all deferred revenue on the balance sheet. This is not economic. It doesn't affect cash. It just means that until deferred revenue account is built back up, booked revenues and profits are understated. For the one month we owned it, this reduced revenue in OIBA by $9.6 million, and swung the net impact of Meetic on our books to the negative. We also had transactions affects expenses in connection with the purchase. The combined effect of all Meetic-related items was negative $5.5 million on OIBA, so the Match segment would have reported $45.7 million OIBA, excluding those effects. So excluding those effects, core revenue grew 15%, total segment revenue grew 14% and margins were up modestly year-over-year, albeit with less operating leverage than we usually see, which was totally in line with our indications at the end of the last quarter on this call. While cost of acquisition relative to revenue was down slightly, the variance was less than in earlier quarters as we increased off-line spend this quarter as planned. And we made certain discrete investments, principally staff, in new products and businesses as we position ourselves for sustained long-term growth. The way that you look at it year-to-date or just Q3, Match is having a great year. Q4 fundamentals for the business remain very good. Excluding Meetic effects, we're looking at double-digit top line growth with good operating leverage and expanding margins. Layering in Meetic for the first full quarter will add materially to revenue and probably about 15% to earnings after the ongoing effect of deferred revenue write off. This purchase accounting effect will affect us until Q2 of next year. It impacts both revenue and earnings but because in essence it falls straight through to the bottom line, it has a more profound effect on earnings. Again, completely standard for any acquisition of a subscription business, noncash, non-economic. Each quarter, our results without Meetic will be totally clear, and Meetic stand-alone results without those effects will also be clear. So there'll be total transparency on our progress and momentum. Finally, on the cash flow and balance sheet side, we had another very strong quarter of cash generation. $74 million of OIBA, which is obviously a pretax number translated into $104 million of after-tax free cash flow, bringing us to $242 million free cash flow for the 9 months. While this ratio of earnings to free cash flow can't be sustained, the fundamentally attractive nature of our businesses from a cash flow perspective remains intact, and this reality, obviously, underlies our share repurchase activity in the quarter, as well as our initiation of a dividend. So with that, let's get to questions.