Match Group (NASDAQ:MTCH) held its first-quarter earnings conference call on Tuesday. Below is the complete transcript from the call.
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Summary
Match Group reported strong financial performance in Q1 2026, exceeding revenue and adjusted EBITDA expectations, driven primarily by improvements at Tinder.
The company's strategic transformation plan, focusing on Reset, Revitalize, and Resurgence, is showing progress, with Tinder's leading indicators improving and Hinge demonstrating strong revenue growth and product innovation.
Future outlook includes driving Tinder back to growth by 2027, leveraging AI across the company to improve user outcomes, and managing costs effectively through organizational consolidation and strategic investments like Sniffies.
Operational highlights include Tinder's product innovations such as Astrology Mode and Music Mode, the rollout of FaceCheck for trust and safety, and Hinge's international expansion and introduction of new features.
Management emphasized the importance of AI in enhancing product experiences and improving operational efficiency, as well as the strategic focus on the non-heterosexual male market with the investment in Sniffies.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Welcome to The Match Group first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press Star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tanya Shelburne, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Tanya Shelburne
Thank you operator and good afternoon everyone. Today's call will be led by CEO Spencer Raskoff and CFO Stephen Bailey. He'll make a few brief remarks and then we'll open it up for questions. Before we start, I need to remind everyone that during this call we may discuss our outlook and future performance. These forward looking statements may be preceded by words such as we expect, we believe, we anticipate or similar statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and our actual results could differ materially from the views expressed today. Some of these risks have been set forth in our earnings release and our periodic reports with the SEC. Also during this call we'll discuss certain non GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are provided in the published materials on our IR website. These non GAAP measures are not intended to be substitutes for GAAP results. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Spencer. Good afternoon and thanks for joining us. Matchgroup entered 2026 with tangible progress on the three phase transformation we outlined last year Reset, Revitalize and Resurgence. We completed the reset phase in 2025 and we're now well into revitalize, focused on improving product experiences, strengthening the ecosystem and rebuilding growth. We are operating with greater focus and discipline, the portfolio is sharper, execution is faster and we are leveraging our scale more effectively. Through our One Match Group approach, we are reinvesting where we see clear opportunities to improve user outcomes while continuing to return meaningful capital to shareholders. Our progress is showing up in three areas. First, leading indicators at Tinder are showing momentum reflecting better product experiences for Gen Z and that progress is increasingly translating into top line metrics like monthly active users or MAU payers and direct revenue. Second, Hinge continues to scale, combining strong revenue growth, rapid product innovation, particularly in AI driven features and continued international expansion. And third, we continue to streamline our portfolio and organizational structure, simplifying how we operate and focusing resources on our highest conviction opportunities. Looking ahead, our objective is to drive a resurgence with our audience by re establishing Tinder as a growth business during 2027 through restoring durable user engagement and relevance at scale. And all of this is happening alongside disciplined financial execution. In Q1 2026, we exceeded our revenue and adjusted EBITDA expectations on the back of strength at Tinder. Steve will walk through the details shortly. Turning now to Tinder's product led turnaround from the beginning, I've said this will be a product led turnaround, starting with user outcomes and moving up the funnel towards user growth. Our most important leading indicators Sparks and Spark Coverage continue to improve in March Sparks, the number of users engaging in six way conversations were down only 1% year over year, a meaningful improvement from down 11% year over year in March 2025. Spark's coverage, which measures the percentage of our users who experience a spark in a given period, was up 6% year over year in March compared to down 1% year over year in March 2025. These are our clearest signals of product efficacy and real connection. And they're improving. As we've said before, our belief is improving Sparks leads to better retention and stronger word of mouth driving MAO over time. We're now starting to see that play out. MAU declines continued to moderate in March, down 7% year over year, the slowest rate of decline in 31 months compared to down 10% year over year in March of 2025. This improvement was driven by a few factors. First, user retention increased up 1% year over year in March after multiple years of decline. US Gen Z women retention, a critical cohort for ecosystem Health, was up 3% year over year in March. Second, registrations returned to growth for the first time since June 2024, up 1% year over year in March compared to down 12% year over year in March 2025. This is proof that the brand is resonating through marketing and word of mouth, driving new users into the experience. We're seeing this progress across different geographies and demographics, including in markets where we've had the most ground to recover. Progress may not always be linear, but the year over year trajectory of these leading indicators and user engagement underscores our confidence in the strategy, and we expect it to translate into revenue growth over time. Let me highlight a few of the efforts driving these improvements, many of which we showcased at our Tinder Sparks event in March, which is available on our IR website. First, recommendations We've sharpened how Tinder understands what users are looking for and how we deliver matches across the ecosystem by learning preferences earlier, showing more relevant profiles and better serving both active and returning users. We're helping people find matches faster and driving more conversations, with particularly strong gains for women. Next product innovation features like Astrology Mode and Music Mode are gaining traction with Gen Z following their mid March launch, reaching 19% and 8% adoption respectively. We're also seeing encouraging early signals on user outcomes. For example, in our early read, women who swipe on Astrology cards are more likely to reach a spark than those with non Astro cards like Double Date. These signals show new modes are resonating by making discovery more expressive and lower pressure, which is exactly what Gen Z users have been asking for. And finally, trust and safety we continue to scale FaceCheck into more regions, including the recent launch in the UK and Singapore. FaceCheck is improving authenticity and user trust, with particularly strong trends in the US where net promoter scores have been trending higher. Importantly, the revenue impact from our ongoing user experience tests remain within the range that we planned. Simply put, Tinder works better now. We're not at the finish line, but the turnaround is clearly underway. Turning to Hinge, where product led growth continues to scale, Hinge continues to build thoughtful, best in class experiences for highly intentioned daters. The team remains focused on a key objective, helping users get out on great dates. That clarity is driving its product roadmap, which is both rapidly advancing the core experience and introducing new and compelling features. Starting with the Core Experience, Hinge is strengthening profile quality through a redesigned onboarding experience that encourages users to slow down and reflect on what they're looking for before viewing profiles. Structured prompts help users more clearly communicate their relationship goals, their personality and preferences from the start. The experience is also more interactive, giving users more visibility into how they're represented and improving confidence during profile creation. We plan to expand this globally by the end of Q2. In parallel, hinge continues to strengthen trust within the experience with Face Check, which is now fully rolled out in the us, uk, Australia, Canada, Brazil and Mexico with additional markets planned for Q2. In these markets, Feature has reduced interaction with bad actors by 20 to 30% with minimal impact on revenue. Originally developed by Tinder, FaceCheck showcases portfolio wide innovation, enabling Hinge to quickly iterate and bring the feature to market faster. Building on its stronger core experience, Hinge is introducing a set of category first features designed to better express intent and help users move from connection to date First. Hinge is reducing friction in getting to great dates with Date Ideas, a feature formerly known as Direct to Date, which allows users to propose a date idea and time upfront to clarify intent and move matches to real life meetings faster. Early feedback has been encouraging, with nearly 9% adoption in testing, one of the highest rates we've seen for a new profile feature and users expressing genuine excitement on social media so far, users are defaulting to familiar, low effort date ideas like dinner, drinks and walks, while custom date ideas skew toward light conversational activities like bowling, arcades, museums and mini golf. Second, Hinge is expanding the role friends play on Daters profiles with Friends Take, which addresses two core tensions representing yourself authentically and navigating dating alone without community. Building on Hinge's Prompt native format, the feature allows users to invite trusted friends on and off Hinge to contribute short reflections to their profiles, adding credibility and helping users get to know one another more deeply. Friends Take will begin testing by the end of Q2, with broader rollout expected in Q3. We see potential for it to be a top of funnel driver, similarly to voice prompts. A couple of years ago, Third, Hinge began testing Signals, a new feature designed to make effort and intentionality more visible. When users consistently demonstrate thoughtful participation by doing things like completing their profile, responding to messages and engaging in meaningful conversations, they earn a Signals badge on their profile. This badge signals to others on the app their level of effort and intentionality, addressing a long standing friction point in the category, particularly for women and younger daters. Early results show improvements in dating outcomes and user behaviors that benefit the overall ecosystem. As we invest in these types of intentional features, we are creating new surface areas to potentially monetize later. Hinge demonstrates the simple principle that when product market fit is strong and user outcomes are clear, growth follows and the model scales. Hinge continues to lead the category in product innovation through its consistent focus on user outcomes and it's led to strong financial results. We're excited to see the impact of Hinge's product roadmap on the business this year as it continues on its path to be a billion dollar business by 2027. Now turning to our one MG approach in action, we're continuing the work that we began last year to simplify the organization and operate more effectively and as One Match Group. As part of this effort we folded our MG Asia business unit into our E and E business unit. This brings our two Asia based businesses, Azar and Pears, closer to the rest of the company, removes a management layer and improves efficiency while maintaining in region cross brand go to market capabilities. We expect this change to result in roughly $15 million in annualized cost savings including stock based compensation. It also enables more cohesive portfolio management, faster execution and to apply shared capabilities and resources on Azaar. As we previously disclosed, Apple temporarily removed the app from the App store on February 22, 2026. The team moved quickly to make adjustments, which led to the reinstatement of a new version on April 6, 2026. While still early registrations and MAU are beginning to recover, but the new app experience is monetizing at lower levels than the previous version. We're testing changes to the product to improve monetization, but expect continued pressure on Azar Direct revenue over the balance of the year. With the consolidation of MG Asia into E and E, we've transitioned our sole based MG AI team of more than 20 talented data scientists and machine learning engineers to report into Tinder's CTO. This team will continue building shared 1mg technologies including AI driven photo uploading and AI enabled recommendation algorithms, but will now operate with closer alignment to our largest business unit. In addition, we're shifting nearly 30 product engineering and analytics employees from Azar to Tinder in Seoul. These moves concentrate resources into Tinder at a critical moment, supported by excellent executive leadership, an accelerating product roadmap and improving business momentum. Following this move, we'll have a nearly 60 person team focused on Tinder in Seoul, making it our third largest tech hub after Palo Alto and Los Angeles. We've also made progress in unifying performance marketing by further centralizing teams and resources into a one MG organization that buys digital media across brands. We spend nearly $600 million globally across 20 or more brands, with significant efficiencies available to us as coordination reps. We're also bringing certain areas of E and E closer with Tinder, starting with the executive layer where I now directly oversee both business units. This has unlocked significant opportunities for better coordination and synergies, including the marketing changes I just mentioned. As I've dug into E and E the last few weeks, we've identified many areas where Tinder and EE results can be improved through tighter coordination, collaboration and integration. Finally, this couldn't be a 2026 earnings call without discussing AI. We see AI as a core enabler of improving user outcomes, enhancing product experiences, increasing relevance, and accelerating development and iteration across the portfolio. To support this, we've launched a global AI enablement program that gives every employee access to leading AI tools with the goal of becoming an AI native company. We're also reassessing our hiring plans with with AI enablement in mind and plan to reduce headcount growth over the remainder of the year. And we're standing up a cross company AI leadership team to help ensure consistent deployment of capabilities and avoid fragmentation across brands. These changes are about operating more simply and more effectively. We're simplifying the portfolio, focusing resources on our highest conviction opportunities and adapting quickly to where we believe the category is going to, not where it's been. That's one MV in practice. Now for some final thoughts. Stepping back We've aligned our business around distinct user intents, with each brand serving a different and important role. Together, they expand our reach across a broad and growing market for human connection. Within that framework, in April we made a $100 million investment for a significant minority stake in Sniffies, a differentiated platform with strong product market fit and a highly engaged user base. We have the option to acquire the remaining equity in the future, similar to the approach we took with our initial investment in hinge back in 2017. Sniffy's reinforces our commitment with non heterosexual men, which represent a large and growing portion of the category. We see a clear opportunity to lend our expertise in areas like trust and safety and geographic expansion while preserving what makes the platform unique to its community. As part of this investment, we plan to wind down our game mail app Archer, which we expect to result in roughly $10 million in annualized cost savings including stock based compensation. We built a stronger foundation and are now seeing that translate into real momentum. By improving how people connect and delivering better outcomes for users, we're setting the business up for durable growth. That's what gives us confidence in the path to resurgence. Over to Steve now.
Stephen Bailey (Chief Financial Officer)
Thanks Spencer. We delivered a strong start to the year, exceeding both our revenue and adjusted EBITDA expectations. The outperformance was primarily driven by better than expected direct revenue and payers, trends at tinder and a benefit associated with Canada's rescission of its digital service tax. I'll walk through the key drivers of the quarter and then turn to our guidance. Unless otherwise noted, all amounts are on an as reported basis and comparisons will be discussed on a year over year basis. More details can be found in the financial table below and in the financial supplement found on our IR website. In Q1, Match Group's total revenue was $864 million, up 4% flat on a foreign exchange neutral basis. FX was $3 million better than we expected at the time of our last earnings call. Payers declined 5% to 13.5 million while RPP increased 10% to $20.90. Indirect revenue of $16 million was down 14%, largely driven by a decrease in spend from top advertisers as compared to a record quarter the prior year. In Q1, Match Group's adjusted EBITDA was $343 million, up 25%, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 40%. Canada's rescission of its digital service tax positively impacted adjusted EBITDA by $11 million in the quarter. Tinder direct revenue in Q1 was $455 million, up 2% and down 3%. FX-neutral Q1 direct revenue includes an approximately $5 million negative impact from user experience testing in the quarter. Payers declined 5% year over year to 8.6 million, a marked improvement from the 8% year over year decline in Q4 2025. RPP increased 7% to $17.56. Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter was $237 million, up 4%, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 51%. Hinge maintained momentum in Q1 with direct revenue of $194 million, up 28% and up 24%. FX-neutral payers increased 15% year over year to $2 million and RPP increased 11% to $33.13. Adjusted EBITDA was $71 million, up 66% year over year, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin Of 36%. EE direct revenue in Q1 was $139 million, down 7% and down 10%. FX-neutral payers decreased 16% to $2 million while RPP increased 11% to $22.97. Adjusted EBITDA was $39 million, up 37%, representing an adjusted EBITDA Margin of 28%. Match Group Asia delivered direct revenue in Q1 of 60 million, down 6% and down 7%. FX-neutral Azara direct revenue was down 6% and down 9%. FX-neutral Azar direct revenue was negatively impacted by an estimated $3 million from its temporary removal from the App Store. Pears Direct revenue was down 6% and down 4% of examination across Match Group Asia. Payers declined 9% to approximately 900,000 while RPP increased 2% to $21.74. Adjusted EBITDA was 21 million, up 11%, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 35% as a result of the organizational changes associated with Match Group Asia that Spencer discussed. Beginning with our Q2 2026 results, we will combine the Match Group Asia and E business units into a single operating segment called E and E and report Match Group results across three operating segments, Tinder, Hinge and E. Now on to consolidated operating costs and expenses including stock based compensation expense. Total expenses in Q1 were down 5%. Cost of revenue decreased 11% and represented 24% of total revenue, down 4 points as a percent of total revenue, primarily driven by alternative payment savings. Selling and marketing costs increased $6 million or 4%, but remained flat at 19% of total revenue as a result of increased marketing spend at Tinder and Hinge, partially offset by reduced marketing spend at E and Match Group. Asia General Administrative costs decreased 20%, down 3 points as a percentage of total revenue to 10%, driven by the Canadian Digital Service tax reversal of 11 million and lower employee compensation including SBC. Product development costs decreased 3%, down 1 point as a percentage of total revenue at 14%. Depreciation amortization increased by 16 million to 48 million due to impairments of intangible assets of Azar totaling 25 million resulting from changes required to reinstate the app. In the Apple App store, our trailing twelve month gross leverage was 3.1 times and net leverage was 2.3 times. At the end of Q1. We ended the quarter with $1 billion of cash, cash equivalents and short term investments on hand and plan to use $424 million of cash to pay off the 2026 convertible notes on or before their maturity in June. Year to date through Q1, we delivered operating cash flow of $194 million and free cash flow of $174 million. We repurchased 2 million shares at an average price of $31 per share on a trade date basis for a total of $60 million, paid $44 million in dividends and deployed $75 million of cash towards net settlement of employee equity awards equating to 103% of free cash flow. Between April 1 and April 30, 2026, we repurchased an additional 700,000 shares at an average price of $32 per share on a trade date basis for a total of $22 million as of April 30, 2026. We reduced diluted shares outstanding by 5% year over year. We also used $100 million in cash on hand to acquire a minority stake in SNFEs, which we announced on April 27, 2026. Our capital allocation strategy centered on returning capital to shareholders through buybacks and a dividend remains unchanged. Now for Guidance, we expect Q2 total revenue for Match Group of $850 million to $860 million, down 2% to flat year over year. This range assumes a 1 point tailwind from FX FXN, we expect total revenue to be down 1% to 3% year over year. Q2 total revenue guidance assumes a $10 million negative impact from Tinder's user experience tests and a $20 million negative impact from lower Azor direct revenue. We expect match group adjusted EBITDA of $325 million to $330 million, representing a 13% year over year increase and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 38% at the midpoints of the ranges as we remain financially disciplined and continue to optimize our cost structure while making the necessary investments that we believe will drive long term growth in the business. Now let's open it up to Q and A.
OPERATOR
We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press Star then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press Star then two. At this time we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question today comes from Shweta Kajuriya with Wolf Research. Please go ahead.
Shweta Kajuriya (Equity Analyst at Wolf Research)
Thank you for taking my questions. One on the Tinder sort of turnaround and leading indicators you're seeing, the March, metrics you called out are very promising. Could you please talk to if you saw continuation of these trends into April, and I guess now early May? And then the second question I have is around your AI cost savings. So how should we be thinking about all these cost savings that you may have, either from integrating business units and also driving productivity with AI tools? And it seems that you have greater and greater potential for margin if you wanted to either this year or next year. So how should we be thinking about that? Thanks a lot. Yeah, thank you for the questions. So firstly, yes, Tinder's momentum has continued into April. Just to sort of take a step back and I'll share some April data. The product led turnaround at Tinder is clearly well underway and I'm feeling really good about it. So as I said in the prepared remarks, Mao declined 7% year over year in March,, which was the slowest rate in 31 months. And then it went on to decline 6.6% in April. So it continued to improve DAO, which I don't think we talked about in the prepared remarks, but daily active users was down 9% back in March, of 2025, then down 6% in March, of 2026 and was only down 4% in April of 2026. So every month Every week, almost every day, we continue to chip away at the audience declines at Tinder. So let me just take a moment, Shweta, to talk about what's driving this. And it's clearly product improvements which are impacting user outcomes. So the big needle movers on improving user outcomes have been, first of all recommendations. So we're just doing a much better job today of showing women the men that we think they'll want to see. And you know, obviously that is the most important thing for a dating app, figuring out whom to show to whom. And we're much better at it than we ever were before. We made lots and lots of changes. But for example, you know, one set of changes improved women's sparks by 6% and that improved women's Dow by 2%, which in turn improved men's sparks by 5% and then men's Dow by 1%. So that's just one example of one set of Rex changes. And you did that plus other RECS changes we thought might hurt revenue. But actually on balance, it resulted in a $15 million annualized revenue gain because of improved women's retention, which then improved men's revenue. So it's not always a trade off between REC's improvements and revenue. Sometimes they actually work together. The second big needle mover on Tinder product improvements was Double date. So around 1 in 5 global users now 18 to 22 are using double date. Around 1 in 4 US women 18 to 22 are using double date. And it's just an important way that people are now using Tinder Music mode and astrology mode also drove great adoption in the quarter. I think it was 8% for global Gen Z for music and 19% for global Gen Z for astrology. And then the next section is a variety of things that we don't talk about very much because they're kind of mundane improvements. But this is really important blocking and tackling. These are things like improved CRM for better emails and notifications or better app performance so the app doesn't crash the way it used to or better website performance and just general better operating cadence at the company. And all those things really do work together. The last one I'll just add is the irl, the in real life pilot in LA has been successful and we're working to expand that. And it's just another example of how we're creating these low pressure ways to connect. I'll leave it at that. If you know, the last piece, I guess is the marketing support of these products. But let me, let me Give it to Steve now to talk about the AI and cost savings. And then if, if there's interest, we can talk about Tinder marketing and how it supports those product changes. Steve?
Spencer Raskoff (Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, sure. Here's the way I would think about it, Shweta. You know, we're making a big push around AI enablement. We're giving every employee in the company access to all the cutting edge tools. We're giving them the training they need to succeed. We're setting expectations. We really want to become an AI native company we think is a huge opportunity. So. But these tools cost a lot of money, as I'm sure you know. And so the way we're helping to pay for that is by slowing, slowing our hiring plans for the rest of the year. So I think of that as a little bit of a cost neutral. Lower headcount cost, higher, you know, software expense down the road. Over the long term, it could result in cost savings, but it's a bit of a neutral for us in 2026 and hopefully it leads to not just cost savings over time, but increased productivity and ultimately revenue growth through higher throughput and output from employees. And then on the structural changes, we talked about Mattress Group Asia, we talked about Archer. Just know that what we quoted in the prepared remarks are annualized savings, including SPC. So I would think of that more as a 2027 savings. It's less so in 26, just due to the timing and due to some of the one time costs that come along with it. But it certainly does give us optionality in 27 around margins.
OPERATOR
Next question, please. The next question comes from Corey Carpenter, but JP Morgan, please go ahead.
Corey Carpenter (Equity Analyst at JP Morgan)
Hey guys, thanks for the question. I have, I have two Steven, Mike, they might both be for you. Just on the 2Q guide, it implies flat revenue that you're expecting and that's despite a $20 million headwind for Mazar. So my question is kind of where are you seeing offsets and which brands to make up for that? And any comments you can give on your expectations for Tinder and 2Q specifically. And then Steve, looking beyond 2Q, any update you can provide us on how you're thinking about the full year outlook? Thank you.
Stephen Bailey (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, sure, I can take that. Thanks, Corey. On Q2, the way to think about it is, yes, azar is a $20 million headwind because of the changes we need to make there to get back in the App Store. That's being nearly fully offset by Tinder strength. That's really where it's coming from. So Tinder performed quite well in Q1 and we expect that to continue in Q2. So that's where the offset's coming from. If you think about the full year, we made no changes to the full year guide, but let me just give you sort of some puts and takes to think about. You know, we expect the czar revenue pressure to continue for at least another few quarters. So I would think about it for the rest of the year. The team's hard at work. We've got a roadmap we're trying to address, you know, the added friction to improve monetization. But I think it'll take some time at Tinder. You know, we'll have to see how things play out. One of the things I'm looking at pretty closely is we've got a $45 million user investment budget still slated for the second half of the year, spread out pretty evenly between Q3 and Q4. So I'd expect us to end up at the lower end, lower half of the full year guidance range given Azar weakness if we end up using that $45 million user investment budget. Now, what we've seen the last couple of quarters is we haven't had to, but for now we're assuming we will. And that's kind of, that's all baked and contemplated in the guide. But you know, if we don't end up using it, that could offer some, some further offsets to Azar in Q3 and Q4. So that's sort of the revenue story on the EBITDA story, the adjusted EBITDA story. I feel really good about the guide there. Same with free cash flow, even if revenue comes in a little softer because of Azar. That's because we mitigated a lot of the adjusted EBITDA impact from the Azar changes through reducing marketing there and reallocating headcount at Azar towards other parts of the business, namely Tinder. And closed some open roles at Tinder in the US and we've reduced costs across other parts of the portfolio too. Our Alt Payment initiative in particular is doing better than expected, so that's helping. And then the changes we just talked about at Match Group Asia, as well as the shutting down of Archer is helping too. Again, there are more 2027 savings impacts, but they also benefit 2026 as well. So that's kind of the way I'm thinking about it. Tinder helping to offset Azar in Q2. We'll have to see how the user investment budget goes for the rest of the year and then feel really good about EBITDA and free cash flow because of some of the cost savings efforts we've made.
OPERATOR
Operator, next question, please. Sure. The next question comes from Nathan Feather with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Nathan Feather (Equity Analyst at Morgan Stanley)
Hi everyone. Thanks for the question and really encouraging to see the progress you've been making here on Tinder. Just help me kind of chart the path over the remainder of the year. Understanding there'll be some kind of puts and takes here, but what's the hope for kind of that glide path for Mouz as we kind of Continue 2Q into the back half and then, you know, given a lot of these improvements that you talked about that are driving this amount growth weren't necessarily just launched in 1Q, but it kind of been the cumulative impact over 2025 up until 1Q. How should we think about the kind of product release cadence and how that interplays with MAU? And have you kind of uncovered any maybe delayed impact as, you know, the tools get released and then users start to use them and that can eventually drive one month? Yeah. Thanks, Nathan. So a couple things, you know, first of all, with respect to the product release cadence going forward, you know, we're not, we're not stepping or we're not taking our foot off the gas. So we the March 12th event was a great catalyst. It generated a ton of urgency and a lot of the innovations that we've announced or that we've shipped came from that urgency. But the team has not slowed down since the so for example, upcoming initiatives are things like, you know, video speed date, which we announced at the Spark week or sorry, at the Spark Tinder sparks event on March 12th and we will be shipping in the next, I don't know, coming month or so in real life events expanding to other cities, rolling out Tinder connect with partners like Duolingo and Belly, and a number of other features that we haven't, you know, that we're not ready to share publicly. So the work is definitely not done. And I'm excited about the roadmap for the balance of the year in terms of how it will play out on impact on Sparks and impact on Mao. Obviously that's hard to predict. You know, I think, I think what we've been saying, we've been kind of setting ourselves up to get to flat mile by the end of, I think we said end of 27 and clearly I'm very proud and pleased that we're already in kind of the negative 6 to 7% year over year range. You can argue that maybe it could Accelerate the pace with which we improve mao, because product efficacy improves as you start to bring more people into the ecosystem because there are just more good people for you to match with. You could also argue that the rate of improvement could slow down because we started with the low hanging fruit first when this new leadership team took over about six or nine months ago and started knocking things down. So it's very hard for me to predict how, how we'll get, like, what the, what the path will be from the negative 7% Mao to flat and then Mao growth. Anything to add, Steve? Okay, next question please. Operator.
OPERATOR
Then the next question comes from Ross Sandler with Barclays. Please go ahead. Hey guys. Hey Spencer. The 1% growth in 30 day retention, that's pretty bullish. I know it's an early signal, but like, could you guys just say, like, how long has it been since you've had growing 30 day user retention? And it sounds like, you know, some of the safety and product changes you mentioned on a previous question are driving this trend.
Spencer Raskoff (Chief Executive Officer)
But just any other details, any color you can provide on, you know, what's turning that kind of key metric up would be helpful. Thank you. Yeah, thanks, Ross. It had been years since we had retention improvements up year over year. I don't know how many years, but at least several. You know, equally encouraging is that retention among US Gen Z women is actually up 3% year over year. So that's even better than the total number, the overall number that I put in the, in the script and I think in the press release. So, you know, what's driving this is, as I said, it's better recommendations, it's double date, it's music mode, astrology mode, blocking and tackling, changing perception of Tinder, moving more towards the fun and safe way to meet new people. Improving social sentiment on TikTok and Instagram, better marketing, which is now working more effectively because when we market these types of features, our marketing budgets go further. You know, prior campaigns were focused on kind of more amorphous brand reconsideration. Sort of like, you know, hey, Tinder's great. Check out Tinder. Now we're able to actually market very specific features that have great resonance with our key user segments. And so the marketing is much more effective. So taken all together, this is what's improving retention. And as I've, you know, as I like to remind people, this is a network effects business. So we are already seeing in certain countries in Asia and Latin America where MAO is flat or in some countries actually up year over year, we're seeing better user efficacy, better sparks, better spark coverage, better retention because more people just improves user results for everybody in the ecosystem. So it's really encouraging. And you're starting to see that in some of the retention data that we're sharing. Operator, next question, please.
OPERATOR
The next question comes from Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Stephen Bailey (Chief Financial Officer)
Thanks so much for taking the question Spencer wanted to ask about capital allocation priorities because you've now made an outside investment in Sniffy's. I believe you backed Justin's venture in parallel with Match when he left Hinge to go down that road. How are you thinking about the competition for capital between outside investments that can be made versus application of capital internally to build and scale some of the platform product initiatives you're trying to accomplish? Just want to understand if there's been any evolution in the thought there. Thanks so much. Why don't I take that first and then, Spencer, feel free to jump in the way. You know, our approach has not changed. Our priority has always been first organic growth in the business. So we're prioritizing investments in Tinder and Hinge to drive growth in those businesses. And we feel like we've got the capital needed to do that. And then number two is returning capital shareholders, as you know, through buybacks and the dividends. You know, we'll continue to be inquisitive when we find opportunities to do M and A. We will do that. We've shown a good track record of it. These are pretty small investments, right? The sniffy's investment is $100 million investment in what we think could be a big opportunity. You know, overtone is a much smaller investment than that. So, you know, this is something we can easily sort of handle while still remaining committed to returning, you know, vast majority of capital shareholders for buybacks and dividends. So I don't think that's new. And I think, you know, $1.1 billion a year in free cash flow allows for flexibility to do all those things. Anything you'd add?
Spencer Raskoff (Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, just in case I don't have the opportunity to address Sniffies later in the call, I want to address it now. Steve's right. In the grand scheme of things, it's a relatively. Well, you call it a small investment. I guess I would say it's. We're so profitable and we have such a solid cash flow generation machine that we're quite easily able to fund it. But it's not a small investment. It's a big investment and it's a big swing in a huge tam. Arguably the Non heterosexual male segment is the most attractive, largest and most highly engaged segment in the dating category. And this is a big investment in the number two player that we think has the potential to become the number one player. This is a company that's not even in the App Store right now. So Sniffy, despite all their success to date, has only been on the mobile web and we expect to be able to help them create a safe for work experience which gets into the App Store which will be a huge unlock for Sniffy. So I'm really excited about this investment. This combined, you know, We've only done two deals since I started. One was acquiring her and one was investing $100 million in sniffies with the right to buy the rest of it. So we're very focused on these two segments, the Sapphic segment and the non heterosexual male segment. We think these are huge tams. And I'm very excited to own the number one player in the Sapphic segment and own a significant portion of the number two player in the non heterosexual male segment with an option to buy the rest. So it's really encouraging and, and exciting. Operator, next question please.
OPERATOR
The next question comes from Benjamin Black with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Benjamin Black (Equity Analyst at Deutsche Bank)
Great. Thank you for taking my questions. Spencer, you clearly have a lot of product initiatives on the way right now at Tinder. If you sort of step back and look ahead to the next 12 to 18 months, I'd be curious to hear which one is the most needle moving in your perspective. Or is this maybe sort of a situation where smaller products initiatives sort of build on top of each other and create compounding benefits? And then quickly, Steve, I'd be curious to hear what you're embedding in your guidance for the year on year trends for Tinder payers and maybe for RPP as well. Thank you. That's a hard one to choose. Amongst all these different product initiatives, as I said, the one that's driven the most improvement to date have been improvements in our recommendations algorithms. In terms of looking ahead there, you know, I'll keep it a little bit vague for competitive reasons, but basically say it's like it's kind of an expansion of Double Date and irl. So kind of tapping into this lightweight lower pressure ways to connect, which is what Gen Z wants. And I'll give a little plug here. On June 11th we're going to have an investor and media focused webinar. We're creating kind of a new investor relations product called a CEO Connection where we're going to outside of earnings do a double click on something that we think is of interest to all of you. And the first one we're going to do on June 11th is on this topic. It's decoding Gen Z dating. So we're going to have a number of our social scientists who study Gen Z and Gen Alpha share our insights and learnings of how these two generations want to connect and how our roadmap informs it. So look for more information coming out of our IR team for that event on June 11th. But you know, it'll be an hour webinar and I think it'll be really insightful and interesting for folks.
Stephen Bailey (Chief Financial Officer)
And then I'll take the payers question. Yeah, here's the way I would think about it. You know, first of all, tinder payers in Q1 were down 5% which you probably saw, which is, which is a huge improvement from the down, you know, 8% in Q4 and you know, 7% the quarter before the couple quarters before that. So a lot of progress there that we're really excited to see. You know, I would think of payers as being in a similar range, maybe some small improvement, but similarly down for the rest of the year as Q1 only because of the $45 million in user investments. So for now again we're assuming we make those investments because we want to give the product teams the optionality to do it. But that's what's leading to similar payer trends over the rest of the year. And then I think if we gave you Tinder full year revenue guidance last quarter, which hasn't changed, so you can kind of back into the payer's assumption. But it, you know, I think would it tell you is payer growth would slow a little bit over the rest of the year too. But again a lot of that slowdown is related to the user investments which will only do if we think it's the right long term thing to do for the business. Next question.
OPERATOR
The next question comes from John Blackledge, T.D. cowan. Please go ahead.
Spencer Raskoff (Chief Executive Officer)
Great, thanks. Two, two questions. I thought another good signal was the new user registrations returning to growth. Don't know if you could add a little bit more color there and how things are trending with that metric thus far in the second quarter. And the second question is around facecheck rollout. How's it going and should we still expect it to be about a one point headwind to revenue growth this year? Thank you. Yeah, let me start with facecheck. Facecheck is rolled out in most markets now for Tinder it's also now rolled out in all major markets at Hinge. It's showing great results at Hinge too, just like it has at Tinder in terms of reducing bad actors on the apps. So in terms of revenue impact, yeah, it's gotten. It's pretty negligible at this point. It's about 1%. That hasn't changed for the total company. That's included in the guidance. And yeah, that's about where it's trending now.
Stephen Bailey (Chief Financial Officer)
John. I don't have new regs, you know, from April at my fingertips, but, you know, it is a really encouraging statistic. I think the registration improvement speaks to overall improving, improving social sentiment and our ability to drive reconsideration. I think a lot of that speaks to the product, but much of that speaks to marketing, frankly, because a new reg is basically somebody that hasn't used Tinder before, or maybe perhaps they did have a Tinder account many years ago, but they've deleted the app. So it really speaks to general social sentiment, improving word of mouth. Some of that's due to product, but a lot of it's due to marketing that is really resonating. So we're encouraged by it. Operator. Next question, please.
OPERATOR
The next question comes from Jason Helfstein with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.
Jason Helfstein (Equity Analyst at Oppenheimer)
Thanks. One on Hinge and then a quick one on Tinder. So Hinge RPP is accelerating. Is that reflecting a mix within plans and user choice? Are there some headline price increases? And then is that. Obviously hinged pairs did decelerate. Is there any connection between price and volume there? And then just a second quick one, Spencer, how do you know that, like, the new product innovations have staying power, like Astrology mode, Music mode, double date. They're definitely cool. How do we know this is not like when a new AI image generator or casual game launches, gets virality and then kind of fades after a few months? Thanks.
Stephen Bailey (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah. Why don't I take the first part of that? Yeah. So, I mean, what we've done at Hinge is optimize pricing geographically over the last few quarters. Some of that means a price up, some of that means a price down. That's what's moving the payers and RPP numbers around a little bit. It's not really package mix shifts per se. With that said, payer growth is still very strong in Q1. I think it's 15% and I expect that to be the case for the rest of the year. I still feel that the bulk of the payer, the bulk of the revenue growth in 2026 will come from payer growth, not RPP growth.
Spencer Raskoff (Chief Executive Officer)
Anything you want to add? Yeah, look on Hinge. Overall, Hinge continues to crank. It was up. The revenue was up 28% year over year in the quarter, which is pretty amazing. Brazil and Mexico launches both went very well. Hinge became a top two or three dating app basically right out of the gate. Based on the success of Brazil and Mexico, we accelerated the launch of more international markets. We quietly launched 10 more markets earlier this week. I think it was Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru in Latam, and then a couple of significant European markets like Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Iceland, Luxembourg, Czech Republic. So we continue to march across the world with Hinge, which has terrific product market fit. You know, there's obviously huge potential for MAO growth in these new markets, but also monetization potential on the path to a billion of revenue in 2027 obviously hinges. Mao in English speaking markets has flattened as we'd expect because those are more mature, mature markets. But revenue growth even in those core English speaking markets was up 17% year over year in the quarter. And Hinge is very consistently the number one downloaded app in English speaking markets, or number one or number two. So I guess the last thing I'd add is, as I think I mentioned in the prepared remarks, the rate of product innovation at Hinge continues to impress. So this quarter we've got three great innovations. Date ideas, which lets people indicate what types of dates they want to go on friends take, which brings friends into the dating experience, and then signals which lets people show if they're high intent. Those are all great features which directly speak to Gen Z and Millennial needs in the category. And again, we're going to be talking more about that at the June 11 event. So all of this is to say I'm very confident in Hinge's trajectory and its growth. I think, Jason, your other question was about kind of staying power of these new features. You know, the way I would answer this is that first of all, as I've said, a lot of the improvements in our data have come from recommendation algorithm improvements. So those are not specifically shiny new features. Those are just giving people, showing people the people that would be a better match with them. But with respect to the shiny new features and might their appeal fade over time. Double Date, I think is a good indicator where its usage just continues to grow every month, every quarter, as more people become aware of the feature. And the same thing is happening with music and astrology. So right out of the gate, for example, with music mode, when nobody had music mode, there were not many people to see in music mode. But now that you start to see more users with their music connected to their Tinder profile, it becomes more immersive. You're more motivated to upload or to kind of connect your Spotify to your Tinder to bring in your music. And awareness grows as the network effect kind of fills out. So in that sense, it's quite different than other feature launches of mobile games, for example. Next question, Operator.
OPERATOR
The next question comes from Youssef Scully with Truist. Please go ahead. Awesome. Thank you so much. So, Spencer, maybe a couple questions for you. Can you maybe talk a little bit about the health of the overall online dating market, both from a competitive standpoint with some of the new modalities that we're seeing offline, like run clubs and book clubs and all kinds of other clubs. But just how is that impacting the online environment? The online dating environment, if it is. And then on Sniffies, what makes that model so successful and so superior to Archers that you decided to invest 100 million to fold Archer into it? Yeah. So on the overall macro market, Gen Z is. Gen Z desperately wants to connect. They know they want to meet new people. They just want to do it in a low pressure, low stakes way that doesn't feel like a job interview. And so, you know, traditional dating apps are very highly structured and can be intimidating to a user under 30. So I think the growth of these alternative ways to meet new people speaks to how Gen Z is trying to find lower pressure ways to connect. We've obviously adapted our roadmap to this reality and Double Date was our first foray into this. The in real life events product in Los Angeles was our next big foray into this. So we're basically at Tinder and Match Group. More broadly, we are embracing this trend of meeting people IRL at different, you know, in different modalities rather than hiding from it. Again, the June 11 event will give us an opportunity to bring a lot more data and learnings from our team of experts into this conversation. In terms of the Sniffes investment, Sniff is very, very different than Archer. Sniffes is a. Basically the experience of Sniffes is for. In a map based experience, for more of an instant connection so people that are looking to meet people right away this evening or who are nearby. Whereas Archer was much more of a serious, high intent kind of find, you know, helping a man find a husband type experience. And Sniffy's had it has incredible product market fit with 3 million monthly active users. Again, only on web, not even on app and just really resonates with this community in a way that Archer did not. And because Sniffies has such huge audience, the network effects are self reinforcing. People use Sniffies because people use Sniffies and people weren't using Archer because people weren't using Archer. So it's a very different product and has a wildly different level of product market fit. And so that's why we've decided to place this bet on the non heterosexual male market on the Sniffies team and sniffies experience. And we basically moved our Archer team who was mostly New York based either into Hinge or Tinder or E and E. So that was a very talented team that had built a beautiful product that hadn't yet found product market fit. And with the Sniffy's investment that team is now has found other roles at Match Group, I think. Next question. One more or two more questions. Okay, operator, go ahead please. The next question comes from James Heaney with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
James Heaney (Equity Analyst at Jefferies)
Yeah, great. Thanks for the question. I just had one. You talked in the letter about your objective to get Tinder back to growth in 2027. When you say a growth business, do you mean revenue payers, Maus, just some other engagement metrics? Just trying to understand kind of how you're thinking about growth in 27. Yeah, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, Steve, but I think what we've kind of the sort of line in the sand that we've committed to is by end of 2027, year over year, MAO growth and by for full year 2027 revenue growth or by end of 27 by the end, by the end of 27 revenue growth. So you know, I guess that's Q4, 27 revenue year over year over Q3. So those are the stated goals and you know, you know where we're at on our path to achieve them. Next question please.
OPERATOR
The last question comes from Brad Erickson with rbc. You may go ahead.
Brad Erickson (Equity Analyst at RBC)
Hey guys, I guess just a lot's been asked here when you think about. You talked about kind of collaborating across brands. Spencer earlier in the call with I guess Hinge has had so much success. I feel like with lots of new product innovation last few years. I wonder if there's anything you could add or bring over to Tinder that could be impactful there anything you've done to date where you're seeing similar results or kind of how you think about the collaborative opportunity there. Thanks. Yeah, it's a great one to end on. This is a huge focus of mine and I've definitely changed the culture internally away from being siloed to being much more deeply collaborative and communicative and in some cases integrated organizationally. Probably the most notable example of this is something that internally we call Project Mercury, which cross sells one app to another. So a BLK user, for example, might get a pop up that says you've been invited to join Tinder and they can create their Tinder profile with one tap. Or an OkCupid user might get a notification that they've been invited to join Hinge and they can create a Hinge profile with one tap. That's driven a lot of incremental revenue and just a lot of goodness across the different apps. But there are many other initiatives brewing that exact greater synergy between the brands. You know, Pears, for example in Japan has been a leader in the in real life events space. So has Meatic in France. And Tinder is learning a ton from Pears and Meatic and what they've built out in the event space. So that's just another example. But there are many dozen dozens of examples around the company and we're just getting started in terms of extracting the full benefit of the combined scale and synergies as we move away from being siloed more towards deeply integrated. I think we'll wrap up with that. Thanks everyone for joining. I'm incredibly proud of the team and the last couple months of accomplishment. We are not out of the woods yet, but things are much improved and improving more every day. We will talk to you again at the June 11 event Decoding Gen Z Dating. And thanks everyone for your time today. Bye bye.
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