Match Group (MTCH) Q1 2026 Earnings Transcript

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Date

Tuesday, May 5, 2026 at 5 p.m. ET

Call participants

• Chief Executive Officer — Spencer Rascoff
• Chief Financial Officer — Steven Bailey

Takeaways

• Total revenue -- $864 million, up 4%, but flat on a foreign-exchange neutral (FXN) basis, with FX delivering a $3 million positive swing over expectations.
• Consolidated payers -- Declined 5% to 13.5 million, while revenue per payer (RPP) increased 10% to $20.90, reflecting ongoing mix and pricing optimization.
• Adjusted EBITDA -- $343 million, up 25%, and adjusted EBITDA margin of 40%, including an $11 million benefit from Canada’s rescission of the digital services tax.
• Tinder direct revenue -- $455 million, up 2% (down 3% FXN), with a 5% decrease in payers to 8.6 million and RPP rising 7% to $17.56; includes a $5 million negative impact from user experience testing.
• Hinge direct revenue -- $194 million, up 28% (up 24% FXN), with payer growth of 15% to 2 million and RPP increasing 11% to $33.13; adjusted EBITDA at $71 million, up 66%, and a 36% margin.
• E&E direct revenue -- $139 million, down 7% (down 10% FXN), reflecting a 16% year-over-year payer decrease to 2 million and 11% RPP growth to $22.97; adjusted EBITDA $39 million, up 37%, with a 28% margin.
• Match Group Asia revenue -- $60 million, down 6% (down 7% FXN), with Azar and Pairs both down 6%; payers declined 9% to approximately 900,000, and RPP rose 2% to $21.74; adjusted EBITDA increased 11% to $21 million, a 35% margin.
• Cash & liquidity -- $1 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments; plan to use $424 million for 2026 convertible notes redemption by June.
• Free cash flow -- $174 million year-to-date, with operating cash flow at $194 million for the same period.
• Shareholder returns -- Repurchased 2 million shares at an average price of $31 for $60 million and paid $44 million in dividends; subsequent to quarter-end, bought an additional 700,000 shares at $32 for $22 million, reducing diluted shares outstanding by 5% year over year as of April 30, 2026.
• Sniffies investment -- $100 million invested for a significant minority stake, with an option to acquire full ownership in the future; deployment funded from cash on hand.
• Product metrics: Tinder -- MAU (monthly active users) decline slowed to 7% in March and 6.6% in April; DAU improvement from a 9% drop in March 2025 to 4% down in April 2026.
• Retention: Tinder -- 30-day user retention rose 1%, with U.S. Gen Z women up 3%; registrations returned to 1% growth in March after periods of double-digit declines.
• Innovations: Tinder -- Astrology Mode and Music Mode achieved 19% and 8% adoption among Gen Z users, respectively; Double Date used by about 20% of global users aged 18-22 and 25% of U.S. women in that demographic.
• Hinge features -- New “Date Ideas” adopted by nearly 9% of testers, “Friends Take” to begin broader rollout by Q3, and “Signals” piloted to highlight user intent and effort.
• AI initiatives -- Company-wide rollout of AI tools, reduced headcount growth, and establishment of a cross-company AI leadership team to unify deployment and realize future cost and productivity gains.
• Operational restructuring -- MG Asia folded into E&E unit, estimated to generate $15 million in annualized cost savings including share-based compensation, and about $10 million annualized savings from winding down the Archer app.
• Segment reporting change -- From Q2, results will be reported for three segments: Tinder, Hinge, and E&E (with MG Asia combined into E&E).
• Q2 guidance -- Total revenue expected at $850 million to $860 million (down 2% to flat year over year, down 1%-3% FXN); guidance includes $10 million negative impact from Tinder user tests and $20 million from lower Azar revenue.
• Q2 adjusted EBITDA guidance -- $325 million to $330 million, up 13% year over year, with 38% margin at midpoint.
• Cost structure -- Total expenses down 5%; cost of revenue fell 11% (24% of total revenue); selling and marketing up 4% but flat at 19% of total revenue; G&A expense fell 20% (now 10% of total revenue); product development down 3% (14% of total revenue).
• Hinge international expansion -- Launched in 10 new markets, including Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Iceland, Luxembourg, and the Czech Republic in early May.

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Risks

• Steven Bailey said, “On Q2, the way to think about it is, yes, Azar is a $20 million headwind because of the changes we needed to make there to get back in the App Store. That is being nearly fully offset by Tinder strength—that is really where it is coming from. Tinder performed quite well in Q1, and we expect that to continue in Q2, so that is where the offset is coming from. For the full year, we made no changes to the full-year guide, but let me give you some puts and takes. We expect that Azar revenue pressure to continue for at least another few quarters, so I would think about it for the rest of the year.”
• Azar’s new app experience is “monetizing at lower levels than the previous version,” and further product changes are being tested amid expected continued revenue pressure.
• Indicated in guidance, $10 million negative revenue impact from Tinder user experience tests and $20 million negative impact from lower Azar revenue are embedded in Q2 forecasts.
• Depreciation and amortization rose by $16 million to $48 million due to $25 million in Azar intangible asset impairments from required App Store compliance changes.

Summary

Match Group (NASDAQ:MTCH) reported 4% total revenue growth and a 25% increase in adjusted EBITDA, driven mainly by Tinder’s performance and strong acceleration at Hinge. Product innovation, including new modes in Tinder and several features in Hinge, yielded measurable increases in leading engagement indicators and improved user retention across key cohorts. Operational restructuring, including the integration of MG Asia into E&E and resource redeployment from Azar and Archer, is positioned to generate annualized cost savings starting in 2027, with incremental impacts in 2026. Continued revenue pressure at Azar, resulting from App Store reinstatement changes, offsets strength elsewhere, prompting management to embed a $20 million headwind for Q2 and to reiterate a cautious revenue outlook for the remainder of 2026. Shareholder returns remained a priority, with $82 million spent on repurchases between the quarter-end and April and a further $100 million investment for minority ownership in Sniffies, targeting the non-heterosexual male dating segment.

• Spencer Rascoff described the path for Tinder as targeting year-over-year MAU growth by 2027, with full-year revenue growth also being an explicit management objective.
• Steven Bailey stated, “If we do not end up using it, that could offer some further offsets to Azar in Q3 and Q4,” indicating variable investment plans contingent on Tinder’s audience trends.
• Integration initiatives under Project Mercury are increasing incremental revenue by enabling frictionless cross-brand user onboarding among various Match Group platforms.
• Company-wide AI enablement is expected to remain cost-neutral in 2026—but with potential longer-term productivity and cost optimization benefits according to leadership.
• Hinge demonstrated international expansion momentum, with launches in Latin America and Europe resulting in immediate category leadership in several markets and supporting the path to $1 billion in revenue by 2027.

Industry glossary

• Sparks: A Match Group-specific metric defined as the number of users engaging in six-way conversations, serving as a leading measure of meaningful connections and product efficacy on Tinder.
• Spark coverage: The percentage of users who experience at least one “Spark” within a given measurement period, indicating breadth of user engagement on Tinder.
• RPP (Revenue Per Payer): Average direct revenue recognized per paying user in a specific period; a Match Group core financial and operational metric.
• FXN (Foreign-Exchange Neutral): Reporting metric excluding the effects of currency fluctuation to present business performance on a constant-currency basis.
• FaceCheck: AI-enabled safety feature from Match Group brands that authenticates user identity and reduces engagement with bad actors, now deployed across Tinder, Hinge, and other applications.
• Date Ideas: A Hinge product feature allowing users to propose and select date activities and times within the app, designed to increase match-to-meeting conversion.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Spencer Rascoff: Good afternoon, and thanks for joining us. Match Group, Inc. 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 are 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 OneMG 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 reestablishing 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 have 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 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 are improving. As we have said before, our belief is improving Sparks leads to better retention and stronger word of mouth, driving MAU over time. We are 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 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. U.S. 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 are seeing this progress across different geographies and demographics, including in markets where we have 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 have 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 are 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 are 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 U.K. and Singapore.

FaceCheck is improving authenticity and user trust, with particularly strong trends in the U.S., where net promoter scores have been trending higher. Importantly, the revenue impact from our ongoing user experience tests remains within the range that we planned. Simply put, Tinder works better now. We are 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 are 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 are represented and improving confidence during profile creation. We plan to expand this globally by Q2. In parallel, Hinge continues to strengthen trust within the experience with FaceCheck, which is now fully rolled out in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, Brazil, and Mexico, with additional markets planned for Q2.

In these markets, the 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 have 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 Q2 with broader rollout expected in Q3. We see potential for it to be a top-of-funnel driver similar 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 has led to strong financial results.

We are excited to see the impact of Hinge’s product roadmap on the business this year, as it continues on its path to be a $1 billion business by 2027. Now turning to our OneMG approach in action. We are continuing the work that we began last year to simplify the organization and operate more effectively as one Match Group, Inc. As part of this effort, we folded our MG Asia business unit into our E&E business unit. This brings our two Asia-based businesses, Azar and Pairs, 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 application of shared capabilities and resources. On Azar, as we previously disclosed, Apple temporarily removed the app from the App Store on 02/22/2026. The team moved quickly to make adjustments, which led to the reinstatement of a new version on 04/06/2026. 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 are 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&E, we have transitioned our Seoul-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 OneMG 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 are 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 will 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 have also made progress in unifying performance marketing by further centralizing teams and resources into a OneMG 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 increases. We are also bringing certain areas of E&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 have dug into E&E the last few weeks, we have identified many areas Tinder and E&E results can be improved through tighter coordination, collaboration, and integration. Finally, it would not 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 have 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 are also reassessing our hiring plans with AI enablement in mind and plan to reduce headcount growth over the remainder of the year.

And we are 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 are simplifying the portfolio, focusing resources on our highest-conviction opportunities, and adapting quickly where we believe the category is going, not where it has been. That is OneMG in practice. Now for some final thoughts. Stepping back, we have 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. Sniffies 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 gay male 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 are setting the business up for durable growth. That is what gives us confidence in the path to resurgence. Over to Steve now. Thanks, Spencer.

Steven Bailey: 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 services tax. I will 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 tables below and in the financial supplement on our IR website. In Q1, Match Group, Inc.’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, Inc.’s adjusted EBITDA was $343 million, up 25%, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 40%. Canada’s rescission of its digital services tax positively impacted adjusted EBITDA by $11 million in the quarter. Tinder direct revenue in Q1 was $455 million, up 2% and down 3% FXN.

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% FXN. 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%.

E&E direct revenue in Q1 was $139 million, down 7% and down 10% FXN. 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% FXN. Azar direct revenue was down 6% and down 9% FXN, and was negatively impacted by an estimated $3 million from its temporary removal from the App Store. Pairs direct revenue was down 6% and down 4% FXN. 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&E business units into a single operating segment called E&E and report Match Group, Inc. results across three operating segments: Tinder, Hinge, and E&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 four 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&E and Match Group Asia. General and administrative costs decreased 20%, down three points as a percentage of total revenue to 10%, driven by the Canadian digital services tax reversal of $11 million and lower employee compensation, including stock-based compensation. Product development costs decreased 3%, down one point as a percentage of total revenue, at 14%.

Depreciation and 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 3.1x, and net leverage was 2.3x at 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 the 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 04/01/2026 and 04/30/2026, 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 04/30/2026, 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 Sniffies, which we announced on 04/27/2026.

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, Inc. of $850 million to $860 million, down 2% to flat year over year. This range assumes a one-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 Azar direct revenue.

We expect Match Group, Inc. 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. We will now open the call for questions.

Operator: We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question today comes from Shweta R. Khajuria with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Shweta R. Khajuria: Thank you for taking my questions. One on the Tinder sort of turnaround and the leading indicators you are seeing—the metrics you called out are very promising. Could you please talk to whether you saw continuation of these trends into April and I guess now early May? That is the first question. And then the second question I have is around your AI cost savings. 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.

Steven Bailey: Yes. Thank you for the questions.

Spencer Rascoff: So, firstly, yes, Tinder’s momentum has continued into April. Just to take a step back, and then I will share some April data. The product-led turnaround at Tinder is clearly well underway, and I am feeling really good about it. As I said in the prepared remarks, MAU 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. DAU—which I do not think we talked about in the prepared remarks—but daily active users was down 9% back in March 2025, then down 6% in March 2026, and was only down 4% in April 2026.

So every month, every week, almost every day, we continue to chip away at the audience declines at Tinder. The big needle movers on improving user outcomes have been, first of all, recommendations. We are just doing a much better job today of showing women the men that we think they will want to see. Obviously, that is the most important thing for a dating app—figuring out whom to show to whom—and we are much better at it than we ever were before.

We have made lots and lots of changes, but for example, one set of changes improved women’s Sparks by 6%, and that improved women’s DAU by 2%, which in turn improved men’s Sparks by 5% and then men’s DAU by 1%. That is just one example of one set of recommendations changes, and that plus other recommendations changes we thought might hurt revenue actually, on balance, resulted in a $15 million annualized revenue gain because improved women’s retention then improved men’s revenue. So it is not always a trade-off between recommendations improvements and revenue—sometimes they actually work together. The second big needle mover on Tinder product improvements was Double Date.

Around one in five global users aged 18 to 22 are using Double Date. Around one in four U.S. women aged 18 to 22 are using Double Date. It is an important way that people are now using Tinder. Music Mode and Astrology Mode also drove great adoption in the quarter—about 8% for global Gen Z for music and 19% for global Gen Z for astrology.

Then there is a variety of things that we do not talk about very much because they are kind of mundane improvements, but this is really important blocking and tackling—things like improved CRM for better emails and notifications, better app performance so the app does not crash the way it used to, better website performance, and just a generally better operating cadence of the company. All those things really do work together. The last one I will add is the IRL pilot in Los Angeles has been successful, and we are working to expand that—just another example of how we are creating these low-pressure ways to connect.

The last piece is the marketing support of these products, which I can come back to, but let me give it to Steve now to talk about the AI and cost savings.

Steven Bailey: Sure. Here is the way I would think about it, Shweta. We are making a big push around AI enablement. We are giving every employee in the company access to cutting-edge tools, we are giving them the training they need to succeed, and we are setting expectations. We really want to become an AI-native company. We think it is a huge opportunity. These tools cost money, and the way we are helping to pay for that is by slowing our hiring plan for the rest of the year. I think of that as a bit of a cost neutral—lower headcount cost, higher software expense.

Down the road, over the long term, it could result in cost savings, but it is a bit of a neutral for us in 2026. Hopefully, it leads to not just cost savings over time, but increased productivity and ultimately revenue growth through higher throughput and output from employees. On the structural changes, we talked about Match Group Asia and Archer. What we quoted in the prepared remarks are annualized savings including SBC. I would think of that more as a 2027 savings—it is less so in 2026 due to timing and some of the one-time costs that come along with it. But it certainly does give us optionality in 2027 around margins.

Spencer Rascoff: Next question, please.

Operator: The next question comes from Cory Alan Carpenter with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Cory Alan Carpenter: Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. I have two—Steve, these might both be for you. Just on the Q2 guide, it implies flat revenue that you are expecting, and that is despite a $20 million headwind from Azar. My question is where are you seeing offsets and which brands make up for that? And any comments you can give on your expectations for Tinder in Q2 specifically? And then, looking beyond Q2, any update you can provide on how you are thinking about the full-year outlook? Thank you.

Steven Bailey: Sure. I can take that. Thanks, Cory. On Q2, the way to think about it is, yes, Azar is a $20 million headwind because of the changes we needed to make there to get back in the App Store. That is being nearly fully offset by Tinder strength—that is really where it is coming from. Tinder performed quite well in Q1, and we expect that to continue in Q2, so that is where the offset is coming from. For the full year, we made no changes to the full-year guide, but let me give you some puts and takes.

We expect that Azar revenue pressure to continue for at least another few quarters, so I would think about it for the rest of the year. The team is hard at work with a roadmap to address the added friction to improve monetization, but I think it will take some time. At Tinder, we will have to see how things play out. One of the things I am looking at pretty closely is we have a $45 million user investment budget still slated for the second half of the year, spread out pretty evenly between Q3 and Q4.

I would 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. What we have seen in the last couple of quarters is that we have not had to, but for now we are assuming we will, and that is all baked into the guide. If we do not end up using it, that could offer some further offsets to Azar in Q3 and Q4. That is the revenue story. On 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 is 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 U.S. We have reduced costs across other parts of the portfolio too. Our payments initiative in particular is doing better than expected, so that is helping. And then the changes we just talked about at Match Group Asia, as well as the shutting down of Archer, are helping too. Again, they are more 2027 savings impacts, but they also benefit 2026 as well.

So that is the way I am thinking about it—Tinder helping to offset Azar in Q2; we will have to see how the user giveback budget goes for the rest of the year; and then feeling really good about EBITDA and free cash flow because of some of the cost savings efforts we have made.

Spencer Rascoff: Operator, next question please.

Operator: Sure. The next question comes from Nathaniel Jay Feather with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Nathaniel Jay Feather: Thanks for the question, and really encouraging to see the progress you have been making here on Tinder. Just help me chart the path over the remainder of the year—understanding there will be some puts and takes here—but what is the hope for that glide path for MAUs as we continue in Q2 into the back half? And then given a lot of these improvements that you talked about that are driving this MAU improvement were just launched in Q1, but kind of in the cumulative impact over 2025 up until Q1, how should we think about the product release cadence and how that interplays with MAU?

And have you uncovered any maybe delayed impact as the tools get released and then users start to use them that can eventually drive MAU?

Spencer Rascoff: Thanks, Nathan. A couple of things. First, with respect to the product release cadence going forward, we are not taking our foot off the gas. The March 12 event was a great catalyst. It generated a ton of urgency, and a lot of the innovations that we announced or shipped came from that urgency, but the team has not slowed down since then.

Upcoming initiatives include things like Video Speed Date, which we announced at the Tinder Sparks event on March 12 and we will be shipping in the next month or so; real-life events expanding to other cities; rolling out Tinder Connect with partners like Duolingo and Bally; and a number of other features that we are not ready to share publicly. The work is definitely not done, and I am excited about the roadmap for the balance of the year. In terms of how it will play out on Sparks and MAU, that is hard to predict.

We have been setting ourselves up to get to flat MAU by the end of 2027, and clearly I am very proud and pleased that we are already in the negative 6% to 7% year-over-year range. You could argue that maybe it could accelerate the pace with which we improve now because product efficacy improves as you start to bring more people into the ecosystem—there are just more good people 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 to nine months ago and started knocking things down.

It is very hard for me to predict what the exact path will be from negative 7% MAU to flat and then MAU growth.

Operator: The next question comes from Ross Sandler with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Ross Sandler: Hey, guys. Hey, Spencer. The 1% growth in 30-day retention—that is pretty bullish. I know it is an early signal, but how long has it been since you had growing 30-day user retention, and it sounds like some of the safety and product changes you mentioned on a previous question are driving this trend, but any other details—any color you can provide on what is turning that key metric up—would be helpful. Thank you.

Spencer Rascoff: Thanks, Ross. It had been years since we had retention improvements up year over year—at least several. Equally encouraging is that retention among U.S. Gen Z women is actually up 3% year over year, even better than the overall number that I put in the script and, I think, in the press release. What is driving this is better recommendations, Double Date, Music Mode, Astrology Mode, blocking and tackling, and 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 is now working more effectively because when we market these types of features, our marketing budgets go further.

Prior campaigns were focused on more amorphous brand reconsideration—“Hey, Tinder’s great, check out Tinder.” Now we are able to market very specific features that have great resonance with our key user segments, and the marketing is much more effective. Taken altogether, this is what is improving retention. As I like to remind people, this is a network effects business. We are already seeing in certain countries in Asia and Latin America, where MAU is flat or in some countries actually up year over year, better user efficacy—better Sparks, better Spark coverage, better retention—because more people just improves user results for everybody in the ecosystem.

It is really encouraging and starting to show up in some of the retention data that we are sharing.

Operator: The next question comes from Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Eric Sheridan: Thanks so much for taking the questions. I wanted to ask about capital allocation priorities because you have now made an outside investment in Sniffies. 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 are trying to accomplish? Just want to understand if there has been any evolution in the thought there. Thanks so much.

Steven Bailey: I will take that first, and Spencer, feel free to jump in. Our approach has not changed. Our priority has always been, first, organic growth in the portfolio. We are prioritizing investments in Tinder and Hinge to drive growth in those businesses, and we feel like we have the capital needed to do that. Number two is returning capital to shareholders through buybacks and the dividend. We will continue to be acquisitive when we find opportunities to do M&A; we will do that—we have shown a good track record of it. These are pretty small investments relative to our scale. The Sniffies investment is a $100 million investment in what we think could be a big opportunity.

Overtone is a much smaller investment than that. This is something we can easily handle while still remaining committed to returning the vast majority of capital to shareholders through buybacks and dividends. I do not think that is new, and over $1 billion a year in free cash flow allows the flexibility to do all those things.

Spencer Rascoff: Just in case I do not have the opportunity to address Sniffies later in the call, I want to address it now. Steve is right—in the grand scheme of things, it is a relatively easy investment for us to fund because we are so profitable and have such a solid cash flow generation machine. It is also 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. 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 is not even in the App Store right now—Sniffies, despite all their success to date, has only been on the mobile web. We expect to be able to help them create a safer experience that gets into the App Store, which will be a huge unlock. I am really excited about this investment. Since I started, we have done two deals: acquiring HER and investing $100 million in Sniffies with the right to buy the rest of it. We are very focused on these two segments—the sapphic segment and the non-heterosexual male segment.

We think these are huge TAMs, and I am 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.

Operator: The next question comes from Benjamin Black with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Benjamin Black: Thank you for taking my questions. Spencer, you clearly have a lot of product initiatives underway right now at Tinder. If you step back and look ahead to the next 12 to 18 months, I would be curious to hear which one is the most needle-moving in your perspective, or is this maybe a situation where smaller product initiatives build on top of each other and create compounding benefits? And then quickly, Steve, I would be curious to hear what you are embedding in your guidance for the year-on-year trends for Tinder payers and maybe for RPP as well? Thank you.

Spencer Rascoff: That is a hard one to choose among all these different product initiatives. As I said, the one that has driven the most improvement to date has been improvements in our recommendations algorithms. Looking ahead—and I will keep it a little vague for competitive reasons—it is kind of an expansion of Double Date and IRL, tapping into these lightweight, lower-pressure ways to connect, which is what Gen Z wants. I will give a little plug here: on June 11, we are going to have an investor- and media-focused webinar.

We are creating a new investor relations product called the CEO Connection, where outside of earnings we will do a double-click on something that we think is of interest to all of you. The first one on June 11 is on this topic: decoding Gen Z dating. We will have a number of our social scientists who study Gen Z and Gen Alpha share insights and learnings of how these generations want to connect and how our roadmap reflects it. Look for more information from our IR team for that event on June 11. It will be an hour webinar, and I think it will be really insightful and interesting.

Steven Bailey: I will take the question on Tinder payers and RPP. First of all, Tinder payers in Q1 were down 5%, which you probably saw, and that is a huge improvement from down 8% in Q4 and about 7% the couple quarters before—so a lot of progress there that we are really excited to see. 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 investment.

For now, we are assuming we make those investments because we want to give the product teams the optionality to do it, but that is what is leading to similar payer trends over the rest of the year. We gave you Tinder full-year revenue guidance last quarter, which has not changed, so you can back into the payers assumption. What I would 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 we will only do if we think it is the right long-term thing to do for the business.

Operator: The next question comes from John Blackledge with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

John Blackledge: Great. Thanks. Two questions. I thought another good signal was the new user registrations returning to growth. Could you add a little bit more color there and how things are trending with that metric thus far in the second quarter? Second question is around FaceCheck rollout. How is it going, and should we still expect it to be about a one-point headwind to revenue growth this year? Thank you.

Steven Bailey: Let me start with FaceCheck. FaceCheck is rolled out in most markets now for Tinder. It is also now rolled out in all major markets at Hinge. It is showing great results at Hinge too—just like it has at Tinder—in terms of reducing bad actors on the app. In terms of revenue impact, it is pretty negligible at this point—about 1%—and that has not changed for the total company. That is included in the guidance, and that is about where it is trending now.

Spencer Rascoff: John, I do not have new registrations from April at my fingertips, but it is a really encouraging statistic. I think the registration improvement speaks to overall improving social sentiment and our ability to drive reconsideration. A lot of that speaks to the product, but a lot of it speaks to marketing, frankly, because a new registration is basically somebody that has not used Tinder before or maybe had a Tinder account many years ago but deleted the app. It speaks to general social sentiment, improving word of mouth—some of that is due to product, but a lot of it is due to marketing that is really resonating. We are encouraged by it.

Operator: The next question comes from Jason Stuart Helfstein with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Jason Stuart Helfstein: Thanks. One on Hinge, and then a quick one on Tinder. For Hinge, RPP is accelerating. Is that reflecting mix within plans and user choice? Are there some headline price increases? And then, obviously Hinge payers did decelerate. Is there any connection between price and volume there? And then just a second quick one. Spencer, how do you know that the new product innovations have staying power—like Astrology Mode, Music Mode, Double Date? They are 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.

Steven Bailey: Yes. What we have done at Hinge is optimized pricing geographically over the last few quarters. Some of that means a price up, some of that means a price down. That is what is moving the payers and RPP numbers around a little bit. It is not really package mix shifts per se. With that said, payer growth is still very strong—15% in Q1—and I expect that to be the case for the rest of the year. I still feel that the bulk of the revenue growth in 2026 will come from payer growth, not RPP growth.

Spencer Rascoff: On Hinge overall, Hinge continues to crank. 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—Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru in LatAm, and several European markets like Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Iceland, Luxembourg, and the Czech Republic. We continue to march across the world with Hinge, which has terrific product-market fit.

There is huge potential for MAU growth in these new markets and monetization potential on the path to $1 billion of revenue in 2027. Hinge’s MAU in English-speaking markets has flattened as we would expect because those are more mature markets, but revenue growth even in those core English-speaking markets was up 17% year over year in the quarter. It is consistently the number one downloaded app in English-speaking markets or number one or number two. The rate of product innovation at Hinge continues to impress.

This quarter we have 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 Signals, which lets people show if they are high intent. Those are features that directly speak to Gen Z and Millennial needs in the category. Again, we will be talking more about that at the June 11 event.

On your question about staying power of new features: a lot of the improvements in our data have come from recommendations algorithm improvements, which are not “shiny new features.” Regarding the shinier features and whether their appeal might fade over time, Double Date is a good indicator—its usage continues to grow every month and quarter as more people become aware of the feature. The same thing is happening with Music and Astrology. Right out of the gate with Music Mode, when few people had it, there were not many profiles to see in Music Mode.

Now that you see more users with their music connected to their Tinder profile, it becomes more immersive; you are more motivated to connect your Spotify to Tinder to bring in your music, and awareness grows as the network effect fills out. In that sense, it is quite different from feature launches in mobile games.

Operator: The next question comes from Youssef Squali with Truist. Please go ahead.

Youssef Squali: Spencer, a couple of questions for you. Can you talk a little about the health of the overall online dating market, both from a competitive standpoint with some of the new modalities that we are seeing offline—like run clubs and book clubs and all kinds of other clubs? How is that impacting the online dating environment, if at all? And then on Sniffies, what makes that model so successful and so superior to Archer’s that you decided to invest $100 million and fold Archer into it?

Spencer Rascoff: On the overall market, 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 does not feel like a job interview. Traditional dating apps are very highly structured and can be intimidating to a user under 30. 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 have adapted our roadmap to this reality. Double Date was our first foray into this; the in-real-life events product in Los Angeles was our next big foray.

At Tinder and Match Group, Inc. more broadly, we are embracing this trend of meeting people IRL 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 Sniffies investment, Sniffies is very different from Archer. Sniffies is basically a map-based experience for more instant connection—people looking to meet right away, this evening, or nearby—whereas Archer was much more of a serious, high-intent “helping a man find a husband” type experience.

Sniffies has incredible product-market fit with 3 million monthly active users—again, only on web, not even on app—and it really resonates with this community in a way that Archer did not. Because Sniffies has such a huge audience, the network effects are self-reinforcing—people use Sniffies because people use Sniffies. People were not using Archer because people were not using Archer. It is a very different product and has a wildly different level of product-market fit. That is why we decided to place this bet on the non-heterosexual male market on the Sniffies team and experience. We have moved our Archer team—mostly New York-based—either into Hinge, Tinder, or E&E.

It was a very talented team that built a beautiful product that had not yet found product-market fit, and with the Sniffies investment, that team has found other roles at Match Group, Inc.

Operator: The next question comes from Analyst with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Analyst: Yes, 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, or just some other engagement metrics? Just trying to understand how you are thinking about growth in 2027.

Spencer Rascoff: I think the line in the sand that we have committed to is: by 2027, year-over-year MAU growth, and for full-year 2027, revenue growth. So those are the stated goals, and you know where we are at on our path to achieve them.

Operator: The last question comes from Bradley D. Erickson with RBC. You may go ahead.

Bradley D. Erickson: Thanks, guys. When you think about collaborating across brands—Spencer, earlier in the call you talked about this—Hinge has had so much success with lots of new product innovation in the last few years. Is there anything you could add or bring over to Tinder that could be impactful there—anything you have done to date where you are seeing similar results—or how do you think about the collaborative opportunity there? Thanks.

Spencer Rascoff: Great one to end on. This is a huge focus of mine, and I have 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 is something we call Project Mercury, which cross-sells one app to another. A BLK user, for example, might get a pop-up that says, “You have 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 have been invited to join Hinge and can create a Hinge profile with one tap.

That has driven a lot of incremental revenue and goodness across the different apps. There are many other initiatives brewing that extract greater synergy between the brands. Pairs, for example, in Japan has been a leader in the in-real-life events space; so has Meetic in France. Tinder is learning a ton from Pairs and Meetic and what they have built out in the events space. There are many dozens of examples around the company, and we are just getting started in terms of extracting the full benefit of the combined scale and synergies as we move away from being siloed and more towards being deeply integrated. We will wrap with that. Thanks, everyone, for joining.

I am 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.

Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.

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