Earnings to watch: Match Group (MTCH) reports Q3 results tomorrow

What happened

Match Group, the dating app company, will report its third-quarter earnings this Monday after market hours. Last quarter it reported revenues of $853.1 million, down 1.2% year on year, with 13.3 million users, down 5.7% year on year.

Confirmed

Global impact / market context

Match Group's falling users and revenue suggest its core dating business is shrinking, so the coming report will show whether that decline is slowing. Revenue is expected to fall 2.4% year on year, which means investors will focus on user numbers and profit guidance rather than growth.

Analyst inference

Peers in consumer internet have reported mixed results: Coursera grew revenue 94% and Netflix grew 11.8%, both meeting or beating expectations. Match has missed revenue estimates several times in two years, so its own results may stand out as weaker than other consumer internet companies.

Analyst inference

What to watch

1. Match Group's report is due Monday after market hours, and the article says analysts reconfirmed their estimates over the last 30 days, which means they expect the business to stay the course. Confirmed
2. Watch whether Match Group's revenue decline of 2.4% year on year, as the article expects, actually appears in the results, since that would confirm the user decline is still weighing on sales. Proposed
3. Watch user numbers and profit guidance, because last quarter's 13.3 million users fell 5.7% while profit guidance beat expectations, so a further user drop could offset any profit strength. Analyst inference

Evidence

• stockstory.org