Lendingtree (T77) Q3 2026 Earnings Report

The call was strongly positive overall. Management reported a Q3 guidance beat, 14% expected full-year adjusted EBITDA growth at the midpoint, strong insurance momentum, improving SMB performance, healthy consumer lending conditions, $100 million of trailing-12-month free cash flow excluding litigation, and continued debt reduction. These positives outweighed the ongoing mortgage and Home market challenges, incomplete SMB recovery, conservative Q4 assumptions, LLM-related uncertainty, and the $99 million noncash goodwill impairment charge.

The updated full-year guidance assumes adjusted EBITDA growth by 14% at the midpoint; the midpoint of the guide versus 2023 implies a 25% EBITDA CAGR, expenses with a 3% CAGR, and net leverage moving from 5.3 to 1.7. For Q4, Home is seasonally lower and might be a little bit more low than normal seasonality, Consumer is generally going to be flat sequentially Q3 to Q4, insurance assumes a seasonal uptick in budgets but less than in prior years, and there is no single business performing particularly poorly Q3 to Q4. The company is still early in 2027 planning and is not putting out guidance or numbers, although it expects expenses growing around 3% at the midpoint to continue into 2027, continued growth in home equity, continued improvement in SMB, and continued growth in insurance to '28 and beyond; it also expects to continue paying down debt toward its $200 million longer-term goal and buying back stock in Q4.