Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Youssef Squali - Jefferies & Co.
Youssef Squali - Jefferies & Co.
Couple of questions; first, Gary, if I look at the applications growth of 18% that is still somewhat shy of your goal of the 20%+ that you have been talking about off late. Yet if we look at the acquisition cost of roughly $64 that was relatively flat sequentially, obviously albeit a big jump from year ago. So, the question is, did you decide not to pursue or not to push for applications really this quarter for whatever reason to protect the margins or what happened because certainly the assumption out of your last call was that maybe you will going to continue to let your acquisition cost go up a little more in order to drive further growth? And the other question, Stuart, maybe can you comment in the close ratio? This is the second quarter in a row where we are seeing a sequential decline. I think it touched the 59%, Q3 I think it was around 57%. It is 55% right now.
Gary Lauer
Youssef, it is Gary. I will start. Yes, on the application growth, frankly as we get into the fourth quarter, we saw the economy and the environment continue to deteriorate fast and as we look at that and we saw that frankly, we just decided to get judicious, I guess is one word a way to describe it about how we were spending money where we spending it. At the same time, we saw our direct content starting to frankly strengthen which we were pleased about and so, yes. We made a conscious decision that we want to keep the spending in check. We certainly could not spend quite a bit more but last quarter at 40% is I think you remember, we commented or I commented, were at the higher end of where we want to be or outside the range of guidance that we have given for the year as well although when we gave that guidance, no one anticipated an economic environment like it is today or like it was in the fourth quarter.
But we thought that at that spend level, getting that kind of application growth that that was a roughly good balance and frankly, relative to everything else that we are learning now about how other companies have faired in this environment, what we seeing in terms of ecommerce momentum and growth and so on, carriers in this market place and on and on, we feel good about the decisions we made and we feel really good about the growth. It is a relative world and that world out there right now is really tough and the fact that we are able to grow 18% and spent what we did, we are very satisfied with that.
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