管理層發言
Welcome to the Opera Limited Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. Please be advised that today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your speaker today, Matt Wolfson, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Erica, and thank you, everyone, for joining us this morning. I'm joined by our CEO, Song Lin; and our CFO, Frode Jacobsen. Before I hand over the call to Song Lin, I would like to remind you that some of the statements that we make today regarding our business, operations and financial performance may be considered forward-looking. Such statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially as a result of various factors, including those set forth in today's earnings press release and in our most recent annual report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement. During this call, we will present both IFRS and non-IFRS financial measures. A reconciliation of IFRS to non-IFRS measures is included in today's earnings press release. The earnings press release and an accompanying investor presentation are available on our Investor Relations website at investor.opera.com. Our comments will be on year-over-year comparisons unless we state otherwise. With that, let me turn the call over to our CEO, Song Lin, who will cover our second quarter operational highlights and strategy, and then to Frode Jacobsen, who will discuss the details of our financials and expectations for the third quarter and full year. Song?
Thank you, and good morning, everyone. We have been looking forward to sharing today's report with you. Our second quarter results reaffirm that being an independent, well-established and innovative browser provider with a user base of nearly 300 million people and a significant advertising reach is a very attractive position to hold in a rapidly evolving and expanding ecosystem. Instead of placing bets on which AI services or infrastructure plays will be leading in the future, we cultivate our position as a tech enabler and platform that facilitates choice for the end user and access to our vast user base for our partners. In this landscape, the browser is becoming more valuable as AI changes how people search, work and act online and Opera is already translating that shift into greater engagement and monetization. By continuing to give the most demanding users new reasons to switch from the operating system default browser and by expanding the functionality of our advertising platform, we broaden our partner ecosystem and grow monetization opportunities every month, adding to the foundation of our long-term trajectory as well. Both revenue and adjusted EBITDA exceeded the top of our guidance range, with growth fueled by acceleration of revenue growth from 23% year-over-year in Q1 to 25% year-over-year in Q2. The strength was broad-based. Advertising revenue grew 27% to $115 million, while Query revenue grew 21% to $62 million. With that, second quarter revenue exceeded $178 million and surpassed the seasonal Q4 peak a quarter earlier than what we've seen in most prior years. Adjusted EBITDA was also a quarterly record at $42.4 million, representing a margin of 24% and growing 32% year-over-year. And importantly, our confidence in this elevated trajectory allows us to raise full year guidance beyond the Q2 overperformance, which Frode will get back to. Advertising growth was again led by e-commerce in particular. As we look ahead, our roadmap includes additional high-intent formats, including AI-supported price comparisons designed to help shoppers evaluate products while helping merchants reach users closer to a purchase decision. Our in-house commerce platform already helps match our users with the best deals across 100 merchants with over 100 million products. Within travel, another high potential vertical for us, we work with the top online travel agencies and have started initial campaigns beyond Opera's own user base. Our partners continue to expand their work with us because our performance-based campaigns deliver measurable outcomes. As a combined platform for first and third-party inventory, we are able to inform and allocate campaigns with a solid understanding of the relevant audiences. In fact, our total addressable audience when taking into account the millions of users that access our content platform through OEM white-label solutions and the broader SDK ratio of Opera apps has now reached beyond 700 million, up from the 500 million we announced just 6 months ago. This scale and growth reinforces our position among the largest online platforms. Our query revenue representing the monetization of our users' proactive intent continues to grow ahead of underlying search market benchmarks as we benefit from natively integrating key partners as a part of the browser interface. This revenue category directly captures the traffic monetization potential of increased engagement in our browsers with native AI functionalities, benefiting both time spent and the browser's ability to connect the right partners with our users at the right time. This is also true as it relates to the evolution of our search partnerships where the secular tailwind from longer and more complex user journeys continues to build. Search is evolving from short keywords to questions and increasingly to conversations. We combine this with rapid product innovation, driving both user appreciation and increased usage of our browsers, all of which results in more engagement within the address bar and omnibox with more opportunities to connect high-intent users with relevant results. Look at the ARPU-driven Western markets, as mentioned before, we see that the users who engage with AI within our browsers spend significantly more time in the browser and even conduct many more searches versus comparable users who are not yet engaged in AI, all of which directly contributes to ARPU growth. As an overall result, we see that query revenue is growing at 1.4x the pace in Western markets; this is the global average, up 29% year-over-year as opposed to 21% globally. It's a point worth making that Opera is already monetizing AI-driven query activity today, not simply describing a future opportunity. In the second quarter, Google announced a new commercialization of its AI mode, widening the basis for our query revenue stream. We also expanded our AI strategy by announcing Browser Connector for leading AI services, including Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Browser Connector enables users to securely connect these AI services to the Opera browser, elevating those services to become agentic by understanding the live browsing context and interacting with the browser on the user's behalf. This represents a shift from closed single-vendor AI experiences toward an open ecosystem where users can choose AI services that best meet their needs while retaining the browser as a central interface. We are fully committed to such interoperability as the best basis for growth of new AI platforms and services, allowing the users to have a deeply integrated experience without juggling multiple browsers and enabling new platforms to access the users in a native way without having to drive both adoption of the platform and a dedicated and perhaps narrow browser experience on top. This open approach aligns with Opera's position as an independent browser vendor and appeals to our most technologically sophisticated user base, many of whom value flexibility and avoiding dependency on a single AI provider. As AI assistants become increasingly capable, the browser is well positioned to serve as a trusted context and execution layer connecting users with multiple AI services, and we expect adoption of such integrations to eventually be commonplace for all users. Opera also introduced Opera Browser AI and an open source command-line interface that enables developers and AI enthusiasts to integrate the browser directly into AI-driven workflows. By allowing AI coding agents and automation tools to interact with a live browser, Opera Browser AI extends the browser's role beyond traditional browsing and reinforces Opera's strategy of making the browser programmable infrastructure for the next generation of AI applications. Turning to our user base. Opera had 288 million monthly active users in the quarter. Our Western user base grew 4% year-over-year to 61 million with both desktop and mobile platforms contributing. Mobile was particularly strong, growing 8% year-over-year across Western markets, while our low-ARPU Asia home base continues to phase out. This continued mix shift towards higher-value users helped increase annualized ARPU by 25% to $2.46. Opera GX reached 37 million monthly active users, adding almost 2 million users during the quarter. Both desktop and mobile grew with a larger absolute contribution coming from desktop. Partnerships with games like Forsaken reward players with in-game items like free skins and game boost, which resonates with our target audience. Our momentum is especially visible in some of the world's most competitive mobile markets. Over the past year, combined Android and iOS MAUs grew 66% in the United Kingdom and 40% in the United States. Across Europe, Opera One for iOS grew 42%, demonstrating our potential to broaden our smartphone base, which is still about 90% Android. Users continue to choose Opera for differentiated features, including our free no-log VPN, intuitive tab management and built-in browser AI. Our iOS user base growth shows how even a highly restrictive ecosystem has materialized and the opportunity for us to grow both users and overall ARPU. Our browser reach and brand trust also enables us to scale new services. MiniPay, our self-custodial stablecoin wallet, solved the problem of access to international currency for users in emerging markets, removing complexities for the end user and making P2P transfers and Web3 access very easy. Given our ability to rapidly scale, we are also able to work closely with key partners such as Celo and Tether to drive adoption of these services. MiniPay's growth continued in the second quarter with 3 million new wallet activations and 88 million transactions since our last update, bringing the total to 18 million wallets and 518 million transactions. MiniPay now reaches more than 66 countries and includes more than 57 live mini apps and is rapidly expanding its capabilities. In June, we launched a card in collaboration with Visa that bridges the gap between stablecoin holding and daily spending. The card is now available across the EU and is being gradually introduced in supporting markets in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Stablecoin access has different use cases in different economies, but as a global yet locally integrated network, we remove friction from international money transfers while both parties are unbanked, and our users can travel globally like true locals in markets where mobile payment options are expanding. All of this strengthens our conviction that MiniPay can make stablecoins useful for everyday savings, transfers and spending. It is still early, but the product scale, utility and ecosystem participation continue to progress rapidly. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Frode Jacobsen, our CFO, to discuss our financial results, guidance and capital allocation in greater detail. Frode?
Thanks, Song. We remain very pleased with how our strategy and business performance converts to healthy financials, having exceeded our guidance ranges in both quarters of 2026 to date. As Song Lin pointed out, being an independent partner-oriented and tech-first browser in the evolving AI landscape is a great position that we will continue to cultivate. And yet again, we are able to lift our full year guidance, reflecting both the Q2 overperformance and our trajectory as we enter the second half of the year. Opera's growth is all organic and comes with healthy profitability. We invest in our growth through rapid and continuous product development, creative and engaging marketing and by acquiring the third-party inventories as we scale our ads business. Those who have followed us over time know that we balance this carefully to ensure a strong growth trajectory while also driving profits and cash generation that we return to our shareholders through our recurring dividend and share buybacks. Last quarter, I talked about how our 10-year average annual revenue growth stands at 21%. And in fact, if you zoom into the post-COVID period and look at the CAGR across the last 4 full years, the average annual revenue growth has been 23%, and profit metrics have grown even faster. At EPS level, our share buybacks have amplified that trend with average annual adjusted EPS growth of 33%, which excludes valuation gains from our stake in OPay that we eliminate from our adjusted metrics. Zooming back into our Q2 results, revenue grew 25% to $178.1 million. Overall expenses came in according to expectations, resulting in adjusted EBITDA growth of 32% to $42.4 million or a margin of 24%. In terms of cost categories, cost of revenue items combined came in at 38% of revenue, exactly as previously indicated. Marketing spend came in at $36.2 million, representing a sequential decline of 6% relative to Q1 with continued discipline. Cash-based compensation was $23.1 million, which included accelerated annual bonus accruals following the strong underlying performance in the quarter. The sum of all the smaller OpEx items, pre-adjusted EBITDA came in at $8.9 million and was overall flat versus Q1. Below the EBITDA line, we achieved adjusted net income of $30 million or 27% growth year-over-year and adjusted diluted EPS was $0.33, representing 25% growth. Operating cash flow was $22 million in the quarter with free cash flow from operations of $17 million. Year-to-date, we have converted 76% of adjusted EBITDA to operating cash flow and 62% of adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow from operations, both ratios nearly the same as in the first half of 2025. While we continue to expect fluctuations in cash conversion between quarters, the year-to-date ratios will stabilize and likely tick up in the second half of the year as they also did in 2025. In terms of capital allocation, our low CapEx business model allows us to return significant value to our shareholders through our recurring dividend and share buyback program. In fact, since 2020 and including our recent July dividend, we have returned $577 million to our shareholders, of which $320 million through dividends and $256 million spent to buy back a total of 37.2 million shares of Opera with an average cost per share of $6.88 and representing 31% of shares outstanding at the start of 2020. Our July semiannual dividend of $0.40 per share or $35.6 million total represented an annualized yield of 3.9% on the record date. During Q2, we repurchased 636,000 shares for a total spend of $11.1 million pro rata distributed between public buybacks and repurchases from our majority shareholder at the same price per share, which was $17.44. This corresponded to 0.7% of shares outstanding at the start of the quarter and reduced the total number of shares outstanding as of 30th of June to 88.9 million. You'll see $14.2 million of buyback spend in our Q2 cash flow, which includes $4.1 million of Q1 repurchases that settled in Q2 and excludes $1 million of Q2 purchases that will settle in Q3. Now turning to guidance. As we revise our full year ranges, we combine the Q2 beat on both revenue and adjusted EBITDA with additional upside in the second half of the year, in line with how we also raised guidance at this time last year. So while we build in a more normalized Q4 spike than the extraordinary year-end growth spikes we saw in 2024 and ultimately also in 2025, we also reflect our most recent momentum. For the full year, we guide revenue of $734 million to $742 million or 20% growth at the midpoint, adding $2 million to $5 million in addition to the Q2 overperformance. We guide adjusted EBITDA of $172 million to $175 million, representing a 24% margin on the elevated revenue midpoint. For the third quarter, we guide revenue of $181 million to $183 million or 19% to 20% growth. We guide adjusted EBITDA of $41 million to $43 million, representing a 23% margin at the midpoint. In terms of costs, we then implicitly guide to a full year OpEx base pre-adjusted EBITDA of $565 million at the midpoint, of which $140 million in Q3. At the new midpoint, we expect cost of revenue items combined to represent about 39% of revenue for the year and the quarterly percentages ticking up with seasonality in advertising. Marketing cost is expected to remain relatively stable around the Q2 level, resulting in mid-single-digit annual growth and representing about 20% of full year revenue. Cash-based compensation expense is expected to modestly reduce relative to Q2 with annual growth in the low double digits and representing about 12% of full year revenue. The sum of all other OpEx items, pre-adjusted EBITDA is expected to remain stable at about 5% of revenue. In sum, cash-based compensation and marketing will then decline from representing 36% of revenue last year to representing about 32% of revenue this year, supported by economies of scale and the inflow of revenue from Opera Ads that carries cost of revenue but limited incremental OpEx. This enables us to guide to an increase in adjusted EBITDA margin relative to 2025 of 25 to 40 basis points. Taken together, we are very pleased with the second quarter and our momentum and opportunity as we enter the second half of the year. We have continued returning capital to our shareholders while investing in the product and commercial opportunities that can fuel Opera's growth well into the future. With that, I'll turn the call back over to the operator for your questions.
分析師問答
We'll take our first question from Naved Khan with B. Riley Securities.
Great. I have a couple of questions. Maybe just on the audience number you gave: you said you have a reach of more than 700 million, which is up from the 500 million plus that you had six months ago. Did you sign any new partners to drive this kind of reach? Can you talk about that a little bit? And then on a related note, the 100 or so advertisers that you have with roughly 100 million item listings, how does that compare with the last quarter and the year-ago period? And then finally, on OPay, can you give us any sense of timing on when that might happen in terms of going public? Is it this year or next year? Just give us some thoughts there.
Well, yes, so it's Song Lin. I think I'll try to answer the first two questions and Frode can also address a bit about OPay for whatever he can comment about. So yes. For the reach, we have actually expanded quite a lot of new partners in the field on the back of our strength of Opera Ads and also with the fact that with the help of AI and algorithm, we were able to bring a lot of demand and also make it much easier for our partners to work with us because we can also help them monetize. Many of the broader new partnerships are very encouraging because they are often new AI services that see a benefit from combining with our strengths. These partnerships could be in the field of AI-generated videos, AI social and many others. They enhance both sides and allow us to reach advertisers who are keen on those audiences. So we are very pleased and it's almost ahead of what we projected, although it's still early stage. Our goal is to reach a billion users, hopefully ASAP, and then be a top-tier player in the field. Regarding the 100 merchants and 100 million products: that capability is particularly designed to power our AI services. Imagine it as a way to show that with the help of AI for content that previously might only be accessible via search, we can now directly surface it in context. It's directly combining the relevant context with a particular product, the right price and the right information, which is only possible with AI. It's not really comparable to the past because in the past we were not doing this at scale due to limitations. Now with AI, we can provide relevant information in the context of what the user is browsing and potentially commercialize it in the right approach and in connection with many of our partners. It's still early days, but it's a very important initiative. As a summary, both questions are tied to our fast growth driven by AI: we've added many interesting AI partners which creates a positive loop, and we can now provide AI-relevant commercial content and e-commerce content in context, which paves potential monetization. With that, Frode can help address the last question.
Yes. In terms of OPay and a question around an IPO, we continue to expect that OPay will ultimately go public. We are very impressed with what OPay has achieved. And at Opera, we're also proud to have been part of its founding. As a shareholder, we will welcome an IPO. It will lead to an immediate transparency as to the value of our founding stake in the company, but I can't really comment on timing. That will be more up to the OPay team to judge.
And we'll take our next question from the line of Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs.
This is Alex on for Eric. I wanted to dig into the strength you saw in the quarter of mobile MAUs in U.S. and Europe. Can you talk about some of the key catalysts that have driven this growth recently? Is it just broader adoption of Chrome and Safari alternatives post the regulatory environment? Are there any active investments you're making in the regions to drive this growth? And any differences in AI adoption and consumer behavior within AI that you're seeing across the two regions would be helpful.
Yes. I think it's a bit of both. In Europe, the opening up of the market has been a clear catalyst. We have seen since last year a continued trend of users becoming aware, especially on iOS, that alternative browsers exist, and we have maintained a nice growth trajectory. The advance of AI has further helped because AI has made alternatives more visible to everyone who sees benefits from different browser experiences. We see the same trend happening in the U.S., which is very encouraging. There's also a self-reinforcing loop: when users come to our platform for AI functionality, they tend to spend much longer in the browser and perform more searches versus comparable users who do not come for AI. That creates a positive feedback loop: they come for AI, they engage more, and that engagement drives further growth. We will likely continue to double down by providing better products for the end user and we expect that growth to continue.
And we'll take our next question from Ron Josey with Citi.
Song, you mentioned earlier just about greater engagement from users who engage with AI versus those who don't. I want to hear a little bit more from you on just the adoption, what tools those users are using within the browser, the insights of users who have adopted those tools, meaning who are they versus those that have not? And specifically, are they Western users? And just more insights on the plans to drive greater adoption of the AI tools given the impact of the shift, I think, toward an open AI ecosystem, which you talked about in the letter. And then just as a follow-up on agentic commerce and the 100-plus merchants and 100 million products, talk to us a little bit more how Opera's positioning here as agentic commerce evolves into a bigger part of everyone's shopping experience.
Sure. Internally we track usage patterns and see that AI usage is moving forward quickly. Users are visiting popular services like Google Gemini, Anthropic and ChatGPT via the web, and we observe growth across those services both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. We also see increased use of many open source services. Behavior is diversifying: users may use one chat service for work and another for personal tasks, and they increasingly use alternative open source models as tools in different contexts. This is partly due to cost considerations and partly because some agentic frameworks are better supported by open source models. We also see growing use of local models for tasks like voice input, especially on newer devices where local models are well supported; users choose local models for privacy and cost reasons. All of these trends support our strategy: as an independent browser, Opera is a neutral place to access both large frontier models and open source or local models, and we support cloud-based and local-hosted models. That unique position makes us well-suited to be the browser infrastructure for diverse AI workflows.
And we'll take our next question from Jim Callahan from Piper Sandler.
I guess starting with GX users with a strong uptick. I think you added as many users quarter-over-quarter as you did in all 2025. Any further commentary on kind of what drove the strength this quarter and maybe the sustainability of that going forward?
Yes, no, I think we are very excited to see the fast growth of GX in Q2. Fundamentally it's a combination of factors. GX users are very AI conscious and the continued integration of the latest AI services resonates with end users. We are also working with more games and game developers to provide a better integrated gaming ecosystem. For example, GX users can participate in games like Roblox with game boosts and daily rewards. GX is becoming more embedded into the gaming ecosystem, which helps user growth and future monetization opportunities. So it's both AI integration and stronger gaming partnerships. On sustainability: the model is durable, though seasonality matters. Summer months are typically a low season for GX as people are not at home or not in front of computers, so we expect some seasonal softness in July and August.
Great. That makes sense. And then with a couple of quick ones on the search business. Any comment on pricing versus impressions in terms of what's making up the revenue growth? And then I might have missed this, but any math we can do to back into like the other query part of the business would be helpful.
I can comment on the search side. Overall, we see search revenue being driven predominantly by the value per search. As I mentioned, we also see increased searches per user driven by engagement, particularly on smartphones. The general trend has been better matching with early search results, fewer queries needed per search, but more than offset by better monetization on a per-search basis. The non-search part of query revenue has continued to grow well over 200% year-over-year; it's still in the single millions of dollars, but it's an increasingly important part of our revenue potential.
We'll take our next question from Lance Vitanza with TD Cowen.
I have two questions, please. The first is on the durability of growth and this valuation disconnect. At 6.5x next year's EBITDA, the stock still appears to imply skepticism around the durability of your growth trajectory. This despite the fact that Frode, you pointed out, the 21% growth CAGR over the past 10 years. But what gives management confidence that the current level of growth can persist beyond the next few quarters? And what metrics should investors focus on to assess whether the growth is becoming more structural rather than cyclical?
That's a difficult question to answer. As Song talked about, and I touched on too, the environment that we operate within has not been this exciting for a company like Opera for many years. There is rapid evolution around us and the browser is playing a bigger role in people's daily life. We see our ability to turn engagement into monetization has been strong over many years and continues to be. We also take comfort that while we are pleased with our growth, there are several large verticals we think we under-index in, such as travel, and e-commerce can scale quickly. Even as a relatively small player globally, we have the ability to address multiple opportunities as our capacity allows. Investors should focus on engagement metrics, ARPU trends, query revenue growth and indicators of scale in our ad platform to assess durability.
Great. And then on MiniPay, it's now reached 18 million wallets. It's in 60 countries. You've got several dozen mini apps, and you recently launched a Visa card. At what point do you think the platform will have achieved sufficient scale so that you can begin prioritizing monetization alongside user growth? Are we still in the early innings of user acquisition? Or are we approaching an inflection point where the economic contribution could become more visible?
I'll comment on that. It's definitely still early stage. Fintech, especially infrastructure plays like MiniPay, require patience to build users, partnerships and interconnections across regions. We take comfort in a few things. First, MiniPay is profitable from day one and reasonably profitable, which validates the business model. Second, experience from other fintech investments suggests that once scale, reach and network effects are established, monetization can ramp quickly because it's about transaction volumes and take rates. MiniPay already has transaction volume and GMV; at the right time we can turn on triggers to monetize more aggressively. So it's still early, but we see a lot of potential.
And we'll take our next question from Jacob Stephan with Lake Street Capital Markets.
Maybe just to start out on kind of the Browser Connector economics. I guess to start, when a user resolves a query inside of Claude, OpenAI, ChatGPT, whatever, through the actual connector versus your own environment, do you monetize that session today? And is the monetization rate any different between LLMs, I guess?
I can try to answer that. There are several benefits for both users and for revenue. First, Browser Connector solves the user's desire to use the AI service of their choice—ChatGPT or others—while allowing that AI to access live browsing context. We are happy to support that as an independent browser. Economically, when users use third-party cloud AI services through the connector, the compute costs are borne by those cloud services and we don't incur those costs beyond providing the browser infrastructure. Importantly, those activities still occur inside the browser environment. A typical scenario is an AI asking the browser to go to a web page, and those interactions occur inside the browser and are subject to whatever commercial arrangements the browser has with partners. Because the activity remains within the browser environment, we see current and future opportunities to monetize, similar to how we monetize regular web page activity. The only difference is that the agent acting on the user's behalf is an AI the user selected. So overall, we are positive about both the user experience benefit and the monetization opportunities.
Got it. And maybe just touching on kind of the advertising growth versus kind of the margin quality of that. Obviously, advertising revenue is up 27%. Cost of inventory has kind of continued to climb here. I guess as Opera Ads expands beyond your own owned inventory, should we expect kind of gross margin to continue to structurally decline? Or how should we think about kind of the incremental EBITDA margins from that revenue growth?
Even within Opera Ads, what we see on third-party inventory is that the trend is an improving gross margin. It's about the mix between different revenue types. In Q2, we had 38% cost of revenue, which is exactly what we expected, and we have guided it to tick up by about another percentage point or so for the year as a whole. We are able to do this while still increasing our adjusted EBITDA margin expectations because of economies of scale across the business and the fact that Opera Ads has limited incremental OpEx as it grows. Historically, Opera Ads went from being insignificant in our P&L to a scaled, more stable contributor. We focus on adjusted EBITDA and cash flow rather than gross margin alone, but when you look at our history, the gross margin trend has become much more stable as Opera Ads has scaled.
At this time, we have no further questions. So I'd like to turn it back over to Song Lin for any additional or closing remarks.
Sure. Again, thank you everybody for joining us. For us, it's quite straightforward. Our focus for the second half is about execution. We need to continue to improve our products, deepen engagement, deliver for our commercial partners and convert the opportunities in front of us into sustainable, profitable growth. We are energized by our progress and by the work ahead, and we look forward to keeping you updated. Have a good day, everyone.
We'd like to thank everybody for their participation on today's conference call. Please feel free to disconnect your line at any time.