Bumble Inc. (BMBL) Earnings

Management highlights

- Bumble has executed a quality reset, prioritizing well-intentioned, engaged members to improve ecosystem health. - Focused on strengthening platform supply, rebuilding technology and product platform. - Entering activation phase with two innovation initiatives: new technology platform and reimagined member experience. - New technology platform is cloud-native, AI-enabled, expected to eliminate innovation constraints. - Next-generation Bumble Date application to launch in select markets in Q4. - Expanded groups on Bumble BFF with strong early traction, testing new ways to bring people together for platonic and romantic purposes. - Delivered strong Q1 compared to expectations, managed cost structure carefully while investing in product, technology, and selective marketing, reduced performance marketing spend to less than 50% of pre-quality reset levels

Guidance

- For the second quarter, expected total revenue in the range of $205 million to $213 million, including Bumble app revenue of $168 million to $174 million, and adjusted EBITDA of $65 million to $70 million. - As we move through 2026, expect revenue headwinds to moderate as quality reset effects dissipate and transition from stabilizing to rebuilding member base. - Adjusted EBITDA margins expected to normalize over remainder of 2026 as invest in technology and talent to modernize platform and drive product innovation, and increase marketing spend to support innovation initiatives, organic member growth, and brand strength

Segment performance

Total revenue for the first quarter was $212 million compared to $247 million in the year-ago period. Bumble app revenue was $173 million compared to $202 million a year ago. Adjusted EBITDA was $83 million, representing a margin of 39%, compared to $64 million and 26% in the prior-year period. Selling and marketing expense was approximately $20 million, or 12% of revenue, compared to approximately $60 million, or 24% of revenue, in the prior-year period. Product development expense was approximately $25 million, or 12% of revenue, compared to approximately $24 million and 10% in the prior-year period. General and administrative expense was approximately $24 million, or 11% of revenue, compared to approximately $26 million, or 10% of revenue, in the prior-year period. For the second quarter, expected total revenue in the range of $205 million to $213 million, including Bumble app revenue of $168 million to $174 million, and adjusted EBITDA of $65 million to $70 million, representing a margin of approximately 32% at the midpoint

Analyst Q&A

• Q: Thanks so much for taking the questions. Whitney, I want to come back to some of the comments you made in the prepared remarks and go a little bit deeper. When you think about the tech stack and how it will iterate going forward, I wanted to ask a two-parter. One, should we be thinking about the velocity of innovation and your speed in terms of going to market that will result from that as we continue to monitor the business from the outside in? And two, what do you think about your opportunity around personalization, and how much of it will be either AI-driven or non–AI-driven when you think about what the tech stack might enable you to do in the years ahead?

  A: Hey. Thank you, Eric. Great to hear from you. I will take this piece by piece. I think before we talk about the actual incredible opportunity we have ahead with this new tech stack, I want to double down on a couple of the prepared remarks I had around what we have been dealing with. We have had extraordinary tech debt. What do I mean by this? We have, frankly, not been able to make the changes that both our members are wanting, needing, and demanding, and that we have wanted to roll out. All of the results你 have seen to date are done on the back end of a very legacy system, which really does inhibit the second part of your question—the personalization of the experience. So let us talk about velocity, my favorite word. Velocity is going to go up in such a way with this new tech stack. As an example, if we wanted to make a change to the recommendation engine right now—which is the algorithm, essentially—it could take us months. It is extremely clunky, cumbersome, and difficult to navigate. On this new tech stack, we are talking about being able to put tests in immediately. We can be monitoring in real time. We can have A/B tests going at levels we have never been able to access before, and, frankly, we can make changes in a matter of days or weeks versus months, or even, frankly, years. When you really start to wrap your head around the opportunity there, I think you can understand why I am personally so excited about this new system finally hitting members’ back ends in the coming weeks. Let us talk about personalization. This is the name of the game. What is the one reason why people come to a product like ours, particularly Bumble? They are not coming for entertainment or to use it like a social media platform. They are coming to meet people. If you want to meet someone, you have to be shown people you want to see and that you want to meet. With this new system and this next-gen recommendation engine—which goes side by side with the new tech infrastructure—we will be able to personalize the system in ways that we have just, frankly, never had access to. It is not lack of innovation, roadmap, or talent; it has been lack of technical capability. So你 will see extreme personalization. Turning to the last part of your question—AI or not AI—no, it is a hybrid. I think it is important to end with a quick moment on how I look at AI for this business. AI should never replace human authenticity or human connection. I have been saying this for a long time, but I certainly hope the rest of the world is starting to see it the way我 am, in the sense that human connection is starting to matter more now than ever before, and real, authentic human connection. For those of you that have been following and watching people fall in love with AI bots, this is not the future we want for ourselves or the next generation. This is why I am at work. I am giving it my all to make sure that we can bring people closer to in-real-life, face-to-face, human, meaningful relationships and connections. We will leverage AI to enable that, but we will not use AI to replace that. I hope that answers the question. I could talk about this for six hours, but I want to give other folks an opportunity to jump in. Thank you again, Eric, for your question.

• Q: Okay. Thank you for taking my question, and thanks for the commentary in your prepared remarks, Whitney. As we think about the timeline, could you please talk to what gives you confidence post the activation phase of the renewed tech platform in 2026 into 2027? You will start seeing potentially marked improvements in the refreshed tech platform. Could you point to what you saw in your tests that gives you that confidence, and what should we be looking for starting in Q4 into next year?

  A: Thanks, Shweta. It is great to hear from you. Let us talk about these different workstreams. I want to be very clear that the back-end tech rebuild is different from the forward-facing, member-facing interaction model and profile redesign. These are two separate things that will converge into each other; however, one comes before the other—that is the back-end technology migration, enablement, and rebuild. That is coming in the coming weeks for select members and will start to roll out globally and more broadly over the weeks and months following. That is the enabler of everything. That is where we can go in and make algorithmic improvements. We can start to make matching and recommendation economics better for folks and really make sure that you are seeing who you want to see. Now, very importantly, that is the back end that will start to enable everything. But very importantly, I fundamentally believe—and I feel that I am a trusted source here because I have been on the front line of this industry from its mobile explosion inception—that the interaction model is outdated, not just for us, but for the industry at large. I believe it is time to leapfrog anything that currently exists and help people break through these areas of friction where these cliffs exist. Right now, to get somebody from first sight to first date is extremely difficult. There are so many areas of drop-off where that mutuality of needing to like each other, needing to chat, needing to keep the conversations going on this double-sided format—it is quite difficult to get you to a date. Frankly, Shweta, we are a dating app. We are not a matching app or a swiping app, but have we really been behaving like that? That is the impetus of the new interaction model. We have listened to our members. We have been in the trenches with them. I personally have been on the front lines of research and deep in the data. That forward-facing, member-touching interface transition and profile redesign is what you will start to see in a major market in Q4, and then, of course, rolling out more broadly through the end of Q4 and early into 2027. To answer your precise question—when do we start to see a rebound in the numbers you are all looking for? The answer is very simple: when our technology and our next-gen recommendation engine can help better connect people more compatibly, show people who they want to see, and then get them out on great dates. That is where the magic happens. Every single thing we are doing—I am spending every waking hour of my life right now—in service of that one goal: get people out on great dates. I hope that this starts to answer your question, and thank you again for taking the time.

• Q: Hey, everyone. Thanks so much for the question. I am thinking a little bit more about that pipeline from discovery to getting out on dates. What do you feel are the current real pinch points that cause people to maybe have a match but not convert that into an in-person connection, and what can actually solve that problem? You know, is there any issue from the perspective of a lot of people having different state or preference dynamics, local markets, etc.? Are there ways that you can solve those? That is the first part of the question. And second, we see really strong performance on gross margin. Can you give an update on what you are seeing in terms of direct payment adoption, and how should we think about the uplift that is driving these?

  A: Thanks, Nathan, for the question. I will take the first half and kick the second part to Kevin. The reality is you are right—everyone has different dating preferences. But the one thing everybody can agree on at this point is that everyone is exhausted from this passive model of just low-effort likes, low-effort interest with very little follow-through. Frankly, the industry at large—and us included—has made it too easy to express low-intent interest. We are turning that on its head. I cannot say much more. I really believe that this is going to be category-defining, and we want to keep it close to the chest. What we will tell you is the early testing has come back remarkably positive. There is very little concern that this is not the right direction. To your point, every market is culturally different, and preferences are different. We have no issue with being really agile and making sure that we test our way into the appropriate sequencing and rollout strategy to make sure that those nuances are accounted for. Listen, I am now 36. I have been doing this since I was 22. I cannot tell你 how much this is needed right now for people to really feel reinvigorated with finding love. There are a few frank realities: we are on our phones more than we have ever been before—much more so than when I started this company. The need for human connection和 love is greater right now than ever. We are more disconnected. Everything is working in our favor. The only thing that has been going wrong is our ability to execute on product innovation, and that is simply due to legacy tech debt. We are working extraordinarily hard. The teams are incredible, and they are so close to getting us to a place where we can finally innovate and deliver a modern product to our members so that they can continue to make meaningful connections in the real world. Kevin Cook: The improvement in gross margin is primarily a function of increased adoption of alternative billing methods and therefore reduction in aggregator fees. You are right to point out that we had very strong gross margin in the quarter—about 300 basis points higher than the prior-year period—and we continue to see strong adoption of our Apple Pay program, for example, in the U.S. That program is slightly ahead of expectation, and we expect alternative billing to be a tailwind to margin throughout 2026.

• Q: Hi. This is Raj dialing in for Andrew Marok. Thank you for taking our question. As it relates to the post-reset disclosures made today, could you update us through March and April and explain how the curves for registrations, retention, MAUs, and payer penetration trended from October until now, given that October was the first month dubbed as the post–quality reset? Which metric should best predict payer recovery going forward?

  A: Yeah. Hey, Ron. Thanks for the question. The disclosures were provided specifically as a way for us to meet a contractual obligation to prospective lenders to cleanse data that we shared with them in connection with the refinancing. That information is all for the periods provided. You can see them outlined in the specific disclosure on the website. They are all reflected in our current financials. They are out of date, stale, and have no import in terms of the business today. The only thing I can share is that the business has stabilized with respect to KPI performance. In particular, on registrations, I think you see highlighted there the steps that we took—quite intentionally—to bring the member base down to what we viewed as a healthier, higher-quality ecosystem from which, now, we can build. That is all I have for you on that.

• Q: Thank you so much. As you look out a couple of years and success as you transition the business, can you talk about how you could see the financial profile of the business relative to the 2022–2024 time frame? The tech debt that built up in the past—you obviously want that to not recur. Could you talk about any changes we might see to the financial profile of the business as you get back to growth in 2027–2028?

  A: Hey, Ken. So apologies—you broke up a bit, but I believe I got the question. You are right to point out two key things. First, in the time frame you referenced, it was a marketing-led business, not a product- and technology-led business as it has been since Whitney returned as CEO. What you will continue to see is a much more efficient marketing spend. Marketing should never return to the levels that you observed in 2024 and 2025. Marketing is used in support of and as a tool to enhance product—contributing to new product introduction, launch, and, of course, to some degree, brand. You will see a higher overall rate of technology and product development spend. We are in a period of investment now. You see us beginning to gently increase product development expense to deliver all of the innovation that Whitney described and that is expected for the second half of the year. Overall, with steady revenue or revenue growth, there is substantial operating margin in the business. You should expect to see continued adjusted EBITDA margin expansion—again, so long as revenue is stable or increasing. Let me know if that answers the question.