Bumble:Quarterly Results/2025 Q2
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Q2 2025 Earnings Call Summary
Q2 2025 Bumble Earnings Call Transcript | Q2 2025 Bumble Webcast Call
Bumble's strategy
- CEO Whitney Wolfe said four months ago she returned to the company to reset their strategy towards quality over quantity when it comes to how they operate, revenue and member base.
- Wolfe said they have removed over $100 million from their cost base through streamlined operations, reduced headcount and more efficient marketing engine.
- The $100 cost base savings so far include approximately $40 million related to the June workforce reduction.
- Wolfe said they are only spending where it's absolutely necessary i.e. they are not planning to put every dollar cost savings into products (Q&A).
User base and monetization
Pricing and subscription trends
- Wolfe said the majority of the payer declines in in Q2 was related to the end of legacy promotions in lower-monetizing regions. "The majority of this quarter's payer decline came from the phase out of a legacy strategy related to promotions, which were skewed towards certain of our lower monetizing noncore markets. As of late April, we have been reemphasizing our core of sustainable full-price subscriptions," she said.
- Wolfe said subscriptions now represent 80% of total payers up from 70% in Q1.
- CFO Ronald Fior said pricing was boosted by the changes they made to monetization and some pricing optimization (Q&A).
User Quality Segmentation
- Wolfe said to assess the quality of user using their Beehive Fit Framework, the use three categories: approve (members showing high intention, effort and alignment to the experience they are building i.e. high quality daters), improve (those with the right intentions but who need guidance and better tools to improve their profiles) and remove.
- Wolfe said approved members monetize at double the rate of improved members.
- Wolfe said they believe eliminating "remove cohort" will lead to a more quality platform even if it causes a near- term headwind to payers.
- Product launches are expected to lead to near-term attrition from lower intent members.
- Wolfe said "improve" accounts for the largest share of the user base while "remove" accounts for less than 10% (Q&A).
Products
- Wolfe said they will launch a verification feature in August that includes phone and ID verification, mandatory selfie checks and richer profile building tools.
- They are also introducing human and AI-powered coaching hub.
- In February next year, they will introduce what they believe to be the safest and most innovative Bumble yet.
- They will launch the new Bumble BFF this month which is build on Geneva's tech and Bumble safety infrastructure and which aims to help people build real friendships off-line.
- Wolfe said BFF is already a top-friend finding app in the US, Gen Z and younger millennial women.
- Wolfe said organic demand for BFF among Gen Z women and younger millennial women is extremely exciting (Q&A).
- Wolfe said AI is being embedded safely across the entire product ecosystem.
- Wolfe said for Bumble date, they are building a fully modern AI-first cloud-native tech stack from the ground up, which is set to be completed in Spring.
- Wolfe said Bumble BFF is migrating to modern platform with the acquisition of Geneva.
- Fior said they are being disciplined on headcount with hiring go particularly to product and AI-related roles.
- Wolfe said they are not willing to share with the Street any metrics they track on their product push and quality right now (Q&A).
- Wolfe said improvements made to their recommendation system drove a 10% increase in women yes votes (Q&A).
- Fior said the trust and safety features they are rolling out will have a negative impact on revenue in Q3 and greater impact in Q4 (Q&A).
- Wolfe said in the Q&A that they are the only company in the space that has a friend- finding feature at scale (Q&A).
Marketing
- Wolfe said they have realigned marketing with a focus on organic growth, high quality acquisitions and durable engagement.
- Wolfe said they are already seeing signs of early progress. Retention and organic registrations are up.
- Fior said they cut on performance marketing deeper than planned.
- Fior said marketing spend is expected to increase in the second half compared to Q2 levels as they support brand initiatives including the August product launches. This is factored into the Q3 guidance they issued.
Alternative payment systems
- Fior said in June, they started testing direct billing options for some purchases on iOS in the US, giving customers discounted pricing.
- Early results were positive with 30% of users opting for direct billings.
- Fior said, if they roll it up broadly, they expect it to modestly boost gross profit dollars in 2025.
- Fior said such tests are headwind to reported revenue since they offer discounted prices.
- They didn't repurchase any shares in Q2 and continue to $50 million remaining on current authorization.
New CFO
- Wolfe said the new CFO hire (Kevin Cook) ticked every box (Q&A).
- Wolfe said they wanted a CFO that understands technology first, who is a product thinker and someone who understands what members want from a product (Q&A).
- Wolfe said Cook has deep technical understanding.
Management and analysts expectations
Management guidance
| Key metrics | Q2 2025[1] | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lower-point | Y/Y | Mid-point | Y/Y | Upper-point | Y/Y | |
| Revenue | $244 million | -9.2% | $246.5 million | -8.3% | $249 million | -7.3% |
| Adjusted EBITDA | $88 million | 17.3% | $90.5 million | 20.7% | $93 million | 24.0% |
- The Q2 2025 revenue guidance of between $244 million and $249 million and adjusted EBITDA of between $88 million and $93 million was given on June 23, 2025 and was upgraded from the range of $235 million to $243 million and $79 million to $84 million respectively, which was given in May 2025.
- Bumble didn't provide guidance for 2025 saying they haven't finalized planning and budgeting for the new team's work.
- They expect to incur approximately $13 million to $18 million of non-recurring charges related to the 30% workforce reduction announced in June 2025. The charges will be incurred in Q3 and Q4 of 2025.
- It expects $12 million revenue headwind due to the discontinuation of operations in Frutz and Official. The headwind impact will begin in Q2 and be distributed throughout the remainder of the year.
- Management said the 13% workforce reduction will lead to cost-savings of around $40 million annually.
Analysts estimates
| Key metrics | Q2 2025 | Y/Y | Q3 2025 | Y/Y | 2025 | Y/Y |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue[2] | $245.65 million | -8.55% | $241.72 million | -11.65% | $968.26 million | -9.65% |
| EPS[2] | $0.39 | $0.32 | $1.17 | |||
| Adjusted EBITDA[3] | $94.59 million | $76.16 million | ||||
| EPS[3] | $0.34 |
Analysts' opinions
Bumble could see low app fees in US following Apple and Epic Games ruling
- Underperform, $5.25->$5.50: Bofa said Bumble is currently developing its own off-app payments which could result in lower app fees in the US following Apple and Epic Games court ruling.
Financial indicators and key metrics will experience volatility in Q2 and 2025Edit
- Morgan Stanley expects volatility in key performance indicators and financial metrics for Match Group and Bumble in Q2 and 2025 due to product offensive and restructuring efforts.
Headwinds likely to continue despite the workforce reduction
- Equal Weight, $5->$7: Wells Fargo said the work force reduction doesn't change their view that headwinds from industry pressure and Bumble clean-up will likely continue.
- Neutral, $4.80->$7: Citi cautioned that despite the workforce reduction there is still work left on Bumble's turnaround. The analysts said reinvigorating growth "is the more critical component".
Q1 2025 earnings call insights
Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript
Turnaround strategy
- Removed low-quality members, bots, and scammers
- Paused performance marketing
- Cut $20M in Q2 marketing spend and found $15M in cost savings
Users
- Bumble said their focus on turnaround will led to fewer users in the near term. “Our efforts to improve the quality of the member base will likely result in fewer paying members on our platform in the near term.” — Whitney Wolfe Herd,.
- Bumble will no longer provide guidance for paying users. “We are pausing our practice of guiding to paying users... We do not want to degrade the base by overly focusing on short-term payer numbers.” — Ron Fior, CFO
Products
- Bumble said they are already seeing early signs of improvement in match rates by leveraging AI. “We are rapidly modernizing our personalized matching algorithm with AI... we’re already seeing early positive results with increases in relevancy and match rates.”“You cannot believe how fast AI is moving when it comes to helping be a strong personal predictor of success on matches.” — Whitney Wolfe Herd
- They are introducing coaching app. “We’ll also be introducing our Coaching Hub... Long term, this will be both human and AI-driven.” — Whitney Wolfe Herd
- Wolfe said the complaints have been about lack of quality matches. “The complaints are almost identical... We’re not getting the matches we want... we see fakes and bots.” “We are not scared of losing members that are unwilling to verify themselves.” — Whitney Wolfe Herd.
Competition
Bumble is implicitly criticizing other dating apps (e.g., Tinder) for fueling growth with performance marketing at the expense of match quality.
“When you scale for scale’s sake, the quality experience of finding matches can start to degrade.” — Whitney Wolfe Herd
“What we learned is that just adding more profiles does not guarantee better matches. In fact, it can lead to the opposite...” — Whitney Wolfe Herd
“I’m not willing to just go pay for more downloads to come into a funnel and get less relevant matches.” — Whitney Wolfe Herd