Bumble Inc. Class A Common Stock 2026 Q2 Earnings Call

Will, please go ahead. Thank you for joining us to discuss Bumble's second quarter 2026 financial results.

With me today are Bumble's Founder and CEO, Whitney Wolfe Herd, and CFO, Kevin Cook. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that certain statements made on this call today are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties and reflect our current expectations based on our beliefs, assumptions, and information currently available to us. Although we believe these expectations are reasonable, we undertake no obligation to revise any statement to reflect changes that occur after this call. Descriptions of factors and risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements are discussed in more detail in today's earnings press release and our periodic filings with the SEC. During the call, we also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures.

These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for or an isolation from our GAAP results. Reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures are available in our earnings press release, which is available on the investor relations section of our website at ir.bumble.com. With that, I will turn the call over to Whitney.

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Second quarter results were in line with our expectations, and Kevin will take you through the numbers in greater detail shortly. As we get into the final stages of our transformation, I want to share our progress, what we are learning, and where we are headed next. Over the first half of this year, we have improved the quality of our member base, and we are rebuilding on a stronger foundation. We have made meaningful progress. From here, the path back to growth is in clear sight, and it will be defined by two things. One, product innovation, and two, winning back the cultural zeitgeist through brand and marketing investment. We have a very clear view of what is needed to win on both of these fronts, and we are executing with full focus.

Last time we talked about our new technology platform on which we will deliver the reimagined Bumble experience. We are now in the process of porting core features and functionality to the new tech stack. Key to completing this effort is migrating critical data from our own data centers onto modern cloud infrastructure, the underpinning of the entire platform. Due primarily to the volume and complexity of the data, this has been more time-consuming than we initially expected and delayed us by 2 months and has pushed our new interaction model and parts of our innovation roadmap. We have a clear plan internally, and we are making good progress. Once we are fully on the platform, we will be able to ship products faster than we have ever been able to before. In the meantime, we are not standing still.

We have been able to execute on other important improvements to address member pain points on the Bumble app. I will share a few examples. The first is a major product enhancement we've been able to test in 12 markets, changing how chats are initiated. Now, for the first time on Bumble, by default, anyone will be able to send only one single opening message, and the conversation does not progress until the recipient responds. We are also addressing another major complaint that existed from our members. We are extending the 24-hour match response window. In our initial tests, we saw very positive signals with members experiencing a significant increase in chat initiation and mutual chat rates. We plan to roll out both updates globally by the end of this month.

As I touched on earlier, we are also making a series of other impactful algorithmic improvements to show how we sort and surface recommendations. These changes are driving meaningful improvements and outcomes for our members in testing, including solid gains in members with a match and chat initiations. Culminating in substantial increases in average mutual chats, these wins help drive progress towards our North Star, delivering our members successful dates. The goal with many of our updates is to get people out from behind the screen faster to meeting in person. In addition to strengthening the core experience, you will see us lean more into real-life experiences, more ways to meet, not just match, and more ways to meet together with friends instead of just one-to-one. I am a firm believer that the future of meeting people in groups will become more important.

People love to come together in groups and see who they naturally share chemistry with once they have met. Bumble can be a catalyst for helping people socialize more broadly. This is precisely the foundational work that we are doing on group experiences. Group socializing is a real part of how Gen Z prefers to meet. We believe Bumble represents a natural bridge from meeting to socializing to then dating. We are already seeing signs of this in our groups initiative at BFF. We are seeing strong growth in both the number of active groups and in the average number of active members per group on BFF. It has been very exciting to see the natural and organic demand and love for the BFF brand and how much it resonates with Gen Z women in particular.

Another initiative that supports the IRL theme is Plans, our standalone app that we are testing for curated in-person social events with the functionality to match with attendees after the event is over. Plans is showing promising results in very early tests this summer, marketed to the youngest cohort of prospective members. The premise of Plans is simple: meet first, match later. This comes to life via these group experiences, consistent with how younger generations are finding connection and eventually love. Together, the chat initiation feature, algorithmic improvements, and group initiatives are important steps towards the better experience our members want, and I am pleased with the progress that we've made. This alone does not satisfy our full ambition. This has been the most frustrating part of the technical transformation, the inability to ship the features our members are craving at a cadence that modern technology demands.

The good news is that we are close. Let's turn to what's next, the exciting stuff. To close out 2026, we expect to begin shipping a multitude of product enhancements that our members have been asking for, ranging from profile and onboarding updates to more compelling, interesting ways to meet people in real life, along with testing elements of our fundamentally new interaction model that I lightly previewed last quarter. Given the data migration delay, we now expect to begin rolling this out in very early 2027. The core idea is a shift away from optimizing for swipe speed and velocity towards something more intentional, fewer, better, more considered signals.

What will replace the swipe, I will be keeping under wraps a bit longer for competitive purposes, but it is designed to generate more immediate interactions and, most importantly, better outcomes, mimicking real life and eliminating the friction and delay that exists in current dating app models. The early member feedback on the new interaction model has been very positive, and Gen Z in particular, as well as millennials, both women and men, have responded enthusiastically. We remain very bullish and excited about the direction we are headed. Turning to Bea, our AI dating assistance tool. It's expected to play an important role in how the experience will be delivered, but never degrading the human-first approach that we will always adhere to. Let me be clear, Bea is not replacing the swipe. We are not aiming for an AI-driven experience. Bea is simply the intelligence under the hood.

We believe that AI tools can help engaged members show up as their true, authentic selves even better, connect with a higher degree of relevancy, and get to better outcomes. Bea is in select members' hands for onboarding and matching today, and it is resulting in a more complete and authentic view of the individual. Member feedback has been that the resulting matches are more relevant, thanks to the greater signal. We are being very deliberate about how we deploy Bea because trust is paramount. We believe the biggest opportunity to our overall member satisfaction is to provide greater value to all non-paying members, which can attract more people, especially Gen Z, to the platform and drive increased engagement. We will be making the free experience much more compelling.

For example, by offering free limited access to Liked You, the most in-demand part of the product, which is currently only available to paid members. We believe that there's a lot of opportunity in allowing members to see the value and then convert to a subscribing member for more access. We've been testing different iterations, and what we have seen is that in early results, there is a significant uptick in yes votes, matches, and mutual chats. These are all key for driving top of funnel and member satisfaction, which drives the flywheel of word-of-mouth growth. These tests are early and actively underway, and we do look forward to updating you next quarter as we have more to share.