Bumble Inc. (NASDAQ:BMBL) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Bumble Inc. (NASDAQ:BMBL) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript May 5, 2026

Bumble Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.34, expectations were $0.25.

Operator: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to Bumble Inc. First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. After today’s prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. I will now hand the conference over to Will Taveras, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Will Taveras: Thank you for joining us to discuss Bumble Inc.’s first quarter 2026 financial results. With me today are Bumble Inc.’s Founder and CEO, Whitney Wolfe Herd, and CFO, Kevin Cook. Before we begin, I would 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 will 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 in 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.

Whitney Wolfe Herd: Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. This is a period of real transformation at Bumble Inc. Over the past few quarters, we have executed a deliberate reset of our member base. We made a clear choice to prioritize quality over quantity, focusing on well-intentioned, engaged members. That decision reduced overall scale but meaningfully improved the health of our ecosystem. Importantly, this quality reset was not isolated. It was the first step in a broader strategy to reestablish Bumble Inc. as the brand that sets the pace for innovation in our category. We focused first on strengthening the underlying supply of our platform, because scale without quality degrades the experience and stifles the outcome people are seeking: high-quality, relevant connections.

At the same time, we continued rebuilding our technology and product platform to better serve our member demand for real dates and in-real-life connection. These moves required short-term trade-offs, but they were deliberate and necessary. Now, with healthier supply and stabilization in our member base, we are entering the next phase: activation. This phase is anchored by two innovation initiatives. First, the introduction of our new technology platform. Second, the launch of a fully reimagined experience for Bumble members, including a new interaction model and profile system. The new Bumble platform and experience will roll out over the balance of the year, beginning with the first stage of the new tech platform in the coming weeks. Our direct member engagement and our research, including our work with author and professor Dr. Arthur Brooks, reinforce a key insight: the biggest friction in dating today is not discovery; it is the gap between online interaction and real-world connection.

People get stuck in that in-between. This is a central challenge faced by every scaled dating app. Everything we are building is designed to close that gap and drive real in-person dates between high-quality connections. Accelerating each member’s progression toward finding that connection and getting out on a date is our priority. We have been doing foundational work on this problem ahead of introducing our new platform and reimagined experience. We have improved profiles, strengthened intent signaling, enhanced safety, and built more dynamic onboarding. These changes have helped members show up better, even within the limits of our legacy systems. We are also continuing to improve the current Bumble experience by addressing core member pain points, improving recommendations, and enhancing usability.

Early tests are showing promising results, including improvements in matching behavior and monetization trends, but results are expected to be relatively limited on the legacy tech stack. We have more to do here in the months ahead. What comes next will go much further. The innovation starts with our technology platform. As we shared last quarter, we have been actively rebuilding our new cloud-native, AI-enabled tech stack. This modern platform will allow us to move faster, iterate more efficiently, and begin to unlock entirely new product experiences. Today, making meaningful changes to our recommendation engine or introducing new features can take months. This has been a real constraint on the rate of innovation. Our new tech platform is expected to eliminate this constraint.

As the platform rebuild nears completion, we are ramping development of the next-generation Bumble Date application, a merging of the new back end and the reimagined member experience, launching in select markets in Q4 of this year. Between now and then, elements of our new technology platform will begin powering a parallel roadmap of incremental improvements in the existing product. With our new app experience, the opportunity is not just to improve the current interaction model but to evolve beyond it. We are designing a system that shortens the distance between intent and outcome, eliminating the friction caused by multiple steps between interest and connection. Clearer signals drive more mutual engagement and faster progression toward in-real-life connection.

Early reactions to this new model have been very positive. Our AI layer, Bee, is expected to play a key role in the reimagined experience. Testing Bee in onboarding new members has been especially encouraging—not just in Bee’s effectiveness, but in members’ willingness to engage deeply and share richer context about who they are and what they are looking for. Bee’s ability to capture more signal and process information quickly improves our understanding of each member and will strengthen our recommendation engine. Onboarding is just the first step in how Bee will be used in the new experience. We also expect Bee to help facilitate connection and to suggest and plan real dates, among other roles. Bee is a great example of what we can accomplish on the new modern tech stack and how AI will be an important catalyst for our business.

It is important to note that we built Bee separately from the legacy system. I have said a lot here. Let me summarize. First, demand for love and human connection is as vital as ever before. We have done the heavy lifting to reset our business with healthy supply that is ready to engage. We are giving members the tools to show up authentically as their best selves. Next is our new platform, which will accelerate product innovation. Right behind that will be an entirely transformed Bumble experience, which dramatically reduces friction and gets members to in-real-life connection faster. We believe this is our path to deliver what daters are seeking today. This is the path to restoring revenue growth, and we are already at work building the monetization model behind it.

That is the core of the Bumble app transformation, but it is only part of the picture. Beyond dating, we are also investing in broader connection, which we see as both a critical need in the world and a competitive advantage for us. We have expanded groups on Bumble BFF and are seeing strong early traction with total group joins nearly doubling between December and March. This success is driven by Gen Z women, who comprise the largest cohort on the platform, highlighting our opportunity with this core demographic. Overall, more than 80% of BFF members are women, reinforcing the durability of our overall brand. We will continue to expand on group connection and in-real-life meetings for platonic purposes through BFF. But we are also bullish on the opportunity of romance beyond one-to-one in terms of how people come together and meet for love.

We are testing new ways to bring people together for both platonic and romantic purposes, including a new product beta launching next month, which we are super excited about. Across all of these efforts, our approach remains consistent: test, learn, iterate, and do it quickly. We are data-driven, member-obsessed, and more passionate about the opportunity and problem we are solving than ever before. In terms of timing, members will first experience the rollout of our new platform, delivering a faster and more reliable experience starting in the coming weeks from a back-end standpoint. From there, we expect to introduce the initial features of our new interaction model and profile. This is our big bang. It will start to roll out to select markets in Q4, backed by a 360 marketing campaign.

Then we will continue to refine the experience into 2027, including adding features like group dating and expanded access to Bee. Ahead of our upcoming unveil, we are continuing to deliver innovations in the current Bumble experience that help members show up better, more confident, and ready to engage. Not all of these improvements will be immediately visible to members. The critical signal enhancements they enable will drive more relevant connections on the back end, and the UI/UX will be on our modernized back end, which will enable the rollout of our transformed experience later this year. As we execute this transformation, we remain disciplined. We delivered a strong Q1 compared to our expectations, and we are managing our cost structure carefully while continuing to invest in product, technology, and selective marketing.

Of note, we have reduced our performance marketing spend to less than 50% of pre–quality reset levels. We are starting to see the benefit of organic marketing again, including positive word of mouth, now that we have improved the member base quality. Despite tech limitations, we have been able to drive meaningful improvement, which we believe signals the opportunity ahead with a modern tech stack in place. To close, we have been hard at work rebuilding our foundation. Now we are focused on translating that into a meaningfully better product experience, which members will start seeing in the coming months. We cannot wait to reignite our brand, product, and mission as we transform Bumble Inc. and our category. We look forward to sharing more in the months ahead.

Thank you so much for your time, and now I will turn it over to Kevin.

Kevin Cook: Thank you, Whitney, and hello, everyone. In the first quarter, we delivered results in line with our expectations as we move past our quality reset to focus on product and technology innovation. As Whitney noted, we are seeing signs of stabilization in our member base as we enter the next phase of activation. I will review our quarterly results before turning to our outlook. Unless otherwise noted, my comments are on a non-GAAP basis, and comparisons are year over year. Total revenue for the first quarter was $212 million compared to $247 million in the year-ago period. Foreign currency exchange rates contributed $9 million to revenue in the quarter. The loss of revenue from Fruitz and Official equated to approximately one percentage point of headwind in the quarter.

Bumble app revenue was $173 million compared to $202 million a year ago. Foreign currency exchange rates contributed $6 million to Bumble app revenue. Adjusted EBITDA was $83 million, representing a margin of 39%, compared to $64 million and 26% in the prior-year period. Higher adjusted EBITDA despite the year-over-year revenue decline is a function of how we have executed through our reset period, most notably with more intensive operating discipline and thoughtful marketing spend. 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. In addition to the reduced overall spend, we have increased our focus on lower-cost and higher-return organic and targeted marketing channels.

This strategy brings us back to our historical marketing strengths and, we believe, also supports long-term brand health. Product development expense was approximately $25 million, or 12% of revenue, compared to approximately $24 million and 10% in the prior-year period. Our product development spending is focused on core product innovation and platform modernization. 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. I will now turn to the balance sheet and cash flows. For the quarter, we generated $77 million in operating cash flow, $74 million of which converted into free cash flow. We ended the quarter with $246 million of cash and cash equivalents and continue to generate substantial cash flow while maintaining a strong liquidity position.

In April, we completed the refinancing of our term loan as had been previously announced. Consistent with our plans to continue deleveraging, we paid down $114 million of debt in connection with the transaction. Pro forma for the refinancing, we had $150 million of cash and cash equivalents at the end of April. Turning to the outlook, as we move beyond the quality reset, our focus is now on activating our higher-quality member base through product innovation and improved member experience. This transition will unfold over the balance of the year as we introduce our new tech platform and accelerate the introduction of new member experiences. While this work will take time to be reflected in our financials, we believe it best positions us to drive more durable engagement and monetization.

For the second quarter, we expect 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. As we move through 2026, we expect revenue headwinds to moderate as the most acute effects of the quality reset dissipate and we transition from stabilizing to rebuilding the member base. Adjusted EBITDA margins are expected to normalize over the remainder of 2026 as we increase investment in technology and talent to modernize our platform and drive product innovation. We also plan to increase marketing spend to support our innovation initiatives, organic member growth, and brand strength.

In closing, we have made meaningful progress on our transformation and are now focused on executing the next phase of the business. Preparing a healthier, more engaged member base with a modernized platform will enable faster product innovation and more effective revenue generation over time. Operator, let us take some questions, please.

Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you. We will now open the call for questions. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question, and if you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Your first question comes from the line of Eric James Sheridan from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Eric James Sheridan: 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? Thanks so much.

Whitney Wolfe Herd: 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 you 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 you 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 I 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.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Shweta Khajuria from Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Shweta Khajuria: 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? Thank you.

Whitney Wolfe Herd: 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.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Nathaniel Jay Feather from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Nathaniel Jay Feather: 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? Thank you.

Whitney Wolfe Herd: 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 you 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 and 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.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Jordan Marok from Raymond James. Your line is currently opening. One moment. Please go ahead.

Raj (for Andrew Marok): 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?

Kevin Cook: 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.

Operator: Next question comes from the line of Ken G. from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Ken G.: 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?

Kevin Cook: 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.

Ken G.: Yes. Thank you.

Operator: At this time, there are no further questions. This concludes today’s call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect.