Opera Limited (NASDAQ:OPRA) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Alicia Yap: Hi. Thank you. So good morning and good evening. Congratulations to the strong quarter and guidance. So I just wonder, I know Aria is not directly monetized for now, but just wondering, how much of the strong performance in the third quarter are benefiting from the availability of Aria that help the user engagement that also lead to better monetization because of the increased time spend or also increase the inventory or even the higher ECPM? So any color that you can either quantify or qualitatively comment where Aria is contributing to some of that strong performance that you even see that month-over-month accelerating trends. So if any color you can share would be great. And then second, I was also wondering, even if this is also driven by the ad tax improvement, any preliminary color that you can share with us how would you expect the revenue growth to be for next year? Thank you

Frode Jacobsen: Song Lin, do you want to comment on Aria or?

Lin Song: Yes. Okay. So I can comment a bit on Aria. So more or like super high level I think as we’ve also discussed at the beginning of the scripts, so I would say the only effect of Aria is mostly visible in marketing. Well, of course, partly really why we are spending less than we want to keep more very low. So it’s very positive is, of course, because Aria has increased people’s awareness that being very attractive. We want see it. So it’s quite similar as obviously on TXL, because of, it’s very differentiating. And same applies Aria where is comes to competitive route. So go for this level. Also, that has been very helpful. That loan probably has already had some very positive very positive consequence of how we can be more profitable in this quarter, so that’s good.

Even Noah [ph] had discussed, I think — we do see traffic increase on the engagement, those are search volumes and others that we’re going to also have a monetizable impact. But that, I think we need to spend more time also those about valuation potentials as we try walking with partners.

A – Frode Jacobsen: And then Alicia to answer maybe the second part of your question, I think it’s still a bit too early to start giving guidance for 2024. So we’ll hold that back into our next call, but we believe that sort of the growth rate that we expect to be able to achieve in the fourth quarter is at least a nice indication of the underlying speed of the business as it stands now.

Alicia Yap: I see great potential. Maybe just one last follow-up. On the 4Q EBITDA guidance and the [indiscernible] imply, which obviously is lower than the first three quarters that you already achieved. So I wonder if this is just more consolidative as a normal practice? Or is it some step-up spending because you mentioned the sales and marketing will be in the $30 million quarterly run rate, right? So it doesn’t seem there is any kind of unexpected step-up spending that you budgeted in for this quarter?

A – Frode Jacobsen: Yes, correct. We’ve always had sort of the marketing spend to increase as the year progresses and as we build the build more scale in the total, let’s say, machinery around our marketing activities. So we’ve guided to exceed $30 million, you come in $3 million, $4 million $5 million above that once you add up what we have in the guidance. And comparing that an average spend per quarter year-to-date of below $27 million. So of course, we’ve maintained an average spend expectation for Q4 and the margin would be far higher.