Bumble Inc.

Good evening. Thank you for attending the Bumble Second Quarter 2025 Final Financial Results Conference Call. My name is Megan and I'll be your moderator for today. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you would like to ask a question during that time, please press star 1 under to those on keypad. I would now like to pass the conference over to Will Traveris, Bumble's Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you for joining us to discuss Bumble's second quarter 2025 financial results. With me today are Bumble's founder and CEO, Whitney Wolford, and interim CFO, Ron Fiore. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that certain statements made on the 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 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.

Hello everyone, and thank you for joining us for our Q2 earnings call. Four months ago, I returned as CEO of Bumble and reset our strategy for quality over quantity across the whole business, including how we operate, our revenue and payers, and importantly, our member base. We've taken decisive actions over the last quarter. We've removed over $100 million from our cost base by streamlining operations, restructuring headcount, and shifting to a more efficient organic marketing engine. These changes have sharpened our operational discipline and positioned us for a return to growth. We've reorganized for speed and focus, rebalancing engineering to the U.S., unifying our product roadmap, and bringing in exceptional leadership, all while building a leaner, higher-performing team. These efforts contributed to record EBITDA margins in Q2. And while this level of performance shouldn't be viewed as a steady state baseline, profitability, margin expansion, and cash flow will remain core priorities, even as we redeploy some of our cost-based savings into selective, high impact investments across product, AI, UX, and trust and safety. We believe we can do both, running healthy, efficient business, and strategically invest in the long-term future of Bumble with discipline, intention, and a relentless focus on quality. That quality extends to the type of revenue and payers we are prioritizing. 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 non-core markets. As of late April, we have been re-emphasizing our core of sustainable full-priced subscriptions. Encouragingly, our full-priced payer base increased quarter over quarter, and subscriptions now represent approximately 80% of total payers up from 70% in Q1. This is reflected in our ARPPU increases. We believe this may be an encouraging signal that removing lower quality revenue moves us towards a stronger, more sustainable baseline for our payer base as we look to return to growth. Now let's talk about the progress we're making on improving the quality of our member base. Our product is people. The quality of someone's experience, how they engage, find what they're looking for, and monetize depends on the quality of who and what they encounter on the platform. We are executing this work through our Be High Fit framework, which is designed to create the right conditions for meaningful connection. Authentic, robust profiles, clear intent signals, and respectful behavior. It's not about exclusion. It's about how well people show up. To assess our members using our Beehive Fit framework, we are using three categories. The first is Approve. These are members showing high intention, effort, and alignment with the experience we are building. They are verified. They engage well on the product. They have robust profiles. These people are great members of the community. follow our community guidelines, and are seen as high quality and compelling daters by the other members on the platform. The second and largest group is improve. Members who have the right intentions, but may need clearer guidance, better tools, or a stronger sense of what a high quality profile and experience should look like. We are focused on supporting them. And this represents one of our biggest areas of opportunity. For example, someone who follows all community guidelines but has only one blurry photo and no bio, that's a simple high-impact improvement. By helping these members show up more fully, we believe we can move more of them to the approved category. This will enhance their experience and drive better engagement for them, and in turn, unlock a healthier member base with increased retention and stronger monetization. Importantly, Approved members monetize at approximately double the rates of our improved members. The third category is remove. We've always prioritized trust and safety. The last quarter, we significantly deepened our focus. In March, we accelerated efforts to identify and ultimately remove bad actors and low intent members, a strategic step aligned with our quality first approach. It includes removing duplicate accounts, members who break trust, bots, scammers, or those that don't follow our community guidelines, but also members with low quality, incomplete profiles, and no willingness to improve. If improved members don't take the steps to engage meaningfully, they transition to remove. We believe that removing these profiles will create a stronger, safer environment for our high intent community, making the overall experience much better, even if it contributes to a near-term headwind to payers. Our goal with Be High Fit is to move as many members into the approved category as possible. And this will be an always-on focus for us over the long term as new members continue to join us. We remain laser focused on cleanup, discipline, and resetting the bar, but we're already shifting into build mode as we set the stage for renewed sustainable growth. Our August love launch marks the first major step in this next phase. It's a trust first product update that includes phone and ID verification, mandatory selfie checks, and richer profile building tools. all designed to help high intent members show up more clearly and confidently, while naturally filtering out those less willing to engage meaningfully. We are also introducing our human and AI powered coaching hub. This launch is foundational to strengthening the platform and improving outcomes for the people who are here for the right reasons. From there, we'll maintain a steady drumbeat of improvements across product and tech, with another milestone in February when we debut what we believe will be the safest and most innovative version of Bumble yet. This next phase is about reactivating our community and personalizing every part of the journey, from onboarding to matching to meeting in real life. On the BFF side, we will also launch the all-new Bumble BFF app this month. Built on Geneva's group tech, and Bumble safety infrastructure. It combines one-on-one matching and events with community features to quickly follow, designed to help people build real friendships offline. With minimal investment, BFF is already a top friend-finding app in the United States, especially among Gen Z and younger millennial women. And we see it as one of our most exciting long-term growth opportunities. especially as demand for friendship, real-world connection, and belonging continues to grow. Bumble and Bumble BFF are both powered by a clear technology vision, build proprietary AI capabilities to create more human connection. Under our new CTO, we've rebuilt our core tech org with a single mandate, help people find love safely and efficiently. AI is being embedded responsibly and ethically across the entire product ecosystem, from matchmaking and personalization to member support and internal operations. We have data rich insights on what our members are looking for and how they achieve successful outcomes. For BumbleDate, we are building a fully modern AI first cloud native tech stack from the ground up. with a new infrastructure set to be completed by next spring. In parallel, we'll continue optimizing the current stack to support ongoing performance and stability. Bumble BFF, meanwhile, is migrating to an already modern platform through our acquisition of Geneva, giving us speed and flexibility in scaling group and community features. Everything we build is grounded in real-world outcomes, not endless engagement. Our AI systems will be trained and continuously refined by real matchmakers and relationship experts, ensuring that insights, prompts, and recommendations are shaped by emotional intelligence and modern relationship science. Now, let's talk about marketing. At Bumble, marketing isn't here to cover for an average product. It's here to amplify a product people need and love. We are focused on building the best experience in the category because a great product is what keeps people coming back. Historically, our performance marketing lacked clear guardrails. We've now realigned marketing with our focus on organic growth, high quality acquisition, and durable engagement. We are already seeing early signs of progress. Retention and organic registrations are up. We're doing all of this while preserving one of our strongest assets, our brand. Among scaled dating apps in the US, Bumble holds the highest favorability among women and the general population, with a competitive standing among Gen Z, with improvements in each of these key demos in Q2. Coming alongside the product update and the love launch later this month is a brand moment rooted in real stories of love, connection, and family that Bumble has helped create. It is a powerful reminder for the impact we help create in the world. Behind all of this work is a team that's getting stronger and stronger. In just a few months, we have both shrunk the team to a much leaner organization and added exceptional leaders across product, tech, marketing, and legal, and now finance. We are thrilled to welcome Kevin Cook, as our new CFO this month. Our leadership transformation has helped us attract top talent with purpose and passion. We are being selective with how we invest in talent with a very high bar for any additions, including considering whether AI can do all or part of the work of each potential new head, prioritizing a lean, high-performing team. Across the company, we've reorganized to move faster with more focus and ownership. We are building a team designed for scale, speed, and with heart. We are just a few months in, but the energy is real. The clarity, the focus, the urgency, it's all here. We are not building for where the world was or is. We are building for where it's going. We have committed to bringing Bumble back to being a truly member-first company. Everything we're building is rooted in what our members want, need, and deserve. When they speak, we listen. Our primary goal is to deliver an experience that helps them find real love, friendship, and connection. Now, I'll hand it over to Ron. Thank you so much.