Bumble Inc.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to Bumble's second 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 one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I'll now hand the conference over to Will Taveras, head of investor relations. 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 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 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 a couple of months. and have 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 and we are extending the 24-hour match response window. In our initial test, 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 in outcomes for our members in testing, including solid gains in members with a match and chat initiations, and 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, and we believe Bumble represents a natural bridge from meeting to socializing to then dating. We are already seeing signs of this in our group's 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 PLAN. 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. However, this alone does not satisfy our full ambition. Frankly, 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. So 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 be 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, B is not replacing the swipe. We are not aiming for an AI-driven experience. B 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. B is in select member's 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 B 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 LikedU, 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. More broadly, we are planning to re-architect our subscription tier to be simpler and more inviting upfront, emphasizing a great free experience with a clean, obvious path into paid tiers that can deliver clear value by enhancing member outcomes. As we build more innovation into our product, we will have more value-additive offerings to distribute across the different pricing tiers. Our philosophy is simple. Monetize value and outcomes, not friction. This will take some tuning, but we have conviction that a better free experience is how we widen the top of funnel and earn the right to monetize. This is how you build the kind of product loyalty that lasts. At the other end of the funnel, we are exploring a higher subscription tier than we have previously offered. One that really anchors on mutual serious intent. which is ultimately what will drive value for a higher paying member. Turning to brand investment. So far this year, our investment focus has been on technology and product and I've just walked you through some of those highlights. We have maintained a very strong margin for more than a year as we pulled back on marketing spend while the product was under transformation. In order to not waste dollars on bringing people into a product experience that was not up to their or our standards. But now as we enter the final stages of our transformation, it is time to prioritize brand marketing again. As a reminder, I built this company and brand from intuitively understanding what women want, need, and expect from dating, consumer brands, and experiences. This is my strength. and I'm excited to go full force back into rebuilding the brand into an incredibly relevant, beloved company that once again captures the cultural zeitgeist. A brand that not only young women love and advocate for, but can also win culture with men. We are starting from a strong base. Among those who know Bumble, we continue to lead in our category on brand favorability. However, The younger cohort just entering our category does not have the same familiarity with Bumble. This is not product related. It is an awareness issue. And this is good news for us because we have an opportunity to go back and do what I did when I launched this company and take over culture again. We're doing this by reinvesting in community, creators, and hyperlocal energy, pointing it directly at a younger audience. This will be a big focus for us in 2027 and it will start ramping in Q3 and Q4 of this year. It is time to start reinvesting for growth. However, as evidenced by this past year, we will remain prudent and surgical about how we spend and we will be mindful of healthy margins. It is important to recognize that product and marketing are not separate initiatives. They complement one another. In our business, the most important element of the product is people using it. The right mix of members makes every match more relevant and every conversation better, which means who we attract shapes the quality of the experience itself. But that flywheel only turns if the product works and the people marketing brings to the top of the funnel. That's why the core experience improvements come first. and why we are now stepping up brand investment. It is also why we expect the investment supporting our new product updates to be more efficient than the performance marketing spend that you saw from our company in prior years. Our new approach to performance marketing is boosting the great content that our creators and members are making and the success stories that stem from Bumble along with highlighting all of our IRL activities that have been resonating very well with Gen Z. To summarize, the core app will be getting better every day and our velocity of innovation will only accelerate as we complete our data migration. The early results from the changes that we've been able to push through are encouraging. They're leading to better experiences for a healthier, more stable member base. Before I close, I stepped back in as CEO March of 2025. My first priority was to do a quality reset. We raised the bar on profile quality, focused on subscription revenue, and took the necessary and difficult steps to transform our tech backend to be modern and advanced for future innovation. We transformed our team, brought in the best talent, and operated in a much more lean and efficient capacity. Essentially, I knew we had to shrink in order to grow. It has not been easy. but I believe it has been worth it. I believe the best is ahead of us. When I stepped back in, the top complaint was trust with profiles on the platform. Prior complaints about bots, spammers and low quality profiles have in many respects been addressed as the quality of our member base has dramatically improved, turning our member base into one of our strengths. Now, we will deliver the roadmap that our members deserve with the innovation that delivers the outcomes that they are seeking. Members first, always. We will win back culture with incredible marketing and brand experiences. And that is how Bumble will win. Demand for love and human connection has never been in question. In fact, as AI progresses, I find myself asking what won't be replaced by AI. And the answer is very clear. The need for real love, friendship and connection in the real world with other humans. Because we are better together. Our job is to build products worthy of it. And that is exactly what our team is doing. Thank you so much. And with that, I will turn it over to Kevin.