RUM Group Inc.

everyone that statements made on this call may include predictions, estimates, or other information that might be considered forward-looking. All forward-looking statements are made only as of the date of this call and should be considered in conjunction with the company's cautionary statements in our earnings release and the factors included in our filings with the SEC. Future company updates will be available via press release and the company's identified social media channels. I will now turn the call over to Rumble's founder, chairman, and CEO, Chris Pavlovsky.

Thanks, Shannon. Let's get right to it. Many of you yesterday saw the press release regarding our intent to acquire AI company Northern Data. I'm not going to be able to discuss that potential transaction during this briefing or answer any questions in the Q&A session. I will be limiting my remarks to the following. As noted on our last earnings call, our management team is very seriously focused on M&A strategy and evaluating strategic opportunities as they come. The announcement this morning is consistent with our ongoing pursuit of these opportunities. As described in the press release, Northern Data is a leading provider of AI and high-performance computing solutions and operates primarily through Ardent, its data center business, and Tyga, its GPU as a service business. Rumble has informed Northern Data that it is interested in pursuing a potential exchange offer in which the shareholders of Northern Data would receive newly issued Class A shares of Rumble common stock in exchange for their Northern Data shares. Rumble has received positive feedback from Tether, the majority shareholder of Northern Data, with respect to the potential offer on the preliminary terms described in the press release. It is important to note that Rumble has not made a final decision yet to launch the potential offer and still needs to complete additional work. The contemplated transaction, if pursued and completed, would be the latest step towards a shared vision between Tether and Rumble to democratize compute while providing unfettered access to infrastructure. This would be achieved by the delivery of GPU as a service and data center power, both of which would leverage Rumble's existing high growth cloud business. Before we move on, please note that this offer is preliminary and subject to additional work, negotiation, and finalization of key terms. I encourage everyone to review our press release for further information, including certain risks, conditions, and uncertainties relating to the potential offer. As you can imagine, the excitement internally at Rumble is hard to hold back. Rumble is embarking on new frontiers, backed by what I believe to be one of the most innovative and forward-thinking companies in the world, Tether. This is driving a completely new mandate for Rumble. The second quarter was a foundational quarter for Rumble. From a user perspective, we held strong at 51 million MEUs, our eighth consecutive quarter above the 50 million mark, and when compared to Google Universal Analytics Q2 2023 number, which was post-midterm elections, we are noticeably up. Most importantly, this was our first full quarter without America's and Rumble's largest live streamer, Dan Bongino. Dan's transition to the administration speaks to his leadership. And while we're incredibly proud and supportive of his journey, the real story is this, Rumble didn't miss a beat. That speaks volumes about the depth of our creator base and the stickiness of our platform. From a monetization perspective, we delivered $25.1 million in revenue, up about 12% year-over-year and also up sequentially quarter-over-quarter, a result I am incredibly proud of, especially as we lap the election year surge. On our previous calls, I discussed the vibe shift in corporate America as a potential tailwind for our business, fueling our growth. Although we are still early, this critical transition is manifesting itself in unique ways. I've previously mentioned some early progress with brands, such as Chevron, which has committed to re-upping their campaign, and America's largest injury firm, Morgan & Morgan, onboarded in Q2. This quarter, we saw a major theme, partnerships. Just like the uphill battle with brands, it has been very challenging to build up partnerships with other companies, which forced us to find growth in isolation. Now, in this new environment, we are creating an ecosystem and making meaningful progress in building out partnerships that will lay a strong foundation for growth. For the first time, I can say it feels like we have increasing momentum in this aspect of our business. Let me highlight a few wins. First, Cumulus Media. We've inked a strategic partnership spanning Cumulus radio stations, Westwood One, and the Cumulus Podcast Network. This is a multi-pronged partnership, allows our respective sales teams to work hand-in-hand, unlocking new ad opportunities while bringing cumulus premium content to Rumble. Second, we've signed a broad-ranging agreement with a leading AI player from an advertising partnership to a tech integration. This is not related to last night's announcement, but continues to demonstrate how bold, ambitious, and committed we are on the AI front. We'll be providing more details later in the quarter, but this is the most we can say about that at this moment. Now, Tether, no partnership has more overall impact right now. In the second quarter, Tether began advertising on Rumble and is helping accelerate our most exciting upcoming launch, the Rumble Wallet. Launching in Q3, Rumble Wallet will be a non-custodial wallet used initially for tipping creators on the Rumble video platform with Bitcoin, Tethers USDT, and Tether Gold. For those unfamiliar with non-custodial wallets, they allow you to directly own your cryptocurrencies and are not reliant on a centralized authority for access. This shared decentralized philosophy is a cornerstone of the Rumble Tether partnership. As we launch Rumble Wallet, we plan to activate the full Rumble community and also get very aggressive with onboarding new creators. We will do this by leveraging Rumble Studio to enable promotional Rumble Wallet ad reads at scale. Think about how everyone wins here. On one side, creators use Rumble Studio to multi-stream to all platforms, including Rumble. They then perform Rumble Wallet ad reads to generate revenue. On the flip side, Rumble side, more people are streaming to Rumble, more people are watching content on Rumble, and Rumble Wallet is being promoted and endorsed across the Internet. As previously stated, Tether has already begun advertising in Q2 with Rumble. With Rumble Wallet, we anticipate that this will grow in future quarters. As you can imagine, we believe and anticipate Rumble Wallet will ignite growth for Rumble's video platform both domestically and internationally. As part of this launch, in keeping with our theme of partnerships, I want to discuss Moonpay. Moonpay will power all crypto on and off ramps within Rumble Wallet, enabling seamless buy, sell, and swap functionality. Moonpay's creative agency, OtherLife, will also leverage Rumble Cloud for next-gen object storage and decentralized compute. Bottom line, partnerships are no longer a someday goal. They're here, they're expanding, and they're creating a meaningful foundation for our next phase of growth. Finally, this leads me to RumbleCloud and AI. This has obviously been a huge focus of ours. It is clear that AI is going to change the world, and if anyone is not aggressively getting into this space, they'll become irrelevant very quickly. We have very ambitious plans around this space, particularly how it pertains to our cloud business, which I believe to be the most underappreciated part of our business today. To sum it up, Our core business continues to demonstrate its stickiness despite coming off a monumental election year. We made significant strides with a diverse set of partnerships to set us up for future growth. We continue to expand our partnership with Tether, which is aligned with our long-term vision. And with Rumble Wallet launching soon, we're accelerating a new phase of growth. Since the transaction with Tether closed, our mandate has changed. YouTube has Google, CoreWeave has Microsoft, Anthropic has Amazon, and now Rumble has Tether. We've always been ambitious, but today we're in a new position. Our mandate is growth, and unlike big tech, it will be aggressive growth while also protecting a free and open internet. With that, I'll turn it over to Brandon to walk through the financials.

Thanks, Chris. I'll now take you through our second quarter 2025 financials at a very high level before turning the call over to the operator for Q&A. We reported revenues of $25.1 million, a 12% increase year over year. This growth was primarily driven by a $1.7 million increase in audience monetization revenues and a $0.9 million increase in other initiatives. The increase in audience monetization revenue is due to an increase from Rumble Premium and local subscriptions, licensing and tipping, offset by advertising revenue. Revenue from other initiatives grew 0.9 million, reflecting further traction in our cloud business. ARPU increased to 42 cents, up 24% sequentially, a positive indicator of our enhanced monetization strategy attributable to higher subscription and licensing revenue. Cost of services improved 26% year-over-year to $26.5 million, primarily from a $10.1 million reduction in programming and content expenses, partially offset by a $1 million increase in other costs, including publisher fees and payment processing. The decrease is primarily due to the expiration of various programming and content agreements. Adjusted EBITDA loss improved to $20.5 million compared to a loss of $28.7 million last year, an $8.2 million improvement primarily related to the previously mentioned increase in revenue and expiration of programming and content agreements. We ended the quarter with total liquidity of $306.4 million, including $283.8 million in cash and cash equivalents and $22.6 million in Bitcoin holdings. Our Bitcoin holdings are carried at fair value and remeasured each quarter. Also, as it relates to cash, we use $17.5 million of cash and cash equivalents during the quarter. We have always been cautiously ambitious with capital deployment. As Chris mentioned, today we're in a different position. With the incredible backing from Tether and significant resources at our disposal, we believe we have the opportunity to evaluate investing in aggressive growth. That concludes my prepared remarks. Before I turn the call over to the operator, I invite you all to join Chris this afternoon at 1 p.m. Eastern Time in an exclusive post-earnings interview with Matt Kors to be streamed live on the Matt Kors Rumble channel. Operator, we're now ready to open the line for questions.