Bumble (BMBL) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Date

Wednesday, March 11, 2026 at 4:30 p.m. ET

Call participants

• Chief Executive Officer — Whitney Wolfe Herd
• Chief Financial Officer — Kevin Cook

Takeaways

• Total revenue -- $224 million, declining from $262 million, driven by deliberate member quality reset and reduced performance marketing spend.
• Bumble app revenue -- $181 million, down from $212 million, reflecting less promotional activity and strategic shift toward higher-quality user acquisition.
• Adjusted EBITDA -- $72 million with a 32% margin, compared to $73 million and 28% margin, as cost controls and product investment supported profitability despite lower revenue.
• Full-year cash flow -- Operating cash flow reached $250 million; free cash flow was $239 million.
• Member acquisition costs -- Selling and marketing expense was $161 million (17% of revenue), reduced from $259 million (24% of revenue), showing a shift toward organic and targeted marketing channels.
• Payer mix -- Subscription share among payers in the Bumble app increased to 89% from 80% amid decreased promotional activity.
• Tech investment -- Development expense climbed to $96 million (10% of revenue), up from $84 million (8% of revenue) as the company modernized its technology stack and developed AI capabilities.
• Debt and liquidity -- $176 million in cash and equivalents at period end; $25 million of Term Loan B repaid; remaining debt of $588 million under review for refinancing ahead of January 2027 maturity.
• Direct payments -- CFO Cook stated, "In the fourth quarter, direct payments contributed approximately one percentage point of year over year gross margin expansion." Adoption of Apple Pay exceeded half of U.S. iOS payments by early Q1 2026.
• Guidance -- Projected revenue in the $209 million-$213 million range and adjusted EBITDA of $76 million-$80 million with a margin of roughly 37% for the upcoming period.
• Product roadmap -- CEO Wolfe Herd affirmed, "The launch is targeted for Q2 this year," for the new Bumble 2.0 experience built on an AI-enabled, cloud-native tech stack.
• Operational milestone -- Management reported that "the heavy lift of our quality reset is behind us," with user metrics indicating stabilization and engagement quality improvement.
• Engagement metrics -- CEO Wolfe Herd said, "Engagement quality is improving significantly, with Bumble app week one in the U.S. up materially and monthly retention trending higher as well."
• Bumble BFF update -- Group discoverability launch resulted in a "17% increase in the number of active groups in just two weeks since launch."

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Risks

• CFO Cook noted, "There is some duplication of costs for a portion of 2026" as both existing infrastructure and new cloud-native stack will be maintained through the technology transition.
• Management warned that "the sequential stabilization in our business metrics, including active users and payers, has not yet been reflected in our year-over-year revenue growth," potentially delaying visible financial recovery.
• Company acknowledged member base declines related to the quality reset, with consequences of top-funnel pressure and near-term revenue headwinds.

Summary

Bumble (NASDAQ:BMBL) reported revenue and EBITDA at the upper end of guidance, driven by disciplined cost management and a deliberate shift in member acquisition strategy. The company emphasized the completion of its quality reset, stabilization of user and payer metrics, and increased engagement and retention signals, citing rising subscription penetration among payers. Leadership detailed the imminent rollout of its cloud-native, AI-enhanced Bumble 2.0 platform and highlighted broad adoption of direct payment methods, signaling higher gross margin and improved long-term profitability. Free cash flow remained strong, and liquidity was bolstered by the elimination of TRA liabilities and ongoing debt reduction measures.

• Management stated, "We expect a lag between these product improvements and our reported financial performance metrics," highlighting the delayed impact of innovation on headline results.
• The company is testing an AI-powered feature, "b," designed as a personal dating assistant and matchmaker, with internal pilot underway and beta imminent.
• Plans call for global rollout of the modernized tech stack to all company products except Bumble BFF, which runs on a different infrastructure.
• Leadership projects group dating and real-world event features as core differentiators targeting Gen Z engagement and expansion.

Industry glossary

• TRA liabilities: Tax Receivable Agreement obligations; a contractual commitment to pay prior owners a share of future tax benefits, often arising from IPO or restructuring events.
• Token costs: Expenditures associated with cloud-based or AI service consumption, often linked to variable pricing models for application development and deployment.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Whitney Wolfe Herd: Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We have a lot to cover today. I would like to recap what has been a very productive first year in our transformation and the excitement building inside Bumble Inc. as we work toward our platform and app relaunch in just a few months. I do not want to sugarcoat the challenging process that we are working through, but I am proud of our team, their pace of execution, and early accomplishments. Starting with performance, we closed out 2025 with fourth quarter revenue and EBITDA at the high end of our guidance ranges as we continue to emphasize financial discipline, balancing investment and sustainable long-term growth with healthy margins and cash generation.

Kevin will provide perspective around the financial strides that we have made in just a moment. Turning to our transformation, the headline today is that we believe the heavy lift of our quality reset is behind us, and we are full steam ahead on product innovation. Before getting into the details, I want to set context. When I returned as CEO about a year ago, I came back with a clear focus: to rebuild this company from the inside out and return to what originally made Bumble Inc. so successful. What people come to Bumble Inc. for is to find love and make in-person connections, and they favor us for a simple but powerful reason: we build trust with women.

We believe that when women feel safe, confident, and intentional about who they meet, the entire ecosystem works better. You get healthier interactions, a more balanced member base, and better outcomes for everyone. Our goal is to continue to lead in this area and to build the most woman-centric dating product in the market across features, design, and outcomes—one that solves real pain points women face in dating today. In 2025, we accomplished our most important goal: putting trust, authenticity, and member outcomes first. We also are running the company with sharper discipline so we can invest where it matters most and execute faster. We knew that doing this the right way would create near-term pressure, and it did.

The choices we made were intentional. We began by raising standards across the platform and fundamentally changing how we approach acquisition. Performance marketing was reduced by well over 80% year over year. That was a deliberate shift away from volume-based acquisition and towards higher-intent, organically driven growth as we return to our roots of brand organic marketing. Despite raising the bar on new members and dramatically limiting marketing, Bumble app registrations and active users have stabilized. We proved two things through this exercise. First, demand for what we offer—the promise of human connection, relationships, and potentially love—is strong and enduring. Second, we believe the Bumble Inc. brand has tremendous affinity with our target audience.

As we tighten trust and authenticity standards, user metrics behaved as expected. Although trust and safety is a competitive advantage and the work never ceases, we believe Q4 marks the completion of our quality reset. As we move into early 2026, trends suggest the rate of sequential member base decline is slowing, consistent with the expectation we shared with you on our last call, and the quality reset is working as designed. We have talked on previous calls about our internal framework improving the mix of our member base by emphasizing approved members, and removing accounts that were not here for the right reasons.

Members who are truly here to find love and connection will be more engaged, and that is what we are in fact seeing as our mix improves. Engagement quality is improving significantly, with Bumble app week one in the U.S. up materially and monthly retention trending higher as well. These progress points demonstrate that the member experience is getting better due to the nature of the quality reset, even before we innovate the product. At the same time, we have improved the quality of our monetization base. Payer penetration for Bumble subscribers has increased, and the portion of payers choosing subscriptions has risen from 80% to 89% as we reduced certain promotional activities related to consumables.

We anticipate that this shift reflects stronger intent and a greater alignment between value delivered and value paid for. Taken together, these improvements likely signal that we are building a healthier funnel from registration to engage to monetization. The data shows that our foundation is now stronger, with a higher-quality, higher-intent member base and a more sustainable payer mix. But this essential foundational work can only take us so far. To fully recover and return to growth, we must focus on product and technology innovation, which is where our efforts are now.

Since the beginning of the year, I have personally spent 90% of my days with our tech and product teams reimagining what finding love looks like in the era of AI. We are rearchitecting the entire Bumble experience from start to finish, and I am taking a very hands-on role in shaping the core user experience across onboarding, profiles, and matching. As we rebuild the experience, one thing is clear: we cannot deliver the innovations we are creating on our legacy tech stack. That is why we are building the new Bumble experience on our cloud-native technology stack built with AI productivity at its core. The launch is targeted for Q2 this year.

What we are calling tech stack 2.0 is not just a back-end upgrade. It is a fully new platform that will transform how we build and ship product. We expect it to allow us to deliver member experience improvements more quickly and intelligently, deepen personalization, support how our monetization model evolves over time, and serve as the foundation for more potential product launches in the future. These are all things that we have been unable to execute effectively on with the current tech stack, a fact that has limited our ability to deliver the innovations that our members should expect from us and compete better with other offerings in the category.

Given the significant tech debt, the fact that we have been able to execute a major member base reset without being able to deliver the innovation that we need is a testament to the enduring strength of our core product and our brand. This makes me excited to show what we can do once our new platform is live. The platform development is currently being executed by our newly consolidated product and technology organization, led by our Chief Product and Technology Officer, Vivek Sagi, and supported by the engineering-led innovation hub that we built in Austin over the last six to nine months. The buzz in the building is strong, and our renewed energy is already accelerating our pace.

We are working more tightly across teams, putting member satisfaction and product at the center of our daily work, and building with clearer accountability and execution. Our new tech stack will enable us to deliver an experience built around people, not just profile. Across the industry, members are dissatisfied with being reduced to images and potentially dismissed with a swipe. Bumble 2.0 introduces a chapter-based structure designed to help members tell their stories more authentically and understand one another more deeply. This will enable them to see matches with stronger compatibility signals, build confidence in the experience, and get to meaningful in-real-life dates more quickly.

Before the rollout of the new Bumble Date, we are continuing to deliver updates on our legacy 1.0 tech stack that improve outcomes and address the most consistent pain points that we hear from members. We are addressing global member feedback, particularly women's feedback. One example is a new “Really Into You” tab, which we began testing last month. While results are early, they have been positive, showcasing the importance of strong signals of intent. We also rolled out tests of Profile Guidance and Suggested Date. Profile Guidance delivers personalized, actionable feedback on bios and prompts, guiding members step by step to help truly reflect who they are.

Suggested Date is a new feature designed to make expressing date intent effortless, and to get people offline as quickly and confidently as possible. Beyond the major updates that we are making to Bumble Date in the near term, we are also actively infusing AI into the core Bumble experience and recommendations algorithm. Our objective is not simply to layer AI features onto the product, but to build the underlying system that reflects how people actually meet, connect, and form relationships so AI can operate within that structure. Done right, AI helps the network function better by prioritizing fewer, more relevant matches over volume, combating swipe fatigue, and moving members more efficiently towards real-world connection.

What differentiates our approach is not just the AI technology, but the depth of the proprietary data that we have built over more than a decade. AI on its own is neither a moat nor disruptor to online dating. Its effectiveness depends on high-quality, scaled interaction data, and the hardest part of building a successful dating platform is earning trust and building that member base at scale. We believe that we have one of the largest and most nuanced datasets of real human connection in the world, leaving us uniquely positioned to use AI in ways that are more personalized and effective than any potential new entrant.

To that point, we have talked in the past about building a standalone AI experience. What we learned in the development process is that the best way to launch a standalone product is to start with enabling it on preexisting datasets. We formed a team to focus on a standalone product feature. We call it “b,” that is integrated in the core member base to accelerate development and iteration. “b” is designed to become a personal dating assistant and matchmaker, learning members' values, relationship goals, communication style, lifestyle, and dating intentions through private conversations, then using those insights to identify mutual compatibility to find better dates with a higher degree of confidence and relevance.

Importantly, this work is grounded in our longstanding commitment to privacy and trust, ensuring members remain in control of their data. A pilot of these core functionalities is testing internally and will be launched in beta soon. In addition to reimagining the dating experience, we continue to expand how people connect through Bumble BFF. We recently launched an important update that makes groups discoverable, allowing members to find and join communities based on shared interests. Early response has been encouraging, with a 17% increase in the number of active groups in just two weeks since launch.

Looking ahead, we have a series of product updates planned as fast follows, including the introduction of functionality designed to bring members together in curated, real-world settings. And these are not just BFF initiatives. Ultimately, they extend into dating. We see an exciting opportunity around group dating as we reimagine the Bumble experience. While the millennial dating experience was more one-to-one, Gen Z searches for love differently, and group socializing is a big part of that. The event capabilities that we are introducing take us firmly in this direction. They create more pathways from digital interaction to in-person connection, and can further strengthen engagement.

We see significant potential here both in deepening engagement within BFF and in creating new on-ramps into Bumble Date as members move fluidly between friendship, community, and romantic connection within our broader ecosystem. Our goal with all of this work is to transform people's expectations of what a dating application is. We plan to deliver a product people actively choose and want to use—one that reestablishes Bumble Inc. as the most culturally relevant and trusted dating brand. I am highly focused on realigning with the cultural zeitgeist and being the dating app of choice for our core audience, which is women and men, ages 21 to 35 predominantly.

To get there, we are doubling down on our unique playbook of hyperlocal organic marketing and community-driven growth, rather than broad, undifferentiated spend, to really reposition Bumble Inc. to the center of dating culture. It is already working. We are seeing Bumble Inc.'s woman-first positioning strengthen as awareness among single women in the U.S. has increased, and Bumble Inc. continues to lead in favorability among scaled dating apps among women. And we continue to see that influencers and other relevant people in culture want to work with Bumble Inc., despite a highly competitive environment. This is the equity that we are building as we bring Bumble Inc. back to the center of dating culture.

We are energized by the innovation underway and the clarity of the roadmap ahead. The products that we are bringing to the market this year represent a meaningful evolution for Bumble Inc., and we believe that they will redefine how people experience connection on and off of our platform. Brand and member experience are central to our foundation, and equally so is our operating health. We have strengthened our business on both fronts. Over the past year, we have added key leaders and resized and reshaped our organization to increase execution velocity and the pace of innovation across product, engineering, and go-to-market. We have improved focus, aligned teams more tightly to outcomes, and accelerated progress on our turnaround roadmap.

We have gained efficiency across the company to fund targeted investment in our strategy, and we have streamlined and focused our marketing approach on reinforcing what our brand stands for and emphasizing organic, high-quality acquisition channels. We expect the moves we have made will help preserve our attractive cash flow profile. To summarize, 2025 was a successful year in executing our transformation. We believe we are well on our way to rebuilding Bumble Inc. around what has always made us different: listening to women and delivering a trusted, high-quality experience that drives real-life connection and love.

We are clear-eyed about the work ahead, but confident in our ability to unlock a step change in the member experience beginning in 2026, which in turn should enable us to monetize more effectively over time. By resetting the foundation of the business—how we acquire members, how we engage them, and how we monetize—we believe we have positioned the company to grow again as we restore Bumble Inc. to what has always been at the heart of our success. With that, I will turn it over to Kevin to walk through the financials. Thank you again.

Kevin Cook: Thank you, Whitney, and hello, everyone. In the fourth quarter, we delivered results at the high end of our guidance ranges. Revenue reflected the expected impact of our trust and safety initiatives— a deliberate reset of the member base—while profitability and cash flow demonstrated the underlying resilience of our model. Over the past year, we have managed the business with discipline, balancing targeted investment in product with careful cost control and a focus on strengthening our financial foundation. I will walk through our quarterly and full-year 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 fourth quarter was $224 million compared to $262 million in the year-ago period. Bumble app revenue was $181 million compared to $212 million a year ago. Adjusted EBITDA was $72 million, representing a margin of 32%, compared to $73 million and 28% in the prior-year period. The quarter reflected what we believe was the most acute top-funnel pressure associated with our quality reset actions. For the full year, total revenue was $966 million compared to $1.07 billion in 2024. Adjusted EBITDA was $314 million, representing a margin of 32%, compared to $304 million and 28% in the prior year.

Selling and marketing expense was $161 million, representing 17% of revenue, compared to $259 million, or 24% of revenue, reflecting a more focused and efficient approach to member acquisition with greater emphasis on targeted and organic channels. We expect to maintain disciplined marketing spend in 2026 while incrementally increasing investment to support the rollout of our new products and in select member acquisition. Development expense was $96 million, representing 10% of revenue, compared to $84 million, or 8% of revenue in 2024, consistent with our plans to increase investment in core product innovation, AI capabilities, and platform modernization.

General and administrative expense was $115 million, representing 12% of revenue, compared to $108 million, or 10% of revenue, reflecting disciplined cost management as we navigate the reset, offset by indirect taxes. We believe this balanced approach—containing overhead while prioritizing product investment—supports both operational efficiency and long-term value creation. I will now turn to the balance sheet and cash flows. For the full year, we generated $250 million in operating cash flow, $239 million of which converted into free cash flow. As discussed on our last call, we are taking active steps to optimize our capital structure. We completed the buyout of all our outstanding TRA liabilities in the fourth quarter for $186 million in cash.

We ended 2025 with $176 million of cash and cash equivalents and have continued to generate substantial cash flow throughout the first quarter. Similarly, we are currently in discussions to refinance our existing debt obligations due January 2027, totaling $588 million as of December 31. Consistent with our intention to deleverage the business, we repaid $25 million of our current Term Loan B in August 2025. In addition to eliminating the full TRA liability from the balance sheet, we expect to repay a portion of our outstanding debt and refinance the balance.

Turning to guidance, we believe the most challenging portion of the quality reset is behind us, and we have turned from adding incremental friction at the top of our member acquisition funnel to improving the experience with product innovation. We expect a lag between these product improvements and our reported financial performance metrics. As such, the sequential stabilization in our business metrics, including active users and payers, has not yet been reflected in our year-over-year revenue growth. For 2026, we expect total revenue in the range of $209 million to $213 million, including Bumble app revenue of $171 million to $174 million, and adjusted EBITDA of $76 million to $80 million, representing a margin of approximately 37%.

As we move through 2026, we expect our revenue headwinds to moderate as the impacts of recent trends in our operating metrics flow through the financials. Improvements in revenue will be primarily a function of new product adoption, and further retention, payer penetration, and average revenue per paying user gains based on enhanced functionality as well as incremental monetization opportunities. An important contributor to our margin performance will be the continued implementation of alternatives to in-app purchases in the U.S. In the fourth quarter, direct payments contributed approximately one percentage point of year-over-year gross margin expansion. We currently expect the benefits to increase through 2026, as we are already seeing increased adoption in January and February.

We believe this shift in billing methods meaningfully enhances the long-term profitability of the business. In closing, the actions we have taken over the past year have been made to support our financial and operational foundation in light of our transformation work. We are entering this next phase supported by a highly efficient, cash-generative business model and a cost structure better aligned to our strategic priorities. Operator, we will now take questions.

Operator: Thank you. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. We will now open for questions. First question comes from Nathaniel Feather with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Nathaniel Feather: Thanks for taking the question and congrats on the quarter. I guess first, thinking through a pretty ambitious product roadmap over the course of 2026, when you say registrations and active users have stabilized, as we look out over the course of the next year, what is the path to get those to start to accelerate and really improve? And of all of these kinds of changes you are talking about, help us think through the timing of when that might potentially happen. And then on the profitability side, adjusted EBITDA margin showing a really nice step up quarter over quarter—can you help us think through what are the puts and takes that are leading to that improvement? Thank you.

Whitney Wolfe Herd: Thanks, Nathaniel, for the question. I will take the first part of the question, and we will talk about returning to user growth. I think it is important to just reemphasize that we just undertook something incredibly difficult without any product innovation to support us. Let me explain what I mean by that. We just underwent a membership overhaul, essentially, where we went in and we said quality is the goal—quality and safety and authenticity—which are the three most important things to women in dating, particularly when they date online, and we are going to take this on while we are still essentially under construction because we are still operating on our legacy tech stack.

The fact that we were able to have registrations and active members stabilize during a transformation with little product innovation to support is actually quite remarkable, which is exciting for the next phase of this, which we said in the remarks, which is rolling out, to your point, a very ambitious but very doable 2026 product roadmap. Once 2.0 back-end infrastructure is up and running, and once we have migrated the 1.0 system to the 2.0 system, innovation becomes a lot more seamless, a lot quicker.

The volume at which we can innovate becomes so much more plentiful than what we have seen in the past, and we have a very long roadmap covering what I said in the prepared remarks of solving women's pain points but also delivering these really incredible innovative features, tools, and ways of connecting that we believe will accelerate these cohorts. I think it is also important to note the oldest Gen Z right now are 28 years old, so we are just entering this peak intentional dating window, and when you look at our roadmap, it is extremely focused on reengaging this next generation who are stepping into intentional dating.

On the timing front, what we said in our prepared remarks is exactly the way to think about things. This starts as soon as 2.0 is in flight, and it will be a very consistent drumbeat of innovation. We are super inspired and committed, and we are building with innovation at the core. I hope that answers the question, and I will kick the profitability piece over to you, Kevin.

Kevin Cook: Thanks, Whitney. Hey, Nathaniel. On profitability for Q1, we continue to be committed to operating discipline, so we are pleased to see continued adjusted EBITDA margin expansion. I will say Q1 is probably slightly elevated. We are expecting—as Whitney highlighted, and you heard from our prepared remarks—to launch significant new product beginning in Q2 in market, so you will see a slight increase in marketing to support new product innovation and some very specific product marketing around new enhancements to product. You will also see product development costs increase midyear slightly in order to support 2.1, 2.2, and the fast follows that Whitney was describing earlier.

I do believe that structurally, our margin profile is higher than it has been historically. We are much more efficient today than the business has been in the past. We are not guiding the year here, obviously, but we do see the opportunity for sustained very high adjusted EBITDA margin throughout the year, and, to the extent that we inflect growth in the business, there is enormous operating leverage in the model.

Nathaniel Feather: Helpful. Thank you.

Operator: We will now turn to Shweta Khajuria with Wolfe Research. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Shweta Khajuria: Thank you for taking my questions. First is on these product revamps. Whitney, how are you thinking about measuring progress, and what will be some of your milestones as you track that the revamp is going well and how you measure it? And is there something that you plan to share with us in terms of metrics, whether it is either top of the funnel or some internal metrics that you are following that would help us get a sense of how it is going? Because we may not see the impact on monetization just yet, but if engagement is improving, that would be a good sign. The second is on investment on the tech replatforming.

Is there additional investment that you are expecting, or how should we think about that? Thank you.

Whitney Wolfe Herd: Shweta, nice to hear from you, and thanks for the questions. You know, Shweta, can you hear me okay?

Shweta Khajuria: Yes.

Whitney Wolfe Herd: Sorry about that. We were having challenges with the microphone. The way we think about outcomes, or KPIs—how we measure this—is really about member outcomes. What we have started to share with you today, as you saw, is that the deeper-funnel improvements are really what measure the health of this business and how it is performing for members. If you have really good top-of-funnel results but negative bottom-of-funnel results, you do not have a healthy consumer business, and this industry and this product are inherently dependent on the outcomes that we drive for our members.

The way we are thinking about 2.0 outcomes is not dissimilar to the way we think about it right now, but ultimately it is: are our members satisfied? Are they getting what they came for, which is high-quality dates with people they actually want to meet? Are those dates safe? Are they reliable? And are they converting into what they came to look for? This is precisely how you drive top of funnel, because when people come, have a good experience, go on great dates, they tell their friends, and that is the flywheel. That is everything we are focused on.

In order to arrive at that outcome, we had to really enhance the way in which people discover one another. We had to focus on quality. Quality in this instance is about helping people show up better. How do we get you to showcase yourself in a way that is actually driving curiosity from members so that you can create matches and go out on great dates? You will see this come to life in 2.0, but ultimately it is all about the outcomes and the success that our members find. Alright.

Kevin Cook: Hello, Shweta. You had a question, I think, about the tech stack and the investment required. Recognize 2025 was an investment year from a product development point of view, and we are continuing with that investment in 2026. Over the course of 2025, we built a new, modern AI-oriented engineering organization primarily in Austin, Texas, and so much of that investment is behind us, including both on product and on the platform. You will see some additional investment throughout 2026, of course. Things to recognize: there is a lot of efficiency in our engineering efforts currently, and we are benefiting substantially from the application of AI in our product development.

In terms of appreciating the level of investment required, there are some infrastructure costs based on the existing set of offerings—primarily data center costs—that we continue to maintain while at the same time we are building this cloud-native, AI-led tech stack that you have heard a lot about already. There is some duplication of costs for a portion of 2026 in that respect. Longer term, you will see a continued modest level of product development expense increase tied to revenue, just to continue to produce the sort of innovation that we are expecting, but you should see some efficiency—some operating leverage—in that line once we have got the duplicate costs taken out of the system.

Whitney Wolfe Herd: Okay. Thanks, Shweta. Thanks, Kevin.

Operator: We will now turn to Steven Zhu with UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Moore Robley: Hi. This is Moore Robley in for Steven. Thank you for taking my question. Appreciate the color on direct billing, and I was just curious if you could frame how big of a potential this could be for you all this year, given how much of a contributor this is to the EBITDA guide. I understand there are some trade-offs between efficiency and causing user friction. And then a second question: how should we expect the new product initiatives to be rolled out globally across the Bumble-affiliated apps? Additionally, do you see any opportunities with respect to international expansion? Thanks.

Kevin Cook: I will take the direct billing question. You are right. We saw in Q4 a full percentage point of gross margin expansion as a result of alternative billing. In Q4, we implemented our Apple Pay program, and what we have seen is a very, very rapid adoption by users of Apple Pay. In fact, as of today—quarter to date—we have already got more than half of our U.S. iOS payments being made through Apple Pay. It is a very cost benefit, or improvement, to gross margin. We believe it is mostly sustainable based on our understanding of the various cases and settlements to date.

There are, as you know, some changes that are occurring in that regard, so we have not built all of the long-term benefit into our model. Clearly for Q1, we are far enough into the quarter that we have great confidence in our adjusted EBITDA guide there. But as I think about the year, we have hedged that number slightly. We have not seen, by the way, any friction. When we built plans, we did think that there could be some impact on revenue. There has not been to date, and we are about three months into the program.

We have noted too that there seems to be an improvement in renewals as a consequence of using these alternative billing methods, which was somewhat unexpected but obviously welcome.

Whitney Wolfe Herd: On the other portion of the question, the back-end infrastructure—what we are calling tech 2.0—that will be applied to the entire portfolio, with the exception of BFF, because that lives on the Geneva infrastructure. As you will recall, we acquired Geneva largely due to how great their tech, their team, and that infrastructure is that they have, which was super enabled for groups and beyond one-to-one, which is going to be a huge part of our focus in 2026 and beyond. We really believe— not to go on too much of a departure—but we really believe that one of the largest opportunities for us is bringing people together in groups of people.

Really taking this beyond one-to-one is inherently how a lot of the Gen Z cohort chooses to socialize and meet and date. To put a pin in this, tech 2.0 will be rolling out to all products that are on legacy infrastructure, and will be enabled globally. That will be replacing any legacy systems. Thank you.

Operator: We will now turn to Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Eric Sheridan: Thanks so much for taking the questions. Maybe two that build on some of the answers so far and just trying to take it a little bit further. When you look at the current competitive landscape of investments against growth and investments against product that you see across the dating horizon, how are you thinking about positioning yourself competitively in a 2.0 world of where you think the biggest opportunity for both incremental growth of new users or reengagement of existing users or legacy users sits for the company when you think about that competitive landscape?

And then second question would be—and maybe it is qualitative more than quantitative at this point—how are you thinking about the incremental margin structure of the company in a fully deployed 2.0 world relative to 1.0 on the other side of the investment cycle? Thanks so much.

Whitney Wolfe Herd: Thanks so much, Eric, for the question. I will take the first part, and then I will make one comment on long-term investment strategy, and then I will kick it to Kevin for the particulars. This is really an important topic. First and foremost, let us back up and actually look at what makes Bumble Inc. so unique and sets us apart inherently from any of our competitors. The most important part of our differentiator has been core to us since I started this company in 2014, and that is our obsessive focus on women. We have become a trusted women's brand. This stands true even today on, quite frankly, somewhat outdated technology and product offerings.

We are not up to par with our product right now, but we will be, and our brand is so resonant and our brand carries us in such a way that this is a strong driver for us in 2.0. When you see the rollout of 2.0—and I know I mentioned this in the prepared remarks—I have been in every pixel, every meeting, so deep in the details, reimagining what the dream women's app would look like in 2026 to reengage women, both Gen Z and millennial alike, and Gen X, frankly, because this is a highly monetizable cohort. They are also equally looking for love and connection.

How could we reimagine this and innovate our way to be the preferred dating platform and connection platform for women? I want to reemphasize that women and the trust that we have with women, and the authentic design system of putting women first—beyond just a function of who goes first or who does not—this is inherently what sets us apart. The second thing is I am a firm believer that the future is beyond one-to-one in any sense of exclusivity. Do I believe that there is still a huge demand for intentional one-to-one dating? Absolutely. Please do not misunderstand me there.

I think we have not seen our potential through with one-to-one dating, and we are very excited about that opportunity globally. But what is really exciting is using Bumble Inc.'s brand and leveraging this brilliant new technology infrastructure to really go beyond just this small dynamic of one person seeing one person, connecting with one person—bringing people together in groups of people, whether that is a small group, a mid-sized group, or even a large group—and getting people in real life. This is such an opportunity for us, and we know that we have a right to win because of the strength and the favorability that our brand brings.

That leads to my final point, which is the number one thing that women want when it comes to dating, particularly online, is trust and safety. This has been at the core of our DNA for years. We have been a leader in the category, even passing laws to drive safer initiatives for women online, and we are going to be doubling down on this in every sense of the word. We are going to be getting out there much more broadly.

I am going to be putting myself out there for a 2.0 relaunch in a way I have never been before, and we are going to reignite this trusted, safe, women-first dating product and brand so that we can bring people together in the real world as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Kevin Cook: Hey, Eric. On the operating cost point with respect to the updated platform, the way to think about it is we are operating from these very old data centers today. When we cease reliance on the data center and have a true cloud platform, operating costs will be substantially lower. With respect to innovation, innovation will become much less expensive and more rapid. We will be able to iterate in a way that is not possible today. That should unlock—separate question, but it should unlock—some incremental monetization or revenue opportunity as well. With the modern platform and what is contemplated in terms of new product introduction, you will see a greater reliance on AI.

You will see an offset perhaps in token costs associated there, but there should be a net benefit to operating margin from our move to the modern platform.

Eric Sheridan: Great. Thank you.

Operator: We will now turn to Cory Carpenter with JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Cory Carpenter: Hey. Good to talk again. You alluded to the chapter-based structure—curious if you could elaborate on your vision there and then the role that you see the swipe playing on the 2.0 platform. And then just bigger picture, once 2.0 is out, how radical the change will users see and how quickly of a change will they see in the app once you roll it out? Thank you.

Whitney Wolfe Herd: Hey, Cory. It is great to chat again. It has been a while. Yes, let us talk about the chapter-based profile. We basically took the stance that the last decade has reduced people down to profile, and this has happened across the internet. Ultimately, dating only works when you really understand the story of someone. This is where chemistry and connection really happen. It is the intersection of someone going from just a stranger that you dismiss to someone you are genuinely interested in. As we reimagined the profile, we thought, why not bring people to life as a story? Everyone has a story to tell, and this is where people become interesting.

What you will see in this chapter-based approach will not be just your standard, flat, non-interesting profile that everybody has become so used to across platforms. This is really an opportunity to capture the essence of who you are so that you go from being Cory of whatever town you live in with whatever age you have listed and just some photo—you turn into who you truly are—and this will ignite curiosity from the people that are exposed to your story. This is also a gateway to allow people to interact more dynamically. Today, on the current Bumble app, you can either broadly swipe right or broadly swipe left, which is a no, on someone’s profile.

You are saying, “Yep, Cory is in,” or “No, Cory is out,” in one swift go, and this reduces the options for people to actually get better matches. We will be introducing more dynamic ways for somebody to express interest in your story, rather than just your profile, and this is going to drive more dynamic engagement, spark better conversation, and ultimately drive better KPIs across the board—like engagement and chances to get better conversations going. You will also see us take a much more deliberate approach to getting people offline versus just in what people refer to as dead-end chat zones.

We are really trying to chip away at member complaints like, “I have all these chats that just sit,” or “They expire,” or “These matches never went anywhere.” We are trying to get people to understand who each other are and get them out in the real world as confidently, quickly, and safely as possible. On how big of a change this will be when members start interacting with 2.0, this has been top of mind for the product team. We are going to piece-by-piece expose members in very controlled groups to different portions of the new 2.0 experience.

We are going to rigorously test every single portion of the experience, make sure that no KPIs are damaged, that monetization is strong, and that we do not accidentally hurt anything. Once we have tested and, if needed, iterated, and once we feel that this is safe, we will start to roll it out slowly in very controlled market expansion. Once we get to a certain place where we feel that everything is going in the direction we want, that is when it will start to migrate to the entire world. You can expect that to be a multi-week thing, not a multi-month thing.

As far as our confidence in getting 2.0 out the door in our projected timeline, we are very confident. Teams and systems are all in a great place, and we are very excited about this next chapter.

Kevin Cook: Awesome. Thank you.

Operator: We will now turn to Robert Coolbrith with Evercore ISI. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Robert Coolbrith: Great. Thank you very much. I just wanted to ask a follow-up on Cory’s question. As I think there was a second part there about swipe mechanic, is that still going to be a core part of the user experience? And then as you move into these more detailed, chapter-oriented profiles, two questions there: what is the strategy for getting existing users to fill those out and engage with the more fulsome profile? And secondarily, is there any trade-off or impact on paid user conversion versus user retention as you make some of those changes? Does it slow down people’s consumption of profiles, which has, I think, historically been a way that you have driven paid user conversion? Thank you.

Whitney Wolfe Herd: Thanks so much for the question. The good news is we have thought about all of these things top to bottom, left to right, for a very long time, and we have teams making sure that revenue and monetization mechanics have been thought through and that there is a do-no-harm approach to revenue and monetization with the 2.0 experience. I want you to take some consolation in that—that we are not going to just roll something out that topples our monetization strategy. We are being very modest and very conservative with that. In fact, we have set up and positioned the new profile to have new gateway opportunities for better monetization over time.

On the swipe piece, the way we are phrasing this internally is: what does life look like beyond the swipe? That does not necessarily mean this binary situation of it is either there or it is not. It is much more nuanced than that. We are testing several iterations of engaging opportunities of how you would get to a match. The swipe is the way you get to a match. If the match is the goal, the swipe is the mechanism. We are testing several mechanisms to get you to a wanted and mutual match as quickly, efficiently, and in the most compatible way as possible.

The mechanism of swiping may dynamically shift, and in certain markets, we may test with no swipe. In other markets, we may preserve the swipe. We have multi-mechanism tests that we are going to be running to make sure that we do what the members want the most, that serves our members best, that is in line with the KPIs that suggest we are getting people to the best outcomes, and, of course, that does not disrupt revenue and preserves the strength of the revenue side of the business. I hope that has answered the question.

Robert Coolbrith: That is great. Thank you very much.

Whitney Wolfe Herd: Oh, sorry—there was a second part of that: how do we get people to fill in the more robust parts of the onboarding? This has been a long game. When I came back a year ago, I knew that this is where we would be this year, but I needed a year to get to the quality transformation. What was a huge part of that quality transformation overhaul? It was trying to drive more of what we called approved members. What constitutes an approved member? Someone who has adequate information in their profile—enough intel that we have to work with to drive compatibility on the back end—enough photos, selfie verification, and, hopefully, ID verification.

We have already been planting the seed for this moment for the last several months by trying to drive people to fill in more information. We have made a ton of progress there, so it is not a cold start situation where all of a sudden we have a brand-new profile and we have no information. We are being really thoughtful in how, what, and where we ask you to fill in more information. It is not going to feel punitive, stressful, or exhausting. It is going to be dynamic and fun.

As we talked about with “b,” our AI assistant, down the road we are going to be able to get much more robust information about who you are and what you are looking for, and really understand your story through more engaging mechanisms—whether that is voice or typing—but in a conversational format like an AI product. This is going to be the long game of how we get more dynamic information. It is a step-by-step plan, but the good news is we have already made a lot of progress.

Operator: As another reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press 1 on your telephone. Ladies and gentlemen, we have no further questions, so this concludes our Q&A and today's conference call. We would like to thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.

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