Opera Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
April 25, 2024

Key Takeaways

  • Opera delivered a strong Q1 with $102 million in revenue (+17% YoY) and $25 million of adjusted EBITDA (24% margin), both exceeding prior guidance.
  • The user strategy shifted to high-value segments, notably Western and GX users, driving a 24% YoY ARPU increase to $1.34 despite declines in lower-monetization markets.
  • Search revenue reached $43 million (+14% YoY) and advertising hit $59 million (+21% YoY), as Opera leveraged in-browser, high-intent ad placements to outpace broader market growth.
  • Opera GX grew to 29.5 million users (+6.1% QoQ) with an ARPU of $3.49 (+10% YoY), fueled by over 6,000 community-built “GX Modes” and 150 million installs.
  • Following EU DMA rules, Opera saw a 63% jump in new iOS users in March and plans to boost iOS investment to capture this untapped growth.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Opera Q1 2024
00:00 / 00:00

There are 9 speakers on the call.

Operator

Welcome to the Opera Limited First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your speaker today, Matt Wolfson, Head of Investor Relations.

Operator

Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you for joining us. As usual, I have with me today are Co CEO, Song Lin and CFO, Berta Jacobsen. Before I hand the call over to Song, I'd like to remind everyone that in the conference call today, the company will be making statements about its future results and expectations, which constitute forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Such statements are based on current expectations and how we perceive the current economic environment and are inherently subject to economic, competitive and other uncertainties and contingencies beyond the control of management. You should be cautioned that these statements are not guarantees of future performance.

Speaker 1

You may refer to the Safe Harbor statement in the company's earnings release for details. Our commentary today will also include non IFRS financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA, which are different from our consolidated financial statements that are prepared and presented based on IFRS. We believe that the use of our non IFRS financial measures provides an additional tool for investors to use in evaluating ongoing operating results and trends. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for financial information prepared in accordance with IFRS. We have also posted an unaudited quarterly historic financial results of Opera on our Investor Relations website.

Speaker 1

With that, let me turn the conference call over to our Co CEO, Song Lin, who will cover our Q1 operational highlights and strategy and then Frode Jacobsen will discuss our financials and expectations going forward. Soh?

Speaker 2

Soh, thanks, Matt, and thanks to everyone joining us this morning to review our Q1 results. 2024 is already off to a strong start with revenue of $102,000,000 driven once again by organic growth, paired with cost discipline, resulting in $25,000,000 of adjusted EBITDA, representing a margin of 24%. Both revenue and EBITDA exceeded the 4th quarter guidance that we outlined on our last quarterly call. Our user growth strategy remains focused on quality over quantity. We continue to see growth of users in Western markets, GX users and other high value users globally, offset by declines in low monetization mobile users in emerging markets.

Speaker 2

Annualized ARPU was $1.34 in the 4th quarter. It's up of 24% year over year. This was primarily driven by the growth of users in high upper markets as well as continued growth of Opera GX broadly, which consistently attracts highly monetizable users across markets. In the Q4, search revenue was $43,000,000 up 14%. This category has consistently grown in the mid teens and faster than broader search market, enabled by continued focus on growing the highest value users.

Speaker 2

During the quarter, users exercised its option only extend our current search revenue partnership, a sign of the value of this relationship to both parties. In the Q1, advertising revenue was $59,000,000 growing 21% year over year and representing 58% of total revenue. Advertising revenue continues to benefit from both our owned and operated, meaning our browsers, as well as our Opera Ads business. There is a clear trend that the digital advertising industry has put more focus on high user intent events, be it the shopping journey over usual or the payment activity in association with a travel booking. Being a browser, we are best positioned to capture these interactions, giving users help choices and suggestions and the right moments.

Speaker 2

This could be in the form of a product recommendation or a relevant page link with context aided by AI to help put everything into perspective. As a result, advertising revenue within the browser experienced the fastest year over year growth since the Q2 of 2021 when advertising revenue was still rebounding post the onset of the COVID pandemic. That's a very direct example of our focus of high value users translating into financial results. As an independent browser, we are known for our continuous innovation and bringing exciting new features to our browsers. Opera 1, which we launched last year, was a great success with the introduction of our browser AI area.

Speaker 2

In addition, it came with beautiful UI design, whether it is a Tap Island innovation or stock page animations, benefiting from a robust engine, enabling complex graphical operations, new UI layout to be separated out from background processes, ensuring the most elegant browsing experience possible. We see how such features and our strong browser brand drive adoption. When users consider a new browser, we are more and more often considered and chosen. We remain encouraged by all the results of the recently implemented digital market apps in the EU. VDMA requires Apple to show a browser choice screen to iOS users in the region and report a byte for the choice screen in every EU country.

Speaker 2

Post implementation, we saw a 63% increase in new iOS users in the EU from February to March. No still from a small base and with lots of work remaining ahead to fully seize the opportunity. We are very excited about this development and will increase our iOS investments now that the playing field is more level with other key regions potentially also opening up. We are starting from a modest base, built to previous platform limitations, leading us to believe that the growth potential is substantial. Again, this reflects a general trend that people show an interest to move away from the boring system depot browser to differentiated products that are tailored for particular audience and needs.

Speaker 2

We believe that this trend will continue and even accelerate. Turning to our gaming browser offered GX. We have spoken about it repeatedly, but I think it's a good example of bringing something truly differentiated to market and euros loving it. In less than 5 years, Opera GX has reached US29.5 million dollars up 6.1% versus the 4th quarter alone. In addition to consistently growing our user base, monetization of the GX user base continues to grow, reaching $3.49 in the 4th quarter, up 10% compared to a year ago, even as its geographic footprint expands in non Western markets.

Speaker 2

GX remains our highest monetizing browser both in developed and emerging markets, while the regional differences in monetization is less than our other browsers. One of the most welcomed new features is the GX Modes, which allows users to customize almost all aspects of the browser. These modes span a wide spectrum and are very creative. 3A gaming franchises can provide a GX mode like those we just announced in association with Cyberpunk two 0.77, a very popular game with the Royal Ten Days. But also our users actively create modes, for example, the background music can react in real time to the actions and moods of videos while using the browser based on the keystrokes or move of the mouse.

Speaker 2

The options are limitless. Users can also upload their modes to the GX store and share it with fellow gamers. Since the introduction of modes a year ago, over 6,000 modes have been created and shared by our U. S. And our Motes have been installed over 150,000,000 times.

Speaker 2

That is a great testimony of how this functionality is appreciated by the gamer audience and the potential related to differentiation in the browser space, which in reality is still largely untapped. I'm going to end on the continuation evolution of our embrace of AI. We continue to roll out new generative AI features within the Opera browser. In the Q1, we announced our AI features work project, which gives us of our Opera 1 developer built access to our latest AI explorations. We drop new features as often and every few weeks, making us one of the fastest new boss in the space.

Speaker 2

One highlight is the experimental support of 1 of the 50 different local large language model variants from approximately 50 families of models, which are now natively supported to be downloaded and can run locally on the user's own computer within the browser. And in terms of speed, last week, we added support for the latest LAMA 3 model just one day after its release. This step marks the first time local large language models can be easily accessed and managed from a major browser through a building feature. The local AI models are a complementary addition to Opera's own ARIA AI service, which utilizes our new fully green energy powered AI platform in Iceland that we announced in February and is now fully operational. It is indeed an interesting time for browser with a massive user base and a brand for innovation.

Speaker 2

We are fascinated about all the changes happening around us and cannot wait to explore the path ahead. So now let me turn the call over to Frode to discuss the financials and guidance for the 2nd quarter and 2024 in more detail. So further.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Song. 2024 is off to a solid start with Q1 exceeding the guidance ranges we set just 2 months ago. Revenue grew 17% year over year, nicely ahead of the 15% midpoint growth we had guided. Net of continued FX headwinds, we saw an even stronger underlying constant currency revenue growth of 23% or 6 percentage points higher. Advertising remains our strongest growth driver, though search has also been performing ahead of the underlying market growth, clearly showing the benefit of our high ARPU user focus.

Speaker 3

In terms of costs, marketing costs came in slightly below expectations as did the other OpEx category. Salary costs came in as expected, while an investment in scaling new advertising revenue streams in our browsers drove up cost of revenue for the quarter. In total, we managed costs to stay on budget, resulting in the revenue over performance translating to adjusted EBITDA over performance as well. Tax cost of $4,600,000 was 19% of adjusted EBITDA, which was somewhat elevated mainly due to our tax assets, which reduced in USD value when local currencies weakened. Our cash generation was particularly strong in the quarter with operating cash flow reaching as much as $31,000,000 or 125 percent of adjusted EBITDA.

Speaker 3

This quarter, we made an all cash investment to establish our new AI data center, representing an unusual amount of CapEx for us, while we were still able to generate free cash flow from operations of CAD 8,000,000 or 33 percent of adjusted EBITDA. Cash generation fluctuates more than EBITDA from 1 quarter to the next. And as the year progresses, our year to date cash conversion rates will stabilize similar to what we saw last year. We paid our semi annual dividend in January, dollars 0.40 per ADS or $35,000,000 total. Of the total, dollars 25,000,000 was offset against our Star X receivable and $10,000,000 was paid in cash.

Speaker 3

The final $8,000,000 of our Star X receivable will be cleared as part of our next recurring dividend payment, which we continue to expect for July, same as last year. We remain committed to our dividend program, viewing it as the best way to return cash to shareholders without impacting our free float or trading volumes. Having said that, as we've also demonstrated several times in the past, we continuously monitor for opportunities to generate ROI for our shareholders through buybacks when conditions favor that. Yesterday, we issued our 20 F for 2023, and I just want to highlight the one estimate update as part of the annual report relating to the fair value of our 9 point 4% ownership stake in Opay. We ultimately set the year end 2023 valuation to $253,000,000 as opposed to $269,000,000 initially estimated, which led to an updated Q4 valuation gain of $90,000,000 as opposed to a gain of 106,000,000 dollars This is an estimate of an unrealized gain and you'll see that the ownership stake is carried at the new value on our balance sheet, but it had no impact on our revenue, cash or other operating metrics.

Speaker 3

In keeping with our well established tradition to guide cautiously, we translate the over performance of Q1 to a $4,000,000 lift of the low end of our full year revenue guidance, while leaving the high end as is. Our new revenue guidance becomes 4.54 to €465,000,000 which results in the midpoint increasing from 15% to 16% full year growth. In terms of adjusted EBITDA, our guided range was already quite narrow at CHF 106,000,000 to CHF 110,000,000 dollars and we retain it based on the same logic. This maintains a 24% adjusted EBITDA margin expectation for the year as a whole. Overall, as only 2 months have passed since we issued our original guidance for the year, we prefer to progress further into the year before we fully extrapolate our trajectory.

Speaker 3

For the Q2, we guide revenue of $107,000,000 to $109,000,000 or 14% to 16% year over year growth. We guide adjusted EBITDA of $22,000,000 to $25,000,000 or a 22% margin at the midpoints. That translates to OpEx pre adjusted EBITDA of $84,500,000 at the midpoints, which includes a steady increase in marketing spend, annual salary adjustments effective in April and adding just over a percentage point of cost of revenue items relative to revenue. Other OpEx items are expected at about the quarterly average of 2023. Our cost expectations for the year as a whole remain in line with our prior directional commentary, with marketing cost and cost of revenue ticking a bit up as percentage of revenue, while compensation cost and other OpEx items ticking down overall offsetting one another.

Speaker 3

All in all, we are off to a solid start of 2024 and excited to continue executing on our strategy. We'll also participate at a number of upcoming investor conferences in May, which gives Matt and I a chance to meet up with many of you in person soon as well. With that, I'll turn the call back to the operator

Operator

Our first question will come from Lance Vitanza with TD Cowen. Your line is now open.

Speaker 4

Hi, thanks everyone and congratulations on the quarter guys. A lot to go through here, but maybe we could start with the DMA in Europe. I find this very exciting and you mentioned a 63% increase in new iOS users just from February to March. Now I understand it's off of a very small base, But could you talk a little more about the opportunity there? Just how many iOS users are there in Europe?

Speaker 4

And what's your what's Opera's penetration like today? Where do we think that could realistically go over, let's say, 3 to 5 years or whatever you think the right time frame is? And then also what are the odds that we see a similar kind of DMA framework? You did talk, I think Song you talked about you do see other markets potentially embracing this kind of a framework? What are your thoughts there in terms of the U.

Speaker 4

S. At some point? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yes. So it's Soni Hau. I think I just briefly comment. It's a big topic, right? So I think, number 1, in general, we are very excited to see the trends because I think Europe, of course, is a key market and is almost the leading role in many of those, I would say, regulatory methods to make sure that there's a bit more fair playing ground.

Speaker 2

So I think we're happy that you have been taking this approach and we're even more happy that it proves to everyone that there is effect, right? Because many times we saw that there are some actions taken by government, nothing happens. And in this case, I think Apple didn't comply, which we are very happy about them as well. And result is also quite satisfactory, I would say, probably more than many people thought, right? So I think that's very encouraging.

Speaker 2

And like also I'll typically comment that like we also see a general trend that those things also happening in other markets. I guess, I mean, I'm more expert on this, but I guess we all know that just last few weeks, I think the DOJ also had a case against Apple. Well, it's all similar nature, right, in the U. S. So and then some of the things are exactly the same.

Speaker 2

So we just saw that I think there is a good chance that more likely also from Apple point of view, I guess, if there's already a great openness up in one market, my feeling is just that we have a whole premise that it's more natural also for them to open up worldwide, which then, of course, can make a real difference because only in the EU, of course, is still automated even though it's already very good start. And then I think in terms of opportunity, right, like I think we all know that on the mobile space, I think Apple has pretty much like especially if they segment the section to be, let's say, performance smartphones, which I think is also a case where DoJ had been using. And then I think Apple almost has 70% of the total market, right, which means middle to rather high end smartphones. And because of the paradox limitations that this is almost non existent for any other browser players, it's simply because Apple don't almost allow it and they don't allow a browser engine, right? So we feel that now this almost opened a new ground that presumably 70% of those performance smartphones in U.

Speaker 2

S. And I would say maybe 50%, 60% elsewhere will have chance to be accessed by us and by other browser vendors, which can be very interesting playground. And we have been able to show that Android, whatever it is relatively level built, we are able to take strong market shares and we have high hope that it can also be replicated in iOS, right? So more like for now, we are user base to start with iOS. We have 1,000,000 of users.

Speaker 2

But then, of course, compared with our total user base, which we announced to be 300,000,000, there's still bigger growth potentials. So I think even though now, even though we see major growth, there are many things like many opportunities ahead, which can have meaningful impact in our revenues in the year to come. So I think that's more like the general feelings and why we're excited, but then of course, it's even interesting to see how this develops in the next few months to come.

Speaker 4

And you did mention that there would be an increase, understandably, I would hope there would be an increase in your iOS investment spend. And I just wanted to check Frode, is that presumably that was already kind of anticipated. And so we think about the guidance that you of talked about for the budgeting and the marketing spend over the course of the over the balance of the year, I should say. There's no incremental upside to the guidance?

Speaker 3

In terms of market expense, I would say we already the Western markets, Europe, North America that is where we spend the majority of our marketing spend, correlates with the revenue and where our revenue growth is really coming from as well. So even though it still represents only 17% of our total user base, that is where we continue to investing in as part of the strategy that we've been following for the past years.

Speaker 4

Okay. And then just on the GX Browser, you called out some dilution in the monetization as GX expands in non Western markets. So I imagine that's actually a good thing despite that. But I'm wondering if you were to control for the geography, do you have a sense for what the year on year growth in monetization might have otherwise been? I think it was 10% overall, but kind of market by market, so to speak, or emerging markets versus, yeah.

Speaker 3

We typically don't go into that level of detail. But overall, I think for the company as a whole, I think we'd see an ARPU growth at about twice that. So I think that's a good indication.

Speaker 4

And just again, just directionally, is the growth kind of comparable in each market or is are you seeing monetization growth now greater or lesser in one market or the other?

Speaker 3

I think we see across the regions that we are doing well on monetization growth. And for GX in particular, I think we continue to advance on greater ad revenue drivers as it has historically been very search driven in isolation. It's still not, let's say, caught up to our other products in terms of mix between advertising and search, but we are progressing on that.

Speaker 4

Okay. Last question for me, Iceland, we talked about the economics quite a bit back in February, I think it was. And it seems like the pace of incremental CapEx investments is pretty well contained. And then we saw Meta announce another big increase in its CapEx budget. And so I'm just wondering, what are the chances that we start to see these big data center investments pop up more frequently quarter to quarter, year to year, etcetera?

Speaker 3

I don't think I would expect any cash flow surprises there, because even if we did want to expand it over time, there is significant lead time on that.

Speaker 4

Okay, thanks. I'll get back in queue.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Mark Argento with Lake Street. Your line is now open.

Speaker 5

Hey, good morning, guys. Congrats on a nice quarter. Just a couple of quick ones here. Anything to read into that kind of more accelerated timetable on the Google renewal? I know you guys had mentioned that, that they had triggered that.

Speaker 5

And then just wanted to touch on what's outstanding right now on the buyback?

Speaker 3

Frode here, I can begin. In terms of the buyback, we have fully consumed our most recent €50,000,000 buyback plan. So I think now it's a bit watch and see as we have historically always done. And sticking with the tradition that when we announce something, then we execute pretty quickly thereafter. In terms of the Google renewal, it was of course a nice gesture of them to renew it this early in the year as they had the whole year.

Speaker 3

And at least from my point of view, I think this is a nice recognition of the joint potentials that we also have with Google.

Speaker 5

That's helpful. And then just quickly back on the browser, it sounds like GX continues to perform well in North America. You get in terms of any uptake on the mobile side or on the desktop side, especially with more AI product or more AI technology rolling out, how do you see the non GX browser as potentially a growth driver for you?

Speaker 2

Yes. It's only how I just commented, right? So yes, I think I will also comment a bit that, I mean, first of all, of course, Opera 1 is the primarily AI focused development now. And also, when we are launching the latest AI feature jobs, it's always on Opera 1 and Opera 1 to better build. So I think it's a good yes, I think now it's almost becoming one of the leading major browsers, which have the fastest and all this access to all the AI technologies, which we have a product.

Speaker 2

So yes, I think especially around the key opinion leaders and many others that have already been established and definitely helpful to our growth in non GX browsers. And then even more I commented that for instance, EVA, iOS. Now one of the major features we have in broadcasting is actually the ability to support AI, which we all know that's obviously going. Bone. So I think all those provide yes, we feel that is good opportunities for us to grow.

Speaker 2

And especially if we can also capture the iOS opportunity, because as you know iOS are really by definition becoming really high segments and those users are also typically quite conscious about the features that we can provide, like it's based around AI. So I think it's a very good playing ground. And even for GX, as I just want to mention that GX also had mobile versions and it's also doing very well on iOS. And I think we're also super happy that now there's more opening ups, it means they can do more. So yes, quite positive about this and in general.

Speaker 5

Great. That's helpful. Thanks guys. Good luck the rest of the way.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Speaker 3

Hi, this is Alex on for Eric. Thanks for taking the question.

Speaker 6

Just a quick one on marketing spend. There's been a lot of discussion broadly around the industry on elevated ad prices in developed markets and sort of competitive ad auctions. Obviously, that's where you're focused on adding users. Can you talk a little bit about what you're seeing in the market and ad auctions, which digital ad channels are working well for you? How has ROAS trended in recent months?

Speaker 6

That would be really helpful. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yes, sure. It's only here, right? I commented it, but maybe comment also from a few grounds as well. So I would say high level, I feel that we are rather competitive in marketing. I think it's also part of the reason why we actually have a bit higher adjusted EBITDA on the short.

Speaker 2

I think the reason just because if you look at if you are more like a traditional ad buyer, where you typically buy the search ads or you typically buy, say, native ads, then, of course, you are pretty limited and you are always facing all of the competitions, right? That there's not so much you can do. And I think for us, it's a bit different that as a browser, especially a desktop browser, they from the starting point don't really rely heavily on those. It's just because we'll never be able to compete in that way. So we, for instance, focus a lot more on the influencers that will work with all the influencers and then we'll talk about partnerships.

Speaker 2

And then when people like it. So I think those things actually enable us to be able to acquire those in a rather efficient way and pretty much maybe not so much affected or impacted as much by those, I guess, movements in the pure ad or marketing spend space. So I think maybe that's a big sort of differentiation. However, it's almost from monetization point of view. I just want to comment that we actually see an interesting trend like that EBIT adjusted purely buying from Snapchat or whatever is almost not as exciting because we saw that people advertisers are actually exploring, they call this so called high user intent event, which means So when you go out booking the web page, when you try to buy something, you want something to be show up.

Speaker 2

So that's actually an interesting trend, which doesn't impact so much on marketing, but it actually has a benefit for us on advertising, which we're trying to talk about that now starting from this year, we saw a lot of other guys approaching us for potential corporation and we are working with some of those giants. How to make sure we can pop up ads in the right moment with high user intent, which is a very good context for browser because as a browser of course, they have good knowledge of what you guys are doing at what time. And so what kind of recommendation we can give them. So I think that's actually one of the interesting trends that we discovered on the digital advertising space, which is definitely something that's changing and we're very excited about it. So yes, so this is I'll try to report them at the same time.

Speaker 6

That's helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Thank Our next question comes from Naved Khan with B. Riley Securities. Your line is now open.

Speaker 7

Hi. Thank you a lot. So maybe just on the DMA implementation and the trends you saw, maybe you can provide some color on the existing base, if you were able to retain that? And then what are you seeing in terms of usage after people have kind of set Opera as a default versus previously maybe not being a default? Let's talk about that a little bit.

Speaker 2

Yes. It's Tommy here. I think I was just briefly commenting that. Yes, so I don't think we have to disclose the separation of our ILS results. It's not irrelevant.

Speaker 2

It's in median user range. So it's still big. But as you also commented about that for total, of course, as it's still small. But even that, right, if you saw a 60% of the increase on new users, then there are also major uplifting on the existing active user base, which we are very happy about. And then I think what we see is that yes, so and then I think you are right in the sense that allow you guys to set default browser.

Speaker 2

So first of all, we do see a significant increase of default browser results, which is actually very common like in most other platforms, we saw a bigger portion of our unit set growth and default. Now, it's possible. So the ratio is a lot higher, which we're also very happy because, yes, that has direct impact on per user office, because they simply search more and they have chance to expose the end users more. So all of those are very positive. And I think the only thing is just that we feel, of course, it's only at the beginning because now it's only EU and it's also been fragmented here because EU contains many countries.

Speaker 2

So we feel that we rather feel this is probably the pioneer of what is heading to and in some even bigger markets, right, like U. S, which we are highly anticipating. So let's see how this develops. And in any case, why this company has a growth, because it's exactly the right trend for us to move forward

Speaker 7

to. Okay. And then maybe a quick follow-up for Odai. Maybe just talk about the opportunity you're seeing for marketing spend. You came in a little bit lighter, I think, in the Q1.

Speaker 7

How should we kind of think about that going out? And do you see some new channels you can deploy add dollars into?

Speaker 3

So we had expected Q1 marketing spend to be very similar to Q4. It came in 2% below. So I think it was quite on expectation. And for the rest of the year, we continue to expect like $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 of incremental spend quarter by quarter, so keep ticking up as the year progresses. I think in terms of the channel mix, we expect to continue what we do today, which is to work with influencers and to turn keep turning more of the spend into Western markets and other high value populations, so then in particular for Opera GX and its global growth.

Speaker 7

Understood. And then for Opera GX specifically, maybe is the growth you're seeing in some of these new emerging markets, is that primarily word-of-mouth or how much of that is advertising? And how does the monetization there kind of change over time? Do you think that it's early days and it might actually improve as you become a bigger presence in a certain geo? Or does that just give us some thoughts there?

Speaker 3

Sure. I mean, in terms of word-of-mouth and distribution mix, we do benefit from a strong brand once we have started to build presence. So and that we also show a chart on in our investor presentation to sort of illustrate the size of the organic inflow of users, but it does require investment to start building a presence and in the example of GX raise awareness of that product. So we do we definitely do that. I think the second part of the question was around monetization opportunities.

Speaker 3

We are in process of expanding the monetization of Opera GX. I think the Q4 to Q1 ARPU was almost flat down a couple of percentage points something like that, which is very strong given the seasonally strong Q4. The product does benefit that the users it attracts outside Western markets are relatively more affluent than the average user in those regions. But let's say if ARPU was constant and it continues to grow internationally that of course would be a headwind, but fortunately we've been able to grow the underlying ARPU faster than the, let's say, the geo mix impact.

Speaker 7

Understood. Thanks a lot, guys. Sure.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Vicki Wei with Citi. Your line is now open.

Speaker 8

Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on the solid quarter. I've got one question. Since the announcement of adding experimental support for 150 local LMM variants from 50 families to Opera 1 browser in developer stream. Any color you could share which are the top 5 favorite models from the users you see on your Opera 1? Any indication how some of these usage of models could help on future financial growth?

Speaker 8

Or will this be more enhancement tools with limited monetization? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yes, it's Songhee Hill. So yes, I'll briefly comment, right. So first of all, I would say, I think it's more like, number 1, I would say this feature is rather a reflection of way, but also many, many ones like us, many key opinion leaders in the industry feel where the AI is heading to that it is always will be a combination of you have this very powerful large language models, which are hosted by the guys of OpenAI and the likes. But then also in combination of, I would say, local models, more like well, I think the typical example is Llama and the others. I think the reason is just because there's always a case that you want to give some help very fast.

Speaker 2

And then for privacy and other considerations, you do not want this to be uploaded to a cloud. And also there are some cost considerations among those. So I think it will always be a mix that for some very for some actions will be taken by you locally and there are certain actions which will have to be done locally. So I think that's where we are heading to and we feel that we're quite happy and proud almost to be the 1st major ones to go to that path. I think really just because we are rather independent, we don't have any more like for some other players, I understand some other considerations, right?

Speaker 2

They want to know their cloud service or whatever. But for us, we just care what is user need, right? So I think that's what's important for us. And then in terms of models, I think typical ones, Llama, of course, will always be very popular. It's one of the most powerful ones from Facebook from Meta.

Speaker 2

And then you also have even Google had gamma, right, which has done that and even Microsoft has announced some local models lately. So we're just happy that this proven to be the right trend. And also if you want, you can also try Llama 3, which is the latest model we just had. So quite proud because it's only coming out last week and now you can actually try that on GoPro and also use it very easily. Just a few steps, you don't have to do the developer or whatever.

Speaker 2

So I think that's the role we're playing and we're quite proud of it. Yes, so more like those are things that we're happy to do. It doesn't like unlike Meta and the others. We're trying to do this in a very smart way. So, this will not bring up the heavy cost and it's almost mostly upside just because essentially this makes our product more differentiated and hopefully retention will be high.

Speaker 2

And if we solve the user loyalty, we hope that they will speak to us longer. So I think it's a win win situation because at the end of the day, what's been concerning is the U. S. CPU and electricity. He's on network, which I'm sure he's happy to take and it also doesn't bring additional cost to us.

Speaker 2

So I think all those are good things, good product features and we hope to remain the leading roles in the AI field within the browser.

Speaker 8

Thank you, Thor.

Speaker 3

I can mainly chime in. I can maybe chime in from the monetization point. I think being able to take these types of AI features mainstream that can attract to us exactly the type of user profile that we monetize the best, right? And that we expect that these offline models will exist in combination with the online models like ARIA, because of the needs that require essentially updated information, access to products, access to other live things that won't be captured in an offline version. So slightly different use cases.

Speaker 8

Thank you.

Speaker 2

Okay. So if there are no other questions, I would just say that thank you all for joining us today. We have been looking forward to share this quarterly update with you. It is certainly exciting times. And as you see, we innovate and evolve quickly to seize the opportunities ahead.

Speaker 2

There will be lots to talk about as the year progresses. So stay tuned and thank you for your time.

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