Opera Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
April 28, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • 40% year-over-year revenue growth to US$143 million in Q1, well above the guided 28–31%, driven by strong advertising performance.
  • Advertising revenue jumped 63% YoY, with the e-commerce vertical growing over 100% and now accounting for two-thirds of total revenue.
  • Adjusted EBITDA reached US$32 million with a 23% margin, exceeding the high end of prior guidance and demonstrating scalable profitability.
  • Opera raised full-year 2025 guidance to DKK 567 million–582 million in revenue (20% growth at midpoint) and €135 million–140 million in adjusted EBITDA.
  • Monthly active users remained stable at 293 million while annualized ARPU grew 44% YoY, reflecting a successful focus on high-value users.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Opera Q1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Welcome to the Opera Limited First Quarter twenty twenty five 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 Wilson, Head of Investor Relations. Please begin.

Matthew Wolfson
Matthew Wolfson
VP - IR at Opera

Thank you for joining us. This morning, I am joined by our Co CEO, Song Lin and our CFO, Frode Jacobsen. Before I hand over the call to Song Lin, I would like to remind you that some of the statements that we make today regarding our business, operations and financial performance may be considered forward looking. Such statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially.

Matthew Wolfson
Matthew Wolfson
VP - IR at Opera

Please refer to the Safe Harbor statement in our earnings press release as well as our annual report Form 20 F including the risk factors. We undertake no obligation to update any forward looking statements. During this call, we will present both IFRS and non IFRS financial measures. A reconciliation of non IFRS to IFRS measures is included in today's earnings press release, which is distributed and available to the public through our Investor Relations website located at investor.opera.com. Our comments will be on year over year comparisons unless we state otherwise.

Matthew Wolfson
Matthew Wolfson
VP - IR at Opera

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

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

Sure. Thanks, Matt, and thank you to everyone for joining us today. I'm excited to share our strong fourth quarter results with you and to provide an update on our recent business activity. The accelerating business momentum we experienced in the second half of twenty twenty four continued into the first quarter of twenty twenty five. In fact, our year over year revenue growth increased from 29% in the fourth quarter to 40% in the fourth quarter, well above the 28 to 31% growth we had previously guided for the period.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

This translates to revenue of hundred and $43,000,000 a report for the fourth quarter. Once again, our outperformance relative to our previously issued guidance was primarily driven by advertising and in particular the e commerce opportunities we are focusing on. In fact, advertising revenue growth was 63% in the fourth quarter reaching million and now representing two thirds of our total revenue. Within this e commerce was the fastest growing vertical and over 100% annualized growth, which in turn offset the underlying seasonality pattern we expect to see from Q4 to Q1. Search revenue was $7,000,000 growing 8% year over year.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

The browser serves as a crucial access point for search and we are pleased to see continued growth in search revenue. By leveraging AI, we can effectively identify high user intent enabling us to optimize the click stream. This optimization allows us to deliver the best possible experience for both end users and partners, fostering the simultaneous growth of search and advertising. Revenue outperformance leads to increased profitability as demonstrated by adjusted EBITDA of US32 million dollars also well above the high end of our previously issued range. The corresponding margin was 23%, meaning that we were able to accelerate our top line growth without sacrificing the expected profit margin percentage.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

Our user base continues to be relatively stable and two ninety three million MAUs while remaining consistent with our ongoing strategy of focusing on those users with the highest value potential. As a result, our annualized ARPU grew and then outstanding 44% year over year. After significant updates to both OperaONE and GX during the fourth quarter, the product launches in the fourth quarter were improvements on the recent refresh such as the addition of Blue Sky Discord and Flex Support to the sidebar of Opera one. Even more relevant and Mobile World Congress, Opera became the first major browser to present AI agentic browsing through the browser operator. The browser operator must the first step towards broadening the role of the browser to an application that is also agentic and can perform tasks for its users.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

While working on completing a task, browser operator lets users see what's going on and any point in the process as well as what steps it took to complete it. During this process, the user remains in full control and can take over or cancel the task at any given moment. The best part is that browser operator works in the same environment as the user, the browser. And another event just ordered this month, you know, fourth live demo of browser operator, we showcased the browser operator's ability to make travel bookings and even order flowers to a particular hotel room in Lisbon. Given a handful of parameters in English, the browser found a retailer with a website in Portuguese, filled the shopping cart with specified flowers along with all relevant delivery and payment information with only the final checkout to be clicked by the user.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

We are just starting to see what is possible with an agentic browsing experience. We also brought our browser AI ARIA to Opera Mini. This makes ARIA available across our full suite of browsers for both mobile and desktop users. Now close to 300,000,000 people can enjoy the benefits of ARIA allowing even our most data conscious users to harness the power of AI in a data efficient manner. Turning to Opera GX, the browser made for gamers.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

Our GX user base was 34,000,000 stable. This is very strong and the release rate in the fourth quarter. On annual basis, we grew the GX user base by 14% with the current annualized ARPU of $3.41 slightly down from the seasonal peak of Q4. Engagement on GX remained high with continued sequential growth in the number of GX games that are published, registered users and the number of unique modes available to users. We also announced our first game called Rogue, Health of It, which is a competition where up to 25 players have to raise up a desolated and obstacle field wins for land in a high stakes battle.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

During the fourth quarter, we also released the latest member of the Opera browser family Opera L. This browser with mindfulness front end center has already received a warm welcome by the tech press with enthusiastic and in-depth coverage and we are in the process of fine tuning it ahead of increasing its marketing. Still in its first two months alone, Opera L has already been downloaded over 5,000,000 times and we are seeing very encouraging usage. Consistent with our focus on the highest value results, Opera Air is targeting users in Western markets. It is still early days, but we like what we see.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

To summarize, 2025 is off to an impressive start, scaling our business faster than we had thought possible just a few months ago. The fact that we achieved this in the face of a highly volatile macro backdrop says something about the appeal of our broadening browser portfolio and our monetization capabilities and we'll certainly do our very best to keep it up. Finally, since a lot of our conversation today might center on the volatility affecting the broader market, I saw to also mention that Opera is actually celebrating its Socas anniversary in 2025. And I've personally been part of the journey for nearly twenty three of those years. We found ourselves in the midst of some other major disruptions over that time, including the emergency of the web itself, our own pioneering of making the Internet available on mobile phones, the fall of the market telcos, the emergency of smartphones and the globalization of Internet access.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

We've dealt with changing environments and competition from companies a thousand times bigger than ourselves. All that to say that we have a strong track record of navigating a rapidly evolving landscape and finding ways to benefit from it and to contribute to innovation. So while today it's natural that we focus our ability to grow even faster than what we told you to expect last time. This will always be made possible by our internal focus of how we develop our products and platforms to set ourselves up for success in the long run. With that, let me hand the call over to Frode for additional details.

Frode Jacobsen
Frode Jacobsen
CFO at Opera

Thanks, Tom. Staying on the topic of rapid scaling with revenue coming in nearly €10,000,000 above the high end of our guidance range, we are certainly off to a solid start of the year with a 40% year over year growth rate in the quarter. That is 11 percentage points above both Q4 and the midpoint of guidance for Q1 and says something about the underlying commercial success of Opera as we enter a new period where an important geography like The U. S. Is held back by greater uncertainty among many advertisers.

Frode Jacobsen
Frode Jacobsen
CFO at Opera

Over our nearly seven years as a public company, we've scaled to become several times bigger versus where we started. And we've been careful to guide with caution, even though the underlying trend has consistently been a very positive one. While in retrospect, we could have been less conservative in terms of reflecting how headwinds could affect the first quarter, it is certainly rewarding that we are now able to raise guidance further even if we believe that these headwinds might be more pronounced in the quarters to come. The underlying success of Opera and our diverse geographic footprint both provide natural hedges. Beyond revenue, we are also very pleased that our adjusted EBITDA came in at the highest margin percentage indicated in guidance adding more than €2,000,000 on top of the high end of our EBITDA guidance range.

Frode Jacobsen
Frode Jacobsen
CFO at Opera

In terms of costs, we saw cost of revenue items scale in line with the advertising revenue overperformance. Apart from that, our OpEx items pre adjusted EBITDA landed in accordance with our prior directional commentary. This included lowering our marketing spend to €34,000,000 from €41,000,000 in the fourth quarter, which was elevated due to multiple product launches. As in recent periods, we have focused our marketing spend on those users with the highest ARPU returns. Our cash compensation cost was €18,000,000 up about €1,000,000 versus the Q4 level and more similar to the recent average quarterly cost level as expected.

Frode Jacobsen
Frode Jacobsen
CFO at Opera

Other OpEx items combined were €8,000,000 up about €05,000,000 versus the Q4 level and also as expected. Year over year, all of these cost categories increased in dollars, but reduced as a percentage of revenue as we benefit from economies of scale. Our operating cash flow was €16,000,000 in the quarter, representing 49% of adjusted EBITDA. Free cash flow from operations came in at €12,000,000 or 37% of adjusted EBITDA. As in prior years, we continue to expect fluctuations in cash conversion on a quarterly basis, which will stabilize as the year progresses towards the full year value.

Frode Jacobsen
Frode Jacobsen
CFO at Opera

For example, in this particular quarter, the fact that revenue remained unusually strong as we exited the peak shopping season of Q4 also meant that our accounts receivable did not contract as they did in Q1 last year. And the reduction in marketing costs drove a reduction in quarter end payables. But of course such effects benefit cash flow in future quarters. And so for the year as a whole, it's neutral. To conclude, Q1 marks our sixteenth consecutive quarter as a rule of 40 company and yet another quarter of meeting or exceeding our guidance.

Frode Jacobsen
Frode Jacobsen
CFO at Opera

We are proud to combine solid growth with healthy profitability and have now entered our third year as a recurring dividend paying company, which lets our shareholders directly benefit from our cash generation through a proper and meaningful yield. Since January 2023, we have distributed $2.4 of dividends per share with the next record date scheduled for July. Now turning to guidance. Given political tensions and unresolved trade disputes, we expect to remain in a volatile period for the foreseeable future. But as a lean and fast moving company with the ability to navigate growth pockets, we will do our best to play it to our strengths.

Frode Jacobsen
Frode Jacobsen
CFO at Opera

Apart from having guided cautiously as the year commenced, there are a couple other reasons why we have some natural cushions from the current volatility as it relates to e commerce and The U. S. First, while e commerce is our fastest growing vertical, we still consider The U. S. E Commerce opportunity to be mostly ahead of us.

Frode Jacobsen
Frode Jacobsen
CFO at Opera

In other words, we have less exposure than many others and believe that there is plenty of opportunity to scale this further in a more normalized environment. Second, almost all of our advertising revenue is performance based as opposed to brand advertising. That means that the payment from the advertiser is tied to measurable results, which we believe makes the business more resilient. Taken together, we believe we are in a pretty good relative position for whatever comes next. For 2025 as a whole, we now raise revenue guidance to DKK $567,000,000 to DKK $582,000,000 or 20% annual growth at the midpoint, up from DKK $555,000,000 to DKK $570,000,000.

Frode Jacobsen
Frode Jacobsen
CFO at Opera

That means we are already adding three incremental percentage points of full year growth with the former high end of guidance now representing the lower part of our revised range. Similar to before, we have based our guidance on sequential modeling with the raised estimates capturing the Q1 overperformance as well as a modest incremental uplift in what we had previously assumed for each remaining quarter of the year. As before, this results in a relatively stable trend of quarterly revenue growth measured on a two year CAGR, which captures the scale we have built in recent quarters, while also evening out our forward looking growth profile. In terms of adjusted EBITDA, we now guide 135,000,000 to €140,000,000 for the year as a whole, continuing to represent a 24 margin at the midpoint, but raised to reflect the incremental revenue. Cost wise, we then implicitly guide to a full year OpEx base pre adjusted EBITDA of €437,000,000 at the midpoints with a further amplification of the trends that we discussed last.

Frode Jacobsen
Frode Jacobsen
CFO at Opera

Our baseline expectation remains that the margin headwind from growth in cost of revenue items will be offset by margin tailwinds from economies of scale in the remainder of our cost base leading to a stable EBITDA margin on top of a rapidly scaling revenue base. We now expect cost of revenue items combined will reach 32% to 33% of revenue in 2025 scaling with our overperformance. We expect that marketing costs will grow at a year over year percentage in the high single digits with a relatively stable level from Q1 to Q2 before ticking off somewhat higher in the second half of the year. We expect both cash compensation and all other OpEx items pre adjusted EBITDA combined to grow at year over year percentage rates in the mid to high single digits. In other words, marketing compensation and the sum of the other smaller OpEx items are all expected to continue to decline as a percentage of revenue in 2025.

Frode Jacobsen
Frode Jacobsen
CFO at Opera

In line with all this, we guide Q2 revenue of 134,000,000 to €138,000,000 representing 24% growth at the midpoint and Q2 adjusted EBITDA of 30,000,000 to 32,000,000 or a 23% margin at the midpoint. This represents a lift versus previous Q2 estimates as part of our formal full year guidance. While also including a buffer for volatility from e commerce advertisers targeting U. S. Consumers.

Frode Jacobsen
Frode Jacobsen
CFO at Opera

Within the implied quarterly OpEx base of €105,000,000 at the midpoint, we expect that cost of revenue items as a percentage of revenue will be in the low 30s in the quarter just below our full year expectations. We expect marketing costs in the mid to low €30,000,000 range and thereby relatively stable versus the first quarter. And we expect cash compensation costs to increase about 1,000,000 to €2,000,000 versus the Q1 level inclusive of annual salary adjustments and potentially a weaker U. S. Dollars relative to the main currencies of our salary expense.

Frode Jacobsen
Frode Jacobsen
CFO at Opera

All other OpEx items pre adjusted EBITDA are expected to remain quite stable in totality. All in all, we are very pleased with continued success of our business and how we are taking advantage of opportunities to scale faster even in the face of macro challenges that for now might delay some of our growth potential. With that, I'll turn the call back to the operator for questions.

Operator

Thank you. We'll take our first question from Naved Khan with B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

Naved Khan
Managing Director - Equity Research at B. Riley Securities

Great. Thank you so much and congrats on the quarter and the race guide. I just have a couple of questions. Maybe one is just on the search growth during the quarter. The 8% is a slowdown from the sort of teens growth rate that we had been seeing.

Naved Khan
Managing Director - Equity Research at B. Riley Securities

Is that because you're able to funnel some of this into e commerce advertising and this is a net result of that? What's the right way to think about search for the full year? And the second question I have is on GX. ARPU declined sequentially. I get it there is seasonality, but it also seems like it is below the levels in the quarter before that.

Naved Khan
Managing Director - Equity Research at B. Riley Securities

How much of a factor is the macro in GX ARPU? Thank you.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

Yes. So it's Song Lin. I think I'll just try to answer both of the questions. So I think for Song Lin, I think basically you are right that basically what we see is that overall the whole industry is actually shifting towards a more I would say intent based targeting and advertisement and we just want to grasp that opportunity. So like even though of course, SOG is always a very, very important part of the browser revenue.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

The moment we can identify user intents, we have possibility of bringing other form of let's say advertisements with the clickstream. So I would say this partly explains why there's some more like that's probably why actually it's so fast growing over advertisements overall. And then even though such is below the double digit, it's still a nice growth that we're happy with. Yes. So like I think basically the overall trend is with what we're describing.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

But then of course in the coming quarters, I think we still have to see there will be a very strong growth of such moving forward. It's just that we will always be optimistic to see that in the chance it does more it makes more sense ROI wise let's say. And also from any other point of view to let them expose to even more ads in different form in the form and shapes, we will be very happy to do it. So and as overall macro that's probably benefit us much more than anything else. So there is a left.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

And then I think for GX it's a bit similar that first of all I think GX is a bit seasonality because Q1 is also a bit obviously than others. So there is that. And then I guess there is also a matter of now we actually also with the help of AI with the help of this high intent advertisement or whatever. We actually have many more options where we show those ads. It can potentially be in JIPS.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

But then there might also be some other place to show those ads with the same effect. And then, of course, as far as those are not showing in GX, we don't really count them as GX revenue. So that's the other part of it mechanics. But I would say overall, it's actually benefiting for Opera as a company for totality. Yes, I think that's the short answer of those two questions.

Naved Khan
Managing Director - Equity Research at B. Riley Securities

And on GES, I forgot to ask about currency. Currency played a role because the dollar is pretty strong Q1, so how should we think about that?

Frode Jacobsen
Frode Jacobsen
CFO at Opera

Yes. U. S. Dollar continues to be or provide a headwind in terms of constant currency. So our growth would have been, we estimate five to six percentage points higher on constant currency.

Frode Jacobsen
Frode Jacobsen
CFO at Opera

We see on a sequential basis, the impact is quite muted. So of course in the quarters ahead that might turn to a positive tailwind. But for now, it's still been a headwind. Thanks so much.

Operator

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Please go ahead.

Lance Vitanza
Lance Vitanza
MD & Senior Analyst at Cowen

Thanks guys. Congratulations on the strong quarter. A few questions here. The first on the e commerce growth, you mentioned that it offset the typical seasonality. I assume that's just because it's growing so quickly, right?

Lance Vitanza
Lance Vitanza
MD & Senior Analyst at Cowen

I mean, I'm getting at is that once the e commerce business reaches maturity so to speak, I assume that it too would be seasonal? Or do you think we should expect a return to the typical seasonality that we've seen at Opera in the first quarter of next year?

Frode Jacobsen
Frode Jacobsen
CFO at Opera

Helane, you're right. Okay. I'll complete. Go ahead. Maybe you can take over.

Frode Jacobsen
Frode Jacobsen
CFO at Opera

That is what we meant that the underlying growth of the e commerce opportunity has been so strong that we didn't see a seasonality factor that we would normally expect. Song, I'll hand it over to you.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

No, no. I think what Peter described is right, right? So I think overall, of course, revenue always have seasonality. It should be the case. But then, of course, whenever we saw some aspects, which are growing very fast and then that is almost a happy issue that it should grow almost all of seasonality.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

I think the only thing maybe I'll emphasize is that of course, the total e commerce market is such a huge market, right? So like, we're talking about $100,000,000,000 market. And even if we grow to be $1,000,000,000 in revenue, well only 1% of it. So I would almost say that, yes, you should always assume seasonality as always. The gross potential are so huge for the company like us, especially on the ground of e commerce.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

So I think we'll continue to focus on it and hopefully we can maintain quite aggressive growth speed in the next quarters to come.

Lance Vitanza
Lance Vitanza
MD & Senior Analyst at Cowen

Got it. Thanks. And then the overall user base, it's drifting a little bit lower. It feels like it's getting harder to round up to 300,000,000 MAUs. And I'm just wondering is there any cause for concern there?

Lance Vitanza
Lance Vitanza
MD & Senior Analyst at Cowen

If not now perhaps in the future, is there a level of total MAUs at which you don't want to be below?

Frode Jacobsen
Frode Jacobsen
CFO at Opera

Lena, I can begin. The thing is there's not a single person in the company that is measured on the MAU count itself because what's important is the byproduct by day, etcetera engagement and stuff that actually drives the revenue. So I think similar to past quarters was the movements we are seeing is typically emerging markets mobile users that are churning faster and then we are focusing our marketing spend and growth initiatives on the user base that has the highest ARPU potential. Even though that comes with the trade off of fewer users coming in, but driving a lot higher revenue. And this is why what you see in our ARPU too right that it's up so much or 45% or so in the past year.

Lance Vitanza
Lance Vitanza
MD & Senior Analyst at Cowen

Okay. And then just one last one for me. Switching gears a little bit, but there's been a lot of news flow recently around U. S. Antitrust actions affecting Alphabet and the rest of Big Tech.

Lance Vitanza
Lance Vitanza
MD & Senior Analyst at Cowen

Could you talk for a few minutes about how you see the broader ecosystem evolving? And what that could mean for Opera's businesses both on the browser side and also in ad tech?

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

Yes. It's Sonihel. Yes, could. So I'll just comment, right? So we can't really comment on particular litigation.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

I guess, I would just say that, overall, I think we have been seeing really like even without this litigation, we saw that there is some major shiftings of how Adam has to do business that they focus on this high intent click streams, which previously is only available, I guess, on certain products like such. But now with the help of AI, it's much more widely available, right? So why this is even a topic? So I would only say that my view our view is that, of course, that's really benefiting to our prior company the trends, because of course, as mentioned already our browser is becoming one of the topic, even from all those litigation or whatever, there's a lot of talks about browser, right? Like it is hotter than ever.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

We've never seen it's almost back to those days where like it's the beginning of the Internet that everybody talks about it. So to us as a browser company, of course, that's as good as it gets for the attention and focus. So I think we are also very visible to innovate both in terms of browser, but also in terms of how it can be monetized based on the user intent and click stream and relevant items, right? So that in isolation is a very positive trend. I guess those legislations is almost reflecting part of it.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

And then like also the various DOJ case or whatever, they of course asking for opening up for competition or whatever. Right around in general that overall trend is positive plus I would say that they are being opening up and then we are still as an agile company, we are coming from a small place. It means that we have many, many times growth potential and we are very positive about the directions.

Lance Vitanza
Lance Vitanza
MD & Senior Analyst at Cowen

Thank you, gentlemen.

Operator

Thank you. And our next question will be from Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Eric Sheridan
Eric Sheridan
Managing Director at Goldman Sachs

Thanks so much for taking the question. I wanted to go a little bit deeper into the e commerce opportunity. Can you give us a little bit of color of either the vertical exposure or the geographic exposure of your e commerce advertisers today? How to think about the diversification of that mix looking out over the next twelve to eighteen months? And when you talk to these advertisers and there's elements of them widening out the array of advertising we do as a platform, how do you think about some of the gating factors that you're trying to solve for with them to increase their overall budget exposure? Thank you.

Frode Jacobsen
Frode Jacobsen
CFO at Opera

Erik. I can begin to describe the e commerce opportunity. So as Sven mentioned, I think on the call, it's growing very quickly. It continues to grow at over 100% year over year rates, meaning that it's becoming a sizable part of our advertising revenue and approaching search in terms of financial importance. It's a very it's a globally distributed opportunity still.

Frode Jacobsen
Frode Jacobsen
CFO at Opera

As we talked about on this call, in particular, we think The U. S. Opportunity is a lot of it is still ahead of us. And it's also what we like in general about the growth of advertising is sort of the increased diversification of the partner base. So I think these are positive directions for the revenue mix as we also look ahead.

Eric Sheridan
Eric Sheridan
Managing Director at Goldman Sachs

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. And we'll go next to Mark Argentino from Lake Street.

Mark Argento
President & Co-Founder at Lake Street Capital Markets, LLC

Thanks. Good morning. Maybe we take another stab at that e commerce question in terms of better understanding kind of the levers there. You said in particular The U. S.

Mark Argento
President & Co-Founder at Lake Street Capital Markets, LLC

Opportunity is still fairly nascent. To actually start to develop that opportunity more, do you have to attract specific platforms, in particular, special in particular retailers or e commerce retailers? What are the levers you need to see that growth start to happen in The U. S?

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

Yes. It's only here, right? So, yes. So, I guess, for just a comment that it's still early days for us this year. I think for us, our strength is really on performance as mentioned.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

So which means any advertiser which focus more on performance, focus more on incrementality. Typically, we are actually a very good partner to work with. And again, very similar as those advertisers, which previously probably invest more in, I would say, either brand or either in some search advertising. Then I think, if you want to catch the similar amount of high user intent, I think we normally see we actually excel in those areas. So that's very good.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

And as mentioned like the whole e commerce market is huge. U. S. Is big despite of some volatility. I think there is still major potential then we are just scratching the surface of it.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

So I think those are all the areas which we focus on. And maybe I'll just mention that of course way at this stage, we choose to work with perhaps not long tail, but both of them are the bigger players. It's just because those are typically the ones that have scale and having impact. While later on the long tail retailers will probably follow along. So that's in general our strategy.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

But I would just also say that just want to mention that Opera of course many people don't realize we are from Norway. We are from a country where there's only 5,000,000 people. So like we don't really have a domestic market to start with. We're always trying to find opportunity globally in a global market. So while, yes, we are growing very fast in U.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

S. We also see big growth opportunity in Asia for instance, grow very fast in Southeast Asia. We grow fast in Japan. We grow fast hopefully in Korea. We also have very good growth in LatAm and in many other countries.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

So I think to us, we just view that this is a bigger opportunity, a major macro trend that we can take advantage on and we'll focus on it both inside U. S. But also globally.

Mark Argento
President & Co-Founder at Lake Street Capital Markets, LLC

So is it safe to say the environment in a kind of more tepid or slowing environment that we're in right now in The U. S. Is that almost more favorable for you guys and as much as the opportunity to drive more wallet share, focus more on performance in The U. S. Market?

Mark Argento
President & Co-Founder at Lake Street Capital Markets, LLC

Is it that people are taking a wait and see approach here near term?

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

Yes. So I would almost say that, I think typically in those kind of volatility environment, you probably saw those brand typically brand advertisers or those that, let's say, brand focused on the platforms, probably platform both, because those are the ones which are typically a bit more easy to be get out I would say. While I think you are right that we see that volatility environment, because we only get paid when Adam has a performance. So in such environment, I would say they almost prefer to work with us, because it's more like you only pay us when you have performance, so you don't worry about it. And at least that's what we saw in Q1 that drives such a high growth and hopefully that will enable us to continue the growth in the quarters to come.

Mark Argento
President & Co-Founder at Lake Street Capital Markets, LLC

Great. Thanks guys.

Operator

Thank you. We'll go next to Jim Callahan with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

James Callahan
James Callahan
Vice President - Equity Research at Piper Sandler Companies

Hi. Thanks for taking the question. In search, think in the past you called out a benefit from choice screens in Europe. Is there any sort of trends to note there?

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

Sure. So, yes, I would say, yes. I don't think we actually published particular European surgical growth or whatever. But yes, I think the answer is very true that if you look at if you really dive down into our performance, wherever we actually have choice between us that much, much bigger growth than what than average growth is. The only thing as I mentioned is that, of course, it's there's also some double effect that we will also able to take advantage to turn some of the social revenue into advertisement revenue, which doesn't really show up in The States properly.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

But yes, you're 100% right that Choice screen has a major help on us on the social revenue and we hope that will come too.

James Callahan
James Callahan
Vice President - Equity Research at Piper Sandler Companies

Got it. Okay. That's helpful.

James Callahan
James Callahan
Vice President - Equity Research at Piper Sandler Companies

And then second kind of similar vein on the marketing expense talking to sort of like high single digit growth year over year. Is there any sort of like channel allocation changes this year? Anything that's working well that's worth kind of calling out or talking to?

Frode Jacobsen
Frode Jacobsen
CFO at Opera

I would say as we when we look from the change from the prior Q4 into Q1, we had a spike in Q4 with the bigger releases of both Upper one and Upper GX. And then I think the sequential change was primarily around the sort of online campaigns promoting the apps through sort of clickbait campaigns, whereas the broader brand building initiatives working with content makers influencers etcetera those things are more stable quarter to quarter.

Frode Jacobsen
Frode Jacobsen
CFO at Opera

And as I guided, as we look ahead, we expect Q2 will be relatively similar before we pick up a bit quarter by quarter in the second half of the year.

James Callahan
James Callahan
Vice President - Equity Research at Piper Sandler Companies

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. At this time, we have no further questions. I'd like to turn it back over to Mr. Song Lin for any additional or closing remarks.

Lin Song
Lin Song
Co-Chief Executive Officer at Opera

Sure. So thank you all for joining us today. Q1 really showed the potential of our continued growth acceleration and we will focus our attention on the best opportunities for the times ahead. Have a good rest of the day and we look forward to reconnecting on our Q2 results.

Operator

We'd like to thank everybody for joining us on today's call. Please feel free to disconnect your line

Executives
    • Matthew Wolfson
      Matthew Wolfson
      VP - IR
    • Lin Song
      Lin Song
      Co-Chief Executive Officer
    • Frode Jacobsen
      Frode Jacobsen
      CFO
Analysts
    • Naved Khan
      Managing Director - Equity Research at B. Riley Securities
    • Lance Vitanza
      MD & Senior Analyst at Cowen
    • Eric Sheridan
      Managing Director at Goldman Sachs
    • Mark Argento
      President & Co-Founder at Lake Street Capital Markets, LLC
    • James Callahan
      Vice President - Equity Research at Piper Sandler Companies
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