Rumble Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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May 8, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Rumble Video posted 59 million MAUs in Q1, achieving an 87% retention rate from Q4—up from 60% after the 2022 midterms—and marking its 13th consecutive quarter above 40 million and seventh above 50 million MAUs.
  • Total revenue grew 34% year-over-year to CAD 23.7 million in Q1 2025, driven by higher subscription, tipping and licensing fees as well as increased cloud services monetization.
  • The advertising business secured its first brand campaigns with Netflix and has ongoing partnerships with Crypto.com and Chevron, while developing programmatic and AI tools to support future growth.
  • Rumble Cloud expanded with a partnership serving the El Salvador government and onboarding the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for storage solutions, signaling rising demand in government and sports verticals.
  • General & administrative expenses rose by CAD 7.3 million in Q1 due to one-time costs from an executive departure and related payroll taxes, weighing on margins.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Rumble Q1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

Transcript Sections

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Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Rumble Incorporated's First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Call. All participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like turn the conference over to Shannon Devine, Investor Relations for Rumble. Please go ahead.

Shannon Devine
Shannon Devine
Investor Relations at Rumble

Thank you, operator. I'm here today with Chris Pawlowski, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Rumble and Brandon Alexandroff, CFO. A press release detailing our first quarter twenty twenty five results was released today and available on the Investor Relations section of our website. Before we begin the formal presentation, I would like to remind everyone that statements made on this call may include predictions, estimates or other information that might be considered forward looking. All forward looking statements are made only as of the date of this call and should be considered in conjunction with the cautionary statements in our earnings release and the factors included in our filings with the SEC.

Shannon Devine
Shannon Devine
Investor Relations at Rumble

Future company updates will be available via press release and the company's identified social media channel. I will now turn the call over to Rumble's Founder, Chairman and CEO, Chris Pawlowski.

Chris Pavlovski
Chris Pavlovski
Founder, Chairman, & CEO at Rumble

Thanks, Shannon. Our first quarter marked the beginning of a new era where we turned the page from a U. S. Election and solidified our balance sheet with the close of our Tether transaction in February. In addition to this, the first quarter showed real signs of success, especially around Rumble Video, Rumble Ads and Rumble Cloud.

Chris Pavlovski
Chris Pavlovski
Founder, Chairman, & CEO at Rumble

With respect to the video business, I was excited to see a clear payback from our investments in the Rumble product. Our user retention in Q1 greatly exceeded the previous post midterm election cycle, something our team was laser focused on accomplishing since Q1 twenty twenty three. Specifically, we posted MAUs of $59,000,000 this quarter, which is an 87% retention from Q4. This is a massive improvement from the 60% retention we experienced in Q1 twenty twenty three after the U. S.

Chris Pavlovski
Chris Pavlovski
Founder, Chairman, & CEO at Rumble

Midterm elections back in Q4 twenty twenty two. While we still have a lot of work to do to continue to improve retention across our portfolio of applications, I am proud of how far we have come in so little time. In my mind, this was a critical temperature check for the video product. This is now our thirteenth consecutive quarter over 40,000,000 MAUs and seventh consecutive quarter exceeding 50,000,000 MAUs, further demonstrating the stability and continued growth of our core user base. In addition, I am pleased with our revenue growth of 34% compared to the same quarter last year.

Chris Pavlovski
Chris Pavlovski
Founder, Chairman, & CEO at Rumble

Now with more positive news, let's dive into the Rumble advertising business. We previously noted that we expect to see some of the artificial headwinds we faced with corporate America to turn into tailwinds with the new administration in The U. S. While it is still very early, I can now confidently say we are starting to see traction. In fact, we have some notable names and partnerships.

Chris Pavlovski
Chris Pavlovski
Founder, Chairman, & CEO at Rumble

These include a brand campaign we successfully executed with Netflix, and we are currently executing on campaigns for Crypto.com and Chevron. These campaigns include a mix of media across Rack and creators sponsorships, which validates the value of our diversified offering for larger brand advertisers. On the product side with Rack, we are also actively exploring both programmatic and AI based tools to expand and accelerate progress in this segment. While these technologies have great potential, we do expect the penetration of this segment at scale to take some time before it meaningfully contributes to our advertising business. Before I jump into cloud, I want to touch on one of the more ambitious projects Rumble is undertaking in partnership with Tether, the RumbleWallet.

Chris Pavlovski
Chris Pavlovski
Founder, Chairman, & CEO at Rumble

RumbleWallet is still in its development stage, but I'm happy to announce that we'll be aiming to bring this product to market in Q3 of this year. Additionally, we're currently in talks with major crypto exchanges to become their on and off ramp partner. The Rumble Wallet will be Rumble's gateway to monetize international markets. The development teams are also working expeditiously to localize the Rumble video product in various languages so that we can launch all international markets simultaneously with the wallet. Our management team sees this as a major growth opportunity for the company.

Chris Pavlovski
Chris Pavlovski
Founder, Chairman, & CEO at Rumble

Not only can this contribute to major MAU growth, but we also think there is an enormous potential to monetize with the wallet, either through the on off ramp exchanges and or through the creator economy. To be very clear, RumbleWallet in partnership with Tether will directly compete with Coinbase. Our goal is to become the most prominent non custodial Bitcoin and stablecoin wallet. Now with respect to Rumble Cloud, we are super proud to have announced the cloud partnership with the government of El Salvador in the first quarter. Through this partnership, we expect to refine our product offering to serve the government vertical and expand into other opportunities.

Chris Pavlovski
Chris Pavlovski
Founder, Chairman, & CEO at Rumble

It is becoming increasingly clear that there is a real appetite for the Rumble Cloud at the highest levels of government around the world. In addition, we also made further progress with the sports vertical, where we announced that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will be joining our cloud and leveraging our storage solutions. With these announcements, we continue to be energized by the potential of the cloud business. Before I conclude, I want to touch on one other strategy that might not be as noticeable as the rest. In the past, Rumble hasn't been shy to acquire businesses such as call in and locals.

Chris Pavlovski
Chris Pavlovski
Founder, Chairman, & CEO at Rumble

In addition to investing in our core three products, Rumble Video, Rumble Ads and Rumble Cloud, our management team is still very seriously focused on M and A strategy and evaluating strategic opportunities as they come. 2025 is off to a great start. The video product is sticking users in a way it couldn't after the twenty twenty two midterm elections. Cloud continues to strengthen and brands are finally starting to knock on our door. I have to say, on a personal note, I was waiting for the quarter that I could finally announce that we secured one brand advertiser.

Chris Pavlovski
Chris Pavlovski
Founder, Chairman, & CEO at Rumble

And today, I was able to name several. Now, I'll pass to Brandon Alexandrov to walk through the financials.

Brandon Alexandroff
Brandon Alexandroff
Chief Financial Officer at Rumble

Thanks, Chris. I'll now take you through our first quarter twenty twenty five financials at a very high level before turning the call over to the operator for Q and A. For the first quarter of twenty twenty five, we reported revenues of $23,700,000 an increase of CAD6 million or 34% when compared to CAD17.7 million in the first quarter of twenty twenty four, of which CAD4.6 million is attributable to higher audience monetization and $1,400,000 was attributable to higher other initiatives. The increase in audience monetization revenues was due to $3,600,000 in higher subscription revenue as well as $1,000,000 from tipping fees, licensing, platform hosting and advertising. The increase in other initiatives revenue was due to a $1,100,000 increase in advertising inventory being monetized by our publisher network and $300,000 increase in cloud services offer.

Brandon Alexandroff
Brandon Alexandroff
Chief Financial Officer at Rumble

ARPU was $0.34 for the first quarter compared to $0.39 in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four. The decrease from the fourth quarter was attributable to lower advertising revenue offset by higher subscription revenue. Cost of services decreased to $30,000,000 for the quarter compared to $31,800,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty four, primarily due to a reduction in programming and content costs of $3,000,000 offset by an increase of $1,200,000 in other cost of services including payment processor fees and costs paid to publishers. Drawing your attention to general and administrative expenses of $16,600,000 in the quarter, the $7,300,000 increase compared to the first quarter of twenty twenty four is primarily the result of two one time payroll and related events. First, a one time $4,800,000 increase in compensation costs related to the amicable departure of an executive and a director of which $3,800,000 was non cash and is a result of accelerating the vesting of options in RSUs and extending the exercise period of options and second, a one time 2,300,000 increase in payroll taxes associated with stock options exercised in relation to the tender offer stemming from the strategic investment from Tether.

Brandon Alexandroff
Brandon Alexandroff
Chief Financial Officer at Rumble

Adjusted EBITDA loss for the first quarter twenty twenty five was $22,700,000 a 14% improvement compared to a loss of $26,500,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty four. As we ramp up monetization and maintain discipline around our cost structure, we continue to expect to move materially towards adjusted EBITDA breakeven in 2025. This remains the goal today and with the recently closed capital infusion from Tether, we have the increased flexibility to further invest in initiatives that could accelerate and expand our business sooner than originally anticipated. Moving to our cash position, we ended the quarter with $301,300,000 in cash and cash equivalents, a significant increase from the $114,000,000 of cash we had at the end of twenty twenty four as a result of the Tether investment. We also held approximately $2.11 bitcoin at quarter end, all of which was purchased during the quarter and is worth approximately $21,300,000 as of noon today, 05/08/2025.

Brandon Alexandroff
Brandon Alexandroff
Chief Financial Officer at Rumble

That concludes my prepared remarks. I will now turn the call over to the operator to open up the line for questions.

Operator

And we will take our first question from Scott Divot with Wedbush. Your line is now open.

Scott Devitt
Managing Director of Equity Research at Wedbush Securities

Hey, guys. I wanted to ask a little bit about the, the Bitcoin efforts and and the and the wallet. First, the, you know, what ultimately are you trying to accomplish with the Bitcoin treasury in terms of how you think of acquiring Bitcoin, in relation to, traditional cash and where you're comfortable taking Bitcoin levels to relative to the needs to possibly have more liquidity in terms of cash? Or are you thinking of them similarly in terms of being one exchange for the other, so you can use the bitcoin to fund the business when you need it as well? I'm just a little curious about that given differences in the volatility.

Scott Devitt
Managing Director of Equity Research at Wedbush Securities

That's the first question and then I had a follow-up on the wallet.

Chris Pavlovski
Chris Pavlovski
Founder, Chairman, & CEO at Rumble

Yes. So thanks for the question. This is Chris. With respect to the treasury, board approved up to $20,000,000 of purchasing for the Bitcoin treasury. There is no further strategy outside of that that we've announced at this point right now.

Chris Pavlovski
Chris Pavlovski
Founder, Chairman, & CEO at Rumble

But this kind of dovetails into the strategy that we have with the Rumble wallet. As we launch the Rumble Wallet, we're really looking to use that as one of the tools for the creator economy where people can tip and subscribe and transact, especially in international markets to their favorite creators and creators can use these wallets as a form of payment and as a form of receiving payment etcetera. So as that becomes like a very important part of our business when we launched the wallet later this year in Q3, That's one of the strategies behind having a treasury so that we can be able to hold more and further Bitcoin with respect to that.

Scott Devitt
Managing Director of Equity Research at Wedbush Securities

Got it. But no ambitions at the moment anyway that you've discussed about like raising the ratio of bitcoin relative to the cash position beyond levels that it currently resides at?

Chris Pavlovski
Chris Pavlovski
Founder, Chairman, & CEO at Rumble

We're continuing to evaluate that, and we haven't really made any determinations or on that quite yet. But at this point right now, the only thing that we've approved at the board level is up to $20,000,000 of purchasing.

Scott Devitt
Managing Director of Equity Research at Wedbush Securities

Okay. And then on wallet, can you just walk through the go to market or, like, the use case for the user in terms of why what are the the the reasons, one, two, three, why a user ultimately will adopt the Rumble Wallet to store their crypto and utilize it for the functionality that provides versus Coinbase or others in the market and kind of how you think about that? Why where you fit in the market and why?

Chris Pavlovski
Chris Pavlovski
Founder, Chairman, & CEO at Rumble

So, one of the demands that we have on the creator side is to get paid in Bitcoin or get paid in a stable coin. And there's obviously a huge demand for that on the creator end and the creators that adopt Rumble have a huge trust factor with Rumble. So we believe that Rumble would be one of their most prominent places to hold and store with a Rumble non custodial wallet. In addition to that, there is when you start exploring these international markets, start to notice that a of the viewers will transact in crypto with rather than let's say typical pieces that you see here in North America. So we think this is a really good strategy to monetize international users as we go international.

Chris Pavlovski
Chris Pavlovski
Founder, Chairman, & CEO at Rumble

And this is going to require a lot of work and we're working on this as we speak right now and localizing using AI to help localize the entire Rumble app and the Rumble all the Rumble content and be able to go to these markets and serve these different markets. But we do believe that USB Tether with their amount of users around the world, can very easily tap into that and bring a lot of that revenue into the creator economy. So I would say like starting from the top, the demand from the creators, the demand from the is number one. Number two is the demand from the users and this would be the first platform that I know of that attacks this market in the way that we're going to do it with the wallet.

Scott Devitt
Managing Director of Equity Research at Wedbush Securities

And last question, but given this is still relatively new and you know, historically, you've had the cloud business and the content business and the overlay increasingly of monetization efforts on on the, you know, on the content business. How do you you think about, you know, Bitcoin, crypto, the wallet in terms of how integral it is to the business in coming years relative to what the operating business was prior to that?

Chris Pavlovski
Chris Pavlovski
Founder, Chairman, & CEO at Rumble

I don't believe this changes the operating business at all. I think this complements the business in its entirety. We're seeing a lot of demand from like crypto customers on cloud. We have a bunch of them We have a significant one actually testing it right now. And then in addition to that, it's a tool that creators and our viewers actually want.

Chris Pavlovski
Chris Pavlovski
Founder, Chairman, & CEO at Rumble

A of these creators desire getting tips in Bitcoin. It's a very desirable way of getting paid for creators and it's something that very great I believe will give us a real competitive advantage over YouTube. Having this on our platform is something that YouTube does not have and creators in general are very, very pro Bitcoin, especially the crowd that you find on Rumble. So we see this as like extremely complementary, not distracting at all and just just drives home with our current ethos.

Scott Devitt
Managing Director of Equity Research at Wedbush Securities

Perfect. Thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Francisco Momo with Maxim Group. Your line is open.

Francesco Marmo
Francesco Marmo
Consumer Internet Analyst at Maxim Group

Yes. Hi, everybody. Thank you for taking my question. Congratulations on the quarter. Two quick questions from me, if I may.

Francesco Marmo
Francesco Marmo
Consumer Internet Analyst at Maxim Group

First of all, on the brand partnership side, great, great news. I was wondering whether you guys could share a bit more details on the partnership, maybe the the scope, the duration, and maybe if you if you already have some initial feedback either from the brands or the users?

Chris Pavlovski
Chris Pavlovski
Founder, Chairman, & CEO at Rumble

In terms of the only one brand campaign completed and we received very positive feedback on that one brand campaign that was with Netflix And currently ongoing right now, we have Chevron and we have Crypto.com. So we're hoping to get more feedback in coming weeks and months on that. But yes, this is to me a major win. This is not something I was able to talk much about in the past. We never really had brand advertisers and all of a sudden now that's something we're talking about.

Chris Pavlovski
Chris Pavlovski
Founder, Chairman, & CEO at Rumble

So it's a huge win for Rumble. It's and it happened right after the elections, which I think says a lot. And I hope to see a lot more of that as the months progress. That's amazing. Would you look forward to hear more as the partnerships evolve? And then

Francesco Marmo
Francesco Marmo
Consumer Internet Analyst at Maxim Group

the second question on M and A, super, super high level, bit of interesting comment in your opening remarks. I was wondering whether you guys give us a sense in terms of what you're thinking, what kind of assets maybe, what kind of verticals or what kind of capabilities you would be interested to add on?

Chris Pavlovski
Chris Pavlovski
Founder, Chairman, & CEO at Rumble

I can't provide any more information other than what I already said. We're going to look at opportunities as they come, and this is a very important focus for us in the current year.

Francesco Marmo
Francesco Marmo
Consumer Internet Analyst at Maxim Group

Okay. Okay. That makes perfect sense.

Chris Pavlovski
Chris Pavlovski
Founder, Chairman, & CEO at Rumble

Great. Thank you, and congratulation again.

Francesco Marmo
Francesco Marmo
Consumer Internet Analyst at Maxim Group

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. This does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time, and have a wonderful day.

Executives
    • Shannon Devine
      Shannon Devine
      Investor Relations
    • Chris Pavlovski
      Chris Pavlovski
      Founder, Chairman, & CEO
    • Brandon Alexandroff
      Brandon Alexandroff
      Chief Financial Officer
Analysts
    • Scott Devitt
      Managing Director of Equity Research at Wedbush Securities
    • Francesco Marmo
      Consumer Internet Analyst at Maxim Group
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