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Date
Aug. 11, 2025 at 3:30 p.m. ET
Call participants
Chief Executive Officer — Chris Pavlovski
Chief Financial Officer — Brandon Alexandroff
Head of Communications — Shannon Devine
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Takeaways
Revenue-- $25.1 million in revenue for Q2 2025, up 12% year over year, driven by higher audience revenue and cloud segment initiatives.
Monthly active users (MAUs)-- Maintained over 50 million MAUs for the eighth consecutive quarter, MAUs exceeded the post-midterm election Q2 2023 level despite the departure of the platform's largest live streamer.
ARPU-- Increased to $0.42, up 24% sequentially, primarily due to growth in Rumble Premium subscriptions and licensing revenue.
Adjusted EBITDA-- Adjusted EBITDA loss improved to $20.5 million compared to a loss of $28.7 million in Q2 2024, reflecting an $8.2 million year-over-year improvement in adjusted EBITDA, largely from increased revenue and lower programming and content costs.
Cost of services-- Reduced 26% year over year to $26.5 million, mainly from a $10.1 million decline in programming and content expenses, partly offset by a $1 million increase in other costs, including publisher fees and payment processing.
Total liquidity-- Ended the quarter with $306.4 million, including $283.8 million in cash and cash equivalents and $22.6 million in Bitcoin, with Bitcoin held at fair value and marked each quarter.
Cash usage-- Utilized $17.5 million in cash and cash equivalents during the quarter, with management emphasizing continued caution but signaling a greater willingness to invest aggressively in growth due to Tether's backing.
M&A activity-- Announced a preliminary, non-binding interest to acquire Northern Data via an all-stock exchange, with Northern Data's majority owner, Tether, providing positive initial feedback; the process is subject to negotiation and completion of key terms.
Strategic partnerships-- Secured new agreements with Cumulus Media and a leading AI company involving ad and technology integration, and expanded Tether's advertising on Rumble, supporting upcoming products.
Rumble Wallet launch-- Scheduled for Q3, Rumble Wallet will enable direct Bitcoin, USDT, and Tether Gold tipping and use MoonPay for crypto on/off ramps, aiming to drive both creator acquisition and international growth.
Cloud business-- Management cited participation in active government and enterprise RFPs against major cloud vendors and noted meaningful progress in cloud revenue and partnerships, describing the business as "underappreciated" and increasingly competitive.
Summary
Rumble(RUM 3.30%) preliminarily announced its intent to acquire Northern Data, a high-performance computing and AI company, via an exchange of newly issued class A stock pending further diligence and negotiation. Executives reported sustained MAUs, ARPU increased to $0.42, up 24% sequentially, and the resilient monetization of the platform despite the loss of its top creator and the absence of an election-year traffic boost. Strategic partnerships with Cumulus Media, an AI firm, and Tether were highlighted as foundation-setting for expansion across advertising, technology, and monetization channels. A Q3 launch of the Rumble Wallet, featuring direct crypto tipping and on/off ramping via MoonPay, is positioned as a vehicle for aggressive creator acquisition and international user growth, leveraging Tether’s support for both capital and marketing. Management characterized the cloud segment as increasingly relevant, with active participation in government and enterprise RFPs alongside premier industry competitors.
CEO Pavlovski stated, Advertising will still be a very high priority here. directly addressing market concern regarding ad revenue focus after the Northern Data announcement.
CFO Alexandroff said, materially moving towards adjusted EBITDA breakeven is still important that we've spoken about before, but it's become a lesser relative priority as we evaluate investing into aggressive growth.
Management specified that much of the Rumble Wallet marketing budget will target off-platform channels and international user growth, which historically has been a minor focus. The company stated, "We're going to look very, very heavily off-platform, and I would imagine that would help bring in more creators to Rumble. We'll probably see more budget off-platform generally because it's so much larger as a TAM outside of Rumble. We'll be spending a lot outside of Rumble as well."
Industry glossary
MAU (Monthly active user): The number of unique users who engage with the platform at least once per month.
ARPU (Average revenue per user): Average revenue generated per active user over a given period, reflecting platform monetization effectiveness.
Adjusted EBITDA: Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, adjusted for non-recurring or non-cash items, used to gauge core operational profitability.
SSP (Supply side platform): Adtech platform enabling publishers to sell digital advertising inventory in automated marketplaces.
RAC (Rumble Advertising Center): Rumble's programmatic advertising marketplace, connecting advertisers with the company’s inventory and external partners.
Noncustodial wallet: A cryptocurrency wallet where the user controls the private keys, enabling direct asset ownership and self-custody, as opposed to third-party custody.
RFP (Request for proposal): A formal document soliciting bids, typically from vendors seeking large contracts—in this context, for government or enterprise cloud services.
On/off ramp: Technology and services facilitating user ability to convert between cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies.
TAM (Total addressable market): The total revenue opportunity available for a product or service, assuming full market penetration.
Full Conference Call Transcript
Chris Pavlovski: Thanks, Shannon. Let's get right to it. Many of you yesterday saw the press release regarding our intent to acquire AI company Northern Data. I'm not going to be able to discuss that potential transaction during this briefing or answer any questions in the Q&A session. I will be limiting my remarks to the following. As noted on our last earnings call, our management team is very seriously focused on M&A strategy and evaluating strategic opportunities as they come. The announcement this morning is consistent with our ongoing pursuit of these opportunities.
As described in the press release, Northern Data is a leading provider of AI and high-performance computing solutions and operates primarily through Ardent, its data center business, and Tyga, its GPU as a service business. Rumble Inc. has informed Northern Data that it is interested in pursuing a potential exchange offer in which the shareholders of Northern Data would receive newly issued class A shares of Rumble Inc. common stock in exchange for their Northern Data shares. Rumble Inc. has received positive feedback from Tether, the majority shareholder of Northern Data, with respect to the potential offer on the preliminary terms described in the press release.
It is important to note that Rumble Inc. has not made a final decision yet to launch the potential offer and still needs to complete additional work. The contemplated transaction, if pursued and completed, would be the latest step towards a shared vision between Tether and Rumble Inc. to democratize compute while providing unfettered access to infrastructure. This would be achieved by the delivery of GPU as a service and data center power, both of which would leverage Rumble Inc.'s existing high-growth cloud business. Before we move on, please note that this offer is preliminary and subject to additional work, negotiation, and finalization of key terms.
I encourage everyone to review our press release for further information, including certain risks, conditions, and uncertainties relating to the potential offer. As you can imagine, the excitement internally at Rumble Inc. is hard to hold back. Rumble Inc. is embarking on new frontiers backed by what I believe to be one of the most innovative and forward-thinking companies in the world, Tether. This is driving a completely new mandate for Rumble Inc. The second quarter was a foundational quarter for Rumble Inc. From a user perspective, we held strong at 51 million MAUs, our eighth consecutive quarter above the 50 million mark. And when compared to Google Universal Analytics Q2 2023 number, which was post-midterm elections, are noticeably up.
Most importantly, this was our first full quarter without America's and Rumble Inc.'s largest live streamer, Dan Bongino. Dan's transition to the administration speaks to his leadership. And while we're incredibly proud and supportive of his journey, the real story is this, Rumble Inc. didn't miss a beat. That speaks volumes about the depth of our creator base and the stickiness of our platform. From a monetization perspective, we delivered $25.1 million in revenue, up about 12% year over year and also up sequentially quarter over quarter. A result I'm incredibly proud of, especially as we lap the election year surge.
On our previous calls, I discussed the vibe shift in corporate America as a potential tailwind for our business, fueling our growth. Although we are still early, this critical transition is manifesting itself in unique ways. I previously mentioned some early progress with brands such as Chevron, which has committed to re-upping their campaign, and America's largest injury firm, Morgan and Morgan, onboarded in Q2. This quarter, we saw a major theme, partnerships. Just like the uphill battle of brands that has been very challenging to build up partnerships with other companies, which forced us to find growth in isolation.
Now in this new environment, we are creating an ecosystem and making meaningful progress in building out partnerships that will lay a strong foundation for growth. For the first time, I can say it feels like we have increasing momentum in this part of our business. Let me highlight a few wins. First, Cumulus Media. We've inked a strategic partnership spanning Cumulus radio stations, Westwood One, and the podcast network. This is a multipronged partnership that allows our respective sales teams to work hand in hand, unlocking new ad opportunities while bringing Cumulus premium content to Rumble Inc. Second, we've signed a broad-ranging agreement with a leading AI player from an advertising partnership to a tech integration.
This is not related to last night's announcement but continues to show how bold, ambitious, and committed we are on the AI front. We will be providing more details later in the quarter, but this is the most we can say about that at this moment. Now Tether, no partnership has more overall impact right now. In the second quarter, Tether began advertising on Rumble Inc. and is helping accelerate our most exciting upcoming launch, the Rumble Wallet. Launching in Q3, Rumble Wallet will be a noncustodial wallet used initially for tipping creators on the Rumble video platform with Bitcoin, Tether's USDT, and Tether Gold.
For those unfamiliar with noncustodial wallets, they allow you to directly own your cryptocurrencies and are not reliant on a centralized authority for access. This shared decentralized philosophy is a cornerstone of the Rumble-Tether partnership. As we launch Rumble Wallet, we plan to activate the full Rumble community and also get very aggressive with onboarding new creators. We will do this by leveraging Rumble Studio to enable promotional Rumble Wallet ad reads at scale. Think about how everyone wins here. On one side, creators use Rumble Studio to multistream to all platforms, including Rumble Inc. They then perform Rumble Wallet ad reads to generate revenue.
On the flip side, Rumble Inc., more people are streaming to Rumble Inc., more people are watching content on Rumble Inc., and Rumble Wallet is being promoted and endorsed across the Internet. As previously stated, Tether has already begun advertising in Q2 with Rumble Inc. With Rumble Wallet, we anticipate that this will grow in future quarters. As you can imagine, we believe and anticipate Rumble Wallet will ignite growth for Rumble Inc.'s video platform both domestically and internationally. As part of this launch, in keeping with our theme of partnerships, I want to discuss MoonPay. MoonPay will power all crypto on and off ramps within Rumble Wallet, enabling seamless buy, sell, and swap functionality.
MoonPay's creative agency, Otherlife, will also leverage Rumble Cloud for next-gen object storage in decentralized compute. Bottom line, partnerships are no longer a someday goal. They're here, they're expanding, and they're creating a meaningful foundation for our next phase of growth. Finally, this leads me to Rumble Cloud and AI. This has obviously been a huge focus of ours. It is clear that AI is going to change the world, and if anyone is not aggressive in getting into this space, they'll become irrelevant very quickly. We have very ambitious plans around this space, particularly how it pertains to our cloud business, which I believe to be the most underappreciated part of our business today.
To sum it up, our core business continues to demonstrate its stickiness despite coming off a monumental election year. We made significant strides with a diverse set of partnerships to set us up for future growth. We continue to expand our partnership with Tether, which is aligned with our long-term vision. And with Rumble Wallet launching soon, accelerating a new phase of growth. Since the transaction with Tether closed, our mandate has changed. YouTube has Google. CoreWeave has Microsoft. Anthropic has Amazon. And now Rumble Inc. has Tether. We've always been ambitious. But today, we're in a new position. Our mandate is growth. And unlike big tech, it will be aggressive growth while also protecting a free and open Internet.
With that, I'll turn it over to Brandon to walk through the financials.
Brandon Alexandroff: Thanks, Chris. I'll now take you through our second quarter 2025 financials at a very high level. Before turning the call over to the operator for Q&A. We reported revenues of $25.1 million, a 12% increase year over year. This growth was primarily driven by a $1.7 million increase in audience revenues and a $900,000 increase in other initiatives. The increase in audience monetization revenue is due to an increase from Rumble premium and local subscriptions licensing and tipping, offset by advertising revenue. Revenue from other initiatives grew $900,000, reflecting further traction in our cloud business. ARPU increased to 42¢, up 24% sequentially. A positive indicator of our enhanced monetization strategy attributable to higher subscription and licensing revenue.
Cost of services improved 26% year over year to $26.5 million, primarily from a $10.1 million reduction in programming and content expenses partially offset by a $1 million increase in other costs including publisher fees and payment processing. The decrease is primarily due to the expiration of various programming and content agreements. Adjusted EBITDA loss improved to $20.5 million compared to a loss of $28.7 million last year. An $8.2 million improvement primarily related to the previously mentioned increase in revenue and expiration of programming and content agreements. We ended the quarter with total liquidity of $306.4 million, including $283.8 million in cash and cash equivalents, and $22.6 million in Bitcoin holdings.
Our Bitcoin holdings are carried at fair value and remeasured each quarter. Also, as it relates to cash, we used $17.5 million of cash and cash equivalents during the quarter. We have always been cautiously ambitious with capital deployment. As Chris mentioned, today, we're in a different position. With the incredible backing from Tether and significant resources at our disposal, we believe we have the opportunity to evaluate investing in aggressive growth. That concludes my prepared remarks. Before I turn the call over to the operator, I invite you all to join Chris this afternoon at 1 p.m. Eastern Time in an exclusive post-earnings interview with Matt Quartz, to be streamed live on the Matt Kors Rumble channel.
Operator, we're now ready to open the line for questions.
Shannon Devine: Thank you very much.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you reach to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by the number two. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure to lift your handset before pressing any keys. Your first question comes from the line of Jason Helfstein from Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.
Jason Helfstein: Hey, everybody. I've got a few questions. So just maybe let me ask one at a time. So you saw a nice advertising growth in the second quarter. Can you give us an update on RAC? I get when could we see an acceleration in advertising? And this is all one question, a long one. And then, Chris, you didn't really talk that much about advertising in your prepared remarks. Should we assume or should investors assume that advertising is going to become a lower priority post the Northern Data announcement and your comments about Tether? So that's question one. And then two more follow-ups.
Chris Pavlovski: Hey, Jason. This is Chris. The answer to the latter part of your question is no. Advertising will still be a very high priority here. And in fact, we're seeing signs, a lot of signs that CPMs can start should start moving up as we go into future quarters and, in future years. But specifically to answer your question about RAC, one of the things that RAC was lacking prior to I would say, 2025, is that we didn't really have the ability to connect with the SSPs and be able to bring our advertising inventory outside of our network and be able to monetize that well on other publishing sites as well.
What we're seeing now in Q2, most specifically in Q3, is that we're seeing a lot more publisher inventory come into Interac, and we're also thinking partnerships with SSPs like PubMatic, etcetera. So there's a lot of partnership activity happening right now in the background of RAC, both on both ends of the advertising and the inventory side. So I actually see it as a very big potential growth opportunity in the coming quarters and years for us. And it's definitely something that is extremely high priority within the company.
Jason Helfstein: Okay. And then just on your comment about creators, you know, looking to onboard meaningfully more creators, I guess the question is, are you looking to find creators who are, like, not monetizing on their existing platforms? Or that you plan to offer better monetization terms or both? Like, I mean, it seems like I guess it's like where are these content creators going to come from and kind of how do you get them to join?
Chris Pavlovski: Yeah. So there's, you know, multiple different mousetraps that we can use, particularly the main mousetrap will be Rumble Studio. So we won't be asking creators to come exclusively. We'll be asking them to use Rumble Studio where they can stream multistream across multiple different platforms. And the major benefit here is that, you know, they will get paid to start promoting the Rumble wallet. And that will give them a huge incentive to use Studio and obviously, they're generating revenue. So we see that as a real opportunity to kind of grow that creator portfolio in a very meaningful way. And, obviously, this being backed by Tether makes it much easier on our side to execute.
So I see this as a big plan internally for us. We're scoping that out as we speak right now. We're looking at which creators we want to target, which creators we want to onboard. Obviously, all the Rumble creators are going to have this readily available to them. But what's really exciting is all the ones that are not on Rumble that we're going to target, and we're hearing interest that they're very interested in joining and becoming part of this. So the marketing initiative around this, both by Rumble and Tether to deploy the Rumble wallet is what's got everyone, like, super excited internally.
Jason Helfstein: Okay. And last one. Just, Brandon, on gross profit losses improvement, meaningfully in the second quarter. Are we on track for positive gross profit in the second half? And can you talk about the path to positive EBITDA and free cash flow from here? Thanks.
Brandon Alexandroff: Yeah. Hey, Jason. Yeah. So with the financial resources that we now have in place, as well as our strong partnerships and resulting cash position, materially moving towards adjusted EBITDA breakeven is still important that we've spoken about before, but it's become a lesser relative priority as we evaluate investing into aggressive growth.
Jason Helfstein: Okay. Any comments around gross profit margins? Like, rest of the year? Or just gross profit?
Brandon Alexandroff: Not planning on giving guidance around that specifically, but yes, you clearly saw an improvement this quarter as some of the large creator agreements started to expire. And so we are, you know, going to continue to evaluate our optionality going forward.
Jason Helfstein: Okay. Thanks. I'll jump back in the queue and look forward to talking to you guys at our fireside.
Operator: Your next question is from the line of Francesco Marmo from Maxim Group. Please go ahead.
Francesco Marmo: Hi, good morning everybody. Thank you for taking my question and congrats on the quarter. One twofold question first on orders monetization and then one quick follow-up. So on audience monetization, first part is MAU evolving. The way you were expecting to. I understand there's a lot of factors, political and nonpolitical, that kind of impact that and that's and that's cyclicality. But how is the evolution of MAU coming through, compared to your internal expectation? Then the second side of that question is on ARPU. That 14% growth in ARPU is impressive.
And I really appreciate the color around the growth in subscription, and I was wondering whether you guys could give us some color as of, you know, the initiatives that you guys are pursuing to get these results. Thank you.
Chris Pavlovski: Hi, Francesco. This is Chris. With respect to the MAUs, I would say we were very, me personally, I was very impressed by the MAUs number in Q2 only because when putting it against last year in an election year where politics and primaries were, you know, central focus. We don't really have that this year. And more importantly, we lost our largest creator on the platform, Dan Bongino. So to be able to put growth year over, to put 51 million, which is growth over the midterm post-midterm election Q2 number in 2023, I see that as a major win for us. Especially not having Dan Bongino on the platform.
And being in a year that doesn't have the same kind of election surge that you would see last year from primaries in the presidential election. So for me and the team, this was a very big number to accomplish with having a clean quarter without Dan. On the ARPU side, I would say, you know, one of the things that we've done really well since late last year is the execution of Rumble Premium. And you're starting to see that kind of take effect and hit on the very well.
So in order for Rumble Premium to have gone to where it is today, what had to happen is we had to start bringing in mid-rolls and more audience monetization across the platform. And as we started bringing in more audience monetization across the platform through RAC, that's also propelled Rumble Premium. So we're kind of seeing, like, a nice feedback loop there with respect to advertising and subscription. And it's really proving out to have a really good flywheel effect.
So that I would say we're very confident that in the next couple quarters and as we get to the latter half of this year, as CPMs start moving up and advertiser demand starts increasing, getting into the Q4 quarter, we'll see impact there.
Francesco Marmo: Great. Thank you very much. That was extremely clear. And then one quick follow-up on the Rumble Wallet marketing initiatives. I assume that most of the initiatives clearly are going to take place on the Rumble platform. Did you mention that you're going to collaborate with your own creators? Is that going to be kind of the main marketing approach you guys have planned?
Chris Pavlovski: So the marketing approach we have planned is definitely we're going to be using the creators on Rumble, and they'll be a big part of it. But we're definitely going to be looking off Rumble as well on the marketing approach and other platforms to use Studio and be able to promote and endorse the Rumble Wallet and push the Rumble Wallet. So we're going to look very, very heavily off-platform, and I would imagine, you know, that would help bring in more creators to Rumble, and we'll probably see more budget off-platform just generally because it's so much larger as a TAM outside of Rumble. We'll be spending a lot outside of Rumble as well.
But, yes, the Rumble creators will be a big participant in this and a huge driver for us, but we're also looking forward to tapping into audiences that we don't currently have and bringing them onto Rumble. It's really important to note that Rumble Wallet isn't just about bringing it and growing Rumble Wallet per se. It's also a mechanism in which we think will drive growth towards rumble.com, the video platform, because of the tipping, because we'll be the first platform of this size to be doing BTC tips, USDT tips. And because it will be a great advertising vehicle for creators on Rumble.
Francesco Marmo: Exactly. Thank you so much. That's such a great answer. Like, that's exactly the question I had in mind because, ultimately, you're going to have that double effect for the wallet itself, but then also marketing opportunity for the platform itself. Is that the right way of thinking of it?
Chris Pavlovski: Yeah. Absolutely. It really should drive Rumble itself. And one of the places where I think it will drive it more and where we have, like, so much market opportunity is we have no presence internationally, but this will take us very international. And I anticipate seeing a lot of growth internationally once we launch this too. It's something that we've never really focused on before, but we have a really sizable audience here in the United States. But we plan to really kind of have a presence outside of the States with the Rumble Wallet. And that backs into rumble.com more than anything. And that's what kind of gets us all really excited.
We're hoping for MAU growth internationally, we're hoping for just a ton more usage of Rumble across international and domestic markets, because the Rumble Wallet will be the catalyst for that.
Francesco Marmo: Great. Thank you very much.
Operator: Your next question is from the line of Jason Helfstein from Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.
Jason Helfstein: I guess I figured I'd ask a follow-up. Chris, just to your point that you think your current cloud business is kind of underappreciated, under-recognized, is there a way to size like, how big again, not from a revenue standpoint, maybe it's just some kind of technical capacity standpoint, how big your cloud capacity is today versus that of Northern Data?
Chris Pavlovski: Yeah. I'm not going to get into too much with respect to Northern Data, but what I can say about the current Rumble Cloud is we're seeing quite a lot of interest, and this is coming from not just governments and countries. We're also starting to see interest from large corporate entities. We've now entered into RFP processes with multiple governments and corporate entities. And what we're noticing is that we're in groups that include Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Rumble Inc., and it's just like the four of us and maybe another player. We're starting to see that we're in these peer groups, and we're starting to compete against them. And we're talking very, very large opportunities.
And, you know, just like we did with El Salvador, we're starting to work with them. We anticipate that this could snowball into becoming something much larger in the next year or two. And as you know, these RFP processes are long, especially when it comes to government. It takes time. We're in the middle of a lot of these, and that's got us really, really excited. And I think it's something that the market doesn't quite see what's happening in the background. But we're in the middle of some pretty interesting RFPs.
Jason Helfstein: Okay. Appreciate the color. Thank you.
Operator: There are no further questions at this time. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you very much for your participation. You may now disconnect.