OPRA

Welcome to the Opera Limited first quarter 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode, after the speaker's remark, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during this period, you would need to press star one on your telephone keypad. If you want to remove yourself from the queue, please press star two. Please be advised that today's call is being recorded. Lastly, if you should need operator's assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to turn the call over to your speaker today, Matt Wolfson, Head of Investor Relations. Please begin.

Thank you for joining us. This morning, I am joined by our 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 as a result of various factors, including those set forth in today's earnings press release and in our most recent annual report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. We undertake no obligations to update any forward-looking statement. During this call, we will present both IFRS and non-IFRS financial measures. A reconciliation of IFRS to non-IFRS measures is included in today's earnings press release.

The earnings press release and accompanying investor presentation are available on our investor relations website at investor.opera.com. Our comments will be on a year-over-year comparison unless we state otherwise. With that, let me turn the call over to our CEO, Song Lin, who will cover our first quarter operational highlights and strategy. Frode Jacobsen will discuss the details of our financials and expectations for the second quarter and full year. Song?

Sure. Thank you, Matt, and good day, everyone. It's been less than two months since we reported our fourth quarter 2025 results with the trajectory for 2026 well ahead of internal expectations. Today, we announce that we surpassed even those recent forecasts. Q1 revenue exceeded the high end of our guidance range by $4 million, and adjusted EBITDA exceeded the high end of our guidance range by $2 million. That translated to year-over-year revenue growth of 23% to $176 million, with $42 million adjusted EBITDA or a 24% margin. It is also worth noting that revenue growth was comparable across advertising and query revenue, 24% and 23% respectively, both contributing to an excellent starting position for the remainder of the year. On the advertising side, first quarter revenue was a new all-time high of $117 million.

Our momentum and underlying growth was strong enough to more than offset seasonality. Our advertising partners run performance-based campaigns. We would not see this level of growth if our partners were not also experiencing success. As a result, we are able to continue increasing our share of wallet with a continued focus on scaling our e-commerce partnerships. As an example, just two weeks ago, we were awarded Affiliate of the Year from AliExpress. In late 2025, we received a similar recognition from Shopee, another key partner. We are humbled by the appreciation shown. We operate Opera Ads with their continued success as our North Star. Our partners appreciate the three core pillars of Opera Ads.

First is a unified media technology ecosystem that combines our own ad inventory augmented with the wider programmatic landscape and advanced targeting algorithms to deliver hyper relevant placements and the precise moment of user intent. Second is consistent execution that delivers daily volume without sacrificing quality. Finally, a deep collaborative alignment that fosters a transparent, closely aligned working relationship with our partners. Working with such global partners will translate demonstrated performance in active markets to continued regional expansion. While e-commerce opportunities will only increase as the year progresses, I'm also excited about taking our learnings from that vertical and applying it more broadly. For example, as we enter the travel-heavy second and third quarters, we see a clear potential to establish Opera Ads as a source of well-targeted audiences for the travel industry.

All in all, there is no shortage of opportunity, and it's all about execution to deliver the best results for our partners. Within the 23% growth of query revenue, such revenue growth continued expanding and reached 14% in the quarter. A level we have not seen since 2024. The remainder of query growth was driven by non-search query revenue, which continues to be multiple times larger than the year ago quarter, with underlying growth also offsetting seasonality. In total, query revenue was $58 million in the first quarter and representing 33% of our revenue. As we've discussed before, the AI age comes with completely new querying monetization potentials for our browsers, both from conversation with the native Opera AI assistant and as it relates to the back-end understanding of a user's intentions, presenting relevant product and services natively in the user interface.

The browser is unlike any other app. It's a gateway to almost every service available online. As the browser gets smarter, the user can more efficiently act on their intentions. For example, if the user starts formulating a query in a URL bar, the browser can understand the intention and expand the interface to present relevant destinations. If a user was interrupted during a session, the browser can organize that history and enable a seamless continuation later on. In fact, AI unlocks both advertising and query revenue opportunities for us. On the advertising side, deep learning and agentic AI are leading to greater optimization and better targeting of user intent, resulting in greater conversion rates for our advertising partners. On the query side, we are witnessing an evolution in search. Historically, search has been limited to the keywords users are searching for.

Over the past few years, we have seen it transform from simple keywords to more complex and longer question-based queries, and more recently, to chat conversations. As a browser with control of the URL bar and omnibox, we are well-positioned as an entry node to search and AI chats. As these more complex searches and conversations begin to be monetized, we are in an excellent position to benefit. Turning to our products and recent innovations, staying on the key topic of AI potentials for the browser. We recently introduced Browser Connector, available both in our subscription-based agentic browser, Opera Neon, and in our mainstream browsers, Opera One and GX.

Browser Connector allows users to plug their favorite AI tools directly into their live browser sessions via a protocol known as the MCP, providing the AI platform of their choice with full real-time context of open tabs and active content. Think of this as bring your own AI. The MCP protocol is an open standard that enables a secure connection between a browser host and AI models, giving users the freedom to choose their preferred combination of browser and AI backends. With Browser Connector, the user no longer needs to act as the personal secretary of their own online AI tools, copy and pasting links and context. Instead, the browser enables the AI of choice to access and read page content, understand open tabs, and even take screenshots to analyze images or graphs. Beyond the technical upgrade, Browser Connector reinforces Opera's long-standing advocacy for user choice over ecosystem locking.

Product innovation translates to user appreciation and increased usage of our browsers, which again translates to revenue tailwinds. Looking at key Western markets, we see users who engage with AI within our browsers spend over an hour more per day in the browser and even perform 50% more traditional searches than comparable users who are not yet engaging AI. All of which directly contributes to ARPU growth. Our broad approach to monetization puts us in a differentiated position as most companies that are monetizing AI today are either chip and compute providers or those relying exclusively on subscriptions and usage-based models. In terms of our user base, we added 4 million users during the first quarter, bringing our total monthly average users to 288 million.

We added 400,000 Western users on top of the seasonally strong first quarter, and we benefited from both continued Android adoption and PC platform growth, and one million new Opera GX users globally. In total, our annualized ARPU was $2.43, a 25% increase year-over-year. The final topic I would like to discuss is MiniPay, our non-custodial stablecoin wallet with deep ecosystem roots. MiniPay is the leading stablecoin wallet in Africa, appreciated for its technical ease and seamless integrations, with great opportunities and real-life benefits, with access to stablecoins, both within emerging markets and as a global payment framework. Just last week, we announced a $1 million incentive for local developers of Mini Apps that take advantage of the transaction opportunities of MiniPay. We are using our on-the-ground presence in Africa and Latin America to provide in-person support.

This supports the continued expansion of Mini Apps available in MiniPay, covering a broad range of services from finance, shopping, entertainment, and utility tools. MiniPay has now activated over 15 million wallets and processed over 430 million total transactions. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Frode Jacobsen, our CFO, to discuss our financial results, guidance, and capital allocation in greater detail. Frode?

Thanks, Song. As Song Lin mentioned, we are very pleased with the start of 2026 and the trajectory we are on now well into the second quarter. Yet again, we overperformed our estimates and delivered an incremental $4 million of revenue on top of the guidance range, with over 50% conversion to incremental adjusted EBITDA. This level of outperformance is particularly impressive in the face of seasonal headwinds following the holiday-heavy fourth quarter. Instead of a seasonal dip, our underlying commercial momentum overpowered those trends and drove sequential advertising revenue higher in the first quarter. Q1 also marks our 20th consecutive quarter as a Rule of 40 company, and we are well on track for 2026 to be the 6th consecutive year where we meet that high bar.

In fact, our average annual revenue growth, or CAGR, stands at 21% over the past 10-year period, a feat few public companies achieve, even more so for companies that have been around for over 30 years, like Opera. In these times, filled with innovation and opportunity, we continue to benefit from the resilience and agility of our business model, disciplined execution, and our consistency in pairing rapid and organic growth with healthy profitability. Our outperformance continues to be broad-based with total revenue growth of 23%, as opposed to the midpoint guidance of 19% growth. Within our total quarterly revenue of $176 million, advertising was $117 million or 67% of the total, and query revenue was $58 million.

Advertising revenue grew at 24%, the evolution of our search business into a broader query approach resulted in query revenue growth of 23%, a level we haven't seen since the post-COVID rebound in 2021, as we better monetize high intent user actions across the browser interface. In terms of costs, I want to highlight the fact that we scale the business beyond expectations while also improving gross margin by about 60 basis points versus the prior quarter. Cost of revenue items combined represented 36.8% of revenue, down from the 37.4% we saw in Q4, according to margin expectations from our prior costs commentary. As expected, cash-based compensation ticked slightly down from the Q4 level to $21.5 million.

Marketing spend came in just below what we had built into guidance at $38.5 million, while the [total spend] of all other OpEx items, pre-adjusted EBITDA came in at $9 million or just above expectations, still resulting in a slight net benefit. All in all, our continued cost discipline underpinned our adjusted EBITDA overperformance, coming in at $42 million for the quarter or a 24% margin. Operating cash flow was also $42 million in the quarter, representing a 100% conversion of adjusted EBITDA. A strong net collection more than offset the limited tax payments we incurred. Free cash flow from operations was $35.5 million or 85% of adjusted EBITDA. We continue to expect fluctuations quarter-to-quarter due to the size and timing of tax and bonus payments, as well as other working capital movements.

Though I will reiterate my statement from last quarter that the full year conversion ratio of EBITDA to these cash flow metrics, as achieved in 2025, continue to be reasonable expectations also for 2026. Turning to capital allocation and return of cash to our shareholders, where we combine a recurring dividend program of $0.80 per year with our recently launched $300 million buyback program. The dividend is paid out semiannually with $0.40 or $36 million paid out in January. In terms of the buyback, we repurchased 1.14 million shares in March for a total spend of $17 million, pro rata distributed between public buybacks and repurchases from our majority shareholder at the same price per share, $14.88. This reduced the total number of shares outstanding as of 31st March to 89.55 million.

You'll see $12.8 million of the spend in our Q1 cash flow, with the settlement of the remaining $4.1 million taking place in Q2. Turning to our guidance. In terms of our full year outlook, our solid start to the year allows us to raise revenue guidance to $727 million-$740 million, or 18%-20% growth for the year as a whole. With that, we are raising the low end of guidance by $7 million and the high end by $5 million from the range we provided just two months ago, adding about 1 percentage point of growth to our expectations. In line with our guidance logic, this range continues to allow for later upside potential in the second half of the year.

We let just over 40% of the incremental revenue flow through to our adjusted EBITDA guidance and update our annual range to become $170 million-$174 million or a 23.4% margin at the midpoints. That means that our prior high end of the range has now become the midpoint. For the second quarter, we guide revenue of $176 million-$178 million or 23%-25% growth. The quarter is already well underway, and both our operational and commercial performance supports the nice step-up versus prior implicit expectations. We guide adjusted EBITDA of $40 million-$42 million, representing a 23.2% margin and 28% adjusted EBITDA growth at the midpoints.

In terms of costs, we then implicitly guide to a full-year OpEx base, pre-adjusted EBITDA of $562 million at the midpoints, of which $136 million in Q2. We continue to expect cost of revenue items combined to represent about 38% of revenue for the year, with mid-year coming in around the annual average before we go slightly higher in Q4 with its seasonal advertising peak. As discussed before, Opera Ads has a different gross margin profile compared to our O&O revenue streams, resulting in a greater cost of revenue component in our overall results, even as our Opera Ads gross margin is ticking up. Apart from the business mix effect, we continue to see the Opera Ads gross margin expanding as the platform scales and our optimization algorithms evolve, in addition to benefiting from low marketing costs and limited OpEx base.

Cash-based compensation expense is expected to grow just above 10% for the year as a whole, which is slightly lower than our earlier expectation of growth in the low teens. We expect costs to increase modestly in Q2 with annual salary adjustments effective as of April. Post Q2, compensation cost is expected to show smaller movements quarter-to-quarter. Full-year marketing cost remains expected to grow by about 10% from the 2025 level, with Q2 costs quite similar to Q1, followed by a slightly higher spend level in the later quarters. Cash-based compensation and marketing will then decline from representing 36% of revenue in 2025 to representing about 33% of revenue in 2026.

For all other OpEx items, pre-adjusted EBITDA, we increase our full year estimate to represent just over 20% growth year-over-year, up from our earlier expectation at about 15% growth. This is explained by hosting costs and the effects of our rapid business scaling, increased AI usage, and pricing impact of constrained supply, while other items included in the total remain stable overall. We expect the cost category to increase quite linearly as the year progresses. In sum, while we continue to focus on building scale over accelerating margin expansion, as we refresh our estimates, we see a slight further widening of the gap between revenue and cost growth, allowing us to lift our adjusted EBITDA margin by about 15 basis points at the midpoints of full-year guidance two months after providing the first color on 2026.

In light of our performance and outlook, we remain very pleased with having expanded shareholder returns beyond our recurring dividend program to also include our new buyback program. We repurchased 1.3% of shares outstanding in the program's first month at an attractive $14.88 per share, accelerating ROI upside for our shareholders. While it's only been a couple of months since our last release, we've been excited to share today's updates with you and look forward to keeping you posted on our progress. With that, I'll turn the call back over to the operator for your questions.

Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star two. When posing your question, we ask that you please pick up your handset for optimal sound quality. We'll take our first question from Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Thanks so much for taking the question. Wanted to know if we could go a little bit deeper into the learnings you have to date with respect to the adoption of AI tools across your user base. When you look longer term, what do you see as the opportunity set, either at the browser level or maybe even for the rise of agentic commerce behavior by users that could bode well for both user growth as well as monetization opportunities? Thanks so much.

Sure. Yeah, yeah. It's Song Lin here. I'll try to answer. Yeah, high-level I guess, number one, I would almost say that I think the AI, more like we are always the advocate for AI, and that's also why we almost try to embed it in many of the aspects within the browser anyway. As we also talk about in the scripts that we also have it, for instance, from the URL bar, omnibar, to of course also the Opera AI assistant that the user can engage from sidebar. Further on to allow user to use AI with their own subscription, bring your own AI. That's consistent with our offerings.

I would almost say that number one, in general, we see that once we provide it in the right context, in the right moment, users are very happy about it. That's why I think we also talk about it briefly in the scripts, that whoever use AI, we saw that they almost spend one hour more in say, desktop browsers, which is already a very long hour spend compared with any other thing. They also typically, you know, search almost one time more, right, than the others. Search or engage with AI in different ways. I think in general we are very positive about it because those basically transfer to better opportunity to capture user intents and also the monetization opportunities as follow on.

I think that's in general why we see that's why it's beneficial. On the other end though, I think maybe the only thing we'll just say that we should of course never forget, that in the end of the day, user is the first, right? You know, as Opera, for instance, we never try to push user to something without may not be what they want. I think number one priority should always be that you give what user want. Also, it's also equally important to be aware that of course it's not all about efficiency, for instance, because many, you know, for many of the times it's user just want to kill time. They just want to enjoy what they do, and we should also respect that.

I think that's what also we see that people in the longer term, whoever win will be who, you know, respect user behavior, give them the AI and the right context and right time, helping them use their own stuff instead of giving some, you know, something with the locked-in ecosystem, whatever that is. I think that's what we see at least a major growth of us, both for the use of all those AI features, but also for how we actually see quite a good growth of user base. As you can see that even though Q1 is actually traditionally almost a bit lower season, it's actually, you know, we have been doing very well on the user base wise.

We're actually almost see one of the highest growth of MAUs on desktop for instance, likely as a result. That's, yeah, more like that's some high-level feelings.

We'll move next to Naved Khan with B. Riley Securities. Your line is open.

Great. Thank you very much. Two questions from me. One is, you know, this metric you shared about users who engage with AI spend an hour more per day, and you see 50% increase in searches. I'm curious what percentage of your base is engaging with the AI chat feature that you currently have, and what are the levers that you control to drive this higher? The second question I have is just on the Google renewal that's coming up at the end of the year. How are those conversations going? Are you confident about renewing it or just give us a thought there.

Yeah, it's Song Lin here. I think I also try to answer it. I capture the last question also. I think I'll just revolve on that. Yeah, I think for Google, I think we also talk about, I believe two months ago, you know, Q4 release, that we are, you know, well along. We are very happy to be one of the first to, you know, sign with Google. We renewed the, let's say, agreement for the year, due to the DOJ requirement, right? With them in the U.S. Very happy. We are very happy. I think they're also very happy that we are one of the first partners to do that. Yeah, moving forward, we don't expect any surprises. We have very good dialogue with them.

Hopefully, there will be also some, you know, interesting openings of new potentials that we can cooperate with Google, both on the search, but potentially on the AI side and a few other side. For the renewal, I think we typically have standard process of renewing with them by more like towards the second half of the year. I think we'll continue the right path on that trend, and we'll provide update when such is available. For now, I think the cooperation is fantastic. As you also see that we even have one of the highest growth of traditional search queries ever. I think both sides are very happy and hopefully we can expand that partnership moving forward.

I guess also super quickly comment a bit on your questions on AI, right. I guess in short, for now we have not disclosed the exact AI usage percent. I think reason just because now there are so many touch point and entry point of AI, that it's almost a bit hard for us to define a particular entry, where, you know, what count as a user use AI or not. You know, because that can happen both from omnibar whenever there is a suggestion, which is of course we are always updating. That's also why you see a good growth of query revenues. Most of them are actually resulted of the many of the AI features that we are trying to promote.

Of course, it's also possible for user to both access AI with from the sidebar with Opera AI. With the latest introduced of browse with your own AI, you can actually control the browser by Browser Connector from your ChatGPT subscription inside the browser directly, or from your Claude and another chatbots directly from a webpage. So I guess it's become, it will becoming harder for us to define particularly what content AI usage because I think that will be almost prolific. That, almost the majority, I think we do expect majority of the interactions within the browser will encounter AI in one form or another. I think our goal basically just to make sure that we are the browser of choice, we are the standalone player.

We give them all the options available, and hopefully, you know, if you, for instance, if you have a Claude subscription, our goal is just to make sure that Opera is the best go-to place for you to use. Same that if you have ChatGPT, you know, subscription, but you also want to use Gemini sometimes, we should also be the go-to choice. I think that's the, that's our aim, and I think we are actually moving closer to that goal.

Thank you.

We'll move next to Ron Josey with Citi. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to ask a little bit more on search, specifically with query growth accelerating in the quarter. Frode, I think you talked about the evolution as search evolves into a broader query approach overall. Talk to us about the evolution as search is, we see accelerating query growth and specifically, you know, the tie between, call it, the new browser AI tools and engagement as search revenues growth and query grow, in fact accelerate. Any insights on the evolution here would be super helpful. Then bigger picture, understood with guidance here, any insights on the broader advertising environment would be very helpful. Are there any verticals to call out one way or the other? Thank you.

Yeah. Hi, Ron. Frode here. I'll start. I think in the first quarter, we saw the year-over-year search, like pure search revenue, was growing at about 14% year-over-year, which was very strong. Up from the growth that we saw in all the quarters in 2025. On top of that, we have the broadening of the category, including also the non-search query revenues that drove it up to 23% total overall. I think we look at that category in an enthusiastic way because as these new tools evolve and as people can engage with the browser in new ways, we have more opportunities to direct people to the things they are looking for in native ways in the browser.

Frode, to that, as engagement ramps, you talked about more opportunity to direct, and then we heard in the call earlier, I think, Song Lin, you talked about broader engagement for those who have adopted AI tools. I know we've talked about that on this Q&A section. Any insights on adoption of AI, of AI tools to the browser and the user base overall?

Yeah. Yeah, it's Song Lin here, Ron. I guess I'll just complement a bit on what Frode is saying that I mean, as I said, I think now as the way we see it's becoming really proliferating that, you know, like for instance, if you just use Opera browser, you can go to ChatGPT, by just using the Browser Connector, you can basically from there to control the Opera browser. Same way that let's say if you type a regular URL, we will actually use AI to say that, "Oh, maybe this is Amazon tools you product that you would like." Right? With a pop-up, you either will click on it, they will go to it, and same as Booking.com is also a positive example that now it actually works that way.

I would almost say that I think now we're basically coming to a stage where you could arguably say that majority of the user sessions are probably have AI involved in one form or the other. I think we'll see that that will be the future moving forward. I think the key is just as we also maybe mentioned a bit earlier that I think the key is just maybe finding the right, you know, design and combination that it should really facilitate user's browsing behaviors. I think maybe that's also something which people forgotten that in the end of day, it's always, you know, consumer first. It's always end user first. It's very important that it's something facilitating.

For instance, that's also why we provide this Browser Connector instead of pushing them to force them to use some particular Opera AI tool, but actually they can use whatever existing AI tool they like. I think that's a very important philosophy that we believe in. We actually feel strongly that that should be the direction of what a browser should do, right? As an independent player, user can choose whatever, you know, AI they like. It can be from existing big players. It can be even from open source if they choose. We just have to make sure that we provide this, you know, Browser Connector in a MCP protocol that people can access as well as user grade, and then they can use whatever to control it.

I think we are basically in the best position to provide it. Maybe perhaps that's also why I would almost say that, you know, so far for the browser, you know, come up by the, by the particular AI providers, I don't think there's too much acceptance of it, but rather we actually see very nice growth. Actually we have the higher growth of our users, say for desktop that we have not seen for years. I think we are very encouraged by that.

Great. Thank you very much.

We'll take our next question from Jim Callahan with Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

Hi. Thanks for taking the question. Interested on the comments on travel, rolling out the sort of performance-based product there. Would you just be curious if how much of the pieces are in place to kind of roll that out? Is that something that's kind of already in the model today?

Yeah. I'll go in terms of the model. Our guidance is always quite bottom-up estimate, where we look at what we have today, and then we rather leave upside for things to scale better than what we build into guidance in the later parts of the year. Of course, travel it's a big opportunity. It's very. We can use our lessons from the e-commerce opportunity to scale into this vertical. It's also interesting seasonality-wise, but it has a different annual profile with sort of mid-year travels, et cetera, whereas e-commerce and shopping tends to be or is definitely strongest at the around year-end and the holiday season.

Okay. got it. That is helpful. Anything in terms of guidance for, I don't know, either 2Q or a full year, just relative growth between query and advertising?

I will be a bit careful to break it down into detail because it evolves as we evolve the opportunity, especially the non-search part of query is relatively new. Search as a whole is also quite market-based on top of how we move our user base. On the advertising side, of course, we have a baseline, and we have a guidance, and we also have opportunities that you just touched on. We, for now, I would say Q1 was very strong on the query overall.

I think we don't need to continue a year-over-year growth of over 20% on a query basis to meet our guidance, but it's a bit too soon to discuss specifics for the later parts of the year.

Great. Thank you.

As a reminder, to ask question, that is star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star two. We'll move next to Jacob Stephan with Lake Street Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Congrats on a nice quarter. Maybe just to start off for me, I'll ask on the MCP. This kind of positions you as kind of the central call point for several AI tools. Do you think that this kind of risks cannibalizing any of the Opera Neon subscriptions or economics, or is this kind of a complimentary funnel? Curious your thoughts here?

Yeah, that's a very good question. It's a very relevant question, right? I guess, yes, we do have a choice, right? Like, any given AI feature, which are quite interesting, we do have a choice of do we only give it to Opera Neon, and then hopefully we'll push more for subscription revenue. Do I think that it's more relevant for the broader audience, and as a result, hopefully also attract more users in the generic Opera One or GX product, right? I think basically, as also demonstrated by our numbers, I think we are in a bit slightly luxurious situation that we are not burning money like all those base model companies. We are quite profitable, and we have good revenue.

You know, because our revenue model is because of advertisement, right, we do not really have to rely on fixed subscription revenue. Be aware that typically that subscription revenue is also, if you are a traditional AI company, that subscription revenue also coupled heavily with burning token costs, which is almost many times not sustainable. I would almost say that, you know, for in this particular case you asked is a bit easy, simple decision because we see it, we saw that there's a great user feedback, people liked it. We calculated that it's economically much better to put it outside rather than just because remember, this is bring your own AI, right? We don't even need to use our own tokens, this is tokens from ChatGPT or whatever based on what you already have.

We don't really have any cost really whatsoever. You know, if that cause higher retention, how user search, how user use of browser, in the end of the day, it's user have to use it inside the browser anyway, that we would be able to capture all the intent and monetize if needed anyway. This particular case is actually very easy decision that it makes more sense to have it available on the general product and make money by regular browsers, which are already demonstrated to be very profitable anyway. I'm sure that there will be certain features may be tailored to particular, you know, you know, vertical audiences that would only be available in Neon, like many of the current Neon features is, and those that will be more subscription-based.

Yeah, for the Browser Connector, it's an obvious choice that it's better to make the, to make it widely available.

Okay. Very helpful. Maybe just last one for me on MiniPay. Obviously nice momentum there. At what point does this kind of become more of a P&L contributor versus, you know, just the strategic investment? Do you kind of, I guess looking longer term, you know, what are your plans for MiniPay, OPay?

Yeah. I can comment a bit on MiniPay. MiniPay is already meaningfully contributing. We generate about $20 million of revenue from the broader ecosystem around it. It is a very successful product, as you say, and it does allow people, we've tailored it initially for emerging markets to have an easy way to access stable coins and other blockchain types of assets. We continue to think it has a huge potential ahead and can really scale. Still, this is one of those items that is quite early, still a bit early in terms of how big it can get and what the trajectory looks until that point. On OPay, which is a separate topic.

That's a company that Opera founded back in 2017, and we have a 9.5% stake in that that we carry on our balance sheet at about $300 million of book value. That company is by now operating completely independently from Opera and is advancing on its own. While we're not operationally working together, we of course share a history and we're very proud to see how that company has scaled and is sort of working towards what we expect that will ultimately be an IPO, which we think is also very positive for Opera because it would sort of immediately make visible the market value of that company and Opera's stake in it.

Got it. Makes sense. I appreciate all the color. Thanks, guys.

Sure.

We'll take our next question from Jonnathan Navarrete with TD Cowen. Your line is open.

Thanks. How are buybacks going in 2Q so far, and how should we think about the pace into the year? Thank you.

I don't think we'll get into sort of the talking ahead beyond sort of the historical period. Overall, we're of course, very pleased to have that program in place. I guess it's the third or fourth time of that we launched a buyback program and by far our biggest one that we have launched. I think we already are, you know, you, we reported our March trades essentially since the program became was launched in late February and we could start trading in March. Already I think it can contribute to accelerating ROI for our shareholders as we take shares out of the denominator.

Then sort of going ahead, I think we continue to be, as we've always been with buybacks, opportunistic and adjust the program to maximize the value that we can create. I think just the fact that we are in that position, we talked about it a bit on the last quarter as well. We are growing fast, and we are self-funded in the sense that, you know, the business is generating very healthy cash flows and our CapEx model that Song touched on the AI side is very limited compared to other companies that you would think about in that space. We don't have like a massive investment needs to drive our business. It's a software layer, it's a service and that is what we are good at.

We don't wanna compete in the hardware race. That also means that the cash we generate, we can actually return it to shareholders. We like the recurring dividend, and the buyback just helps us drive incremental upside.

Great. If I just one more question. There were some reports this morning that OpenAI missed some internal sales targets, and just wondering what could be the read-through, if any, for you guys?

I hardly.

OpenAI?

Yeah, yeah.

I thought OpenAI had this one.

I think, okay, it's actually convenient that you ask the question immediately after my prior response because I think that we are quite distinguished if you think about companies that have an, let's say, AI opportunity, then of course we have the major platforms like OpenAI, et cetera. You also have Opera, right? We do it as a service in a browser. We don't try to compete against the big LLMs out there, whether it's ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude or any of the other ones. We are very good at providing an interface for LLMs to exist very close to the user, to control the browser, to take into account context of the user, and to enable it to be as productive as possible, right?

That, so for example, as we talked about with the Browser Connector, our own Opera AI in the browser, like you as a human, you don't have to sit and be like the personal secretary of an AI model and copy-paste links and text, right? You can just, you can operate these tools in the browser, with the context included. I think, comparing us to OpenAI in some ways flattering that you ask. At the same time, I think our cost and capital need structure is completely different.

Yeah. Maybe I'll just add, right, that I just I think in general, as you I think hopefully as we also demonstrated that, you know, like, both Opera and the potential all users are already demonstrated to be very AI savvy, I would say. Otherwise they probably wouldn't like, unlike some other maybe old-fashioned browser companies, people whoever use AI tend, whoever use Opera tends to be AI savvy, they tend to be very interested. I would almost say that I think of course, 300 million MAU of that is a very attractive partners that whoever, you know, want to grow AI is I think we must be a very attractive partners that they can work with.

You know, for instance, if you compare with many other we call them similarly big player, like even Claude or X or whatever, I think I believe they are, you know, their MAU are in a range of almost 1/10 of our MAUs. Right? I'm sure OpenAI has a bit more, but at least our 300 million would must be a very interested partnership opportunities. I guess that will also be our, you know, hopefully with the year moving on, we can see what can be done there.

It does appear that there are no further questions at this time. I would now like to hand the call back to Song Lin for any additional or closing remarks.

Sure. Yeah. I guess thank you to everyone for joining us today. 2026 is off again to a great start. I'll continue at the moment. You know, truly exciting landscape has already resulted in a solid foundation for continued strength through the remainder of the year and well beyond. Have a good day, everyone.

Thank you. This brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.

Welcome to the Opera Limited Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] 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. Please begin.

Thank you for joining us. This morning, I am joined by our 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 as a result of various factors, including those set forth in today's earnings press release and our most recent annual report on Form 20-F, filed with the SEC. We undertake no obligations to update any forward-looking statements. During this call, we will present both IFRS and non-IFRS financial measures. A reconciliation of IFRS to non-IFRS measures is included in today's earnings press release. The earnings press release and an accompanying investor presentation are available on our Investor Relations website at investor.opera.com. Our comments will be on year-over-year comparisons, unless we state otherwise. With that, let me turn the call over to our CEO, Song Lin, who will cover our fourth quarter operational highlights and strategy, and then Frode Jacobsen, who will discuss the details of our financials and expectations for the first quarter and full year. Song?

Sure. Thank you, Matt, and good day, everyone. While we preannounced Q4 outperformance, we have been very much looking forward to today, and to tell you how great our actual results was, and even more importantly, how exciting our 2026 guidance is. Advertising revenue led by continued scaling of e-commerce came in with an unprecedented sequential increase of $19 million versus the third quarter, resulting in 25% year-over-year growth. Clearly, we are performing well for an increased number of advertiser partners, all running performance-based campaigns with us, and we have yet again shown our ability to leverage the seasonally strongest fourth quarter to cross a year of fast growth. In addition, our rapidly expanding monetization of user intent query revenue continued with 16% growth year-over-year. This was fueled by both healthy search revenue growth and a continuation of 200% plus year-over-year growth in non-search query revenue. The monetization of intent-based traffic beyond search is an exciting opportunity, contributing over $5 million of revenue in the quarter and will continue to be our fastest-growing revenue component in 2026. All in all, Q4 revenue growth was 22% against the toughest quarterly comparison of 2024, and 8% higher than the midpoint of guidance. Our resulting annual revenue growth was 28% in 2025, an acceleration from 21% growth in 2024. EBITDA also came in well above the high end of our guidance range and 7% higher than the midpoint. We continue to invest in both product marketing and the growth of advertiser relationships, while maintaining a healthy EBITDA margin and solid cash flow, which Frode will cover in more detail later. We have talked a lot about our positioning in the AI era over the past years, and the topic continues to deserve attention. Our job is to make the best browsers for demanding users. We are amazed at the quality of emerging AI services, as I'm sure many of you are too, and we do not consider these companies as our competitors, but rather current and potential future partners. Our focus is to create the best orchestration layer possible for end users to benefit from this rapidly expanding ecosystem. The best example is Google, which has delivered the world's best search experience for decades and is showcasing its technical abilities through the advancing Gemini models. Google has its own browser but has been our partner for 25 years as we deliver an integrated experience for the end user to benefit from these services in a feature-rich and advanced browser. And with the broadening ecosystem of services, the appeal of an independent browser only increases. And at the same time, the attention to the browser space results in more people contemplating which browser represents a better alternative. That sentiment should be shared by the new AI companies, which would prefer to reach their users via an independent Opera browser as opposed to a direct competitor's browser. That is a healthy basis for constructive relationships. Our strength is browser sophistication and a dedication to augment the web experience in ways the users will find familiar and useful. Most people don't want to change their browsing habits. Rather, they are looking to enhance it with a richer experience, enabled by AI and agentic capabilities of their choosing, but it all starts with browsing at its core. The browser itself is a gateway to your online journey, and it is a mistake to build a browser that is a little more than an AI terminal with browsing the web as an afterthought. This positioning is also what enables our financial profile. We do not need to put out massive capital into hardware nor enter a fierce competitive large language model arms race. Financially, this is a continuation of the profile we have consistently shown a healthy combination of growth, profitability and cash generation, and a relatively unique resulting ability to be both a growth company with no financial constraints to seize our potential, while also returning significant cash to our shareholders. While our performance and outlook are not fully reflected by the public market today, there is always a silver lining. And in this case, it is our ability to take advantage of this opportunity to create significant value for our shareholders by launching a major share buyback program. Frode will go into the specifics shortly. Moving on to operational highlights. 2025 was certainly another year of rapid innovation and built upon our modular technology and preference to tailor browsers to distinct audiences. We launched 2 new browsers, Opera Air; and the subscription-based Opera Neon, which became widely available in early December. While user demand for agentic browsers is not yet mainstream, Neon is a terrific product that solves multiple goals. It provides one of the most advanced browsers for AI demanding power users, potentially unlocking a new subscription-based revenue stream. And more importantly, it is a testing ground for new AI features that we can then introduce across our full suite of browsers. Our revamped flagship browser, Opera One entered 2025 in its second-generation R2, and most recently was refreshed to R3. In addition to greatly enhanced tab management and split screen views, R3 came with native integration of e-mail and calendar and our most advanced integrated AI assistant yet, Opera AI. Compared to earlier versions, Opera AI benefits from a 20% faster agentic-based engine and contextual responses that allow AI to understand the web page or an entire group of tabs. This enables it to give answers based on the browsing context while maintaining privacy and control in the hands of the user. As a result, the user benefits from more relevant, efficient persistency and direct task completion within the browsing experience, unlike a stand-alone chat. And on the back of expanding monetization opportunities, we are bringing Opera AI to all of our browsers. With business models evolving beyond subscription, Opera is exceptionally well positioned to benefit from these trends and take advantage of our successful history of query monetization. Opera GX, the browser for gamers, reached over 34 million MAUs in the fourth quarter, a 5% sequential increase and remains our highest ARPU product. As the official browser sponsor of the League of Legends World Championships, we saw our best weekend of user activations in the history of GX during the tournament. Our mobile browsers also contributed to healthy user base dynamics, with Europe continuing to stand out after iOS became a more level playing field, following the EU Digital Markets Act. All in all, we ended the year with 284 million MAUs, inclusive of 60 million users in Western markets that contribute the most to our strong ARPU trajectory. ARPU grew by 26% to $2.49 in the fourth quarter. This growth demonstrates our ability to gain users in key target markets despite new entrants from well-capitalized competitors. We continue to take advantage of our browser position to scale opportunities that are natural extensions. Opera Ads, the platform that initially optimized the relevance of ads to each individual Opera user has become a global player also on non-browser inventory as part of our audience extension. Learning from primary data signals, we more than doubled its pace of growth in 2025 versus 2024, with well-performing campaigns for our advertiser partners. Every second, we process 12 million ad queries, more than double the year ago period. We worked with over 300 advertisers in 2025, including 4 of the 5 largest e-commerce platforms. Within the top 50 advertisers, the average spend per advertiser grew by 56% in 2025. In terms of our total advertising reach, when taking into account the millions of users that access our content platform through OEM white-label solutions, and the reach of Opera Ads, it is over 0.5 billion MAUs and growing. This scale and growth positions Opera uniquely among the largest online platforms. Another native extension of our footprint is MiniPay, a stablecoin wallet that emerged as a feature inside our mini browser tailored to emerging market users and is now available as a dedicated app. Mini Pay continues to drive adoption in a stable core market with over 13 million activated wallets, an increase from 10 million in the third quarter. The accumulated number of transactions increased from 290 million last quarter to 390 million. MiniPay is the fastest-growing stablecoin wallet in Africa, appreciated for its technical ease and seamless integrations with a broad partner ecosystem, enabling simple and low to no-fee transactions. Most recently, we expanded support for USDT and Tether Gold, and are rolling out the MiniPay card to increase functionality and serve as an important offering, offering best-in-class FX rates. Building upon our success in Africa, our 2026 focus will be to invest in making MiniPay a more global platform. With that, I would like to turn the call over to our CFO, Frode Jacobsen, to discuss our financial results, guidance and capital allocation in greater detail. Frode?

Thanks, Song. As Song Lin also opened, we have been looking forward to sharing our complete fourth quarter and full year results with growth well ahead of even recent expectations and above the guidance ranges on both revenue and adjusted EBITDA. While we always apply caution to guidance, exceeding the high end of our revenue range by over $12 million is a recent record. Relative to midpoint, revenue was 8% above guidance and adjusted EBITDA was 7% above guidance. We are also very pleased with the composition of our overperformance with healthy trajectories across both advertising and query revenue. Our e-commerce success translated into a record contribution from the holiday shopping season, and as importantly, demonstrated our ability to scale our partnerships further ahead of embarking on a new year. Our most mature revenue stream, search, is evolving and broadening with our ability to monetize users' intent as part of query revenue, whether it relates to reactive suggestions or advancing our intent-based traffic partnerships. In addition, AI unlocks query volume that was previously too complex for the search bar and represents a major improvement in the user experience, including well-tailored advertiser recommendations. Quarterly revenue totaled $177 million, 22% up year-over-year and well ahead of guidance. Looking at our quarterly cost components, we incurred about $1 million more cash compensation expense than expected, predominantly a result of increased bonus provisions and a weaker U.S. dollar. Cost of revenue items also scaled with the revenue overperformance, representing 37.4% of total revenue. Marketing costs and the sum of all other OpEx items pre-adjusted EBITDA came in according to expectations. In total, and largely as a function of revenue overperformance, costs were $11 million higher than implied in our midpoint guidance, though this was more than offset by the comparable $14 million increase in revenue, resulting in $3 million incremental adjusted EBITDA. Quarterly adjusted EBITDA came in at $42 million, a 23.6% margin and also outside the guidance range, as earlier stated. All in all, full year revenue came in at $615 million, growing 28%. Our initial guidance for 2025 was for growth of 17%, after which our steady cadence of overperformance added $52 million of revenue as the year progressed or 11 percentage points of growth. 2025 adjusted EBITDA came in at $143 million, a 23.2% margin. This too represented a solid increase of $7.5 million versus initial guidance, adding 7 percentage points to the expected growth rate for the year. With that, 2025 was our fifth consecutive year as a Rule of 40 company. A few words about gross margin. As we scale Opera Ads, which has a different gross margin profile compared to our all in all revenue streams, we see a greater cost of revenue component in our results. But the platform comes with no marketing cost and a limited OpEx base. As a result, our EBITDA margin was relatively stable even as we delivered 28% overall revenue growth. It's worth noting that the Opera Ads gross margin actually expanded in parallel with its scaling from 2024 to 2025, thanks to enhancements in our optimization algorithms, showing how both we and our advertisers benefit from our strong targeting capabilities. Operating cash flow was $40 million in the quarter or 96% of adjusted EBITDA, resulting in a full-year operating cash flow of $118 million or a relatively normalized 83% as expected. Free cash flow from operations, which also deducts capitalized equipment and development as well as payment of lease liabilities, was $35 million in the quarter and $98 million for the year, corresponding to 84% and 69% of adjusted EBITDA, respectively. As percentages of adjusted EBITDA, we believe these annual levels represent fair expectations for 2026 cash conversion as well, while we will continue to see quarterly fluctuations with seasonality, tax and bonus payments and other cyclical effects. Then turning to guidance. While we are very pleased with our performance last year, we are still early in our trajectory. As we embark on a new year, we are excited by both the quality and potential of our products, and our opportunities to continue growing our financial results. Starting with the current quarter, we guide Q1 revenue of $169 million to $172 million, representing 18% to 21% growth year-over-year. The guidance reflects the growth momentum experienced year-to-date, reducing the sequential effect following the seasonally strongest quarter. We are generating healthy margins and are guiding for adjusted EBITDA of $38 million to $40 million, a 22.9% margin at the midpoint, setting a solid foundation for the remainder of the year. For 2026 as a whole, we guide revenue of $720 million to $735 million, translating into growth of 17% to 20%. While we prefer to be prudent at such an early point in the year, we are humbled by how far we have come in these past few years and our opportunities ahead. We guide adjusted EBITDA of $167 million to $172 million, a 23.3% margin at the midpoint. We take pride in driving organic revenue growth at a healthy level of profitability. And while our guidance reflects an inclination to focus on building scale over expanding margins, it implies a slight tick up in profitability, with the 2025 margin level now representing the starting point of the range. In terms of costs, we then implicitly guide to a full year OpEx base pre-adjusted EBITDA of $558 million at the midpoint, of which $131.5 million in Q1. We expect cost of revenue items combined to represent about 38% of revenue for the year, starting somewhat below and ticking up as the year progresses. That represents a 2 percentage point gross margin headwind for the year, while Opera Ads in isolation is expected to continue its margin expansion. Economies of scale across the other OpEx items supports the combination of rapid growth combined with a cautious adjusted EBITDA margin expansion. Cash-based compensation expense is expected to grow with a percentage in the low teens with quarterly costs starting just below our Q4 2025 level and ticking up with annual salary adjustments as of April. Full year marketing cost is expected to grow by about 10% from the 2025 level with a relatively even distribution of the annual spend between the quarters. And all other OpEx items pre-adjusted EBITDA are expected to grow by about 15% for the year as a whole, starting just below the Q4 level and increasing quite linearly through the year. Finally, we are excited to launch our new buyback program today, which is of an unprecedented scale. In fact, the $300 million authorization exceeds all prior buybacks combined and represents over 25% of our market cap as of this morning. Our ability to do this on top of an already meaningful recurring dividend only highlights the attractiveness of our operating model and commitment to shareholder returns. Given our belief that our stock is trading at levels that do not reflect our continued success, we are taking advantage of our strong balance sheet and expanding cash generation to capture a compelling ROI opportunity for our shareholders. We will pace and structure the buyback program based on market conditions, and we will buy back shares from our majority shareholder at the same pace as we buy back shares in the public market, ensuring that our free float percentage remains unchanged while massively stepping up our return of cash to shareholders. All in all, we are very pleased and also proud of the results we have achieved, thanks to our highly driven team and our ability to expand monetization while enhancing the user experience. We look forward to keeping you posted as yet another year with much promise progresses. With that, I'll turn the call back to the operator for questions.

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question from Ron Josey with Citi.

I wanted to ask a little bit more about Western users, which grew about $2 million sequentially. And I think we had some positive commentary around greater competition in Europe. So just talk to us about the ability to continue to gain these users despite, call it, greater competition and everything else. So talk about Western users and the growth there as one. Then the next question is just on ads overall. With e-commerce growing 25% year-over-year, a lot of that from e-commerce specifically, you noted the top 50 advertisers grew 56%. Talk to us about the traction that you're seeing within e-commerce and how you position that going forward.

Yes, I can answer this. No, I just saw that he mentioned you, Frode. But this is only -- I can try to answer, give a first step, and then Frode can also comment a bit afterwards. So yes, I mean, I think overall, we are quite happy with the user performance in Q4. I mean, actually, both for the total MAUs, I think it's a good number because, as we always mentioned in the past that where we are always like losing some feature phone users, but then we are always growing in where it counts: smartphone users and desktop users. And of course, a fair percentage of that is also Western users, which also showed up nicely in the Q4 stats. So very happy about it. I think -- essentially, I think it's an illustration of our focus, of our dedication, both for very attractive desktop offerings, but also -- maybe also to mention that we also see very nice growth on, say, mobile browsers, especially iOS browsers after the European Market Act. Then we also saw a lot of attraction, of course, a result of AI -- that as a result of AI, everybody actually see that it's actually possible to have a very good AI-powered browser experience also in iOS, and then that's why we also have a lot of interest with Opera for iOS, for instance. So overall, I think we saw a very good trend, and cautiously positive that the trend will continue, and then hopefully we will grow faster in the new year to come. So I think it's on that. Then, yes, like again, also maybe super quickly commenting on the ads, especially e-commerce. So yes, in general, e-commerce is our biggest category. It grows very nicely. That grows -- if you only look at e-commerce alone, it actually grow a lot faster than 25% apparently. And it's one of the strong powerhouse, I guess, to power the whole year-over-year growth. It's also very easy to calculate that despite of like nice growth on search and also others, the e-commerce, of course, overall grows faster. And that actually enabled us to have an overall yearly growth of 28%. So like again, very positive. But also maybe I like to mention that the whole e-commerce is a very big market. It's a very big TAM, right? Like the whole -- I would say it's -- in the world, it's probably likely to be $100 billion, depends on which number you use. And then even if just by a market share of where we should be, we still have at least $5 billion to $10 billion actually potential to grow. So we are very positive about it. I think it is also indicating the opportunity that brings us that in the past, most of those money probably go into, let's say, search engine because that's the only user intent, which people cares. But with the advancement of AI, people are now starting to see that there are actually many places that is possible to place user intent and browser is naturally also one of it. That's also why we have the chance to actually gain those, I would say, user intent revenues, both in what we call acquired revenue, but also in advertisements or performance based. And we feel that this have a very good opportunity to continue to power our growth in the next months or years to come. So very excited.

Let me chime in briefly that the e-commerce, very successful part of the business. It continues growth rates and a 100% year-over-year rate, including in the key fourth quarter and scaled massively over the past couple of years. Then the Opera Ads platform, which is -- which also allows third-party publishers to take advantage of our targeting, saw an increase in the growth rate in 2025. The metric you mentioned about the biggest customers growing, I think that's a very good picture of the deepening of the relationship we have with them, as all our campaigns are performance-based. And when we do well, we get a bigger share of their marketing budgets.

Our next question will come from Jim Callahan with Piper Sandler.

Just a question on Neon. It's been a few months since being rolled out. Anything you can talk to on engagement or monetization there, so far?

Yes. So again, it's Song Lin here. So I'll also try to comment a bit, right? So like again, as also mentioned in the scripts, very exciting about the launch of Neon. We just have it widely available in mid-December, so it's still quite early. But as also mentioned that I think what's been relevant is both the opening up of Neon as a potential community hub for AI power users. But also, I think the technology behind it, which actually allows us to use the most advanced orchestrations in ways and forms, which is not possible in the past. And then all of those features have also been able to allow us to move those into Opera AI, which are also launched across all the Opera products, which are very well received, which we believe is actually also part of the reason why we see the strong growth in Western market, because this is where this is mostly appealed to. But we also think that there's a good potential to have it to further grow in 2026. Then in terms of monetization, as I also mentioned a bit that it's, of course, partly already revealed by the nice growth in both query revenue, but also related advertisement revenue based on it. But even though it's not really showing up in Q4, because we only launched it in mid-December, there are potential, of course, of potential subscription revenue streams, which can help us move up further.

Just follow-up on gross margin. So you're obviously, scaling the off-platform part of the business, but your incremental gross margin stepped up the past 2 quarters. Can you just talk about the sustainability of that trend, and like what steady-state gross margins look like if we keep scaling off-platform?

I think the nice thing as we look into 2026, it's a good growth potential across the business. We are still guiding to Opera Ads platform, growing slightly faster than the totality and building in a bit of a couple of extra points on cost of revenue. But at the same time, given the P&L profile of running a platform, it's generating very healthy EBITDA contribution, which allows us to slightly tick up the EBITDA margin expectation for 2026.

Our next question comes from Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs.

Maybe the first one, just following up on Jim's question about Neon. I want to understand how you view the landscape to potentially grow wider adoption? And what might be some of the key investments you need to make from either a branding perspective or a download perspective to sort of get more usage around Neon broadly as you look out over the next sort of 6 to 12 months? That would be the first one. Then in the slide deck or the investor presentation, you talked a little bit about the payments opportunity that sits in front of you. What do you see as some of the strategic investments that have to be made to capitalize on that payment opportunity? And how does it fit more broadly into your strategic imperatives?

Yes, it's Song Lin. So I think I'll just try to make a stab, and then Frode can also comment a bit on growth, right? So again, very good question on Neon. So to us, I think it's about -- yes, it's actually a very interesting consideration. So I guess to us, at the end of the day, we are very unique in a position that because many other AI companies, they either have to rely on purely subscription. They don't really have a choice. And I think we are almost in a bit luxury situation that we are rather profitable on our free product, right, powered by advertisement and a few others. So for us, I think it's almost a bit of consideration and also balancing act that what features do we want to prioritize on get into Neon, which is a paid product, subscription base? Or do we think that makes more sense to have it in -- to make it generally available to everybody, right? Because that, in the end, of course, will also be able to allow or grow users faster and also help generating a very healthy advertisement revenues, which is, I guess, a bit challenge for some of the newer AI start-ups. So I would almost say that's almost a bit luxury situation, and that's also essentially why, for instance, at least in Q4, we have prioritized on also making sure that many of the functionalities moved into Opera AI because we can afford it, and it's also making more sense in that context. While I think our focus is more for those which are really for powerful users. For instance, Neon will allow very powerful orchestration of different AI models, you can choose Grok, you can choose OpenAI, you can choose many other models or even many Open Source ones. And then also will allow rather comprehensive task management to group all the tabs into different -- more like to group multiple tabs into a task, to be able to generate the context. And also, we actually also have very powerful Neon make tools, which are able to make many interesting utilities, mini apps or potentially even presentations. But naturally, those were always tailored to a very, I would say, a niche group of users to start with, among others, right? So we have a lot of thoughts. We have a lot of ideas. We have many functionalities. Some of them will go into Opera AI, which is more suitable perhaps for wider audience. But then some of it, I would almost say, at this point, we have some very exciting tools for utility or, let's say, efficiency tools, which we are aiming at Neon. And I think those will be very interesting for potential Neon users in the future, and those will be our target subscription base, while there's also many other browser-related utilities and functionalities that will focus more in Opera AI, which will more be freely available to general market. So it's a very big topic, very exciting times. And I think we only appreciate that we at least have many different choices to make, which is a very nice position to be in. Then super quickly on payments. So you might also recall that we actually have an investment of some other investments based on fiat currency, which is proven to be a very good success in the past. So I would almost say we have some experience of how to have very interesting payment infrastructure buildups on emerging markets, which we see opportunities. So I think MiniPay hereby is also a very good case that we believe by focusing on technology, in this case, Web3 and Stablecoin. And because of infrastructure, again, in this case, decentralized approach that noncustodial approach and decentralized that we are able to build up a technical infrastructure while utilizing our, I would say, orchestration both for partners across different countries and also end consumers, which as a consumer company, we are very good at to be able to link all those 3 different parts to have a very compelling value proposition and storage. So for now, I would say it has -- we have already proven in Africa. But this year, the focus is actually to move it to be a more platform play around the world, and also be able to link in those developed countries to developing countries as well. So I think those will be the area which we work. But again, we're actually working with closely with partners. For instance, we announced the cooperation with Tether earlier this year, which I think we in particularly called out that, that will also be focus not only in Africa, but also allow us to reach other parts of the world. And hopefully, we also have some other interesting announcements to come shortly, which continue to allow us to do more globally as a platform and technical infrastructure. So very exciting times.

Our next question will come from Naved Khan with B. Riley Securities.

Two questions from me. One on the Opera GX user growth. What regions are you seeing this growth come from? And then also, I recall you launched Japan and Korea sometime early last year. How are those markets performing in terms of contributing to the user growth? So that's question one. Then secondly, can you just talk about maybe OPay and maybe potential IPO timing, if there is going to be one this year, what are your expectations there or your thoughts there?

Yes. So like again, I think I'll try to talk about a bit on Opera GX, and then Frode can also talk a bit more on some other investments we have. Yes, so high level, I think Opera GX, so overall, I would almost say that at this stage, what we have already been proven is that gaming users itself are quite high up valuable users across the regions, right? So I think the nature of the fact that they are gaming users, typically on PC actually, and this is very nicely reflected in the different revenue and ARPU profiles as fairly high ARPU users regardless of the regions they are. So yes, consequentially, for us, its priority is actually to making sure that we serve all those users, both in one of the biggest market, for instance, U.S. is still the biggest market, but also in other markets like LatAm and a few other places, which we also see some very good interest. Then maybe also super quick comment that, yes, indeed, that we have also actually quite interesting developments in, I would say, East Asian market, which we previously have not spending time on. Like, for instance, League of Legends World Championship last year is actually in China, but also is also very influential in Korea and Japan. So the fact that our close relationships with Riot allow us actually to be able to do more in those markets. So we have actually some very exciting happenings, and also continuations in those markets in 2026 to come.

I can comment on the OPay question. I think we're very excited about the performance of our -- OPay. In terms of an IPO, we see that they have hired very experienced public executives with the new CFO and CEO that the company recently announced. I think all signs point to the company -- a natural next step for the company being a public company, but nothing yet been confirmed on timing and specific expectations around it.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question will come from Jonnathan Navarrete with TD Cowen.

My questions are really on MiniPay. The first one is, could you walk us through the monetization path for MiniPay? And lastly, are there any read-throughs in terms of Stripe's potential acquisition of PayPal as it relates to MiniPay? Or are they just really two different platform assets?

I can comment on the monetization first. So our priority with MiniPay is to build a scale and build a user base and create a product that has such low barriers to entry that stablecoins become sort of a viable accessible tool for people with the starting focus on emerging markets. Then as we've talked about, we're expanding sort of the functionality of it to include more payment opportunities, both domestically and internationally. And the way we monetize it for now is, broadly speaking, from the partner ecosystem, integrating partners into the product and promoting that, and sort of growing together with partners.

Our next question will come from Mark Argento with Lake Street.

Congrats on the strong finish to the year. Just one quick one for me. Could you just remind us non-search query revenue was up almost 200%, small dollars, but what is that exactly? And how can you leverage that going forward?

Yes, sure. I'll do that. It's starting to -- it's a very new revenue stream. So -- but it's becoming material. It exceeded $5 million in the quarter, up from $3 million in Q3 and growing very quickly. What it consists of is essentially when a user has an intent and we can address that intent by sending a search query to a search partner, but we can also provide direct references to partners, either as a part of the URL experience or in an AI test with Opera AI, for example, and promote partners directly that way, tailored to what the user is looking for. The reason we're excited about the revenue stream is that, sort of, as these types of potential dialogues expand so quickly, people use it more, we see a big step-up in our users taking advantage of Opera AI in the browsers. Being a native part of the browser and existing one level above websites has many advantages, including monetization potential, which we will then capture in, in query revenue.

At this time, there are no further questions in the queue. So I'd like to turn the call back over to Song, for any additional or closing remarks.

Sure. So yes, like again, thank you to everyone for joining us today. 2025 was an amazing year. We were able to ship new browsers and bring exciting features to our existing suite of browsers, and at the same time, deliver impressive financial results that exceeded our rising expectations throughout the year. So while we, of course, still have a lot of work ahead of us, I'm confident we can make 2026 even more successful. Have a good day, everyone.

Thank you. This brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.