Opera Ltd (OPRA) 2025 Q4 法說會逐字稿

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  • Operator

  • Welcome to the Opera Limited 4th quarter and full year 2025 earnings call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session.

  • (Operator Instructions) Please be advised that today's call is being recorded. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the call over to your speaker today, Matt Wolfson, Head of Investor Relations. Please begin.

  • Matt Wolfson - Head, Investor Relations

  • Thank you for joining us this morning. I am joined by our CEO Song Lin and our CFO Froda Jacobson. 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 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 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 4th quarter Operational highlights and strategy, and then Fronda Jacobson, who will discuss the details of our financials and expectations for the 1st quarter and full year.

  • Lin Song - Chief Executive Officer

  • Thank you, Matt, and good day, everyone.

  • While we pre-announced Q4 outperformance, we have been very much looking forward to today and to tell you how great our actual results were, and even more importantly, how exciting our 2026 guidance is.

  • Advertising revenue led by continued scaling of the e-commerce came in with an unprecedented sequential increase of 19 million visits is the so call, resulting in 25% year over year growth. Clearly, we are performing well for an increasing number of advertiser partners. All running performance-based campaigns with us, and we have yet again shown our ability to leverage the seasonally strongest 4th quarter to create 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 filled by both healthy search revenue growth, and the continuation of 200% plus year over year growth in non-searchpar revenue.

  • The monetization of internet-based traffic beyond such is an exciting opportunity, contributing over 5 million of revenue in the core 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, and 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 further we 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 our competitors, but rather current and potential future partners.

  • Our focus is to create the best orchestration layout 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 official 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 the browser sophistication and a dedication to augment the web experience in ways that 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 outsource. This positioning is also what enables our financial profile. We do not need to plow massive capital into hardware, nor enter a fierce competitive large language model arms race. Financially, this is a continuation of the profile we've 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. Further, we'll go into the specifics shortly.

  • Moving on to Operational highlights.

  • 2025 was certainly another year of rapid innovation and build upon our multiple technology and preference to tailor browsers to distinct audiences.

  • We launched two new browsers, Opera Air and the subscription-based Opera Neo, which became widely available in early December. While user demand for agent 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 suit of browsers.

  • Our revamped Black Sheep browser Ora 1 and 2025 in its second generation R2 and most recently was refreshed to R3.

  • In addition to greatly enhanced the tap management and split screen views, after it came with native integration of email and the calendar, and our most advanced integrated AI assistant yet, Ora AI, compared to audio versions, Opera AI benefits from a 20% faster agent-based engine and contextual responses that allow AI to understand the webpage 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 assistency and direct task completion within the browsing experience, unlike a standalone chat, and on the back of expanding monetization opportunities, we are bringing Opera AI to all of our browsers with the 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 MAU in the fourth quarter, a 5% sequential increase, and remains our highest Apple 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 MAU inclusive of 60 million users in Western markets that contribute the most to our strong up trajectory. Appput grew by 26% to $2.49 in the fourth quarter. This growth demonstrates our ability to gain results 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 advertiser partners. Every second we process 12 million aquiries, more than double the year ago period. We worked with over 300 advertisers in 2005, 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 half a billion MAU 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 tailort to emerging market users and is now available as a dedicated app. Minipay continues to drive adoption in a stable coin market with over 13 million activated wallets and 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 the broad personal ecosystem, enabling sample and low to no fee transactions.

  • Most recently, we expanded support for USDT and pedal Gold and are rolling out the minipa card to increase functionality and solve as an important off-ramp, offering best in class x rates. Building upon our succeeding 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 Jacobsson to discuss our financial results, guidance, and the capital allocation in greater detail. Further.

  • Frode Jacobsen - Chief Financial Officer

  • Thanks. Songlin also opened, we have been looking forward to sharing our complete 4th quarter and full year results with growth well ahead of even recent expectations and above the guidance ranges on both revenue and adjusted.

  • 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 midpoints, 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 revenue, 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 US dollar. Cost of revenue items also scaled with the revenue over performance, representing 37.4% of total revenue.

  • Marketing costs and the sum of all other opexx items pre-adjusted the EBITDA came in according to expectations.

  • In total and largely as a function of revenue over performance, 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% 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% 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 up our ads, which has a different gross margin profile compared to our OO revenue streams, we see a greater cost of revenue component in our results. But the platform comes with no marketing cost and a limited opic space. 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 midpoints, setting a solid foundation for the remainder of the year.

  • For 2026 as a whole, we got 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 got 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 EUR optic space pre-adjusted EBITDA of $558 million at the midpoints, 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 picking up as the year progresses.

  • That represents a 2% 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 opexx items support the combination of rapid growth combined with a cautious adjusted EBITDA margin expansion.

  • Cash-based compensation expense is expected to grow with the percentage in the low teens, with quarterly costs starting just below our Q4 2025 level and taking 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 opic 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

  • (Operator Instructions) Ron Josie, Citi.

  • Ron Josey - Analyst

  • Great, thanks for taking the question. 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 is one.

  • And 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 know 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.

  • Thank you.

  • Frode Jacobsen - Chief Financial Officer

  • So, I think it, it's, it's.

  • Lin Song - Chief Executive Officer

  • Only, yeah. Yeah, I can answer this. No, I just saw that he mentioned that you further, but this is only I can TRY to answer, give it a false step, and then I can alsocom a bit afterwards. So. Yeah, I mean, I think overall we are quite happy with the user performance in, Q4. I mean, actually, both for the podeic use, I think, it's a good number because as we always mentioned in the past that, we are always, like, losing some picture phone users, but then we're always growing in where it counts, smartphone users and desktop users, and of course a fair percentage of, that is also Western noodles, which also showed up nicely in the Q4 states.

  • 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 and then we also saw a lot of attractions, of course, a result of AI that as a result of AI, everybody actually see that it is actually possible to have a very good, AIPod the browser experience. So also in iOS and then that's why we also have a lot of interest, with all purple iOS, for instance.

  • So overall, I think we saw very good trends and cautiously positive that the trend will continue and then hopefully will grow faster, in the new year to come. So. So I think it's on that. And then, yeah, like again, also maybe super quickly commenting on the ads, especially emo. So yeah, in general, emo is our big categories. If it grows very nicely, that grows, if you only look at efomos 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 of such, 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 like to mention that the whole e-commerce is a very big market. It's a very big camp, 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 to $10 billion actually potential to go.

  • So we are very positive about it. And 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 tell us, but the way the advancement of AI people are now starting to see that.

  • There are actually many places that it is possible to place user intent, and a 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 a qui revenue, but also in advertisements, or performance based, and we feel that this, I have a very good opportunity to continue to power our growth in the next months or years to come. So very excited.

  • That's great.

  • Thank you.

  • Frode Jacobsen - Chief Financial Officer

  • Very much. Chime in briefly that e-commerce key, very successful part of the business. It continues growth rates in the 100% year over year rate, including in the key fourth quarter, and the scale 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, and the metric you mentioned about the biggest customers growing, I think that's a very good picture of the deepening of the relationship we had with them. As all our campaigns are performance based and when we do well, we get a bigger share of of their marketing budgets.

  • Thank you for this.

  • Operator

  • Jim Callahan, Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

  • James Callahan - Analyst

  • Hi, thanks for, taking the question. Just a question on theon. It's been a few months, since being rolled out. Anything you can talk to on, engagement or monetization there so far?

  • Lin Song - Chief Executive Officer

  • Yeah, so again, it'stonny Hill. So I 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 on mid-December, so it's still quite early, but I 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 allow 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 Ora AI, which are also launched across all the Opra 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 the most appeal to.

  • But we also think that there's a good potential to have it to further grow in 2026. And then in terms of monetization, as I also mentioned a bit that it's of course partly already revealed by by the nice growths in both query revenue, but also, Related depends revenue based on it. But even though it's not really showing up in Q4 because we only last in mid-December, there are potential, of course, of potential subscription revenue streams which can help us move up further.

  • James Callahan - Analyst

  • Got it. That is helpful. And then 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 two 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? Thank.

  • Frode Jacobsen - Chief Financial Officer

  • You. I think the nice thing as we look into 2026 is 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 EITTA contribution which allows us to slightly take up the EBITDA margin expectation for 2026.

  • James Callahan - Analyst

  • Great thank you.

  • Operator

  • Eric Sheridan, Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

  • Eric Sheridan - Analyst

  • Thanks so much for taking the questions. Maybe the first one just following up on 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 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 and 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? Thanks so much.

  • Lin Song - Chief Executive Officer

  • Yeah, it's only help, so I think I'll just TRY to make a step and then through the can also come a bit on pul, right? So again, very good question on Neil. So to us, I think it's about, it's, yeah, 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 big consideration and also balancing act that, what features do we want to prioritize on getting to me, which is a paid product subscription base, or do I think it actually makes more sense to have it in, to make it generally available to everybody, right, because that in the end, of course, we'll also be able to allow.

  • I'll grow faster and also help generating a very healthy advertisement revenues, which is, which is, I guess, a bit challenging for some of the newer AI startups. So I would almost say that's almost a bit laxury situation and that's also essentially why, for instance, and this in Q4 we have prioritized on also making sure that, many of the functionality is moved into Ora 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, we, in the neon we allow very powerful orchestration of different AI models.

  • You can choose Grok, you can choose open AI, you can choose, many other models or even many open source ones, and then also we allow rather comprehensive task management to group all the tabs into different, more like to grow, multiple tabs into a task. To be able to generate the context and also we are 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 will always tail out to a very, I would say a niche group of users to start with, among others, right?

  • So I, we have lots of thoughts, we have a lot of ideas, and we have many. Functionalities, some of them will, go into Opera AI, which is more suitable perhaps for a 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, new, and I think those will be very interesting for, potential new users in the future, and those will be our targets, subscription base.

  • And 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. And then super quickly on payments.

  • So you might also recall that we actually have an investment of, some other 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 market 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 web 3 and Stablecoin and because of infrastructure, again, in this case, decentralized approach, that non-custodial 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 and the consumers, which as a consumer company we are very good at. To be able to link all those three different paths to have a very compelling value proposition and the storage.

  • So for now, I would say that it has, we have some a proof 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 Tal, early this year, which I think we in particularly called out that will also be with focus not only in Africa but also allow us to reach other parts of the world. And hopefully we'll also have some other interesting announcement, to come shortly, which continue to allow us to do more, globally as a platform and technical infrastructure.

  • So very exciting times.

  • Operator

  • Great, thank.

  • Lin Song - Chief Executive Officer

  • You.

  • Operator

  • Naved Khan, B Riley Securities.

  • Naved Khan - Equity Analyst

  • Great, thank you very much. Two questions for 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 growth? So that's question one. And then secondarily, Can we just talk about maybe op and maybe potential IPO timing if there is going to be one this year? What are your expectations there or your thoughts there?

  • Thank you.

  • Lin Song - Chief Executive Officer

  • Yeah, so, like, again, I think I'll TRY to talk about a bit of Opera GX and then further I can also talk a bit more on some other investments we have. So, yeah, 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, particularly on PC actually, and this is very nicely reflected in the, different revenue and up profiles as a fairly high up users regardless of of the regions they are.

  • So yeah, consequentially for us it's priority is actually to making sure that we we solve all those users, you know. Both in one of the biggest market, for instance, the US 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, and then maybe also super common comment is that yes, indeed that we have also actually see 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 it's also very influential in Korea and Japan. So the fact that, our close relationships with Real, allow us to 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.

  • Frode Jacobsen - Chief Financial Officer

  • I can comment on the opay questions. I think very excited about the performance of our MSC Oay. In terms of an IPO, we see that they've hired very experienced public executives with the new CFO and the CEO that the company recently announced, and I think all signs point to. The company, a natural next step for the company being a public company, but nothing has been confirmed on timing and the specific expectations around it.

  • Operator

  • (Operator Instructions) Jonnathan Navarrete, TD Cowen.

  • Jonnathan Navarrete - Analyst

  • Thank you. 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 stripes, potential acquisition of PayPal as it relates to MiniPay, or are they just prey to different platform.

  • Frode Jacobsen - Chief Financial Officer

  • Assets?Thank you. I can come on the monetization first, so.

  • For 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 stable coins become a sort of a viable, accessible tool for people. With the starting focus on on emerging markets and then as as we've talked about, so we're expanding sort of the functionality of it to to include more payment opportunities, both domestically and internationally, and the way we monetize it for now is is broadly speaking from the partner ecosystem. Integrating partners into the product and promoting that and growing together with partners.

  • Operator

  • Mark Argento, Lake Street.

  • Mark Argento - Analyst

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

  • Frode Jacobsen - Chief Financial Officer

  • Yes, sure, I'll do that. It's starting to, it's a very new revenue stream, so, it's, but it's becoming material. It's 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 chat with AI, for example, and promote partners directly that way, tailored to what the user is looking for.

  • And the reason we're excited about the revenue stream is that 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 Ora 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 and query revenue.

  • Thanks right up.

  • Operator

  • Thank you. And 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.

  • Lin Song - Chief Executive Officer

  • Sure. So, yeah, like again, thank you to everyone for joining us today. 2025, was an amazing year. We were able to ship a new browsers and bring exciting features to our Existing pseudo 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.

  • Operator

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