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21:00
Aug 05 ◎

APP FY2026 Q2 Watch

Applovin Corporation (APP) FY2026 Q2 Earnings Call

APP META GOOGL AMZN NVDA ▾

Adam Foroughi

Management is framing the Q2 miss as a one-quarter timing issue in model improvements, with the next performance step-up already live. The Q3 guide implies re-acceleration, and management reaffirmed a 30% long-term compound growth target, signaling confidence.

"Q3 is off to a strong start, and the business is back on the trajectory we expect."

APP WATCH

Adam Foroughi

AppLovin's consumer e-commerce business is growing rapidly, with advertiser spend up 28% sequentially versus Q4 2025, the seasonal peak, suggesting steep adoption and under-penetration of this vertical. — This signals that AppLovin is carving out a new, growing slice of the digital ad market, potentially pressuring the duopoly (META, GOOGL) and competing with AMZN's ad business for e-commerce budgets.

"Advertiser spend set another record, finishing 28% above Q4 2025 levels. And remember, Q4 is the seasonal peak for these advertisers."

META WATCH GOOGL WATCH AMZN WATCH

Matt Stumpf

AppLovin's compute costs are rising, but management guided that it will keep the incremental cost of revenue at ~10% of revenue and expects a 70% flow-through to EBITDA, consistent with prior long-term guides. — This suggests AppLovin's significant training/inference compute demand (for AWS or other cloud providers) and potentially for AI accelerators (NVDA, AMD) will continue to scale with its revenue growth, providing a steady demand signal.

"Of the incremental dollar in revenue, we're spending about 10 cents on compute. We're at that level within the guide and We're at that level."

NVDA WATCH AMD WATCH

HIGH

21:00
May 06 ◎

APP FY2026 Q1 Watch

Applovin Corporation (APP) FY2026 Q1 Earnings Call

OPENAI BYTEDANCE APP META GOOGL ▾

Adam Ferughi

Applovin was a user of OpenAI's Sora model for its AI video creation tool. Its discontinuation doesn't hurt Applovin, but highlights dependency on third-party generative AI models.

"Sora 2 is a good product. Obviously, it's one of the ones that we use underneath the hood. It going away doesn't change a whole lot."

OPENAI WATCH

Adam Ferughi

Applovin is evaluating ByteDance's video generation models as alternatives to OpenAI's Sora, showcasing direct competition between the two AI model leaders.

"You mentioned Seed Dance. There's other ones out of China as well. We can deploy any form of model, whether open source or closed source,"

BYTEDANCE WATCH

Adam Ferughi

Management's tone is extremely bullish, driven by consecutive beats, accelerating growth in the consumer vertical, and the upcoming public launch of the Axon platform in June, which they expect to unlock significant new growth.

"the future has never looked better. We just delivered another quarter where we beat our own guidance. Again."

APP WATCH

Adam Ferughi

The consumer vertical's April ad spend is already higher than any peak Q4 month, showing that AppLovin's platform is counter-seasonal, unlike the rest of the digital advertising industry which typically sees a Q1 slump. — This indicates AppLovin is rapidly taking share from the larger ad platforms like Meta and Google, which normally report significant Q1 over Q4 declines.

"April reaching a record month in advertiser spend, higher than any peak Q4 month. That kind of acceleration is exactly what you want to see"

META WATCH GOOGL WATCH

Adam Ferughi

AppLovin's plan to monetize IAP-only games with non-competitive ads could significantly increase its inventory supply by converting a subset of the $100B IAP market into hybrid monetization. — As more game publishers like those of the largest IAP titles shift to hybrid monetization, they could unlock a $7.5B+ supply opportunity per year, expanding AppLovin's addressable ad market at the expense of other ad networks.

"10x the market opportunity for that same customer. So these in-app purchasing developers are really starting to understand that there's massive growth in this mixed monetization model."

U WATCH TTWO WATCH

HIGH

22:00
Feb 11 ◎

APP FY2025 Q4 Watch

Applovin Corporation (APP) FY2025 Q4 Earnings Call

GOOGL AAPL PPLT AMZN META ▾

Adam Ferughi

Google's transition to bidding in the Max auction is cited as another historical example of how increased competition has benefited AppLovin rather than hurting it, supporting the 'rising tide' narrative for the broader ecosystem.

"You had Google switch to bidding. Every time this has happened, there's been this confusion around, well, in an auction dynamic-based system, competition should decay up Levin's edge. You've never seen that happen."

GOOGL WATCH

Adam Ferughi

Management discusses the constraints Apple's terms place on Meta's ability to bid deterministically on no-ID traffic, which they view as a protective factor for AppLovin's business.

"I think it's blatantly against Apple's terms. I don't think the space is big enough for Meta to say they want to violate the platform they depend on's terms."

AAPL WATCH

Adam Ferughi

AppLovin's partnerships with measurement companies like Triple Whale are generating early demand through sponsorship and brand awareness, indicating a potential new customer acquisition channel is proving effective.

"Some of the coolest yields that we've seen and coolest partnerships are these partnerships with the measurement company. So if you talk to Triple Whale, they've got a sponsorship. From us, TVPN, the podcast, branded their gong with our"

PPLT WATCH

Adam Ferughi

Management identifies Amazon as one of the few companies that would not be a customer for its supply-side platform, implicitly acknowledging them as a competitor in the broader advertising market.

"Every publisher wants a monetization platform like ours to help them monetize their business unless they're Facebook, Google, or Amazon."

AMZN WATCH

Adam Ferughi

Meta is increasing bidding on IDFA traffic in Max, but is not yet bidding on probabilistic no-ID traffic. Management dismisses the threat of Meta dominating the space again, citing AppLovin's superior Axon 2 model and closed-loop data advantage, and questioning the logic of Meta violating Apple's terms.

"Meta was a launch partner of Max. They're a good partner. They've been in the Max platform for a long time. They are a bidder on anything that has an ID today, and they're not a bidder on anything that does not have an ID."

META WATCH

Adam Ferughi

Management explicitly targets Shopify merchants as a key growth segment for its e-commerce advertising platform, indicating a direct focus on winning spend from this customer base.

"In brands, that's going to be these performance D2C companies, much more the Shopify merchants, much less of those big brands that people talk about that buy through Madison Avenue agencies."

SHOP WATCH

Matt Stumpf

Management exudes extreme confidence, guiding a beat on Q1 seasonality and highlighting the strength of its e-commerce launch and model improvements. The tone is defiantly bullish against market fears of AI disruption and competition.

"Revenue in the fourth quarter was $1.66 billion, up 66% year over year, driven by continued technology advancements to our core mobile gaming business, seasonal strength, and the expanding impact of our e-commerce initiative. Adjusted"

APP WATCH

HIGH

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