Northern Data AG (NB2.MU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Rumble update call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Shannon Devine, Investor Relations for Rumble. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. I'm here today with Chris Pavlovski, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Rumble; and Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether; and Zachary Lyons, Deputy CIO of Tether. Before we begin the formal presentation, I would like to remind everyone that statements made on this call may include predictions, estimates or other information that might be considered forward-looking. All forward-looking statements are made only as of the date of this call and should be considered in conjunction with the company's cautionary statements in our press release and the factors included in our SEC filings. Future company updates will be available via press releases and the company's identified social media channels. I will now turn the call over to Rumble's Founder, Chairman and CEO, Chris Pavlovski.

Thank you, Shannon. Good morning, and thank you for joining us. I couldn't be more excited to be here today and have Paolo, the CEO of Tether, alongside me. Today marks one of the most important days in Rumble's history. Last night, we announced 3 transformational milestones that will forever redefine who we are and where we're headed. One, our exchange offer for Northern Data. This redefines what Rumble is. We become an instant AI infrastructure leader with land, lots of power, data centers and GPUs. Two, Tether's $150 million GPU purchase agreement, which solidifies an immediate anchor customer, providing the foundation for revenue scale. And three, Tether's $100 million advertising commitment, which will fuel our video platform business by helping reshape how creators monetize by using the Rumble Wallet. Collectively, this positions Rumble as one of the most important disruptors in technology, spanning video, cloud, AI and payments, all anchored in: freedom, privacy, independence, and resilience. Rumble is no longer just a video platform. As you can see with our newly released investor deck, we unveiled it's the foundation of a new Freedom-First ecosystem that will fiercely challenge the likes of Microsoft, Google and Amazon. We built one of the most engaged communities online with 47 million monthly active users, but that was only step one. We then built an advertising ecosystem that can access over 1 billion ad requests per day, followed by an emerging cloud platform and soon the Rumble Wallet, but it doesn't end there. Today, we're going big. We're extending that mission into GPUs, data centers and AI. And further into the future, we will open up pillars around web tools and a productivity suite, which will include e-mail and file storage. This future of Rumble isn't about competing within the old systems. It's about redefining with something better. With the full backing of Tether, Rumble will create an entire tech ecosystem rooted in freedom across every pillar of business we do, giving consumers and businesses the control they deserve and are seeking. Now let's talk about Northern Data. Northern Data is one of the world's leading AI infrastructure companies with significant capital deployed in a highly attractive base of hard assets. Through this acquisition, we're adding over 22,000 GPUs, 9 data centers, of which 4 are owned, land, power, data centers and GPUs, we will now have the assets to immediately scale in the enterprise space. It also positions us as an international player overnight with Northern Data's footprint across Europe and U.S. complementing Rumble's prominence in North America. Most importantly, it launches us directly into the fastest-growing market in technology, AI infrastructure. Next, the $150 million GPU purchase agreement from Tether, $75 million per year over 2 years following closing of the transaction. This agreement is a validation of the combined platform we're building. It gives us immediate contracted demand and more importantly, we will become the infrastructure vehicle of one of the most visionary customers in the world. It's not just a commercial commitment, it's a strategic alignment with the largest player in digital assets and the most widely used dollar stablecoin with more than 500 million users, commits to this level of engagement, it signals to the market that Rumble's infrastructure is ready for prime time. And then there's the $100 million advertising agreement from Tether, $50 million per year over 2 years tied directly to the Rumble Wallet. This is about transforming the future of payments within the creator economy. Specifically, this commitment will be used to fuel massive creator growth on the Rumble video platform, bringing in a whole host of new creators to promote Rumble and promote the use using the Rumble Wallet while live streaming to their viewers. Payments and the freedom to transact are key pillars of our vision, and this partnership will quickly make this vision become a reality. Simply put, when you put all this together, this is the moment Rumble hits its next inflection point. We've catapulted into the AI market, secured hard assets, sizable revenue and global reach. The acquisition is propelling our vision to bring a new freedom-first ecosystem to the market as a new ways forward for tech from media, advertising and payments to land, power and data centers to AI and beyond, our ecosystem will be a fierce competitor to big tech built upon core values to support our freedoms anchored in: privacy, independence, and resilience. I said this on our last earnings call, and I think it's fitting to end on it again. Since the $775 million transaction with Tether closed back in February, our mandate has changed. YouTube has Google, CoreWeave has Microsoft, Anthropic has Amazon and Rumble has Tether. We've always been ambitious, but today, we sit in a different position. Our mandate is growth. And unlike big tech, it will be aggressive growth while protecting a free and open Internet. It's an honor to turn this call over to Paolo, the CEO of Tether.

Thank you, Chris. I speak on behalf of the entire Tether team by saying we are excited to partner with Rumble and help you reach the next level. Hello, everyone. I'm Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether. For those who don't know us, Tether was born in 2014 as the world's first stablecoin, a simple but revolutionary idea, a stable digital dollar on the blockchain. This was the beginning of the stablecoin industry. And today, Tether supports over 500 million active wallets and tens of millions of families, many in emerging markets such as Argentina, Turkey, Nigeria and everywhere else in the world. In 10 years, that idea has grown. And today, we issue the most liquid and widely used stablecoin in the world with over $200 billion in assets. These are everyday people who have been forgotten or ignored by the traditional financial system. But Tether is more than a stable coin company. It's the stable company. We are building resilient infrastructure, advancing financial sovereignty and pioneering a future that's decentralized, resilient, stable and powered by artificial intelligence. At our core, we believe in freedom of money, freedom of speech and freedom of thought. These values drive everything we do, but our mission is much bigger. We are building infrastructure across finance, communication, artificial intelligence and energy, because freedom requires resilience in all the systems. Our investment in Rumble is about building infrastructure that protects these freedoms. We share the same vision of creating open platforms as a counterweight to centralize censor-prone big tech. Rumble's vision aligns perfectly with ours, to create open platforms that stand as counterweight to centralized censor-prone tech giants. By investing in Rumble, we are not just investing in infrastructure. We're investing in Freedom-First future for the Internet and AI. This investment deal is the beginning of a new chapter for the Internet. For too long, a handful of corporations have controlled the flow of information, the servers that host our content and now the GPUs that power AI. That concentration means they decide who builds, who gets to build and which ideas are allowed to exist. AI today is not limited by creativity or vision. It is limited by access to computing power. And when computing is centralized, so it is control. Rumble's bold acquisition changes that dynamic. By combining Rumble's independent-first platforms with Northern Data infrastructure, they are creating the conditions for open access to AI tools and intelligence at scale. This matters most for the decentralized population, the creators, the researchers, the communities and the nations who cannot and should not have their future dictated by big tech gatekeepers. The vision is simple, an open infrastructure for intelligence where no single company or government sets the boundaries of thought, creation or speech. That is why this transaction matters. It is not the scale for the sake of scale. It is not -- it is scale for the sake of freedom. The Internet should serve people, not the other way around. Together, we are making that a reality. The Internet and now AI has become concentrated in the hands of few corporations. They decide what you can see, what you can say and soon what you can even think. That is not innovation, that is control. Freedom-First means breaking the step cycle. It means building technology that is independent of gatekeepers, resilient against censorship and align with the values of privacy transparency and choice. Today's big tech model thrives on centralization. They own the servers, the algorithms, the data and ultimately the truth, but truth cannot be owned.

And now Rumble is flipping that model on its head. We're moving from centralized platforms to open ecosystems from surveillance-driven business models to privacy-first tools from gatekeepers of intelligence to communities in control of their own intelligence. This is more than a business strategy. It's about ensuring that AI doesn't become the next layer of centralized control, but instead, it becomes a tool of empowerment for creators, for entrepreneurs, for nations who want independence in their digital futures. A Freedom-First Internet and AI stack is no longer optional. It's a necessity if we want innovation to serve people, not corporations, not governments and not special interests.

We'll open up the line for questioning.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is coming from Jason Helfstein from Oppenheimer.

Congratulations on announcing the deal. Can you help us a little bit from a financial perspective, I mean, just whether -- it seems like the deal is like initially going to be dilutive, but then obviously, you believe over time, it will be accretive. We can kind of do the math on the advertising impact that -- from the advertising investment Tether is making as well as the investment in the cloud contract and GPUs. But I didn't see any specifics around kind of the financial impact on the slide. So I don't know, just give us some modeling help maybe as we're just trying to think about like how dilutive it is initially and then kind of like over time, how this becomes accretive.

Jason, this is Chris. Thanks for your question. So with respect to guidance, we're not providing any guidance. You can kind of refer to the press releases that we put out last night. But obviously, the -- we have this large advertising commitment from Tether to the tune of about $50 million per year for 2 years. That will kick off in 2026. And then the GPU commitment is obviously that happens post close, which is anticipated to be in the first half of 2026 as well.

Okay. And just maybe a follow-up. Any update on kind of between the 2 companies, the kind of wallet and kind of further expansion of the financial transactions with the platform?

Yes. So we're planning to release the Wallet to a larger user base in the coming weeks and then have it open to the entire user base by mid-December. So we're on track for, I would say, about in a month from now, it should be opened up to everybody and to a pretty large and sizable cohort in the coming weeks here in November.

And then just maybe last follow-up, and I'll go back in the queue. Any update on how you're thinking about functionality of that Wallet beyond just for content creator payments, any other kind of functionality you've been discussing with Tether?

Yes. So with respect to the Wallet, it's a noncustodial wallet. So it can be used for -- it can be used by anyone for basically anything. But obviously, it will be deeply tied into the Rumble platform for tipping. Obviously, the vision here is to have the Rumble Wallet be used for more than just tipping. Eventually, we'd like to see creators get paid that way or they can choose to get paid that way. We really want it to be a real economic engine around everything we do on Rumble, even from advertising to cloud to creators. But in the first iteration, we're looking to launch it strictly around the tipping for creators. Paolo, if you want to add anything to that by all means.

Yes, absolutely. It's important to note that the United States are the biggest remittances corridor in the world. And remittances more and more happen through stablecoins and especially USDT and soon, USAT, that is Tether's domestic stablecoin. So we see also the Rumble Wallet as a way to onboard people and workers that work in the United States and want to send money back home to their families, maybe in Central South America or Africa or Southeast Asia, for example. And so I believe -- we believe that the Rumble Wallet will become a centerpiece of that economy that is growing. Note that between 20% and 40% of the GDP of many emerging markets is remittances. And so we plan to position the United States and the Rumble Wallet into those huge corridors.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is coming from Francesco Marmo from Maxim Group.

Two for me, if I may, one for Chris and one for Paolo. So Chris, you guys keep on posting impressive results in terms of your revenue per user. I was wondering if you could give us a sense for what's driving those?

Thank you for the question. So what's driving the ARPU is the Rumble Advertising Center and the sponsorships that are -- the advertising sponsorships that are happening on the platform. What we're starting to see on Rumble is that brand advertisers are coming. They're coming slowly, but they're starting to come, whereas a year or 2 ago, we didn't have any. We now have a few of them, such as Crypto.com and now you're seeing Perplexity. You have these brands now spending on Rumble, which didn't exist a year ago. So that's starting to move the needle a little bit. We'd like to see many, many, many more brand advertisers join, and we're hopeful that will happen in the coming years. But it started -- you're starting to see a little bit of the action happening with the larger advertisers, and that's what's helping drive the ARPU.

Great. And then if I may, one quick one for Paolo kind of like big picture global maybe. Paolo, I was wondering if you can give us a sense for like how do you see the adoption trends of crypto and kind of freedom-based financial tools in general differing across the U.S., Europe and Asia? And what factors, whether it's regulatory, cultural or technological, do you think are driving those regional differences?

Thank you. I think that I would like to start from the concept that for the last 5 dozen years, society was built upon the concept of peer-to-peer and decentralization. People were for both information and money. People were meeting at the dinner table, where we're discussing, we're talking directly without intermediaries. At the same time, people were exchanging value like cash and gold coins or salt in the beginning directly peer-to-peer. I think what we -- what happened in the last 30, 40 years, both for information and communication and money has been an insane centralization and hands of just a bunch of 2, 3 big companies. That is unprecedented. That is putting at risk the fabric of society itself. So with Rumble and Tether and this acquisition that Rumble is making, we want to create a counterbalance. We want to ensure that both communication, streaming and finance all become, again, freedom tools will become, again, a way for society to grow to become more stronger, to become more independent because that's how innovation starts. Innovation cannot grow, cannot thrive under -- in the hands of just a few companies. So that's why it's important to create the first huge conglomerate that unifies all the ethos and the philosophy of a stable society, at the same time, has the tools, the technical tools, technical innovation and the capital to continue to grow that vision and has the ability to create technology that empowers people rather than empowers one single decision maker. So that cannot only be about communications, that cannot be only about money. It cannot only be about intelligence. You need different pillars to build a stable society, you need communication tools. You need energy access. You need financial freedom and access to financial services for everyone in the world and not just the reachers. And also you want accessible intelligence. That is the global mission of -- that is shared across all our companies.

Our next question is a follow-up from Jason Helfstein from Oppenheimer.

Just want to dig in a bit more on the fundamentals in the quarter. Obviously, as the earlier person pointed out, you had healthy growth in ARPU in the quarter. That being said, we did see a bit of a decline sequentially in users, obviously strong usage, et cetera. So I guess can you just comment any kind of just broad commentary what you're seeing as far as like usage on the platform sequentially, if there's anything to call out that was a headwind in the third quarter? And then -- and then just on cost of revenue, just any kind of commentary where we are with sort of the minimum guarantees because it just felt like -- yes, just any kind of color that would just help us there, maybe as we're just thinking about the gross margin going forward.

Jason, so I'll touch on the MAUs. Consistent with like previous years and what we see in the summer is like creators like Steven Crowder and Dave Rubin, they take off months, a month or in some cases, even more during the summer months. And this has kind of an impact on the MAUs a little bit as a lot of creators stop live streaming during the summer months. And then that obviously starts to pick up in September. So that's -- we're seeing like that typical seasonality that we always see with respect to the creators in the summer months. In addition to that, it's obviously not -- it's an off -- it's post the presidential election year. So it's a little softer because of that as well because of the election cycles. But obviously, we anticipate in 2026 as midterms come around the corner that the election cycle news will provide -- we'll give it back a better boost. With respect to the creator contracts and the guarantees, I think what's really important here is to call out the $100 million Tether advertising spend, which kind of changes the game for us on how we pursue creators and contracts. Typically, as you remember, back in 2023 and 2024, as we pursued creators to bring them to the platform, the idea was to try to -- we would model them based on getting them to a certain point of breakeven and bringing them advertisers. We no longer have that problem. Tether is now -- is going to be the large advertiser here that is going to allow us to go and bring the creators, and we're going to -- and they're going to be funding -- they're funding that advertising to the tune of $100 million over the next 2 years. For us to go aggressively go get those creators where we'll make profit on, and we won't have that issue of looking for advertisers to come in. So that's a complete game changer in us pursuing creators onto the platform and allowing us to step on the gas pedal to really grow the platform in 2026 and in 2027. So I think if there's one thing to take away on the advertising commitment deal is that this is what -- I believe there's a lot of exciting growth potential here, especially on the MAU front and the creator front because we're going to be going -- we're going to be stepping on the gas, bringing in creators. And every creator we're going to bring in, we have the funder of the advertiser, which is Tether, and we're going to be making a profit on that. So it's a completely different model in terms of creator acquisition than it has been in '23 and '24. So that's probably the most exciting part about the advertising commitment.

Thank you. We've reached the end of our question-and-answer session. And ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's teleconference webcast. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.