Opera at Piper Sandler Conference: Strategic Growth and AI Focus

On Wednesday, 10 September 2025, Opera Ltd (NASDAQ:OPRA) presented a strategic overview at the Piper Sandler 4th Annual Growth Frontiers Conference. The discussion, led by CFO Frode Jacobsen, highlighted Opera’s robust growth trajectory, driven by its unique browser offerings and AI integration. While emphasizing significant revenue growth and a strong user base, Jacobsen also acknowledged challenges in expanding advertising revenue. The company remains optimistic about its strategic direction and shareholder value.

Key Takeaways

• Opera reported annual revenue of approximately $600 million with over 20% year-over-year growth.
• The company focuses on AI integration, launching ARIA and preparing for Opera OneON.
• Opera’s advertising growth, particularly in e-commerce, exceeded 100% year-over-year.
• Nearly $500 million has been returned to shareholders since 2020 through dividends and buybacks.
• The MiniPay stablecoin wallet has 9 million wallets and 250 million transactions.

Financial Results

• Revenue: Around $600 million annually, with over 20% year-over-year growth.
• Profitability: Positive EBITDA at approximately 23%.
• Capital Allocation: Nearly $500 million returned to shareholders since 2020 via dividends and share buybacks.
• Advertising Growth: Over 100% year-over-year growth since mid-last year.

Operational Updates

• Browser Products: Opera One targets tech-savvy users, while Opera GX caters to gamers.
• Advertising: Strong partnerships with Amazon, Temu, and Shein drive e-commerce growth.
• AI Integration: Launch of ARIA and upcoming Opera OneON to enhance user experience.
• MiniPay: A stablecoin wallet with 9 million users and 250 million transactions, focusing on emerging markets.

Future Outlook

• AI: The native AI browser will offer personalized recommendations and facilitate e-commerce.
• Growth Potential: Focus on increasing user engagement and combining growth with profitability.

Q&A Highlights

• Advertising: E-commerce initiative still has room for growth in revenue mix.
• Google Partnership: Long-standing partnership with annual contract renewals.
• Gaming: Opera GX continues to attract a dedicated gaming audience.
• Competitive Landscape: Opera differentiates itself through scale and specialized browser offerings.

Opera’s presentation at the conference underscores its commitment to innovation and strategic growth. For more details, refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Piper Sandler 4th Annual Growth Frontiers Conference:

Unidentified speaker: Hey. We’re here with Frode Jacobsen, the CFO of Opera. You’ve been in the seat for quite a while now, think since 2016. Would love to kinda hear you give sort of, an overview of how you the business, how you think about it for for those less familiar.

Frode Jacobsen, CFO, Opera: Sure. So Opera is a Norwegian consumer Internet company. We make browsers, so we make, you know, an alternative to Chrome, Safari, Edge, whatever comes with your computer or phone. We have been around for thirty years and close to 300,000,000 users, so it’s it’s quite at scale. Revenue wise, about 600,000,000, growing a bit more than 20% year over year and have been for a very long time.

Positive EBITDA around 23%, good cash conversion, and we we pay dividend, which I know isn’t so common for sort of tech growth Mhmm. Stock.

Unidentified speaker: Great. That’s, very helpful. I guess just you’ve got a number of products, the two largest, Opera One and Opera GX. Can you kinda just talk about those, and what are what are sort of the users and and the main use case?

Frode Jacobsen, CFO, Opera: Yeah. I think what all our browsers have in common is that they are quite distinctively different from system defaults. So they have to be different enough that for somebody who knows enough that they know that they can take another browser, there’s some reason to switch. So we we don’t go for the 90% market share play, but we go for the play that, you know, if you’re in that in that segment, then you will find Opera as an attractive browser. So Opera One is is the browser that’s maybe a bit for the tech savvy, a bit geek, but also a bit design oriented.

And Opera GX is our browser made for gamers. So like that kinda high end, you know, neon lit or neon or a lead LED lit keyboards and gaming chairs and and all of that, and then upper GX both with the style and functionality is a is a good fit for that.

Unidentified speaker: Right. Yeah. And and the engagement with, at least on the GX side, is, like, pretty high. Right?

Frode Jacobsen, CFO, Opera: Yeah. It’s it’s our highest ARPU product. Mhmm. It has the best retention, the the very positive user reviews, etcetera. And it’s the only browser made for gamers too, because, again, it goes to this, if your browser comes with an operating system, you kinda have to cater to the oldest and the youngest and the most and least tech aware people.

Mhmm. And and when you have a sort of a competitive play, an independent play, we don’t have to do that. So so then then we can afford to be very accustomed to to a segment. But still, there’s, like, hundreds of millions of gamers, and since everybody who uses it loves it, so we’re we’re still investing a lot in raising awareness and getting more people to to to know of its existence.

Unidentified speaker: Right. Okay. That is very helpful. I guess, just moving to some some of the financial, metrics. You’ve seen really strong advertising growth.

Can you just kinda dig in a little bit on on the drivers there and kinda what’s, you know, how fast is the growth and and what’s kind of been driving that?

Frode Jacobsen, CFO, Opera: Yeah. I mean, we we just first to explain that we typically divide our revenue into two parts, one we call search and the other one advertising. So search is maybe a bit narrow name, especially now, you know, the way we think about it, but it’s about when the user is, you know, looking for something, and then we send it to, for example, Google, and and get a revenue share in exchange. And then on the advertising side, that is where we more actively promote partners to the users. Mhmm.

So on that front, it’s we’ve had very many levers to pull, so we’ve been able to scale, scale very rapidly. And at the start of last year or just before, we we started an initiative around ecommerce. We saw that we were under indexing on that, and we had gotten to a scale big enough in countries like The US, Europe, etcetera, that we could drive meaningful amounts of traffic to partners. Mhmm. So with that initiative, we we you know, it was first in the, since mid last year, it’s been more than 100% year over year Right.

Growth.

Unidentified speaker: And how big would you say that that is now in the commerce

Frode Jacobsen, CFO, Opera: piece? I I think we’re still under indexing revenue mix wise. We have a 4% market share in these regions. I mean, if it’s a $100,000,000,000 offer to, you know, market, then then we definitely think there’s a lot of plenty of, like, more headroom that we’re starting to calculate, this is, you know, another x percent now.

Unidentified speaker: Right. Right. I see. And maybe could you talk about some of the partners you kinda have currently on the ecommerce side?

Frode Jacobsen, CFO, Opera: Yeah. It’s pretty big. I mean, we we do it’s a big space, but we typically focus on the biggest players, the regional and global Mhmm. Leaders. So for example, from The US, Amazon is a good example.

Mhmm. We got, like, Team and Sheen and those that are very global also. And then you have more regional players in in both Europe and and Asia as well. Mhmm. So we we focus on a shorter list because we everything we do is on a performance basis.

We have access to first party very good data from the browser side. Right. And and then we’re able to so so we essentially create a targeting approach for each partner. And as we’ve been scaling, what’s typically happening is that each partner can open up new geographies to us. If we do well in one, then we can expand, and that’s been driving driving our growth.

Mhmm.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. That that’s very helpful. And on, I guess, the data piece, you’re able to use that data to then help target users off off platform. Is that correct?

Frode Jacobsen, CFO, Opera: Right. Yeah. Yes.

Unidentified speaker: Yes. Okay. I guess you mentioned Timu and Xian. This is like a big sort of debate in digital advertising broadly. They were spending a lot.

They pulled back spend. It seems like they could be, you know, spending again. Do you work with both of those, or is that, like, sort of like a focus, this sort of China reseller?

Frode Jacobsen, CFO, Opera: Yeah. We work with both of those, but we we don’t have so much focus on The US tariff situation because we can’t affect it. Right. But when we saw that in in the beginning of the year, obviously, how many international retailers were pulling back from The US market, but then we’ve been working with them to grow their presence in in other markets. Mhmm.

So we still had a q two, which was sort of the quarter of perhaps the strongest impact with, I think, 40% year over year advertising growth. It was growing even in The US. It was just that the growth rate was lower than Mhmm. In other markets.

Unidentified speaker: Yeah. Got it. I see. Okay. I guess moving to search, roughly a third of revenue, pretty high margin.

Can you just kinda talk about the growth drivers of that business? I think, historically, you’ve generally outgrown actually Google’s Google’s own search

Frode Jacobsen, CFO, Opera: Yeah. I mean, it’s a revenue share, so our revenue on on the search item is a function of, of our user base and their activity level. Mhmm. So we we have typically, grown faster than the overall, let’s say, Google search, revenue, and that goes back to our our focus over the last five years or so to scale the user base amongst the highest ARPU potential user bases. Mhmm.

So that that includes gaming that we talked about, which is of a global thing. We see that people who are, like, high end gamers, no matter if if they’re even if they live in a in a market that’s not, like, typically a developed country, they’re more affluent than the rest of the population. Right. But it’s also about, geography, focusing on western markets. So I think we’ve two two point five x or something that user base over the

Years. Now I I think the most recent number was 58,000,000, users in in western markets. And as our user base, you know, grows in these markets, then, you know, I guess that’s the beauty of being small that you’re not constrained by market growth. We’ve we’ve essentially been taking share, right, because the nonpopulation and Internet connectivity has been relatively stable. Yeah.

But, yeah, we’ve done well in that, and and then, of of course, it benefits both search and advertising, but it’s almost easier to spot within search because there’s, a market benchmark. Mhmm. Yeah.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. That is helpful. Sort of to that point on search, we received a big outcome recently from the remedies to the Google antitrust case. Can you sort of talk about that, what sort of the impact could be to to Opera? Yeah.

Frode Jacobsen, CFO, Opera: I mean, that case, so, you know, it was about, ensuring healthy competition in the search space, and the part of it that was, you could say, relevant to Opera was whether or not Google would be allowed to pay revenue shares to traffic sources, like Opera as a browser. And, of course, all the attention was on the Google Apple relationship. And so that was last week that the ruling came out on the remedies, and that was explicitly not limiting that, which would have been a bit surprising if somehow Google would not be allowed to pay for traffic, but all their competitors would be. So, so it’s maybe not so surprising, but I think it was, like, you know, even though it was only relevant to The US portion of our search traffic, it was some something that was kinda just nice to Mhmm. Get out of the way for people.

Yes.

Unidentified speaker: Yeah. Right. And I guess the one change would be previously, the the contracts would be, like, three years plus one. With Google, now it will be renewed every year?

Frode Jacobsen, CFO, Opera: Yes. Okay. But, I mean, we did that again earlier this year, did a one year extension. So that that’s more or less I I think our current work with Google is more or less following exactly the items that that, that the judge asked. Mhmm.

We and just context, we we’re entering the twenty fifth consecutive year of being in that partnership, so it’s it’s a very long standing one. Maybe we get more attention than you’d think, you know, because we are, of course, the, you know, smaller than the other, you know, system browsers at least, but we’ve worked with Google since the beginning of Chromium. I think we’re the only company that shared any of the committees that developed that, which is the rendering language of how to show websites, etcetera. Mhmm. And so there’s a technical part of it, and and there’s also the part we are, you know, pretty fast moving with bold, even though it’s 30 years old, so we’re probably about the same ages as companies.

They just got a bit bigger, but, so so I think we we’re always very interested to try new things and experiment together, and and I think that’s that’s also what’s kept the partnership so close over these years. Mhmm.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. Great. That is that is helpful. I guess following up on GX, few big things in in gaming right now. We’ve seen kind of a big surge in Roblox usage.

And I guess next year, we have the release of Grand Theft Auto. Can you kinda talk about how, like, those sort of events could could impact engagement on GX?

Frode Jacobsen, CFO, Opera: I think anything that draws an audience to a platform that’s relevant for the gaming browser, we’re very interested in. You know, like, we are the global sponsor of the League of Legends tournament, for example. We did something around, not the boys, but It was the boys. I thought it was the junior version of it. So just because it’s kinda a bit overlapped in terms of the addressable, in terms of the market.

So we had a bot browser, I guess. Mhmm. Just the fun thing. But it’s these things that draw eyeballs in the direction of gaming, and then it’s an excellent opportunity opportunity for us to to be there. There’s typically no other alternative browser partner for them.

Right? And and so we we use that as a as a way to raise awareness. Mhmm.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. That that is helpful. I guess I AI is obviously a pretty big important topic here at the conference. And we’ll definitely talk about Neon in a second, but just can you maybe explain how you’ve used AI in the products and the browsers even just up up until this point? Yeah.

I mean, this

Frode Jacobsen, CFO, Opera: is something we we’ve been so we are so excited about it, but for for a good amount of time now because it’s almost like it I mean, I think everyone here probably uses one or all of these new AI services. Right? And and we benefit from it. It’s such a great tool. So it’s almost like when going back to when search first started to be as good as it is now, but beyond that in terms of what you can create and productivity and all of that.

So the first thing we did was to create an integrated AI service in in the browser, like an overlay over the websites that you’re on. You can chat with ARIA, is its name, and ask questions about the content you’re reviewing, etcetera, and you can use it to control the browser, group things, close various things based on what you wanna focus on. That’s been good. That’s gotten us a lot of attention, and when we see the people that come in and start using that, the same sort of pool of people, their profile changes to be, more retained, higher engagement, etcetera. And then the big thing this fall is the nay like, true native AI browser that we’re launching now coming up now Mhmm.

That we call up on EON. I don’t know if you wanna discuss that separately or

Unidentified speaker: Yeah. No. That that’s that’s great.

Frode Jacobsen, CFO, Opera: Yeah. Please. Please. Because the AI is great as it is. Like, the way we use it now is it’s it’s a website.

So it’s it’s in one of those tabs in your browser, and that’s where it exists. So I think the opportunity we have as a browser is not to compete with the LLMs that are already out there. You know, there’s plenty of them, and and they’re all quite good. But to integrate that type of service natively in the browser so that it doesn’t exist within a website, but it sort of exists above the tabs, as part of the browser itself. Because if you think the browser is I mean, it’s logged into your email.

It’s logged into your calendar, the newspaper subscriptions you have, and and all the stuff you do online. So the browser is aware of all of these things, the browser can act across all of these tabs, help you, help you initiate whatever research or planning or whatever you want. So so by having the AI a a native AI browser, you can do stuff like, you know, you’re flying into this conference and, you know, you ask if I here’s my schedule, you know, pull the email dialogue, summarize my interactions with the companies I’m meeting, do research on them, give them the latest news, send me send me a report. Right? Or schedule meetings with your team, summarize, research, share it with person x.

So I think it’s it’s great for productivity, and as a browser, it’s also great for monetization because it’s also an excellent tool to this is what I’m interested in, I don’t know, running wise. It’s treadmill, but sometimes on asphalt, and you you get shopping advice. And so, of course, then it’s it’s it opens up a whole new opportunity for us to send traffic to partners in with very high conversion rates. Right? That’s why I mentioned that the labeling of revenue search is almost a bit too narrow because we’re moving into an area where it’s really about the U user having an intent to do something Mhmm.

Going after it, and then whether it’s addressed as a search result or or as an AI dialogue with with recommendations is almost indifferent. Right? It’s it’s about monetizing that.

Unidentified speaker: Right. And so in this I guess in this case, like, if I have my passwords across all my sites logged in, the agent the agentic browser would be able to utilize that to, like, complete the task. Right?

Frode Jacobsen, CFO, Opera: It’s it’s your computer. It’s your browser. You are logged in. So, of course, Wall Street Journal wouldn’t allow ChatGPT or any others to just kinda scrape all their paid content, but Mhmm. You are allowed to read it Right.

And your agent is allowed to read it Mhmm. Because it’s just for you. Yes. Yeah.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. That is helpful. I guess kind of on on that point, there’s a lot of software companies at the conference. There was some news recently about a software company acquiring sort of a competitive

Frode Jacobsen, CFO, Opera: competitive browser. Can you talk about maybe, like, where you’re similar or different to to sort of that that product and what kind of the implications could be for the space? Yeah. Maybe first comment on the interest. It’s it’s maybe not so surprising that we see stuff like that just because making a browser is you can see it if somebody comes out with a quick browse or something, it’s not so easy.

Mhmm. It has to be a quality product that has to work the way people actually use them. Mhmm. And and browsers, like also the browser company that invest in innovative ways like Opera has been doing to to use the web is not easy to do. I think how we differ from the browser companies, I mean, obviously, the scale, it’s they don’t they don’t pop up on step counter, so it’s probably less than point 1% market share, but I think they came out with a with a very advanced product for the most advanced users initially.

Mhmm. And then it was it was loved, but it just wouldn’t scale. And then I think they just recently went more mass tried to move in the direction of mass market than in in, like, beta. So it’s, it’s I mean, it was a technology acquisition more than a user acquisition, I guess.

Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

Frode Jacobsen, CFO, Opera: Of of a, yeah, more junior product, obviously. Mhmm.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. Okay. Another pretty interesting product here, a little bit separate from the browser side, is MiniPay, which is your, I believe, your stablecoin wallet. Can you kind of talk about the the growth you’ve seen, what some of the KPIs are, and then what monetization could look like

Frode Jacobsen, CFO, Opera: Yeah. For this? MiniPay is, yeah, stablecoin wallet. So essentially for emerging markets where we have a big big user base in Africa Mhmm. Also in Emerging Asia, people can then hold value in dollars, stablecoins, euro, stablecoin, and, of course, remit across countries if you have family members abroad, etcetera.

And then there’s like a a quickly growing ecosystem of services on top. We launched it through our browsers. It exists as a stand alone app. It’s at 9,000,000 wallets now, and 250,000,000 transactions is the latest figure we went out with. So it what I understand is that it is the fastest or amongst at least the very fastest growing noncustodial wallets out there.

So it’s attracted a lot of interest from the ecosystem to partner up and be promoted, be supported, etcetera. And so we monetize it already a little bit, but not by the user, but just from people who want to be promoted and integrated.

Unidentified speaker: Right. I see. Okay. Just for looking at OpEx sort of excluding COGS, I think marketing spend is probably your largest expense. Can you sort of talk a little bit about the user acquisition strategy and what channels have kind of been working better versus versus others?

One

Frode Jacobsen, CFO, Opera: raised brand awareness. So for that, we use content makers, you know, YouTubers, streamers, all kinds of influencers, and classic marketing. And that has worked really well. And then and then on top, we work with classic sort of download campaigns, a bit on the OEM side, but that’s mostly for mobile in emerging markets. So it’s a relatively broad spectrum of activities, and then the beauty of this is that, you know, we’re dealing in the millions and tens of millions of people coming in.

And so we within a few days, we can sort of see the profile of of a cohort of new users and and and and with good, accuracy sort of predict their their lifetime value with engagement click search, you know, like all the stuff that they do. Mhmm. So so we are we can very quickly, when we start the new campaign, a new partner establish the ROI and then adjust the spend to where where we see the best performance. Mhmm.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. That that is helpful. So you’ve done a great job, beating sort of raising historically, and margins have have looked pretty strong, I guess. How should we think about, sort of the long term growth kind of from here?

Frode Jacobsen, CFO, Opera: Yeah. I I mean, we’re in a space that is extremely exciting. We okay. A little bit biased. But, if you think about it yourself, like, when you’re on your computer, how much time you’re actually spending in the browser.

For most people, that time spent is going up. Right? You’re doing more stuff in the browser. More of your tools are essentially on the web, for sharing collaboration and and everything. And then you have these new tools that that enables you to scan the web faster, find sources faster, and and just do your own research, where maybe in the past you’d call some somebody.

Right? So I think that is very exciting. We we we we we never missed on our revenue guidance. One time, we took an EBITDA provision when COVID hit, and that was one quarter. And other than that, we’ve never missed on our EBITDA guidance either.

So we’ve we’ve sort of had the luxury of, well, I think we’ve made the right strategic decisions. We’re also in a space that combines both growth with good profitability potential, not just in some distant future, but, like, right now. Yeah. And and so we we we we try not to stretch it when we guide. We try to sort of, okay.

Here’s our guidance. It’s better than you all thought. Mhmm. And if we make this, then we should all be happy. And then, you know, hopefully, we can do a little bit better even, but Mhmm.

We’re not gonna commit to it. Mhmm. But then typically, that has happened.

Unidentified speaker: Got it. And then just last, as we’re kind of approaching time here, could you just talk about the sort of the capital return strategy?

Frode Jacobsen, CFO, Opera: Yeah. I mean, for something like $1,700,000,000 cap company. We’ve returned nearly half a billion since 2020 to our shareholders. So we are very active on that. We bought back 30% of the company over the past four years in buybacks, and we we are a recurring dividend payer, which is sort of the other half of that 500 ish million.

So we we continue to pay a recurring dividend. That’s our preferred way of returning capital to shareholders. But then, you know, I think we’ve shown historically that that we can be opportunistic across both. Mhmm. Yeah.

Well, Frode, thank you for, for being here. Appreciate it. Thank you.

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