Opera (NASDAQ:OPRA) held its first-quarter earnings conference call on Tuesday. Below is the complete transcript from the call.
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Summary
Opera reported Q1 2026 revenue of $176 million, exceeding guidance by $4 million, with a 23% year-over-year growth and adjusted EBITDA of $42 million at a 24% margin.
Advertising revenue reached an all-time high of $117 million, with strong momentum that offset seasonality, and query revenue grew 23% driven by AI advancements.
The company is focusing on expanding its e-commerce partnerships and exploring opportunities in the travel industry for Opera Ads.
Opera introduced Browser Connector, allowing users to integrate their preferred AI tools, enhancing browser functionality and user engagement.
The company raised its full-year revenue guidance to $727-$740 million, anticipating 18-20% growth, and continued its share buyback program to increase shareholder value.
Full Transcript
Matt Wolfson (Head of Investor Relations)
Thank you for joining us this morning. I am joined by our CEO Song Lin and our CFO Froda Jacobsen. Before I hand over the call to Song Lin, I would like to remind you that some of the statements that we make today regarding our business operations and financial performance may be considered forward looking. Such statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially as a result of various factors, including those set forth in today's earnings press release and in our most recent annual report on Form 20F 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 [email protected] our comments will be on a year over year comparison unless we state otherwise. With that, let me turn the call over to our CEO Song Lin, who will cover our first quarter operational highlights and strategy, and then Frodo Jacobson will discuss the details of our financials and expectations for the second quarter and full year.
Song Lin (Chief Executive Officer)
Sure. Thank you Matt and good day everyone. It's been less than 2 months since we reported our fourth quarter 2025 results, with the trajectory for 2026 well ahead of internal expectations. And today we announced that we surpassed even those recent forecasts. Q1 revenue exceeded the high end of our guidance range by 4 million and adjusted EBITDA exceeded the high end of our guidance range by 2 million. That translated to year over year revenue growth of 23% to $176 million with 42 million adjusted EBITDA or a 24% margin. It is also worth noting that revenue growth was comparable across advertising and query Revenue and 24% and 23% respectively, both contributing to an excellent starting position for the remainder of the year. On the advertising side, first quarter revenue was a new all time high of 117 million. Our momentum and underlying growth was strong enough to more than offset seasonality. Our advertising partners run performance based campaigns, so we would not see this level of growth if our partners were not also experiencing success. As a result, we are able to continue increasing our share of wallet with a continued focus on on scaling our e commerce partnerships. As an example, just two weeks ago we were awarded Affiliate of the year from AliExpress and in late 2025 we received a similar recognition from Shopee, another key partner. We are humbled by the appreciation shown and Operate Opera Ads raise their continued Success as our North Star Our partners appreciate the three core pillars of Opera ads. First is a unified media technology ecosystem that combines our own ad inventory augmented with the wider programmatic landscape and advanced targeting algorithms to deliver hyper relevant placements and the precise moment of user intent. Second is consistent execution that delivers daily volume without sacrificing quality and finally, a deep collaborative alignment that fosters a transparent, closely aligned working relationship with our partners. Working with such global partners will translate demonstrated performance in active markets to continued regional expansion. And while e commerce opportunities will only increase as the year progresses, I'm also excited about taking our learnings from that vertical and applying it more broadly. For example, as we enter the travel heavy second and third quarters, we see a clear potential to establish Opera ads as a source of well targeted audiences for the travel industry. All in all, there is no shortage of opportunity and it's all about execution to deliver the best results for our partners. Within the 23% growth of acquiring revenue search revenue growth continued expanding and reached 14% in the quarter, a level we have not seen since 2024. The remainder of query growth was driven by non such query revenue which continues to be multiple times larger than the year ago quarter with underlying growth also offsetting seasonality. In total quarry revenue was $58 million in the fourth quarter and representing 43% of our revenue. As we've discussed before, the AI age comes with completely new query monetization potentials for our browsers, both from conversation with the native Opera AI Assistant and as it relates to the backend understanding of a user's intentions presenting relevant product and services natively in the user interface. The browser is unlike any other app. It's a gateway to almost every service available online. And as the browser gets smarter, the user can more efficiently act on their intentions. For example, if the user starts formulating a query in a URL bar, the browser can understand the intention and expand the interface to present relevant destinations. Or if a user was interrupted during a session, the browser can organize that history and enable a seamless continuation later on. In fact, AI unlocks both advertising and query revenue opportunities for us. On the advertising side, deep learning and agentic AI are leading to greater optimization and better targeting of user intent, resulting in greater conversion rates for our advertising partners. On the query side, we are witnessing an evolution in search. Historically, search has been limited to the keywords users are searching for, but over the past few years we have seen this transform from simple keywords to more complex and longer question based queries, and more recently to chat conversations. As a browser with control of the URL bar and omnibox, we are well positioned as an entry node to search and AI chats. As these more complex searches and conversations begin to be monetized, we are in an excellent position to benefit. Now, turning to our products and recent innovations, the key topic of AI potentials for the browser, we recently introduced Browser Connector. Available both in our subscription based agentic browser Opera Neo and in Our mainstream browsers Opera1 and GX. Browser Connector allows users to plug their favorite AI tools directly into their live browser sessions via a protocol known as the mcp, providing the AI platform of their choice with full real time context of open tabs and active content. Think of this as Bring your own AI. The MCP protocol is an open standard that enables a secure connection between a browser host and AI models, giving users the freedom to choose their preferred combination of browser and AI backends. With Browser Connector, the user no longer needs to act as the personal secretary of their own online AI tools, copy and paste in links and context. Instead, the browser enables the AI of choice to access and read page content, understand open tabs, and even take screenshots to analyze images or graphs. Beyond the technical upgrades, Browser Connector reinforces Opera's long standing advocacy for user choice over ecosystem locking. Product innovation translates to user appreciation and increased usage of our browsers, which again translates to revenue tailwinds. Looking at key Western markets, we see users who engage with AI within our browsers spend over an hour more per day and in the browser, and even perform 50% more traditional searches than comparable users who are not yet engaged in AI, all of which directly contributes to upgrowth. Our broad approach to monetization puts us in a differentiated position as most companies that are monetizing AI today are either chip and compute providers or those relying exclusively on subscriptions and usage based models. In terms of our user base, we added 4 million users during the first quarter, bringing our total monthly average users to 288 million. We added 400,000 Western users on top of the seasonally strong post column, and we benefited from both continued Android adoption and PC platform growth and 1 million new Opera GX resource globally. In total, our annualized ARPU was $2.43, a 25% increase year over year. The final topic I would like to discuss is minipay, our non custodial stablecoin wallet with deep ecosystem roots. Minipay is the leading stablecoin wallet in Africa, appreciated for its technical ease and seamless integrations with great opportunities and real life benefits with access to stablecoins both within emerging market and as a global payment framework. Just last week we announced a 1 million USD incentive for local developers of mini apps that take advantage of the transaction opportunities of minipay and we are using our underground presence in Africa and Latvia America to provide in person support. This supports the continued expansion of mini apps available in minipay covering a broad range of services from finance, shopping, entertainment and utility tools. MiniBay has now activated over 15 million wallets and processed over 413 million total transactions. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Frodo Jacobsen, our CFO to discuss our financial results, guidance and capital allocation in greater detail.
Frodo Jacobsen (Chief Financial Officer)
Thanks, Song. As Hong Lin mentioned, we are very pleased with the start of 2026 and and the trajectory we are on now well into the second quarter. Yet again we overperformed our estimates and delivered an incremental $4 million of revenue on top of the guidance range with over 50% conversion to incremental adjusted EBITDA. This level of outperformance is particularly impressive in the face of seasonal headwinds following the holiday heavy fourth quarter. Instead of a seasonal dip, our underlying commercial momentum overpowered those trends and drove sequential advertising revenue higher in the first quarter. Q1 also marks our 20th consecutive quarter as a Rule of 40 company and we are well on track for 2026 to be the sixth consecutive year where we meet that high bar. In fact, our average annual revenue growth or CAGR stands at 21% over the past 10 year period, a feat few public companies achieve. Even more so for companies that have been around for over 30 years like opera. In these times filled with innovation and opportunity. We continue to benefit from the resilience and agility of our business model, disciplined execution and our consistency in pairing rapid and organic growth with healthy profitability. Our outperformance continues to be broad based with total revenue growth of 23% as opposed to the midpoint guidance of 19% growth within our total quarterly revenue of 176 million. Advertising was 117 million or 67% of the total and query revenue was 58 million. Advertising revenue grew at 24% and the evolution of our search business into a broader query approach resulted in query revenue growth of 23%, a level we haven't seen since the post Covid rebound in 2021 as we better monetize high intent user actions across the browser interface. In terms of costs, I want to highlight the fact that we scaled the business beyond expectations while also improving gross margin by about 60 basis points versus the prior quarter. Cost of revenue items combined represented 36.8% of revenue down from the 37.4% we saw in Q4 and according to margin expectations from our prior costs commentary. Also as expected, cash based compensation ticked slightly down from the Q4 level to 21.5 million. Marketing spend came in just below what we had built into guidance at 38.5 million, while the of all other OPEX items pre adjusted EBITDA came in at 9 million or just above expectations but still resulting in a slight net benefit. All in all, our continued cost discipline underpinned our adjusted EBITDA over performance, coming in at 42 million for the quarter or a 24% margin. Operating cash flow was also 42 million in the quarter representing a 100% conversion of adjusted EBITDA. A strong net collection more than offset the limited tax payments we incurred. Free cash flow from operations was 35.5 million or 85% of adjusted EBITDA. We continue to expect fluctuations quarter to quarter due to the size and timing of tax and bonus payments as well as other working capital movements, though I will reiterate my statement from last quarter that the full year conversion ratio of EBITDA to these cash flow metrics as achieved in 2025 continue to be reasonable expectations also for 2026. Turning to capital allocation and return of cash to our shareholders, where we combine a recurring dividend program of 80 cents per year with our recently launched $300 million buyback program. The dividend is paid out semi annually with $0.4 or $36 million paid out in January. In terms of the buyback, we repurchased 1.14 million shares in March for a total spend of 17 million pro rata distributed between public buybacks and repurchases from our majority shareholder at the same price per share, $14.88. This reduced the total number of shares outstanding as of 31st March to 89.55 million. You'll see 12.8 million of the spend in our Q1 cash flow with the settlement of the remaining 4.1 million taking place in Q2. Now turning to our guidance in terms of our full year outlook, our solid start to the year allows us to raise revenue guidance to 727 to 740 million or 18 to 20% growth for the year as a whole. With that, we are raising the low end of guidance by 7 million and the high end by 5 million from the range we provided just two months ago, adding about 1 percentage point of growth to our expectations. Still in line with our guidance logic, this range continues to allow for later upside potential. In the second half of the year, we let just over 40% of the incremental revenue flow through to our adjusted EBITDA guidance and update our annual range to become 170 to 174 million or a 23.4% margin at the midpoints. That means that our prior high end of the range has now become the Midpoint for the second quarter. We guide revenue of 176 to 178 million or 23 to 25% growth. The quarter is already well underway and both our operational and commercial performance supports the nice step up versus prior implicit expectations. We guide adjusted EBITDA of 40 to 42 million representing a 23.2% margin and 28% adjusted EBITDA growth at the midpoint. In terms of costs, we then implicitly guide to a full year OPEX base Pre adjusted EBITDA of 562 million at the midpoints of which 136 million in Q2 we continue to expect cost of revenue items combined to represent about 38% of revenue for the year, with mid year coming in around the annual average before we go slightly higher in Q4 with its seasonal advertising peak. As discussed before, Opera ADS has a different gross margin profile compared to our O and O revenue streams, resulting in a greater cost of revenue components in our overall results even as our Opera ADS gross margin is ticking up. Apart from the business mix effect, we continue to see the Opera ADS gross margin expanding as the platform scales and our optimization algorithms evolve. In addition to benefiting from no marketing costs and limited OPEX space cash based compensation expense is expected to grow just above 10% for the year as a whole, which is slightly lower than our earlier expectation of growth in the low teens. We expect costs to increase modestly in Q2 with annual salary adjustments effective as of April. Post Q2 compensation cost is expected to show smaller movements quarter to quarter. Full year marketing cost remains expected to grow by about 10% from the 2025 level, with Q2 cost quite similar to Q1, followed by a slightly higher spend level in the later quarters. In sum, cash based compensation and marketing will then decline from representing 36% of revenue in 2025 to representing about 33% of revenue in 2026. For all other OPEX items pre adjusted EBITDA we increase our full year estimate to represent just over 20% growth over year, up from our earlier expectation at about 15% growth. This is explained by hosting costs and the effects of our rapid business scaling, increased AI usage and pricing impact of constrained supply While other items included in the total remain stable overall, we expect the cost category to increase quite linearly as the year progresses. In sum, while we continue to focus on building scale over accelerating margin expansion, as we refresh our estimates, we see a slight further widening of the gap between revenue and cost growth, allowing us to lift our adjusted EBITDA margin by about 15 basis points at the midpoints of full year guidance two months after providing the first color on 2026. In light of our performance and outlook, we remain very pleased with having expanded shareholder returns beyond our recurring dividend program to also include our new buyback program. We repurchased 1.3% of shares outstanding in the program's first month at an attractive $14.88 per share accelerating ROI Upside for Our Shareholders While it's only been a couple of months since our last release, we've been excited to share today's updates with you and look forward to keeping you posted on our progress. With that, I'll turn the call back over to the operator for your questions.
OPERATOR
Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press Star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press Star two. When posing your question, we ask that you please pick up your handset for optimal sound quality and we'll take our first question from Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
Eric Sheridan (Equity Analyst)
Thanks so much for taking the question. Wanted to know if we could go a little bit deeper into the learnings you have to date with respect to the adoption of AI tools across your user base. And when you look Longer term, what do you see as the opportunity set either at the browser level or maybe even for the rise of magentic commerce behavior by users that could bode well for both user growth as well as monetization opportunities. Thanks so much.
Song Lin (Chief Executive Officer)
Sure. So it's only here I'll try to answer so, high level, I guess number one, I would almost say that I think the AI more like we're always an advocate for AI and that's also why we almost try to embed it in many other aspects within the browser anyway, as we also talk about in the scripts that we also have it for instance from the URL bar omnibar to of course also the Opera AI assistant that the user can engage from sidebar and then further on to allow user to use AI with their own subscription, bring your own AI. So that's consistent with all offerings. And I would almost say that number one, in general we see that once we provide it in the right context, in the right moment, you are very happy about it. So that's why I think we also talk about it briefly in the script that whoever use AI, we saw that they almost spent one hour more in say desktop browsers, which is already a very long hour spend compared with any other thing. And then they also typically search almost one time more than the others search or engage with AI in different ways. So I think in general we are very positive about it because those basically transfer to better opportunity to capture user intent and also the monetization opportunities as follow on. So I think that's in general where we see that why it's beneficial. And on the other end though, I think maybe the only thing we'll just say that we should of course never forget that in the end of the day user is the first. Right. So at Opera for instance, we never tried to push user to some may not be what they want. So I think the number one priority should always be that you give what you want. And also it's also equally important to be aware that of course it's not all about efficiency, for instance, because for many of the times it's either just want to kill time, they just want to enjoy what they do. And we should also respect that. So I think that's what also we see that people in the longer term, whoever win will be who respect user behavior, give them the AI and the right context and right time helping them use their own stuff instead of giving something with the locked in ecosystem, whatever that is. And I think that's what we see at least a major Growth of us both for the use of all those AI features but also for how we actually see quite a good growth of user base. And you can see that even though Q1 is actually traditionally almost a bit lower season, it's actually we have been down very well on the user base wise and we actually almost see one of the Highest growth of MAUs on desktop for instance, likely as a result. So that's. Yeah, more like that's some high level figures.
OPERATOR
We'll move next to Naved Hahn with B. Riley Security. Your line is open.
Naved Hahn
Thank you very much. So two questions from me. One is this metric you shared about users who engage with AI spend an hour more per day and you see 50% increase in searches. I'm curious what percentage of your base is engaging with the AI chat features that you currently have and what are the levers that you control to drive this higher? And the second question I have is just on the Google renewal that's coming up at the end of the year. How are those conversations going? Are you confident about renewing it or just give us your thoughts there.
Song Lin (Chief Executive Officer)
So yeah, it's only now I think I also try to answer it. I capture the last question. I think I'll just revolve on that. So yeah, I think for Google I think we also talked about, I believe two months ago people release that we are well very happy to be one of the first to sign with Google the renewed, let's say agreement for the year due to the DOJ requirement. Right with them in the US So very happy. We are very happy. I think they're also very happy that we are one of the first partners to do that. And moving forward we don't expect any surprises. We have very good dialogue with them. Hopefully there will be also some interesting openings of new potentials that we can cooperate with Google both on the search but potentially on the AI side and if the other side. And yeah for the renewal I think we typically have standard process of renewing with them more like towards the second half of the year. I think we'll continue the right path on that trend and we'll provide update when such is available. But for now I think the cooperation is fantastic and as you also see that we even have one of the highest growth of traditional search queries ever. So I think both sides are very happy and hopefully we can expand that partnership moving forward. Yeah and I guess I also super quickly comment a bit on your questions on AI. Right. So yeah, I guess in short for now we have not disclosed the exact AI Usage percent I think reason just because now there are so many touch points and entry point of AI that it's almost a bit hard for us to define a particular entry where you know what count as user use AI or not. You know because that can happen both from omnibus whenever there is a subjection which is of course we are always updating. So that's also why you see a good growth of query revenues. Most of them are actually resulted of the many of the AI features that we are trying to recommend. But of course it's also possible for user to both access AI from the sidebar with Opera AI. But with the latest introduced of a browser with your own AI you can actually control the browser via Browser Connector from your ChatGPT subscription inside the browser directly or from your cloud and another chatbots directly from a web page. So I guess it will become harder for us to define particularly what content AI usage because I think that will be almost prolific that almost majority. I think we do expect majority of the interactions within the browser will encounter AI in one form or another. And I think our goal basically just to make sure that are the process of choice where the standalone player will give them all the options available. And hopefully for instance if you have a cloudy subscription, our goal is just to make sure that Opera is the best go to place for you to use and same that if you have ChatGPT subscription but you also want to use Gemini sometimes we should also be the go to choice. So I think that's our aim and I think we're actually moving closer to that goal.
Naved Hahn
Thank you.
OPERATOR
We'll move next to Ron Jose with Citi. Your line is open.
Ron Jose
Great, thanks for taking the question. I wanted to ask a little bit more on search specifically with query growth accelerating in the quarter. And Soto I think you talked about as search evolves into a broader query approach overall. So talk to us about the evolution as search is we see accelerating query growth and specifically the tie between call it the new browser AI tools and engagement as search revenues growth and query grow in fact accelerate. So any insights on the evolution here would be super helpful and then bigger picture understood with guidance here. But any insights on the broader advertising environment would be very helpful. Are there any verticals to call out one way or the other? Thank you.
Frodo Jacobsen (Chief Financial Officer)
Iron Frodo here I'll start. So I think in the first quarter we saw the year over year search like pure search revenue was growing at about 14% year over year which was very strong and up from the growth that we saw in all the quarters in 2025 and then on top of that we have the broadening of the category including also the non search query revenues that drove it up to 23% total overall. So I think we look at that category in an enthusiastic way because as these new tools evolve and as people can engage with the browser in new ways, we have more opportunities to direct people to the things they are looking for in in native ways in the browser.
Song Lin (Chief Executive Officer)
And further to that as engagement. Ranci talked about more opportunity to direct and then we heard in the call earlier, I think Song, you talked about broader engagement for those who have adopted AI tools. I know we've talked about that on the Q and A section, but any insights on adoption of AI tools to the browser and the user base overall? Yeah, so yeah, it's only here, right? So I guess I'll just compliment a bit on what Fuda is saying that. I mean as I said, I think now the way we see it, it's becoming really proliferating that you know, like for instance if you just use Opera browser, you can go to ChatGPT by just use the browser connector, you can basically from there to control the Opera browser. And same way that let's say if you type a regular URL we will actually use AI to say that oh maybe this is Amazon to a product that you would like regular pop up user will click on it, they will go through it. And same as booking.com is also a perfect example that now it actually works that way. So I would almost say that I think now we are basically coming to a stage where you could arguably say that majority of the user sessions probably have AI involved in one form or the other. And I think we'll see that will be the future moving forward. And I think the key is just as we also maybe mentioned a bit earlier that I think the key is just maybe find the right design and combination that it should really facilitate user's browsing behaviors. I think maybe that's also something which people have forgotten that in the end of the day it's always consumer first, is always end user first. It's very important that it's something facilitating. For instance, that's also why we provide this browser connector instead of pushing them to force them to use some particular Opera AIR tool. But actually they can use whatever existing tool they like. And I think that's a very important philosophy that we believe in and we actually feel strongly that that should be the direction of what a browser should do. Right. As an independent player, user can choose whatever AI they like it can be from existing big players, it can be even from open source if they choose. And then we just have to make sure that we provide this browser connector in MCP protocol that people can access as well as user gray and then they can use whatever to control it. And I think we are basically in the best position to provide it. So maybe perhaps that's also why I would almost say that so far the browser come up by the particular AI providers. I don't think there's too much acceptance of it, but rather we actually see very nice growth. Actually we have the higher growth of our users say for desktop that we have not seen for years. So I think we are very encouraged by that.
Ron Jose
Great, thank you very much.
OPERATOR
We'll take our next question from Jim Callahan with Piper Sandler. Your line is open.
Jim Callahan
Hi, thanks for taking the question. Interested in the comments on travel rolling out this sort of performance based product there would just be curious how much of the pieces are in place to kind of roll that out or is that something that's kind of already in the model today?
Frodo Jacobsen (Chief Financial Officer)
So I'll go in terms of the model. So our guidance is always quite bottom up estimate where we look at what we have today and then we rather leave upside for things to scale better than what we build into guidance in the later parts of the year. And of course travel is it's a big opportunity. We can use our lessons from the E commerce opportunity to scale into this vertical. It's also interesting seasonality wise that it has a different annual profile with sort of mid year travels et cetera whereas E commerce and shopping tends to be or is definitely strongest at around year end and the holiday season. Okay, got it. That is helpful. And then anything in terms of guidance for I don't know either two Q or full year, just relative growth between query and advertising. I will be a bit careful to break it down into detail because. It evolves as we evolve the opportunity especially the non search part of queries relatively new and then search as a whole is also quite market based on top of how we move our user base. And then on the advertising side of course we have a baseline and we have a guidance and we also have opportunities that you just touched on. So we for now I would say Q1 was very strong on the on the query. Overall I think we don't need to continue a year over year growth of over 20% on a query basis to meet our guidance. But it's a bit too soon to discuss specifics for the later parts of the Year.
Jim Callahan
Great, thank you.
OPERATOR
And as a reminder, task question, that is Star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press Star two. We'll move next to Jacob Stephan with Lake Street Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Jacob Stephan
Hey guys, congrats on a nice quarter. Maybe just to start off for me, I'll ask on the mcp. This kind of positions you as kind of the central call point for several AI tools. But do you think that this kind of risks cannibalizing any of the Opera Neon subscriptions or economics? Or is this kind of a complimentary funnel? Curious your thoughts here?
Song Lin (Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, it's actually a very good question. It's a very relevant question. Right. So I guess yes, we do have a choice, right? Like any given AI feature which are quite interesting, we do have a choice of do we only give it to Opera Neo and hopefully we will push more for subscription revenue or do I think that it's more relevant for the broader audience and as a result hopefully also attract more users in the generic Opera One or GX product. Right. But I think basically as also demonstrated by our numbers, I think we are in a bit slightly luxurious situation that we are not burning money like all those base model companies. We are quite profitable and we have good revenue. And also, you know, because our revenue model is because of advertisement, right. That we do not really have to rely on fixed subscription revenue. And then be aware that the typical debt subscription revenue is also if you are a traditional AI company, that subscription revenue also coupled heavily with burning token cost, which is almost many times not sustainable. So I would almost say that in this particular case, you ask, it's a bit easy, simple decision because we see it, we saw that there's a great user feedback, people liked it and then we calculated that it's economically much better to put it outside rather than just because remember this is bring your own AI, right? So we don't even need to use our own tokens. This is tokens from JGPT or whatever based on what you already have. And so we don't really have any cost really whatsoever. But if that caused higher retention, how User search. User user browser. Because in the end of the day user have to use it inside the browser anyway that we would be able to capture all the intents and monetize if needed Anyway. So this particular case is actually very easy decision that it makes more sense to have it available on the general product and make money by regular browsers which are already demonstrated to be very profitable anyway. I'm sure that there will be certain Features may be tailored to particular vertical audiences that would only be available in neo, like many of the current Neon features is, and those that will be more subscription based. But yeah, for the browser connector, it's an obvious choice that it's better to make it wisely available.
Jacob Stephan
Okay, very helpful. Maybe just last one for me on Mini Pay, obviously nice momentum there. At what point does this kind of become more of a P and L contributor versus just the strategic investment? Do you kind of, I guess, looking longer term, what are your plans for for minipay and opay?
Frodo Jacobsen (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, I can comment a bit on minipay. So minipay is already meaningfully contributing. We generate about $20 million of revenue from the broader ecosystem around is a very successful product, as you say, and it does allow people we've tailored it initially for emerging markets to have an easy way to access stablecoins and other blockchain types of assets. And we continue to think it has a huge potential ahead and can really scale still. This is one of those items that is quite early, still a bit early in terms of how big it can get and what the trajectory looks until that point. On Opay, which is a separate topic, that's a company that Opera founded back in 2017 and we have a 9.5% stake in that that we carry on our balance sheet at about $300 million of book value. That company is by now operating completely independently from Opera and is advancing on its own. So while we're not operationally working together, we of course share a history and we're very proud to see how that company has scaled and is working towards what we expect will ultimately be an ipo, which we think is also very positive for Opera because it would immediately make visible the market value of that company and APRA stake in it.
Jacob Stephan
Got it. Makes sense. I appreciate all the color. Thanks guys.
OPERATOR
We'll take our next question from Jonathan Navarret with TD Cowan. Your line is open.
Jonathan Navarret
Thanks. How are buybacks going in 2Q so far and how should we think about the pacing through the year? Thank you.
Frodo Jacobsen (Chief Financial Officer)
Hey, so I don't think we'll get into sort of the talking ahead beyond sort of the historical period, but overall we're of course very pleased to have that program in place. I guess it's the third or fourth time that we launched a buyback program and by far biggest one that we have launched. I think we already are. We reported our March trades essentially since the program was launched in late Feb and we could start trading in March. And already I think it can Contribute to accelerating ROI for our shareholders as we take shares out of the denominator and then sort of going ahead. I think we continue to be as we've always been with buybacks, opportunistic and adjust the program to maximize the value that we can create. I think just the fact that we are in that position. We talked about it a bit on the last quarter as well. We are growing fast and we are self funded in the sense that the business is generating very healthy cash flows. And our CapEx model as song touched on the AI side is very limited compared to other companies that you would think about in that space. So we don't have a massive investment needs to drive our business. It's a software layer, it's a service and that is what we are good at. So we don't want to compete in the hardware race. And that also means that the cash we generate, we can actually return it to shareholders. We like the recurring dividend and the buyback just helps us drive incremental upside.
Jonathan Navarret
Great. And just one more question. There were some reports this morning that OpenAI missed some internal and just wonder what could be the read through, if any for you guys.
Frodo Jacobsen (Chief Financial Officer)
Hard to OpenAI. I think, okay, it's actually convenient that you asked the question immediately after my prior response because I think that we are quite distinguished. If you think about companies that, that have an, let's say AI opportunity then of course we have the major platforms like OpenAI et cetera. But you also have Opera. Right? But we do it as a service in a browser. We don't try to compete against the big LLMs out there, whether it's ChatGPT or Gemini or Quad or any of the other ones. But we are very good at providing an interface for LLMs to exist very close to the user, to control the browser, to take into account context of the user and to enable it to be as productive as possible. Right. So for example, as we talked about with the browser connector, our own open Opera AI in the browser, as a human, you don't have to sit and be like the personal secretary of an AI model and copy paste links and text, right? You can just, you can, you can operate these tools in the browser with the context included. So I think comparing us to OpenAI in some ways flattering that you ask, but at the same time I think our cost and capital need structure is completely different.
Song Lin (Chief Executive Officer)
Maybe I'll just add, right that I just, I think in general as you. I think hopefully as we also demonstrated that you know, like both Opera and the potential. All users are already demonstrated to be very AI savvy. I would say otherwise they probably wouldn't like unlike some other maybe old fashioned browser companies, people whoever use AI tend whoever use Opera tends to be AI savvy. They tend to be very interested. So I would almost say that I think of course 300 million of that is a very attractive partners that we will want to grow. AI is I think we must be a very attractive partners that they can work with. You know for instance, if you compare with many other equally similarly big players like even Claudio X or whatever I think I believe they are. You know they are you are in a range of almost 110 of our I'm sure openair has a bit more but at least 300 million must be a very interested partnership opportunities. So I guess that will also be our hopefully with the year moving on we can see what can be done there.
OPERATOR
And it does appear that there are no further questions at this time. I would now like to hand the call back to Song Lin for any additional or closing remarks.
Song Lin (Chief Executive Officer)
Sure. So yeah, I guess thank you to everyone for joining us today. 2026 is off again to a great start. I'll continue at the moment in a truly exciting landscape has already resulted in a solid foundation for continued strength through the remainder of the year and well beyond. Have a good day everyone.
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