BSP — Q2 2026 Financial Report Analysis

Revenue more than doubled, and nearly all of that came from buying companies

Bending Spoons, the Milan-based company that buys established apps and websites (AOL, Eventbrite, Vimeo, Evernote, WeTransfer, Remini and others) and then cuts costs and rebuilds them, reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of $704.2 million, up 126% from $311.1 million a year earlier. Operating income rose 139% to $240.3 million and net income rose 171% to $177.0 million, or $0.28 per diluted share against $0.11.

The size of the jump comes almost entirely from deals. The company says the increase was "primarily driven by acquisitions", namely AOL, Eventbrite, Harvest, MileIQ, Tractive and Vimeo, all bought between the start of Q2 2025 and the end of Q2 2026. Organic revenue growth (the same businesses compared with themselves a year earlier, whether or not Bending Spoons owned them then) was just 3%. Tractive and WeTransfer grew the most, and declines at the photo-enhancing app Remini and the music app Splice partly offset them.

This is the company's first quarterly report as a listed company. It sold shares on Nasdaq on July 1, 2026, at $29 each, after the quarter ended. The figures are in US dollars under US GAAP, the American accounting rules.

At a glance

• $704.2M revenue, +126% reported but +3% organic. Buying businesses is the growth engine. The apps it already owned barely grew.
• 34.1% operating margin, up from 32.3%, even after $82.3M of amortization (the accounting write-down of the value of acquired brands and customer lists) and $50.8M of restructuring costs, mostly severance at newly bought companies.
• $4.09B of net debt and $109.0M of quarterly interest. Interest took 45% of operating income, and the company has since agreed two more acquisitions worth over $2.6B in enterprise value.

The numbers

The EPS growth rate is the company's own figure, calculated before rounding. Rounded EPS of $0.28 against $0.11 would look like +155%.

Where the revenue comes from

Bending Spoons reports as a single business segment, so it does not give revenue for each app. It does split revenue by how it earns money:

The mix is changing. Subscriptions fell from about 91% of revenue to 77%. Advertising came mostly with AOL's email and news portal, and "other" revenue mostly with Eventbrite's ticketing fees. Both are more exposed to the economy than auto-renewing subscriptions. By geography, US customers brought in $434.9M (62% of the total), up from $148.4M (48%), mostly because AOL and Eventbrite are US-heavy businesses.

What each acquisition contributed (first half of 2026)

The filing breaks out what the three 2026 acquisitions added from the day each one closed through June 30:

AOL is already very profitable inside the group: $156M of pre-tax profit on $294M of revenue in six months. Eventbrite and Tractive are still losing money while Bending Spoons restructures them. That is how this company usually operates: it buys a business, cuts staff and rebuilds the technology, and profits come later. The Q2 restructuring costs went mainly to "separation packages" (severance) at AOL, Eventbrite, Tractive and Vimeo.

Takeaway: Bending Spoons runs the apps it owns very profitably, with a 54% adjusted operating margin, but they grew only 3% organically. The growth story depends on continuing to buy businesses with borrowed money and making them more profitable faster than interest costs rise. Q2 shows the profitability side working. The pace of deal-making since then, with Airtable bought and Miro agreed, means the debt side needs watching just as closely.

What the headline numbers hide

Adjusted versus reported profit. The company's preferred profit measure, Adjusted Operating Income, was $381.1M (a 54% margin), against $240.3M under GAAP. The $140.9M gap consists of $82.3M of amortization of acquired intangible assets, $50.8M of restructuring costs, $6.6M of deal costs and $1.2M of other items. Excluding amortization is common for acquirers. Restructuring is less clear-cut: severance at newly bought businesses happens every quarter for a company whose whole strategy is buying and restructuring, so it is arguably a recurring cost of the model rather than a one-off. In the company's favour, it does not exclude stock-based pay ($14.3M this quarter) from its adjusted figures, unlike many tech companies.

Net income was higher than pre-tax income. Pre-tax income was $150.8M. Net income was $177.0M because the company booked a $26.2M tax benefit, which it attributes mainly to "the remeasurement of equity compensation obligations at our subsidiaries", giving an effective tax rate of -17%. Other income also included a $19.6M foreign-exchange gain. Neither is an operating gain, and neither should be expected to repeat each quarter. On a normal tax charge, net income would have been well below the reported figure.

Interest costs grew faster than profit. Interest expense tripled to $109.0M ($202.2M for the half year), "primarily driven by higher borrowings associated with acquisition financing". GAAP operating income covered interest about 2.2 times. Cash interest paid in the first half was $161.2M. The main term loans charge between about 5.5% and 9.4% after hedging. The US dollar term loan B costs 9.43%.

Debt. At June 30 the company had long-term debt of $4.88B (of which $794M is due within twelve months), cash of $793M and net debt of $4.09B. Bending Spoons gives a leverage ratio of 2.4× net debt to adjusted EBITDA. That EBITDA counts acquired businesses as if they had been owned for the whole year and includes "certain expected cost savings" that have not happened yet, so the ratio flatters the true position. Its lenders allow up to 4.0×. Since the quarter ended:

• the IPO raised $1.10B net;
• it closed the Airtable purchase (enterprise value $1.285B; the press release puts the implied equity value at about $2.25B including Airtable's own cash);
• it agreed to buy Miro (enterprise value $1.355B; certain Miro shareholders will reinvest $295M in new Bending Spoons shares);
• it raised a $1.25B add-on to its US dollar term loan B and a €395M add-on to its euro term loan B, both above their original targets, plus €590M of new euro term loans.

Moody's raised its credit rating to Ba3 and S&P to BB-. Both ratings are still below investment grade.

Cash conversion is fine, but acquisitions consume all of it. First-half operating cash flow was $254.2M against net income of $204.4M, so reported profit is turning into cash. Over the same period the company spent $2.29B on acquisitions (net of cash acquired), paid for with $2.57B of new borrowing. Receivables used $77.3M of cash in the half, a much bigger drain than the $0.7M a year earlier. Part of this reflects Eventbrite's ticketing flows, but it is worth tracking.

Pro forma growth. If AOL, Eventbrite and Tractive had been owned since January 1, 2025, first-half revenue would have been $1.44B versus $1.09B, up 31%. This figure is not a like-for-like comparison, though. Accounting rules count businesses bought during 2025, such as Vimeo, only from their purchase dates, which inflates the growth rate. The company's own organic figure of 3% is the better measure of underlying growth.

Outlook

Management's guidance, given on August 13 and based only on the businesses owned on August 12 (so excluding Airtable and Miro):

The Q3 midpoint implies an adjusted margin of about 53%, roughly in line with Q2's 54%. The full-year midpoint implies second-half revenue of about $1.50B, against $1.31B in the first half. Most of that increase comes from Tractive's first full quarters, not from faster organic growth. Q3 will also include an $11M stock-pay charge triggered by the IPO, and Airtable from September 4. The company says it will add Airtable to its guidance when it next reports.

Our read: Q3's adjusted margin will show how well Bending Spoons absorbs businesses it has bought. Eventbrite and Tractive were loss-making when they arrived, and Airtable, a growing software business with about $480M of annual recurring revenue, will be added next. Three things to watch next quarter: whether organic growth stays positive with Remini and Splice shrinking, whether interest expense grows faster than operating income once the new term loans are drawn for Miro, and whether restructuring charges stay this large. If restructuring remains around $50M a quarter, it is a running cost of the business and investors should treat it that way rather than add it back.