Duolingo Q2 Earnings Call Highlights

Duolingo Q2 Earnings Call Highlights Written by MarketBeat August 5, 2026 Add As Preferred Source Share Share Share This Article Link copied to clipboard. Close Image from MarketBeat Media, LLC. Key Points User growth and retention accelerated: Daily active users rose 23% year over year, slightly exceeding expectations, while user retention reached an all-time high. Duolingo remains focused on reaching 100 million DAUs by 2028. Full-year guidance was maintained, with profitability improving: The company kept its outlook for 10%–12% bookings growth and 15%–18% revenue growth, while raising its adjusted EBITDA margin target to 26.5% and gross-margin outlook to about 70%. Monetization and AI initiatives are expanding: Duolingo is testing longer free trials, a lower-priced “Super Lite” subscription and increased advertising. Falling AI costs are enabling broader access to its Video Call feature and supporting margin improvements. Five stocks we like better than Duolingo . 2 Falling Knives That Might Be Worth Catching Duolingo NASDAQ: DUOL reported accelerating user growth in the second quarter, with daily active users rising 23% year over year, as the language-learning company continued to prioritize product improvements, retention and long-term audience expansion. Co-founder and CEO Luis von Ahn said the company’s daily active user, or DAU, growth accelerated from the first quarter and came in slightly above expectations. He said the company was encouraged by early trends in the third quarter and remains focused on reaching 100 million DAUs by 2028. Get Duolingo alerts: Sign Up Duolingo: This Beaten-Down Growth Stock May Bounce Back “The vast majority” of growth came from Duolingo’s ongoing product experimentation process, which von Ahn called the “Green Machine.” The company tests hundreds of product changes, measures their performance and expands the initiatives that work, he said. Duolingo releases a new app version weekly, with roughly 350 changes per version, according to von Ahn. Retention and streak campaign support engagement Von Ahn said user retention metrics reached all-time highs during the quarter. In particular, the company’s current user retention rate, or CURR, increased by about one percentage point over the past year. He said the improvement was broad-based across regions and user types, reflecting a “stickier” product rather than a single feature or change. Duolingo Stock: EdTech Growth Meets Subscription Strength Duolingo also ran a one-time Streak Revival campaign in June, allowing learners who had lost their longest streak to restore it by completing three lessons. More than 15 million learners revived their streaks, von Ahn said, adding that these users have demonstrated stronger retention than a typical re-engaged user cohort. The company is also working to improve its top-of-funnel user acquisition. Von Ahn said Duolingo’s own social media accounts generated more than 1 billion impressions per quarter. It has also expanded its work with content creators, particularly in China, Indonesia and India, where influencers account for roughly two-thirds of the company’s total social media impressions. While most growth remains organic, Duolingo has become more active in performance marketing. Von Ahn said the company is seeing traction from both creator partnerships and performance marketing, while CFO Gillian Munson said top-of-funnel growth improved in almost every region during the quarter. The U.S. also posted faster growth, although Asia remained the company’s fastest-growing region. Guidance maintained as company invests for growth Munson said second-quarter top-line results were in line with expectations and profitability was modestly ahead of plan. The company maintained its full-year outlook for bookings growth of 10% to 12% and revenue growth of 15% to 18%. For modeling purposes, Duolingo expects approximately 11% bookings growth and roughly 16% revenue growth for the full year. At constant foreign exch...