Rumble: Crypto Pivot Doesn’t Move The Needle

Summary Rumble’s user growth has stalled since late 2022, despite content deals and the 2024 election boost proving fleeting. Revenue totals remain far below expectations, and content partnerships like Barstool Sports failed to deliver meaningful user growth. The company’s crypto pivot, including a Tether investment and upcoming wallet, is limited in scope and hasn’t translated into business momentum. The stock trades at an expensive 22x 2026 sales estimates without profitability or real growth. Rumble Inc. ( RUM ) once offered the promise of developing into a major online video streaming player, but lately the company is focused on a crypto shift. The business has failed to garner any momentum due to other sites relaxing free speech concerns, originally driving the business model. My investment thesis remains ultra-Bearish on the stock due to the lack of growth and the very expensive valuation. Source: Finviz Online Video Stalling The stock popped on the company announcing pivots towards crypto, since Rumble hasn’t actually accomplished anything in the non-video realm. The big question is whether the crypto business will actually amount to something. For Q1’25, Rumble only reported 59 million global monthly average users (MAUs), up from the last March quarter. In reality though, the online video platform hasn’t seen any growth in users since the Q4’22 U.S. mid-terms. Source: Rumble Q1’25 10-Q Elon Musk bought Twitter back in October 2022 and the whole free speech benefits of the online video platform disappeared. Rumble has signed substantial content deals in the ensuing years without any meaningful change in the user base. Even in the 2024 Presidential elections with a Rumble user like Donald Trump winning the election, the platform only produced 68 million MAUs, versus 67 million in the prior Q4. Rumble reported Q1’25 revenues of $23 million, up a solid 34% from last Q1, but still far below all original forecasts for the business when completing the SPAC deal. Data by YCharts Rumble still spent $30 million in Q1 on cost of services, even with content costs down $3 million. The company spent substantial amounts on trying to build up the platform via minimum guarantees for new content, but most content creators have much higher followers on other media platforms. Barstool Sports is a prime example of a media outlet doing a deal with Rumble for content, yet the user base remained meager on the platform. The sports media company only has 60K followers on Rumble versus 6.5 million on Twitter/X and another 1.9 million on YouTube, causing a failure to re-up the agreement after a year. Rumble probably wisely signed some content deals to make the platform more legitimate, but organic content creators are what is ultimately needed. Barstool Sports was promised as a partner promoting Rumble as their video home, but the partnership didn’t last. Crypto Pivot Going back to December, Rumble obtained a $775 million investment from Tether. Also, the company bought bitcoin during the March quarter and ended Q1 with a balance of 211 bitcoins with a current value of $22 million based on a price of $105K each. The crypto pivot is far from over with the intent to launch a crypto wallet in Q3. The Rumble Wallet is intended to compete with options from Coinbase ( COIN ), but the prime use is to pay content creators, especially in international locations. At the end of the day, Rumble has a very limited crypto pivot with a future Rumble Wallet more for payment transfers, though additional crypto features can be built out in the future. The company used the $775 million investment from Tether to immediately turnaround and acquire $525 million worth of shares at a price of $7.50, providing just $250 million in cash for the business. Source: Rumble Q1’25 10-Q Rumble has a diluted share count of around 400 million shares now, for a market cap of ~$3.5 billion. The consensus analyst forecasts for 2026 revenues of just $154 million, so the stock trades at nearly 22x sales estimates for a company still not profitable, nor growing at a very fast clip. The stock might have some support here around $8.50 with strong recent support down to $7. The key is that Rumble likely doesn’t have much upside, at lease sustainable upside, without any actual business with growth. Takeaway The key investor takeaway is that Rumble is still priced like a booming business in either online video streaming and crypto, yet the company has generally stalled for a couple of years now.

Source: Seeking Alpha