Perion Network Q2 FY26 earnings call PERI

Perion has deliberately diversified its business away from the open web, adapting to marketplace demands and budget shifts. The Perion One platform, described as a unified AI-native execution infrastructure, saw massive adoption in Q2 FY26, driving strong traction across key growth engines like CTV, Retail Media, and Digital Out-of-Home. This platform is designed to address market fragmentation by planning, activating, and optimizing advertising campaigns across various channels, including TV, social, digital out-of-home, Retail Media, and the Open Web.

AuthMax, Perion's proprietary AI agent, continues to scale rapidly, achieving triple-digit year-over-year spend growth. It operates as an agent that plans and executes on advertisers' behalf, continuously optimizing outcomes across channels and platforms. To enhance accessibility, Perion launched Ask Perion, an agentic self-serve mobile application within Perion One, providing a simple conversational interface for advertisers and agencies to leverage sophisticated execution capabilities.

Perion secured a significant partnership with Best Buy Canada, which selected Perion as its end-to-end in-store retail media technology partner. This deal involves deploying Perion's ad server, SSP, and header bidding technologies to power one of Canada's largest SSP-enabled digital out-of-home media networks. Geographically, Perion expanded its reach by partnering with Across Media 241 to bring AuthMax to agencies and brands across Greece and the broader Central and Eastern European region, utilizing a capital-efficient, partner-led distribution model.

The company extended its full-stack digital out-of-home infrastructure into Google DV360, enabling programmatic guaranteed deal execution for digital out-of-home inventory directly within Google's media platform. This capability covers over 1.6 million screens in more than 40 countries. Additionally, Perion established a new data partnership with Fetch, a consumer reward and purchase intelligence platform, accessible through LiveRamp, providing advertisers with verified SKU-level purchase data from over 13 million monthly active users and 26,000+ merchants.

Perion One spend grew 15% year-over-year to $156.7 million, representing 80% of total spend. However, Perion One contribution ex TAC declined 4% year-over-year to $34.9 million, primarily due to promotional terms used to acquire new accounts and drive incremental spend. The search business continued to be managed for cash flow, with its contribution ex TAC declining 30% year-over-year. The company repurchased 2.7 million shares for $24.5 million in Q2 FY26 and plans to execute the remaining $33.2 million of its buyback program by year-end, reflecting confidence in its long-term value.

Perion executed targeted efficiency initiatives in Q2 FY26, optimizing its cost base by approximately 10% to streamline operations and improve productivity. These actions are expected to positively impact profitability starting in the second half of the year. The company narrowed its full-year 2026 guidance for contribution ex TAC to $215 million to $225 million and maintained its adjusted EBITDA midpoint at $51 million to $53 million, implying a 24% margin at the midpoint, driven by strategic agreements and operational efficiencies.