Key Points
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Strong first-half performance: Trustpilot’s bookings grew 18% at constant currency, including 27% growth in North America, while adjusted EBITDA rose 46% to a record $26.3 million and the margin expanded to 17.4%.
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Enterprise demand and AI relevance supported growth: ARR from customers paying more than $20,000 annually increased 35%, with larger businesses seeking visibility in AI-driven search. Trustpilot also launched AI-focused products and said ChatGPT citations rose more than 400% year over year.
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Guidance and capital returns maintained: The company kept its outlook for high-teens constant-currency revenue growth and a 2–3 percentage-point adjusted EBITDA margin improvement, while returning $25.8 million to shareholders through buybacks during the half. Trustpilot also disclosed tax and distributable-reserve issues that it said do not affect current trading or guidance.
Trustpilot Group (LON:TRST) reported first-half 2026 bookings growth of 18% at constant currency, supported by enterprise customer demand and a 27% increase in North American bookings, while adjusted EBITDA rose 46% to a record $26.3 million.
Chief Executive Officer Adrian Blair said the company’s adjusted EBITDA margin reached 17.4%, up 2.8 percentage points year over year. Trustpilot maintained its full-year outlook for high-teens constant-currency revenue growth and a 2 to 3 percentage point improvement in adjusted EBITDA margin.
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The company also announced a finance leadership transition. Former Chief Financial Officer Hanno Damm, who spent 11 years at Trustpilot, presented the results, while Marcus Roy joined as CFO after five years in the same role at The Economist Group.
Enterprise and Regional Growth
Trustpilot said annual recurring revenue from customers paying more than $20,000 annually increased 35% year over year. The number of customer logos in that segment rose 29%, while the cohort represented 47% of total bookings, compared with 27% in the first half of 2023.
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Blair said larger customers are increasingly focused on improving their presence in AI-driven search and large language model results. The company cited Expedia as a recent customer win, alongside Bed Bath & Beyond, Intact Insurance, Sunrun, Halfords, Space NK, EE, Bending Spoons and Isybank.
Bookings in the U.K. totaled $64 million, up 11% at constant currency. Blair said some global accounts that are sold by the U.K. team are billed through North America, which reduced reported U.K. growth by approximately 1 to 2 percentage points. The U.K. business had a 60% contribution margin, according to the company.
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Europe and the rest of the world generated $68 million in bookings, up 19% at constant currency. The DACH region—Germany, Austria and Switzerland—grew 30%, and its ARR surpassed $20 million. Germany is now Trustpilot’s third-largest country after the U.K. and U.S., Blair said.
North American bookings grew 27% at constant currency, with new-business sales up 76% year over year. Organic reviews in the region increased 50%, while the number of paying customers rose 11%. Blair said growth was seen in insurance, wellbeing, software and technology, as well as areas of retail including appliances and electronics.
Revenue, Retention and Cash Flow
Revenue was $151.4 million for the half, while gross margin increased 0.8 percentage points to 83%. Trustpilot attributed the improvement partly to infrastructure and hosting efficiencies as platform volume grew, offset in part by continued investment in customer success teams following a sales reorganization.
Last-12-month gross dollar retention remained at 87%, while net dollar retention was 101%, down from 103% a year earlier. Damm said the decline reflected the annualization of previously disclosed package migrations. The U.K. recorded gross retention of 88%.
Adjusted free cash flow rose 5% to $16 million, and adjusted diluted free cash flow per share increased 13% to $0.039. Damm said cash flow is seasonal, with the first half affected by annual bonus payments and the second half typically stronger. For the full year, the company expects free-cash-flow margin to be about one percentage point below adjusted EBITDA margin.
Trustpilot closed the period with $21.9 million in cash after returning $25.8 million to shareholders through buybacks during the half. Its employee benefit trust purchased a further $16.5 million of shares. Since beginning its repurchase program in 2024, the company has returned $141 million to shareholders and repurchased 11% of the shares outstanding at the program’s start, Damm said.
Accounting Matters and Capital Allocation
Damm said Trustpilot excluded an Italian regulatory fine, which it is appealing, and a provision related to historical U.S. sales-tax exposure from adjusted results. The sales-tax matter resulted in a $2.6 million restatement of a prior period and a $0.8 million charge in the current period. He said the adjustment did not affect current trading performance, adjusted EBITDA or the company’s 2026 guidance.
He added that Trustpilot had obtained advice from a Big Four firm and reviewed historical invoicing and state-level tax requirements, and management believes it has established a robust provision for potential historical liabilities.
The company also identified a technical issue involving demonstrated distributable reserves in connection with certain earlier share repurchases. Damm said the issue has no impact on financial performance or cash balances and will be remediated in the fourth quarter. Trustpilot expects to use interim dividends from its Danish operating entity and updated PLC accounts to establish further distributable-reserve headroom for future buybacks.
AI Products and Trust Measures
Trustpilot highlighted the role of its review platform in AI search. Blair said research from Seer Interactive ranked Trustpilot as the most cited review platform globally, while the company saw ChatGPT citations increase more than 400% year over year. Trustpilot’s Semrush Domain Authority score reached 100, the maximum score.
The platform held 394 million active reviews at the end of the half and surpassed 400 million reviews in July. Users submitted 20% more reviews year over year, while Trustpilot reviews received 29 billion Google impressions in the first half, Blair said.
The company removed 3.9 million fake reviews during the period, up 28% from a year earlier, with most removed automatically. Business-profile warnings increased 83% year over year as Trustpilot expanded automated detection and enforcement tools.
Product releases included AI Search Analytics, an in-app review collector, Invitation Optimizer, custom dashboards and a lower-cost digital-only starter plan. Trustpilot also launched upgrades to product reviews, including a universal product catalog and dedicated product review pages. During a beta trial involving more than 400 businesses, the company said product-review features generated an average increase in AI citation growth of more than 15 times and 2.4 million ChatGPT citation requests.
Blair said Trustpilot is also reorganizing sales operations, using outsourced business-development specialists for top-of-funnel activity while internal teams focus on conversion and customer relationships. The company created separate customer success and account management roles to support onboarding, product adoption, cross-selling and renewals.
About Trustpilot Group (LON:TRST)
Trustpilot began in 2007 with a simple yet powerful idea that is more relevant today than ever — to be the universal symbol of trust, bringing consumers and businesses together through reviews. Trustpilot is open, independent, and impartial — we help consumers make the right choices and businesses to build trust, grow and improve.Today, we have more than 300 million reviews and 67 million monthly active users across the globe, with 127 billion annual Trustpilot brand impressions, and the numbers keep growing.
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The article “Trustpilot Group H1 Earnings Call Highlights” was originally published by MarketBeat.
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