Acast Posts Record Third-Quarter Revenue as North America Overtakes Europe

Acast, the Stockholm-based podcast advertising and hosting company, reported the highest quarterly revenue in its history on Wednesday, Oct. 28, as sales in North America rose 54% and the region overtook Europe as the company's largest market. Net sales for the July-to-September quarter reached SEK 802.3 million, up 25% from SEK 642.1 million a year earlier, according to the company's interim report press release.

The results, published at 7 a.m. Central European Time (2 a.m. ET), also showed Acast's highest adjusted profit margins to date. Organic growth, which strips out acquisitions and currency effects, slowed to 18% from 41% in the third quarter of 2025, and sales in Europe rose 5%. Acast shares closed at SEK 30.50 on Nasdaq Stockholm that day, down 5.86%, according to share data shown alongside the release on MFN, the figure also cited by PPC Land.

Record Sales, Record Margins

The quarter topped the previous record of SEK 776 million set in the second quarter of 2026, according to Acast's investor presentation. Podcast News Daily, which converted the figures to dollars, put third-quarter revenue at approximately $84 million, up from $67 million a year earlier.

Adjusted EBITDA nearly doubled to SEK 77.8 million from SEK 39.7 million, lifting the adjusted EBITDA margin to 10% from 6%. Adjusted operating profit rose to SEK 51.9 million from SEK 18.1 million, an adjusted EBIT margin of 6%, compared with 3% a year earlier. Net profit for the quarter was SEK 45.4 million, up from SEK 7.3 million, and basic earnings per share were SEK 0.25, compared with SEK 0.04.

Gross margin held at 39%, unchanged from the third quarter of 2025, while adjusted operating expenses excluding depreciation rose 11%, according to the CEO letter in the release. Items affecting comparability totaled SEK 4.2 million and were mostly transaction costs tied to the purchase of Backyard Ventures.

Acast counted 1.155 billion listens and views in the quarter, up 4% from 1.108 billion. Average revenue per listen or view, the company's main monetization measure, rose 20% to SEK 0.69 from SEK 0.58. Acast said its view counts currently cover only HLS, the video format Apple uses for video podcasts.

North America Becomes the Largest Segment

North American net sales rose to SEK 384.0 million from SEK 248.7 million, according to the full interim report. Organic growth in the region was 41%. Backyard Ventures, an Austin-based creator network that Acast acquired on Aug. 11, contributed SEK 27.9 million to the region's sales in the quarter. Europe's net sales rose to SEK 361.9 million from SEK 345.5 million, with organic growth of 3%, and the Other Markets segment grew 18% to SEK 56.4 million.

Chief executive Greg Glenday attributed Europe's slower growth to a tough comparison with the prior year and to a strong second quarter that he said was partly supported by advertiser activity around the World Cup. He noted that Europe had grown 16% organically over the first nine months of the year.

"Record revenue, record margins, and our growth is translating into profit," Glenday told investors on the company's Wednesday earnings call, according to Podcast News Daily. He also said Acast could keep growing without large audience gains. "We have unsold inventory, and we have a long tail of smaller shows that we can activate against," he said.

Acast announced the Backyard Ventures deal in August for a total consideration of $20 million, made up of $16 million in cash and $4 million in Acast shares payable on a deferred schedule, according to the acquisition announcement. That announcement said Backyard generated $16.1 million in revenue in 2025 and represents creators including Ryan Holiday's The Daily Stoic, Piers Morgan's Uncensored, Cal Newport's Deep Questions and Mark Manson's Solved. Podcast News Daily reported that the business now operates as Acast Austin.

Video, YouTube and New Leadership

Glenday said Acast now has close to 1,000 shows using HLS video but that audio still accounts for most consumption. "It's still much more L than V," he said, according to Podcast News Daily. Chief financial officer Anders Hägg said the company's audience totals still exclude YouTube views, explaining that changes YouTube made to its view-counting method in August led Acast to wait for clearer measurement standards. "We rather wait until the industry standards are aligned, rather than report a number that we might have to sort of restate later on," Hägg said.

In the release, Acast cited its Podcast Pulse 2026 research, which found that 88% of listeners consume both audio and video podcasts, up from 78% a year earlier, and that 63% have started an episode in one format and finished it in another. The company also named Liv Sandberg, who leads advertising across 17 markets at TikTok, as executive vice president for Europe, a role she takes up in early 2027, and appointed Mark Bulling, formerly of WPP Media's Choreograph, as vice president of product, according to the release.

The report also showed Acast's maximum obligation under minimum revenue guarantees offered to certain creators at SEK 289.7 million on Sept. 30, up from SEK 207.4 million a year earlier, according to PPC Land's review of the filing. Acast, which says it connects more than 140,000 storytellers with more than 4,000 advertisers, is scheduled to publish its fourth-quarter and full-year 2026 results on Feb. 11, 2027.