Trustpilot shares fell as much as 20% Tuesday after the online-review platform reported strong first-half growth but left its full-year outlook unchanged, disappointing investors who had increasingly priced in another guidance increase.
Revenue rose 23% to $151.4 million for the six months ended June 30, equivalent to 19% growth at constant currencies. Bookings increased 22% to about $171 million, or 18% at constant currency, with both measures slightly ahead of expectations.
Adjusted EBITDA climbed 46% to $26.3 million and the margin expanded 2.8 percentage points to 17.4%. Profit was nevertheless slightly below the company-compiled consensus of roughly $27 million.
Trustpilot kept its 2026 guidance for high-teens constant-currency revenue growth and a two-to-three-percentage-point improvement in adjusted EBITDA margin.
That confirmation was not enough for a stock that had gained roughly 60% through Monday’s close.
Shares dropped as low as about 209 pence during Tuesday trading, their weakest level since April, before recovering some of the decline. The move put Trustpilot on course for its worst session since March.
The reaction says more about expectations than the underlying growth rate.
Trustpilot had already disclosed most of its first-half revenue and bookings performance in a July trading update. At that point, company-compiled analyst consensus called for 17.1% full-year constant-currency revenue growth, adjusted EBITDA of $55.6 million and an 18% margin.
Strong U.S. growth, larger enterprise contracts and optimism around Trustpilot’s position in AI-generated search had raised expectations since then. Investors were looking for management to convert that momentum into a higher forecast.
Instead, Trustpilot effectively confirmed numbers the market already knew.
U.S. and Enterprise Growth Remain the Strongest Part of the Business
North America continues to outpace Trustpilot’s other major regions.
First-half bookings increased 27% at constant currency in North America, compared with 11% in the U.K. and 19% across Europe and the rest of the world.
Larger customers are also becoming more important.
Annual recurring revenue from customers spending more than $20,000 a year increased by roughly 35% from a year earlier, while the number of customer accounts above that threshold rose 29%. Management also said it signed significantly more contracts worth more than $100,000 during the half.
That shift helps Trustpilot because larger enterprise customers generally provide more recurring revenue and can expand across multiple markets and products.
Annual recurring revenue across the business reached approximately $313 million at the end of June, up 17% at constant currency.
Customer retention was less impressive.
Gross retention improved to 87% from 86%, but net dollar retention slipped to 101% from 103%. Management has linked some of that moderation to the annualization of pricing and package migrations carried out in 2024 and 2025.
A net retention rate just above 100% means existing customers are still spending slightly more in aggregate, but the metric does not show the same acceleration visible in new enterprise business.
AI Is Helping Visibility, but the Financial Impact Is Still Developing
Trustpilot has increasingly positioned its library of consumer reviews as valuable infrastructure for AI-powered search and shopping.
The company says independent research from Seer Interactive ranks Trustpilot as the most-cited review platform in AI-generated answers globally. Trustpilot also reported that requests involving its content through ChatGPT increased more than 400% year over year in June.
That exposure can make Trustpilot more valuable to businesses trying to influence how their brands appear not only in traditional Google searches but also in AI-generated recommendations.
Management attributes part of the acceleration in enterprise demand to what it calls Answer Engine Optimisation, where businesses use trusted review content to strengthen visibility inside AI responses.
The financial opportunity is real, but it remains difficult to isolate.
Trustpilot does not currently break out revenue generated specifically from AI-related demand, and most subscriptions still monetize the broader platform rather than a standalone AI product.
Investors therefore have to judge the opportunity through metrics such as enterprise bookings, customer growth and retention rather than a separate AI revenue line.
One-Off Costs Obscured the Underlying Profit Improvement
Trustpilot reported a statutory net loss of about $1.1 million despite the sharp increase in adjusted EBITDA.
The loss included several costs that management considers outside normal underlying performance, including an Italian competition-regulator fine that Trustpilot is appealing and provisions related to historical U.S. sales taxes.
The Italian competition authority imposed a €4 million penalty earlier this year. Trustpilot disputes the decision.
The company also identified historical periods in which sales tax had not been applied to certain U.S. customer invoices, resulting in a prior-period adjustment and an additional charge during the first half.
Those items do not materially change Trustpilot’s current sales momentum, but they added accounting noise to a report where investors were already looking for a clean earnings beat and higher guidance.
Cash also declined as Trustpilot continued returning capital to shareholders.
The company ended June with $21.9 million of net cash after spending $42.5 million during the first half on share repurchases and purchases through its employee benefit trust. Trustpilot has returned about $141 million through its repurchase program since 2024.
Expectations Are Now the Bigger Issue
Trustpilot’s operating performance remains considerably stronger than Tuesday’s stock move might imply.
Revenue is still growing near 20% at constant currency, adjusted EBITDA is expanding much faster than sales, margins are improving and North American and enterprise demand remain strong.
But those strengths were increasingly embedded in the share price.
Trustpilot had risen sharply before the results as investors anticipated that AI-driven demand and U.S. momentum would push management above its existing full-year targets. The company instead delivered a small EBITDA miss and repeated the same guidance it had already given in July.
That leaves the second half carrying a higher burden.
To rebuild the expectations premium that disappeared Tuesday, Trustpilot will need to show that North American bookings remain near their current growth rate, enterprise customers continue expanding rapidly and AI visibility translates into enough incremental business to push results above the existing high-teens revenue outlook.
After Tuesday’s reset, simply meeting guidance is no longer the problem. The next earnings catalyst will be whether Trustpilot can begin outperforming it again.