Sources: $RDDT Needs to Prove That it is More Than Just $GOOGL's Social Network

Every figure in the piece is listed below with its source. Where a figure was checked against a second source, that is stated. Where it could not be, that is stated too. News-sourced figures were checked for subsequently issued corrections; where one exists, it is noted along with what the original said.

What was verified, and what was not

Independently confirmed. The Q2 2026 figures were checked against filing mirrors, earnings coverage and the earnings call rather than sec.gov directly, which refuses automated requests. Confirmed: revenue $804.9M (+61%), advertising revenue $761.6M, other revenue $43.3M, net income $252.8M, gross margin 91.3%, adjusted EBITDA $342.8M, operating cash flow $261.9M, capital expenditures $1.1M, free cash flow $260.7M, cash and marketable securities $2.8B, total liabilities $350.9M, U.S. revenue $638.1M, international revenue $166.8M, global DAUq 130.3M (+18%), U.S. DAUq 53.2M (+6%) against 53.5M in Q1 2026, international DAUq 77.1M (+28%), logged-in U.S. DAUq 23.1M (+1%), logged-out U.S. DAUq 30.1M (+10%), U.S. WAUq 197.2M (+9%), global WAUq 514.6M (+24%), U.S. ARPU $11.85 (+51%), international ARPU $2.26, global ARPU $6.18, Q3 guidance of $860M–$870M revenue and $385M–$395M adjusted EBITDA, 1.5M shares repurchased, diluted EPS $1.25, and Q2 2025 revenue of $499.63M with net income of approximately $89M. stocktitan.net (10-Q) · stocktitan.net (8-K) · fool.com

Comparison-set growth rates, reconstructed. Trailing-twelve-month revenue growth to March 31, 2026 was checked for four of the five comparables. AppLovin 66.39% and The Trade Desk 15.55% match the table exactly. Meta’s 26.2% was not directly readable and was rebuilt from FY2025 revenue of $200,966M less Q1 2025 (~$42,340M) plus Q1 2026 of $56,310M, giving $214,936M against a prior-year trailing figure of $170,386M, or 26.15%. Pinterest’s 16.3% reconstructs to roughly 16.4% on the same method. Snap’s 10.3% could not be re-checked on a March basis because its trailing window has since moved forward.

Comparison-set EBITDA, reconstructed. The operating income plus D&A plus stock-compensation build was rebuilt from independent line items for the two comparables whose trailing window still ends March 31, 2026. AppLovin: $4,752M + $148.56M + $232.51M = $5,133M, matching the table exactly. The Trade Desk: $601.52M + $123.23M + $471.42M = $1,196M, matching the table exactly. Meta, Pinterest and Snap have since reported June quarters, so their published trailing figures now end June 30 and cannot be set against the March basis used here; rebuilt on the June window they give $134,792M, $1,280M and $885M against the March figures of $131,620M, $1,228M and $777M, each higher by roughly one quarter of growth, as expected. Two exact reconstructions out of the two that remain comparable is the check on the method. stockanalysis.com

Not verified. The March-basis EBITDA figures for Meta, Pinterest and Snap, for the reason above. The year-ago U.S. segment split ($90.8M international, $7.87 U.S. ARPU). The litigation docket entries, which are cited to CourtListener but were not re-pulled. The publisher traffic figures, which are secondhand and flagged as such in the body.

Reddit filings and disclosures

[Q2 2026 letter to shareholders, Exhibit 99.2 to Form 8-K, filed July 30, 2026] — revenue $804.9M; ad revenue $762M; Other revenue $43M; net income $252.8M; adjusted EBITDA $342.8M and 42.6% margin; gross margin 91.3%; U.S. DAUq 53.2M against 53.5M prior quarter; logged-in U.S. DAUq +1%; logged-out U.S. DAUq +10%; U.S. WAUq 197.2M (+9%); global WAUq 514.6M (+24%); global DAUq 130.3M; international DAUq 77.1M; U.S. ARPU $11.85 (+51%); international ARPU $2.26; global ARPU $6.18; international revenue $166.8M; Q3 guidance $860M to $870M revenue and $385M to $395M adjusted EBITDA; Huffman quotations. No correction issued. sec.gov

[Q2 2026 earnings press release, Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K, filed July 30, 2026] — net income $252,848 thousand against $89,297 thousand, an increase of 183% as stated by the company; diluted EPS $1.25 (+178%); basic EPS $1.31; weighted average shares 192,345,684 basic and 202,029,721 diluted; 207.0M total fully diluted shares outstanding; free cash flow $260,742 thousand and purchases of property and equipment $1,134 thousand, from which operating cash flow of $261,876 thousand is derived; cash and marketable securities $2,786M; total liabilities $350.9M; 1.5M shares repurchased at $157.57 average; eighth consecutive quarter above 60% revenue growth. No correction issued. sec.gov

[Q2 2026 earnings call transcript, July 30, 2026] — Vollero: “Q2 will be the last quarter we report logged in and logged out user metrics.” Vollero on Q3 stock-based compensation and related taxes of $140M to $155M, and on full-year SBC guidance revised down to the low-to-mid-teens as a percentage of revenue from high teens, tracking at “less than 13% of revenue to date” — which is why no SBC figure is used as a bear argument in this piece. Huffman on AI Overviews; and, asked about data licensing renewal timing, that “the range of outcomes is wide,” that the deals are not a “binary outcome,” that the Google relationship comprises separable components (training data, traditional search links, AI Overviews), and that licensing is an expanding marketplace with multiple potential buyers. No correction issued. investing.com · fool.com

[Advertising revenue decomposition, Q2 2026] — growth driven by ad pricing up approximately 40% and ad impressions up 17%. 1.40 × 1.17 = 1.638, reproducing the reported 64% advertising revenue growth almost exactly, which is the reconciliation stated in the text. finance.yahoo.com

[Trailing twelve month operating cash flow] — quarterly operating cash flow of $185.16M (Q3 2025), $266.81M (Q4 2025), $312.25M (Q1 2026) and $261.88M (Q2 2026) sums to $1,026.1 million for the twelve months to June 30, 2026. The preceding twelve months, to March 31, 2026, sum to $875.6 million. June 2026 is therefore the first period in which the trailing figure exceeded $1 billion, as stated in the text. stockanalysis.com

[Q2 2025 comparatives] — revenue $499.6M (+78%); net income $89M (18% of revenue); adjusted EBITDA $167M at a 33% margin; operating cash flow $111.33M; capital expenditures $0.51M (0.1% of revenue); free cash flow $110.83M; DAUq 110.4M (+21%). Free cash flow of $260.74M in Q2 2026 against $110.83M is an increase of 135%, the figure shown in the quarter table. Capital expenditures were 0.1% of revenue in both periods. seekingalpha.com · stockanalysis.com

[Q3 2025 results, for the guidance comparison] — revenue $584.9 million, up 68% year-over-year; advertising revenue $549 million; other revenue $36 million; U.S. revenue $480 million; international revenue $105 million; gross margin 91.0%. Q3 2026 guidance of $860M–$870M against this base implies growth of approximately 48%. No correction issued. cnbc.com

[FY2025 results press release, Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K, filed February 5, 2026] — FY2025 revenue $2,202.5M; FY2025 Other revenue $140M (+22%); Q4 2025 Other revenue $36M (+8%); FY2025 adjusted EBITDA $845.1M. No correction issued. sec.gov

[Revenue growth streak] — Q1 2026 was reported as Reddit’s seventh consecutive quarter of revenue growth above 60%, which makes Q2 2026 the eighth, as stated in the opening paragraph. tikr.com

[Final prospectus, Form 424B4, filed March 21, 2024] — “In January 2024, we entered into certain data licensing arrangements with an aggregate contract value of $203.0 million and terms ranging from two to three years.” sec.gov

Comparison set

[Comparison table, as used] — enterprise value and trailing-twelve-month EBITDA before stock-based compensation, the two inputs behind every multiple in the table. Reddit $25.7B / $963M (March basis) and $25.7B / $1,140M (June basis); AppLovin $137.5B / $5,133M; Meta $1,478B / $131,620M; Pinterest $12.2B / $1,228M; Snap $8.9B / $777M; The Trade Desk $7.3B / $1,196M. EBITDA before SBC is operating income plus depreciation and amortization plus stock-based compensation over the trailing four quarters, built identically for all six. Enterprise value is market capitalization plus long-term debt less cash and short-term investments. Reconstruction results for these figures are in the verification section above.

[Comparison set financials] — trailing twelve month operating income, depreciation and amortization, stock-based compensation and revenue for Meta (CIK 1326801), Pinterest (1506293), Snap (1564408), AppLovin (1751008), The Trade Desk (1671933) and Reddit (1713445), built from SEC XBRL company facts. Quarterly values were derived from cumulative interim periods where companies tag six-month and nine-month durations rather than discrete quarters. The build reproduces Reddit’s filed trailing twelve month revenue exactly, which is the check on the method. Balance sheet items are from each company’s most recent balance sheet filed as of the March basis. data.sec.gov (and the corresponding files for each CIK above)

[Market capitalizations — July 31, 2026 closing values] — Meta $1.50T, AppLovin $136.73B, Pinterest $13.54B, Snap $8.26B, The Trade Desk $8.71B, Reddit $28.48B, from exchange quote data. July 31 was the last session before publication. stockanalysis.com (and the corresponding pages for each ticker)

[Meta Q2 2026 results, reported July 29, 2026] — revenue $60.80 billion, up 28%; Family daily active people 3.60 billion; Family ARPP $16.86; operating margin 31% against 43% a year earlier. Meta reported before this piece published, so the ARPP comparison in the text sets Meta’s June quarter against Reddit’s June quarter. No correction issued. prnewswire.com

[Meta Q1 2026 results, April 29, 2026] — worldwide Family ARPP $15.66; DAP 3.56 billion; revenue $56.31 billion (+33%); income from operations $22.87 billion. Used only for the March-basis comparison table. Meta does not break ARPP out by geography, which is why no U.S.-to-U.S. comparison against Meta appears in the piece. No correction issued. q4cdn.com · investor.atmeta.com

[Snap Q1 2026 results, Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K, filed May 6, 2026] — North America ARPU $9.23 in Q1 2026, up 10% year-over-year; Europe $3.34 and Rest of World $1.20. North America daily active users 92 million, down 7%. North America revenue $851.253M against $831.691M, up 2%. Snap defines ARPU as quarterly revenue over average daily active users, the same construction Reddit uses, but the release does not state which countries its North America segment contains, which is noted in the text. No correction issued. sec.gov

[Pinterest Q1 2026 results, May 4, 2026] — U.S. and Canada ARPU $7.12, up 9%; global ARPU $1.61; total revenue $1.008 billion (+18%); MAU 631 million. Pinterest defines ARPU against monthly rather than daily actives, which is not comparable to a daily-user denominator and is flagged as such in the text. No correction issued. q4cdn.com

Market data

[Reddit price and market reaction, July 31, 2026] — closing price $140.67, a decline of $37.37 or 20.99%; steepest intraday decline since the 2024 IPO. Confirmed independently against Morningstar quote data for the same session. No correction issued. finance.yahoo.com · morningstar.com

[August 3 market data and Snap Q2 2026 — the update note] — Reddit closed August 3 at $154.71, up $14.04 or 9.98%, recovering 37.6% of the July 31 decline of $37.37 and leaving the stock 13.1% below the $178.04 pre-earnings level. Snap reported Q2 2026 the same day: revenue $1.6 billion (+19% from $1.34 billion); North America revenue $943 million (+15% from $821 million); North America daily active users 92 million, down 7% year-over-year and flat sequentially; adjusted EBITDA $249.6 million against $41.3 million. No correction issued. stockanalysis.com · cnbc.com

[Reporting calendar] — Meta reported Q2 2026 on July 29, Snap on August 3, Pinterest on August 4, and AppLovin and The Trade Desk on August 6. March 31, 2026 is therefore the last quarter for which all six companies can be set on a common basis, which is the reason the table uses it.

[Analyst target revisions, July 31 and August 1, 2026] — Wells Fargo to $143 from $187; Deutsche Bank to $200 from $250; Cantor Fitzgerald to $170 from $200; JPMorgan to $185 from $200; Baird to $185 from $200; Piper Sandler to $195 from $215; Oppenheimer to $200 from $225; Wedbush to $221 from $250; Roth Capital to $145 from $185; B. Riley raised to $270 from $250; Truist raised to $275. Published consensus targets disagree — Schaeffer’s cites $231.36 and MarketBeat $220.90 for the same period — and neither is used in this piece. schaeffersresearch.com · stockanalysis.com

Litigation

[Reddit, Inc. v. Anthropic PBC, N.D. Cal. No. 3:25-cv-05643] — complaint filed in San Francisco Superior Court June 4, 2025 as No. CGC-25-625892; removal July 3, 2025; Dkt. 42 (December 15, 2025) recording that mediation on August 1, 2025 did not produce a settlement; Dkt. 60 (March 30, 2026) granting remand; Dkt. 62 (April 3, 2026) acknowledgement from San Francisco Superior Court. Docket entries as cited; not independently re-pulled. courtlistener.com

[Remand ruling and causes of action, March 30, 2026] — five California state-law claims with no copyright count; holding that the alleged conduct implicates contractual rights distinct from those conferred by copyright. loeb.com · courthousenews.com

[Reddit, Inc. v. Perplexity AI, Inc. et al., S.D.N.Y. No. 1:25-cv-08736, filed October 22, 2025] — parallel suit naming Perplexity and three data-collection intermediaries. sdnyblog.com

[Bartz v. Anthropic PBC settlement, final approval July 20, 2026] — $1.5 billion; certified Works List of 482,460 titles; estimated recovery of approximately $3,100 per work; attorneys’ fees set at $101,561,111. Figures updated at final approval. Coverage at the September 2025 announcement, still widely reprinted, described the settlement as approximately $3,000 per work across roughly 500,000 works; the 500,000 figure is a rounding of the 482,460-title Works List, and the per-work estimate rose after the court reduced the fee award by roughly $86 million from the amount requested. courthousenews.com · pearlcohen.com

Search referrals and publishers

[Wall Street Journal report on publishers and Google, published July 21, 2026, corrected July 22, 2026] — every figure in this paragraph is secondhand. The Journal’s page could not be retrieved in any form; all URL variants return a 403 from network egress policy, meaning the domain is blocked rather than paywalled, so not even the headline could be checked against the source. Both the original and corrected figures are as reported by PPC Land, which covered the article and its correction. The Journal corrected its Semrush figures one day after publication. The pre-correction version reported declines of about 23% at Politico, about 25% at CNN, more than 85% at Business Insider and nearly half at USA Today; that set was reprinted widely and is still circulating. The corrected June 2025 to June 2026 figures are 18% at USA Today’s national paper, 20% at Politico, and 31% each at CNN and Business Insider. The corrected chart of trailing twelve-month averages records declines of roughly 3.2% at People, 27% at Time, 28% at USA Today, 35% at Reuters, 43% at Business Insider and 44% at the Washington Post, alongside gains of about 16% at the Guardian and 15% at the BBC. The two sets differ because they measure different things, a point comparison and a trailing average. This limitation is stated in the body of the piece as well as here. ppc.land · niemanlab.org

[Reported value of the Google licensing agreement, July 22, 2026] — approximately $60 million a year; contract nearing expiration; Reddit statement on approaching negotiations. Press reporting, not company disclosure. No correction issued to this figure. cnbc.com

Author’s calculations

Enterprise value. Approximately $25.7 billion, being the exchange-quoted market capitalization of $28.5 billion at the July 31 close less cash and marketable securities of $2,786 million at June 30, 2026, against no debt. The March-basis row uses $2,771 million of cash at March 31, 2026, which leaves the enterprise value unchanged to the nearest hundred million.

Conversion ratio. 97.3%, being $1,140 million of EBITDA before stock-based compensation over $1,171.8 million of reported adjusted EBITDA on a trailing twelve month basis. The single-quarter Q2 ratio is 98.3% ($336.9 million over $342.8 million); the trailing figure is used throughout.

Segment revenue reconciliation. Reddit reports U.S. revenue of $638.1 million and international revenue of $166.8 million directly. These do not reconcile to ARPU times DAUq: 53.2 million U.S. daily uniques at $11.85 gives $630.4 million and 77.1 million international at $2.26 gives $174.2 million, a shift of roughly $7.7 million from the U.S. column to international, and $12.9 million on the same basis in Q2 2025. The ARPU-basis figures sum to $804.7 million against the reported $804.9 million total, confirming a reallocation rather than a denominator difference. Reddit’s stated definition is “quarterly revenue in a given geography divided by the average DAUq in that geography,” with advertising revenue apportioned by the location in which impressions are delivered and other revenue by the customer’s billing address, which is the source of the gap. All scenario arithmetic applies growth rates to reported segment revenue rather than multiplying an ARPU against a DAUq.

Segment growth decomposition. U.S. segment revenue growth: $638.1 million against $408.8 million in Q2 2025, the latter being that quarter’s $499.6 million total less $90.8 million of reported international revenue, a 56.1% increase against U.S. DAUq growth of 5.8% (53.2 million against 50.3 million). Snap North America decomposition: revenue of $851.253 million against $831.691 million is 2.35%, daily active users of 92 million against 99 million is minus 7.07%, and 1.0235 divided by 0.9293 is 1.101, reproducing the reported 10% ARPU increase.

Decomposition asymmetry. Snap’s North America decomposition reproduces its reported ARPU exactly because Snap’s published user count is its own ARPU denominator. Reddit’s does not: revenue growth of 56.1% over DAUq growth of 5.8% implies 47.6% ARPU growth against the 51% Reddit reports, the difference being the apportionment gap above. This is stated in the body where the comparison is made.

International convergence. $5.93 is 2.62 times the reported $2.26, applied to reported international revenue of $166.8 million to give approximately $438 million quarterly, $271 million quarterly incremental and roughly $1.08 billion annualized. Annualized Other revenue of approximately $172 million, being the second-quarter figure of $43 million at a four-quarter run rate.

Scenarios. Both are built four quarters out at the reported Q2 adjusted EBITDA margin of 42.6%, held flat, and converted to the before-SBC basis at 97.3%. Case one: U.S. revenue of $638.1 million grown 25% to $797.6 million, international revenue of $166.8 million grown 40% to $233.5 million, total $1,031.1 million quarterly and up 28.1% year-over-year, giving $439.3 million of quarterly adjusted EBITDA, $1.76 billion annualized and $1.71 billion before SBC; enterprise value of $18.8 billion to $22.2 billion at 11 to 13 times. Case two: U.S. revenue grown 51% to $963.5 million, international grown 50% to $250.2 million, total $1,213.7 million quarterly, giving $517.0 million quarterly, $2.07 billion annualized and $2.01 billion before SBC; enterprise value of $36.2 billion to $44.3 billion at 18 to 22 times. The 26% figure is a two-point interpolation between the scenario midpoints of $20.5 billion and $40.3 billion, not a market-implied probability.

Per-share derivation. Scenario enterprise values converted to a share price by adding back $2,786 million of net cash and dividing by the 207.0 million fully diluted share count. Case one: ($18.8B + $2.79B) / 207.0M = $104.28, and ($22.2B + $2.79B) / 207.0M = $120.70. Case two: $188.34 and $227.47. No-compression case: 26.7 times $2.01 billion is $53.7 billion of enterprise value, giving $272.72 a share, which requires 0.53 turns of enterprise value per point of growth against 0.43 for Meta. Only Pinterest (0.61) and Snap (1.12) sit above 0.53, and both do so because their growth is slow rather than because the market is paying up for it. On the 192.4 million share count the quote services use, each figure rises approximately 7.6%.

Free cash flow rounding. $261,876 thousand of operating cash flow less $1,134 thousand of capital expenditures gives $260,742 thousand. The rounded components ($261.9 million and $1.1 million) subtract to $260.8 million, which is why the company’s reported $260.7 million does not tie to its own rounded inputs. This is the arithmetic note in the quarter section.

Miscellaneous. Single-session market value change of approximately $7.7 billion, being the $37.37 per share decline across 207.0 million fully diluted shares. Turns per point of growth is EV/EBITDA divided by trailing revenue growth in percentage points, an author construction rather than a standard metric.