AppLovin hasn't reported anything yet. It does that on Wednesday, after the market closes at 4 p.m. Eastern. But its shareholders already know what a bad year looks like. The stock closed at $733.60 on December 22, 2025, Trefis reported. On October 30 it closed at $228.50, its lowest in a year. "This once-hot growth stock has lost two-thirds of its value this year," The Motley Fool wrote, and it called AppLovin the worst performer in the S&P 500. Other counts of the fall run from 64% to 65%, depending on the day.
The shares bounced on Tuesday, closing at $245.51, up 7.28%, according to MarketBeat. Twice already this year, results have been followed by a drop: the shares lost 19.7% after the February report and the same after August's, Schaeffer's Investment Research reported.
This is a preview, not a report. Every expectation below is someone else's, and the real figures arrive after the close. It is a strange setup: the business is still growing fast, and the stock has fallen anyway. Here is what AppLovin has promised, what Wall Street is looking for, what went wrong in the summer, and what to watch.
What AppLovin promised, and what analysts expect
AppLovin set the bar itself in August. It guided to third-quarter revenue of $2.055 billion to $2.085 billion, growth of 46% to 48%, 24/7 Wall St. reported, and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $1.71 billion to $1.74 billion.
Analysts sit inside that range. MarketBeat's consensus is earnings of $4.03 a share on revenue of $2.07 billion, against $2.45 a share and $1.41 billion a year earlier. Zacks, cited by Schaeffer's, expects $3.94 a share on $2.08 billion. Of the 30 analysts covering the stock, 21 rate it a strong buy, two a buy and seven a hold, Schaeffer's reported. Those are their ratings, not ours.
Traders expect a big move. Options prices imply a swing of about 17% in either direction after the report, according to Schaeffer's. That is the market's measure of uncertainty, not a forecast of which way it goes.
Source: SEC EDGAR XBRL data
What went wrong in August
The second quarter is where the doubts began. Revenue rose 53%, but at $1.92 billion it fell short of the $1.94 billion analysts expected, CNBC reported. "We've always managed this business with the goal of outperforming our own expectations, and this quarter we fell short of that standard," chief executive Adam Foroughi told analysts. He said the "pace of meaningful model improvement was lighter than normal during the quarter and the next step up in model performance landed just after quarter ended." He also said "Q3 is off to a strong start, and the business is back on the trajectory we expect," 24/7 Wall St. reported.
Some analysts weren't persuaded. Piper Sandler's James Callahan downgraded the stock to neutral and cut his price target from $665 to $385, CNBC reported, writing that "we have more questions than answers on beat/raise cadence from here, and move to the sideline."
Why the models matter so much
To see why one quarter's slip hurt so much, it helps to know how AppLovin makes money. It runs an AI advertising engine, AXON, "that matches advertisers with in-app inventory, mostly inside mobile games," 24/7 Wall St. explained. Gaming is still most of its revenue, and management has called model performance the biggest driver of growth there: "when the models improve, advertisers can increase their spending and still earn their targeted returns," Trefis wrote. When the models stall, so does growth.
The models also cost more to build. Higher computing costs for training models were the main reason costs rose from the first quarter to the second, Trefis reported, citing management. And AppLovin is trying to grow beyond games. Its 10-Q says its investments will help it "expand into new verticals outside of gaming, such as e-commerce and CTV," meaning connected TV. In the second quarter it opened its platform to all advertisers as AppLovin Ads Manager, "aiming at mid-market consumer advertisers," and spending by those advertisers hit a record, 28% above the fourth quarter of 2025, 24/7 Wall St. reported.
Not all of the fall is about AppLovin itself. The Motley Fool wrote that "fears that artificial intelligence (AI) will disrupt its operations and impact its growth potential have sent it into a tailspin." On October 30 the shares fell 10.4% on a day when, Trefis noted, "The company released no announcements, earnings reports, or filings," as a selloff in AI stocks deepened.
Source: SEC EDGAR XBRL data
A business that still earns a lot
The odd thing about the fall is how little the profit forecasts have moved. Analysts now expect $16.65 of normalized earnings per share for 2026, more than the $13.67 they expected a year ago, TIKR reported. What changed is the price people pay for those earnings. By TIKR's count, the stock went from 51x expected earnings at the end of 2025 to under 13x. That is TIKR's measure, and we take no view on what it should be.
The cash is still there. In the second quarter, "Net cash from operating activities was $869.0 million and Free Cash Flow was $863.3 million," AppLovin's release said. It spent $551.3 million buying back and withholding shares. In 2025 it earned $3.3 billion on revenue of $5.5 billion, its annual report shows. One change to watch: taxes. AppLovin paid $639.8 million in cash taxes in the first half of 2026, against $100.6 million a year earlier, TIKR reported, and management expects free cash flow of about 75% of adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization this year, down from 87.6% in 2025.
What to watch
This is analysis, not advice, and we make no call on the shares. Three things in the release will say the most about the business.
- Revenue against the range. AppLovin promised $2.055 billion to $2.085 billion. Landing at or above the top would back up Foroughi's account of a late model update. Landing near the bottom would make August look less like a timing problem.
- The fourth-quarter forecast. TIKR says analysts' numbers imply fourth-quarter revenue of about $2.25 billion, roughly 36% growth, and that a forecast below that would push next year's estimates lower.
- Beyond games. Any figures on e-commerce and other consumer advertisers. They are AppLovin's main route to growth outside mobile games, and the release is where the company will say whether they are adding up.
More figures are on AppLovin's company page, and we'll cover the results once they are out. For most of this year, the stock has moved on what people fear. After the close, the company gets to show its numbers.