Duolingo, Inc. (NASDAQ:DUOL) Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call May 9, 2023 5:30 PM ET
Company Participants
Deborah Belevan - Head of Investor Relations
Luis von Ahn - Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Matt Skaruppa - Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants
Mark Mahaney - Evercore
Justin Patterson - KeyBanc
Ralph Schackart - William Blair
Andrew Boone - JMP Securities
Ryan MacDonald - Needham
Mario Lu - Barclays
Arvind Ramnani - Piper Sandler
Nat Schindler - BofA
Deborah Belevan
Good afternoon, and welcome to Duolingo’s first quarter earnings webcast. My name is Debbie Belevan, Head of IR.
Today after market close, we released our year-end -- our quarter-end shareholder letter with our Q1 results and commentary, which you can find on our IR website at investors.duolingo.com.
On today's call, we'll have Luis von Ahn, our Co-Founder and CEO; and Matt Skaruppa, our CFO. They'll begin with some brief remarks before opening the call to questions. [Operator Instructions] And please note that this event is being recorded.
Just a reminder that we'll make forward-looking statements regarding future events and financial performance, which are subject to material risks and uncertainties. Some of these risks have been set forth in the risk factors of our filings with the SEC. These forward-looking statements are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of today, and we have no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events.
Additionally, we'll present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures on today's call. These non-GAAP measures are not intended to be considered in isolation from, a substitute for or superior to our GAAP results. And we encourage you to consider all measures when analyzing our performance.
And with that, I'll turn it over to Luis.
Luis von Ahn
Hello, everyone. Thank you, Debbie, and welcome. I'm proud to report that we kicked off this year with another great quarter. We had strong user growth, top line results, profitability and free cash flow.
In the first quarter, our user growth exceeded our expectations. DAUs increased 62% year-over-year to $20.3 million, with all major markets growing nicely. Our strong user growth, of course, helps us deliver on our mission to create the best education in the world and make it universally available. But it also helps us increase paying subscribers, which are up 63% year-over-year to $4.8 million or 8% of MAUs at quarter end.