Bumble shares, which operate a dating app under the same name, rose in their public offering for the first time on Thursday at Nasdaq.
The company’s stock started trading at about 77% at $ 76 per share under the “BMBL” tick mark. It sold shares for $ 43 each, in addition to the set price range of $ 37 to $ 39, and sold 50 million shares.
Youngest Female CEO To Take Company Public
Following its launch, Bumble’s market capitalization was $ 8.3 billion.
On Bumble, founded in 2014 by current CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd, women have to initiate the first conversation for heterosexual matches.
At 31, Wolfe Herd is the youngest female founder to take a U.S. company public. She also joins the ranks of an extremely small list of women founders who led IPOs, including Stitch Fix’s Katrina Lake, who took her company public in 2017, and Julia Wainwright, who took The RealReal public in 2019.
Bumble Offerings
Bumble has a “freemium model,” which means users can join and match for free. It gets a large portion of the revenue available through in-app purchases and different subscription offerings like Bumble Boost, starting at $ 12.99 per week, and its upgraded Bumble Premium, starting at $ 17.99 per week.
Paid services allow users to do things like make their profile more prominent, see who likes their profile first or set their own travel mode.
It is the same model as the rival apps Hinge and Tinder, where users join and use key functions for free but can pay for continuous use. For example, the price of Hinge’s “preferred” membership is $ 19.99 per month. Bumble also makes little money through advertising and partnerships.
Speaking to CNBC ahead of its first trade, Wolfe Herd said the company was focused on its efforts to convert most of its users to paid users by investing in future features and product offerings.
Bumble said in his S-1 filing it generated $ 376.6 million in the first nine months of 2020, with a loss of $ 84.1 million. At the same time in 2019, Bumble brought in $ 362.6 million, and reported a total profit of $ 68.6 million.
Competition
Bumble’s main competitor is Match Group, which owns Hinge, Tinder and many other dating competitors, and has a market value of $ 45.5 billion.
Bumble acknowledged its competition, but said in its prospectus that online dating “is not a ‘winner-take-all’ market.” The company said most people have an average of two different dating apps on their phones.
Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan led the book-building
