Tinder owner Match swipes right for a $467m IPO

10 Nov 2015

Tinder’s parent company online dating giant Match Group, plans to raise $467m in an IPO on Nasdaq.

Tinder’s parent company, online dating giant Match Group, plans to raise $467m in an IPO on NASDAQ. The IPO, which takes place before Thanksgiving, will see Match trade under the ticker ‘MTCH’.

New York-headquartered Match plans to offer over 33.3m shares valued at between $12 and $14 a share, according to its SEC filing. The IPO is being underwritten by JP Morgan, Allen & Co and Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

The pricing of the shares could enable Match Group to raise between $400m and $470m and values its Tinder subsidiary at around $3bn.

Last year, the company reported annual revenues of $888m, out of which it has derived a profit of around $85m.

Match Group owns popular dating sites like Match.com, OK Cupid and – its most famous product – Tinder, created in 2012 by Sean Rad, Jonathan Badeen and Justin Mateen, which is a location-based dating and social discovery application.

Tinder is the most famous of the swiping apps where users use a swiping motion to choose between photos of other users – right for potential matches, left to reject. The app has gained some notoriety for enabling a new fast-lane hook-up culture that no doubt horrifies prudes and romantics in equal measure.

Match Group said that among all of its properties it had more than 11.7m paying customers by the third quarter of 2015.

Mobile dating image via Shutterstock

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com