Shares of Bumble Inc, backed by Blackstone Group Inc, soared more than 76 percent in their stock market debut on Thursday, fetching a US$14 billion valuation for the operator of the dating app where women make the first move.
The company’s shares opened at US$76 on the NASDAQ, well above its initial public offering (IPO) price of US$43 per share. Austin, Texas-based Bumble operates two major apps, Bumble and Badoo, which touts over 40 million monthly active users worldwide.
In an interview on Thursday, Bumble chief executive Whitney Wolfe Herd said the global pandemic encouraged people to build a relationship and meet new people on their phones.
Photo: Reuters
“People are building meaningful relationships digitally first, and then the physical follows. This is a really phenomenal shift toward safety and engineering more accountable experiences,” said Wolfe Herd, who expects the trend to continue in a post-COVID 19 world.
Bumble, unique among dating apps for its “women-first approach,” generates revenue mostly from premium subscriptions. The company reported US$376.6 million in revenue in the first nine months of last year, according to filings. The Bumble app had 1.1 million paying users, with 1.3 million on the Badoo app and other services.
Wolfe Herd, 31, has become one of the youngest female executives leading a public company.
TINDER CO-FOUNDER
A co-founder of rival app Tinder, she later sued the company, alleging that her co-founders subjected her to sexual harassment. Tinder parent Match Group Inc, which denied the allegations, paid about US$1 million to settle the dispute.
Bumble plans to use the US$2.2 billion proceeds from the IPO to pay off debt, fund international growth, and pursue acquisitions.
“Right now we’re very focused on taking the dating opportunity globally,” Wolfe Herd said. “We also hope to have the pre-eminent platform for meeting whoever you’re looking for, for whatever use case, in the long run.”
In 2019, Blackstone paid about US$3 billion to acquire a majority stake in MagicLab, which owned the Bumble and Badoo apps at the time, from founder Andrey Andreev. Wolfe Herd was named Bumble’s chief executive officer after the deal.
Bumble also joins the ranks of Snowflake Inc, Airbnb Inc and DoorDash Inc, all of which had strong first-day pops when they debuted last year.
Stellar first-day trading gains such as these are likely to fuel criticism from some venture capital investors, including Benchmark’s Bill Gurley, who has argued that investment banks underprice offerings so their investor clients can win big in first trades.
Some investors have also pushed companies to consider direct listing, where bankers have little influence on the price at which the stock is sold. Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are the lead underwriters for the offering.
Semiconductor business between Taiwan and the US is a “win-win” model for both sides given the high level of complementarity, the government said yesterday responding to tariff threats from US President Donald Trump. Home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), Taiwan is a key link in the global technology supply chain for companies such as Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp. Trump said on Monday he plans to impose tariffs on imported chips, pharmaceuticals and steel in an effort to get the producers to make them in the US. “Taiwan and the US semiconductor and other technology industries
The US Federal Reserve is expected to announce a pause in rate cuts on Wednesday, as policymakers look to continue tackling inflation under close and vocal scrutiny from US President Donald Trump. The Fed cut its key lending rate by a full percentage point in the final four months of last year and indicated it would move more cautiously going forward amid an uptick in inflation away from its long-term target of 2 percent. “I think they will do nothing, and I think they should do nothing,” Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis former president Jim Bullard said. “I think the
SMALL AND EFFICIENT: The Chinese AI app’s initial success has spurred worries in the US that its tech giants’ massive AI spending needs re-evaluation, a market strategist said Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek’s (深度求索) eponymous AI assistant rocketed to the top of Apple Inc’s iPhone download charts, stirring doubts in Silicon Valley about the strength of the US’ technological dominance. The app’s underlying AI model is widely seen as competitive with OpenAI and Meta Platforms Inc’s latest. Its claim that it cost much less to train and develop triggered share moves across Asia’s supply chain. Chinese tech firms linked to DeepSeek, such as Iflytek Co (科大訊飛), surged yesterday, while chipmaking tool makers like Advantest Corp slumped on the potential threat to demand for Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators. US stock
Cryptocurrencies gave a lukewarm reception to US President Donald Trump’s first policy moves on digital assets, notching small gains after he commissioned a report on regulation and a crypto reserve. Bitcoin has been broadly steady since Trump took office on Monday and was trading at about US$105,000 yesterday as some of the euphoria around a hoped-for revolution in cryptocurrency regulation ebbed. Smaller cryptocurrency ether has likewise had a fairly steady week, although was up 5 percent in the Asia day to US$3,420. Bitcoin had been one of the most spectacular “Trump trades” in financial markets, gaining 50 percent to break above US$100,000 and
RSS