THE MOTLEY FOOL – Apr 15 – After a highly successful IPO, shares of Bumble have fallen 24% from their highs. Bumble benefited from the pandemic-driven stay-at-home economy, as online dating became one of the only mediums to meet a match. Yet despite the seemingly perfect environment for its business, the company still struggled to generate positive earnings. The company faces a drag on its business from Badoo, whose revenue per paying subscriber fell 9.8% in 2020. Bumble suffered an overall net loss of $142.8M, which was in stark contrast to the $85M profit in 2019. The swing owes to a significant 74% ($292M) increase in operating expenses, which grew much faster than the 19% increase in revenue. Granted, some of the additional expenses may not recur in 2021.
Category: Badoo
The Tech Billionaire Who Is Putting Women First
BBC – Apr 8 – The co-founder of dating app Bumble, Whitney Wolfe Herd, has joined Forbes list of the super-rich. The 31-year-old became the world's youngest self-made female billionaire when she took Bumble public in February. Before Bumble, she was among the founding team at Tinder but after tensions with other executives – one of whom she had been dating – she left. The central focus of her app is that only women can initiate a conversation in heterosexual matches. She founded Bumble with help from early investor Russian billionaire Andrey Adreev, who also had a stake in Badoo, both of which he sold in November 2019. Ms Wolfe Herd owns a 11.6% stake in Bumble, giving her an estimated net worth of $1.3B. She also heads Badoo. The two apps have a combined 40M users, 2.4M of whom pay a subscription.
Dating Apps Thriving Amid Pandemic
APN NEWS – Mar 23 – According to data by Finaria.it, the combined revenues of the top five dating apps globally hit $100M in January. As the most-profitable dating app, Tinder generated $64.6M in revenue that month. Tinder in-app purchase revenues skyrocketed by 250% in three years, jumping from $403M in 2017 to $1.4B in 2020. Bumble ranked as the second-most-profitable dating app, with $18.6M in revenue and 1.8M downloads in January. Bumble users spent $210M on in-app purchases in 2020, six times less than Tinder users. Hinge, Badoo, and Match followed with $8.4M, $5.1M, and $4.3M in revenue in January.
Bumble’s Q4 and Full Year 2020 Results
BUMBLE – Mar 11 – Full year 2020 revenue increased to $582.2M from $488.9M in 2019, with $110M net loss. Q4 revenue increased 31% to $165.6M (Bumble – $105.8M, Badoo and other $59.8M). Total paying users increased 32% to 2.7M. 2020 Net loss was $110.2M. Bumble anticipates Revenue and Adjusted EBITDA for the Q1 2021 and year 2021 to be: Q1 2021 revenue – $163 to $165M, Q1 2021 Adjusted EBITDA – $41 to $42M. Full year 2021 revenue – $716 to $726M, Adjusted EBITDA – $173 to $178M.
Bumble: a Profit Machine at the Wrong Price
SEEKING ALPHA – Feb 15 – The company is too expensive at the moment despite excellent business results. Bumble has the first-mover advantage in addressing a problem that women have in the dating space. In Wolfe's telling, women are taught to let men be the aggressors. The company's value proposition is very compelling to women and it shows in the demographics of the app: there are 30% more women than men on Bumble. In total, as of Sep 30, 2020, the company had 42M monthly active users: 40.7M MAUs coming from Bumble and Badoo (12.3M MAUs from Bumble and 28.4M MAUs from Badoo). Having grown 49% in 2019, to 855,600 in 2019, Bumble's paid users grew a further 30% YOY, for the first nine months of 2020 to 1.1M. Though the number of paid users in Badoo fell by 9% in 2019 to 1.2M, they grew 10% YOY for the first nine months of 2020 to 1.3M. Wolfe has been an excellent capital allocator, growing returns on invested capital (ROIC) from -39.2% in 2018, to 179.7% in 2019 and 178.8% for the trailing twelve months (TTM) period. Unfortunately, Bumble Inc’s P/E multiple is 51, based on our adjusted earnings per share, which is very unattractive.
First Look At Bumble’s IPO
SEEKING ALPHA – Jan 20 – Bumble is reportedly seeking a $6-8B valuation. In 2019, Blackstone purchased a majority stake in the company that valued the company at $3B, representing quite a sizable return in a short amount of time. Across its two apps, Bumble and Badoo, the company has 42M monthly active users. Badoo is the fourth-largest (by gross revenue) dating app in the world.
In terms of sizing: Badoo actually has more MAUs than Bumble, with 28.4M as of the end of Sep 2020. This is more than double Bumble's 12.3M MAUs. However, Bumble users are more likely to be premium users; hence, the Bumble brand actually generates ~60% of the combined company's revenue versus ~40% for Badoo. This is why Bumble, despite the smaller user base, is the #2 grossing dating app in the world, behind Tinder. The global online dating market stood at $5.3B in 2020 and is expected to grow 13% YOY to $9.9B by the end of 2025. Despite the rapid and broad adoption of online dating in recent years, only 15% of users are paid subscribers. Given the normalization of paying for multiple services, especially driven by COVID-19, we expect this number to continue trending upward. Bumble's total paid users grew 19% YOY to 2.44M, with the Bumble app indexing at a faster 30% YOY growth rate versus 11% YOY growth for Badoo.
by Gary Alexander
See full article at Seeking Alpha
Andrey Andreev to Launch Social Network, Stereo
TELEGRAPH.CO.UK – Nov 2 – Andrey Andreev, the billionaire founder of Badoo, will soon launch a new kind of social network based around audio, called Stereo. He is the founder, CEO and primary backer of the app, which will let users engage in voice-based chats or listen in on conversations between friends or celebrities. The app is in beta mode with a team made up of former Badoo staff in the UK and Silicon Valley.
by Matthew Field
See full article at Telegraph.co.uk
This post also appears on Very Social Network
Top Grossing Dating Apps for August 2020
SENSOR TOWER – Sep 29 – The top grossing dating app worldwide for August 2020 was Tinder with~$83.5M in user spending, which represented 7.8% growth from August 2019. ~43 percent of Tinder's revenue was from the US, followed by 6% from the UK and 6% from Germany. Bumble was #2 with ~$22.7M in gross revenue, up16.8% YOY. The next top grossing app was Pairs, followed by Badoo and MeetMe.
HotOrNot Shaped the Social Web as We Know It
MASHABLE – Sep 28 – Created in 2000, HOTorNOT became an overnight viral hit by letting people upload pictures of themselves so total strangers could rate their attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 10. Twenty years later, HOTorNOT's DNA is embedded into almost every major platform that defines how we interact online today. "Everything about HOTorNOT was about finding ways to connect people. We really saw ourselves as trying to build the ultimate people router," said one of HOTorNOT's two co-founders, James Hong. "It was a different internet at the time," said Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter. A good friend of Hong, he called him one of the smartest people he knows in Silicon Valley. "Most people hear HOTorNOT and think of the ranking feature, which is crude and sort of questionable in today's light," he said. "But there was always a deep caring and humaneness in how they did things." HOTorNOT made ~$4M by 2003 (with ~88% of revenue coming from auto-renewing subscriptions). The site's downfall began with the arrival of Web 2.0, when web platforms with "venture money started pouring back into startups again. HOTorNOT couldn't compete with services that were free and relying on cash from investors to pay their bills," Young said. He also cited the loss of their talented and ambitious employees who left to start their own companies, like Crunchyroll. HOTorNOT was sold to Avid Life Media for ~$20M in 2008. In 2012, it was sold to Badoo. Badoo only revived HOTorNOT to turn it into another Tinder app clone launching in 2014.
MeetMe’s Live Video Dating: Dating Online With an Audience
BBC – Sep 2 – On dating app MeetMe, users broadcast live from their phones and then interact with people who tune in. This live vlogging format includes a series of live dating game shows. Livestreamers are paired up to see if there is any chemistry between them. Viewers comment on a "stream" underneath, in real time. MeetMe is part of a suite of dating apps run by The Meet Group. Others include Skout, Tagged (for African-American audience) and Lovoo (an app developed in Germany, which MeetMe bought). Between them they have ~15M users, and on average 180K dating games are played each day, with ~1M people watching the live dates unfold. CEO Geoff Cook describes the platforms as "a public version of speed dating". Plenty of Fish is also currently offering live dating experiences. Badoo has recently experimented with the idea as well.
by Dougal Shaw
See full article at BBC
Mark Brooks: Geoff Cook, CEO of The Meet Group, made a couple of impactful statements in the BBC video interview. Geoff said, "I certainly believe daters no longer have the risk appetite for meeting many different people in person based on something as shallow as a right swipe." This risk, of course, is heightened right now because of covid. However, there's always been additional risks when daters meet in-person for the first time. Especially the risk of disappointment when people have misrepresented themselves in their dating profile and photos. The best thing about video is, video doesn't lie, so when people meet in-person, they're less likely to be disappointed, or catfished. Geoff also stated "…Live-streaming video helps…by really emphasizing personalities" which I think is why this new video dating norm will be here to stay. It's so tough for dating apps to really help people get a sense of chemistry. But with video, users can actually get their first sense of chemistry. That's huge! (Full Disclosure: The Meet Group are a client of Courtland Brooks)