OPW – May 9 – Match Group has released its Q1 2018 earning results. "We are delivering all time best," said CEO Mandy Ginsberg at todays earnings call. Total revenue grew 36% YOY to $407M, the highest quarter over quarter revenue growth since the IPO. Tinder average subscribers were 3.5M in Q1 2018, increasing 368K sequentially and 1.6M YOY. Operating income was $112M, an increase of 91% YOY, while Adjusted EBITDA increased 60% YOY to $138M.
Highlights from the earnings call:
- Tinder is testing first video feature, called Loops which are 2s-looped user-generated videos that allows users to show their personality.
- Tinder is also testing a new location based feature called Tinder Places. It allows users to see others going to the same places they do (bars or museums). Tinder has been testing this product in 3 international markets with a small group of users. In the first three weeks Match saw users going to 200 social places. Half of them engage daily with Places and 96% of them have continued using this feature. It is an opt-in feature, and it will be available to all users in Q2.
- This week, Tinder started the "message first" setting to allow users (especially women) to have more control.
- Match Group has settled with Chinese "Tinder clone" TanTan. TanTan will re-design its U.S. app and pay Match annual royalty payments.
Mandy talked about Facebook entering the online dating space. "It is really unclear but Facebook dating won't probably have a negative impact on Tinder", said Mandy Ginsberg. Tinder introduced SMS signed up last year. Within two months of this offering, new users went from 100% Facebook sign up to only 25%. (Data from North America). "Users quickly separated Facebook from their dating experience", said Mandy.
