Hinge Turns Profitable

SEEKING ALPHA - Oct 28 - Amid the pandemic, Match Group announced that Hinge is now profitable and on track to triple revenue this year. In February of this year, Match Group acquired the remaining 49% of Hinge that it didn't already own. Match had previously purchased a majority stake in the app back in June 2018. Tinder's somewhat sleazy reputation as a "hookup app" allowed other entrants such as Hinge to build brands around the idea of a more relationship-focused service. Rather than retool Tinder to be all things to all people, Match bought Hinge and embraced the idea of market segmentation. Although Match doesn't offer any specific numbers, Morgan Stanley analyst Lauren Cassel estimates that the app has 6M active users and ~400K paying subscribers. Those numbers are dwarfed by Tinder's estimated user base of ~50M active accounts and ~6M paying users, but Hinge's customer base is older, and thus, willingness to pay is higher. Assuming that the 400K paying user figure is accurate, simple arithmetic shows that Hinge could be generating ~$64M annually in sales from subscriptions alone.