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
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