Finances

Dating app conglomerate Match Group reported third quarter earnings that beat analyst expectations, with more of its users paying for subscriptions on dating app Tinder. The company’s stock rose 16 percent in response.

Despite the effects of inflation and a slow first half of the year, along with poor execution of some new features and executive team changes made by new CEO Bernard Kim, Match Group turned things around and impressed investors and analysts with better-than-expected revenue gains. Match Group revenue reached $810 million for the quarter ending September 30th, beating analysts’ estimate of $793 million according to Refinitiv data.

Tinder’s revenue grew 6 percent and its paying users jumped 7 percent according to Reuters. Tinder users account for the vast majority of Match Group’s estimated 100 million active users.

Match Group has joined Epic Games in expanding their lawsuit against Google and its Play Store, claiming the company paid developers to prevent Play Store competition.

According to a report by Engadget, the companies filed a motion with a federal court in the Northern District of California in October, accusing Google of paying off developers that had the financing and ability to create new Android app stores to compete with Google.

As Tech Crunch pointed out, this would be “a direct violation of U.S. antitrust law known as the Sherman Act,” the amended lawsuit states.

In the original lawsuit, Epic Games and Match Group detailed a program called “Project Hug” that paid game developers hundreds of millions of dollars to keep their games on the Google Play store, notably following the release of Epic Games’ Fortnight in 2018 (where it was made available outside of Google Play, bypassing their fees).

Barry Diller, owner of IAC Corporation, has sold off his remaining shares of Match Group for approximately $1.9 billion, according to Global Dating Insights.

The media titan is founder and chairman of InterActiveCorp (IAC), which owned Match Group before it spun off into its own entity. It split from IAC to become a public company in July 2020, which caused a rift with the former owner of its star dating app Tinder, Sean Rad. He and several other Tinder employees sued the company, claiming that their shares were undervalued ahead of the public offering when they were forced out.

Diller’s initial sale of Match stock began in 2021 when he sold his first round despite the company’s impressive growth during the pandemic. But since 2022 began, the stock’s value has fallen 60 percent, in part due to earnings expectations for Tinder falling short the last two quarters. The app’s steady growth is now expected to remain flat through the end of the year.

The share value for dating app conglomerate Match Group was downgraded from buy to hold in mid-September by a Wall Street analyst who projects the company will fall short on revenue goals until the end of the year.

According to Seeking Alpha, Loop Capital Analyst Laura Champine said Tinder remains a “wildcard” on the heels of Renate Nyborg’s exit from the company, the app’s market share losses to Bumble, and “cannibalization” of Tinder by the company’s other star app Hinge. She also lowered her price target from $70 to $60 a share, adding that “we see potential for further misses” going into the next quarter. 

Champine added that CEO Bernard Kim will be able to “bring in exciting talent” from outside the company, which she takes as a promising sign. Still, she said of the company’s star app: "Tinder has not been executing in line with expectations…Match blamed Tinder for its lower outlook overall and said product launches had been poorly executed of late. The brand needs to do a better job attracting new customers," according to Seeking Alpha.

Smitten, a new dating app designed for Gen Z daters, has raised $10 million in its latest round of Series A funding.

According to Venture Beat, investors of the app include Makers Fund, Possible Ventures, and Wonder Invest.

Smitten has gotten attention, thanks to a new study that found it had a post-match success rate of 60 percent, compared to Tinder’s 11 percent – a huge difference to online daters. It is currently the most popular dating app in Iceland and second most popular in Europe, so the new round of funding is in part to help the app expand into new territories and grow its user base.

Smitten has a new take on matching – in addition to sifting through profiles, it has added games to help young daters interact in more engaging ways. If you are interested in someone’s profile, you can start with a questionnaire game called Guessary, where you can guess how the other person answered a series of yes and no questions and get immediate feedback on whether they are correct. If you like how they answered, you can like and match with them and take it from there.

Match Group, which owns Tinder, Hinge and other popular dating apps, has brought a lawsuit against Apple in India, accusing the tech giant of “monopolistic conduct.”

According to an exclusive report from Reuters, the lawsuit follows other filings the company has made against Apple’s App Store practices, since the company takes commission on every in-app sale and doesn’t allow third party payment systems. Match Group filed a complaint in the Netherlands with the country’s regulatory agency which fined Apple almost 50 million euro, until they came to an agreement to revise App Store practices.

Another lawsuit was filed against Apple in India for its App Store practices, arguing that the company “restricts innovation and development” by “enforcing the use of its proprietary in-app purchase system and ‘excessive’ 30 percent commission,” according to Reuter’s review of the filing. That prompted an investigation from the CCI (Competition Commission of India) back in December of 2021.