Bumble IPO: Date, Stock Price & Complete Review

Initial public offerings or IPOs are known as a great way for investors to make a big profit in a relatively short time. On average, they can bring investors 40% returns in the first 3 months. Once the initial funding stages are out of the way, IPOs can be a great way for companies to gain exposure to the open market, help the company grow by attracting more capital and improve liquidity. If you’re an active user of this dating app you might have wondered, “is Bumble publicly traded?” or “when is Bumble going public?” as you might be interested in investing in this company. Read on to find out about Bumble stock IPO and all the important information about Bumble IPO 2021.

Bumble History

Bumble is an online dating app that positions itself for serious long-term relationships rather than, you know, Tinder stuff. The service was launched in December 2014 by Whitney Wolfe Herd and Russian entrepreneur Andrey Andreev who had launched another dating service Badoo in 2006.

Even though the idea of giving people something more than judging on looks may have seemed naive to some, in 2020 the service reached 100 million users and became Tinder’s main competitor.

The app is more “women-friendly” and only allows women to send the first message in heterosexual matches. For same-sex matches, either can initiate the contact. The matches themselves happen the same way as in Tinder, with a right swipe to like and left swipe to skip.

Whitney Wolfe Herd had been working as VP of Marketing at Tinder and left. She sued the company for sexual discrimination and harassment and got slightly over a million-dollar settlement in September 2014. Andreev, the founder of Badoo, was the one that approached Herd suggesting she should come back into the dating space. Andreev invested over $10 million and got 79% of the company, while Herd got 20% and became the CEO of Bumble. The pair was joined by fellow Tinder ex-workers Chris Gulczynski and Sarah Mick, who designed and helped to launch the app.

By November 2017, the company was already valued at over $1 billion. Bumble reports 42 active users and 1.2 million paying subscribers to premium features of the app.

Read on to find out about Bumble IPO date and price and other key info.

Bumble Public Listing Key Data and IPO Date

Bumble IPO Date: February 11, 2021

Ticker: BMBL

Exchange: Nasdaq

IPO stock price: $43

Valuation at IPO: $4 billion

Market cap (3/30/22): $5.367 billion

CEO: Whitney Wolfe Herd

Category: Social Media

Listing method: Direct

Bumble launched its IPO on Nasdaq on February 11, 2021 with the stock symbol BMBL.

The shares were valued at $43 but increased to $76 on the first day of trading, which brought up the company’s value to over $13 billion.

The launch gave Whitney Wolfe Herd, who owns 21% of the company, a net worth of over $1 billion. This is on top of her $100 million from the sale of her share in private equity company Blackstone. This made Herd the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire at 31, as well as the youngest woman to have taken a company public.

The Bumble IPO was backed by Blackstone, with Goldman Sachs and Citigroup as the main underwriters.

Bumble chose the path of a traditional IPO. The other method of going public is via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). These are blank-check companies created specifically to help private companies go public. This method has been rising in popularity for startups because it is cheaper and the IPO process takes less time.

So What About Investing Now?

At the time of writing, it is probably not a good time to invest in Bumble. The Bumble stock price is currently under $30 (4/1/22), around 60% lower than the price of $70 at close of the first trading day on their IPO date. This is normal for IPOs after the initial hype and the subsequent sell-off. Bumble is cheaper but perhaps not cheap enough.

The stock has potential for growth and the company is doing fairly well. However, both are at a risk of bad performance. The Bumble IPO price of $30 is perhaps still overblown. And in general, with such an uncertain situation on the market and the fact that we may be entering recession soon, now is not a very good time for buying growth stocks, IPOs and other assets of a more speculative nature. But if you like Bumble or use the app, it’s a good addition to your stock watchlist.

Check out our IPO section to look at other scheduled IPOs. If you want to find companies that match your interests, investment goals and portfolio, try Gainy for some great IPO investment ideas, as well as established blue-chip companies and a variety of other assets.