Dating | Young people got tired of dating apps – The stock prices of industry giants are crawling far from the peaks

Present it has been a difficult year for large international companies developing dating applications.

The share prices of Match Group and Bumble, the largest listed companies in the industry, are far from their peak readings, as young people in particular feel increasingly tired of the world of dating apps and are looking for their partners elsewhere.

Helsingin Sanomat has also reported on several occasions, especially about boredom among young adults to the dating culture colored by applications. In response to the superficial dating culture in Finland, for example, has been organized events focused on “whale hunting”..

Something similar has also been seen in other parts of the world. US flag company Eventbrite reported in June that according to its report, the number of participants in various dating or Singles events increased by 42 percent from the previous year in 2023 and has increased this year by 49 percent from last year.

Dating apps have also reportedly become gendered – there are typically more men than women in the shop.

Dating apps the stock prices of developing companies peaked in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic in 2021, but the ride has been cold since then.

At Friday night’s stock price, Match Group’s stock has already fallen 80 percent from its all-time high price in October 2021. Match Group is the world’s largest dating app company, whose apps include Tinder, Hinge, Match, Okcupid and Meetic.

Although Tinder is still the most important of the company’s applications, the importance of the company’s Hinge application has been emphasized in recent years. Since 2022, Tinder’s revenue for Match Group has grown by only about nine percent, while Hinge’s revenue has doubled in the same time.

Bumble the share, on the other hand, tells a harsh picture of the drugs of the pandemic era, in which dating app companies floundered. The company was listed on the technology exchange Nasdaq in early 2021, and its share’s highest closing price so far was already seen on the share’s third trading day.

At the peak, the company’s share cost $78.9. On Friday, the company’s share price floated slightly below six dollars. The decline from the stock’s peaks has therefore been more than 92 percent.

On Thursday, Bumble’s share price fell almost 30 percent to its lowest level ever, when the company lowered its revenue guidance for the current year in connection with its second quarter earnings release.

The company said it expects its net sales to increase this year by 1-2 percent compared to last year. Previously, the company had expected that the turnover would increase by 8–11 percent. Economic magazine of the Wall Street Journal according to analysts had expected a turnover growth of around 8.4 percent.

The company’s turnover and net profit also fell short of analysts’ expectations.

I’m dating the number of paying users, important for large companies, is one sign of Match Group’s predicament in particular.

The situation can be seen especially in the figures of Match Group, the industry’s market leader. The number of paying customers has mostly decreased over the past couple of years, and has now already returned to the level of the first half of 2021.

The number of Bumble’s paying users has so far continued to grow steadily, but a major acceleration of growth has not been in sight so far.

The companies have started to take action to reverse their direction. Match Group said at the end of July that it would cut six percent of its employees, while Bumble already said in February that it would lay off about a third of its employees.