Bumble, female-focused dating app, makes its IPO filing public

Bumble made its IPO filing public on Friday, adding fuel to rumors that it will make its stock market debut in time for Valentine’s Day.

The female-focused dating app — which grew in popularity in the Tinder era by only allowing women to make the first move in conversations on its platform — is expected to list on the Nasdaq under the BMBL ticker.

In its filing, Bumble said that it brought in $488.9 million in revenue in 2019, and $376.6 million in revenue between Jan 29 and Sept. 30 of last year.

The company’s two apps Bumble and Badoo currently draw 42 million users each month, with 1.1 million paying for Bumble’s premium features.

Bloomberg reported last last year that the company will likely seek a valuation between $6 billion and $8 billion. Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are working with Bumble on the IPO.

The IPO date hasn’t yet been finalized, but it will land around the lovers’ holiday, though it won’t be Feb. 14 as Valentine’s Day falls on a weekend this year.

Bumble was founded by 31-year-old Whitney Wolfe Herd, who famously left hookup app Tinder after accusing a male colleague of sex harassment and launched the new product in 2014 with features to give women more control over conversations with dating prospects and to keep them from being stalked and harassed.

Bumble is the latest tech company to seek to go public as Silicon Valley’s top firms look to ride the stunning recovery in the US capital markets from the coronavirus pandemic that forced a number of them to postpone their debuts.

Airbnb and DoorDash both went public late last year, with the former seeing its value double almost instantly while the latter has almost doubled its $102 listing price.