Bumble IPO could raise more than $1B for dating service

On the heels of private companies Robinhood and Databricks

each

raising $1 billion or more yesterday

, Bumble is out with a new IPO filing this morning indicating that it wants to raise ten figures as well.

The relationship-finding service where women reach out first will go public on the heels of strong public debuts in December by companies

like Airbnb

, DoorDash

and C3.ai

and Qualtrics

and Poshmark

lighting the way in January.

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But at a

range of $28 to $30 per share

, is Bumble aiming high or low in its valuation and resulting multiples? (For more, check out our first-look at Bumble’s results here

.)

Annoyingly, it’s a little tricky to figure out, as the company’s ownership structure and results are messy thanks to a majority-sale to Blackstone back in 2019

. So this won’t be entirely clean or simple.

But we’ll get through it. Here’s what we want to know:

• Simple and diluted valuations for Bumble at its current IPO price range

• What sort of multiples Bumble expects public investors to pay for its shares

• How those stack up compared to Match Group’s own numbers

• And, finally, what the Bumble IPO could mean for dating and relationship-focused startups; could this IPO prove that there is lucrative space in the market for more dating products?

So let’s get to work, starting with Bumble’s valuation.

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a very valuable bee?

Bumble’s simple valuation is just that to calculate, a doddle. At $28 to $30 per share, and Bumble noting that it expects to have 108,384,634 shares outstanding after its IPO, including its full underwriters’ option, the company would be worth $3.03 billion to to $3.25 billion.

But that’s actually a bit too simple. Bumble’s share count is actually quite a lot higher. For example, if we assume the “exchange of all Common Units held by the Pre-IPO Common Unitholders,” then the company’s share count rises to 189,548,952. At that share count, Bumble is worth $5.31 billion to $5.69 billion. That’s a lot more!

Now things get actually tricky. Our last share count did not take into its confines “any shares of Class A common stock issuable in exchange for as-converted Incentive Units or upon settlement of certain other interests.” So, what are those?