Bumble in advanced talks to go private at $1 billion valuation
A deal could be reached as soon as this week, the Wall Street Journal reports, days after the dating app's biggest shareholders weighed its options.
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Bumble is in advanced talks to go private at a $1 billion valuation, with a deal potentially arriving as soon as this week, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The figure marks a steep comedown from Bumble's debut on public markets. The company listed at around a $7.7 billion valuation in 2021, and Axios reported in May that the stock had fallen 95% since then. Blackstone, which bought a majority stake in Bumble's predecessor MagicLab in 2019 at a $3 billion valuation, holds roughly 22.9% economic ownership and 48.9% of voting power, according to Wikipedia's entry on the company. Chief executive Whitney Wolfe Herd holds about 14.0% economic ownership, the same entry shows.
The prospect of a sale is not new. Reuters reported previously that Bumble was exploring a sale and working with Morgan Stanley bankers on a process, at a time when its shares had fallen 48% over the prior year and its market value stood at $388 million. In a May interview with Axios, Wolfe Herd declined to rule out taking the company private.
The talks land in a fall stretch thick with take-private and strategic-buyer activity across consumer and media names, from MGM's pursuit of People Incorporated to Authentic Brands' approach for Mattel. Private capital has kept finding value in public names that public markets have marked down. A completed deal would stand out as one of the clearer resolutions in that cycle, since other situations, including Cooper Cos. and Northern Star, remain unresolved or have been rejected. It would also hand other dating and social-app companies a concrete valuation marker to be judged against, if the deal closes as described.