Love is in the air, and if it's not it's on your phone. Bumble's (BMBL 3.19%) namesake app is growing quickly as the world's second-highest-grossing online dating platform after Match Group's Tinder. Bumble delivered impressive second-quarter results shortly after Wednesday's market close, and if the market's smart it's going to make sure it sticks around for another date.
Online dating is a no-brainer theme for the pandemic recovery. We're running into some hiccups of the delta variant variety this summer, but inevitably things will be back to normal. Courtships in social settings will continue, but Bumble has actually fared pretty well through the darkest stretches of the COVID-19 crisis.
The 19% in revenue growth it mustered for all of last year was a little more than half of the 36% increase it posted in 2019, but a double-digit gain is pretty impressive in a year in which traditional date outlets were off the menu. Growth is back to resuming its 2019 pace, and investors can somehow still buy into Bumble for just a little more than February's IPO price of $43.
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It's a match
Revenue growth started to regain its rhythm in the fourth quarter of last year, climbing 31% through the final three months of last year. Bumble's top line soared 43% in the first quarter of this year, beating expectations and raising its guidance. It's still locked in beat-and-raise mode.
Bumble's revenue rose 38% to $186.2 million in Wednesday afternoon's second-quarter report. The performance may seem to break the streak of accelerating top-line growth we were seeing clawing out of the pandemic, but this is actually a better beat-and-raise report than the one we got in May.
The beat is substantial. The $186.2 million that the fast-growing matchmaker is delivering on the top line is well ahead of the $177.5 million that analysts were projecting. Even the highest of the dozen top-line estimates was only $183 million. The raise is the real treat. Bumble stock retreated after its first-quarter results in May because boosting its guidance by roughly $8 million was essentially the size of the quarterly beat itself. Bumble wasn't really painting a different outlook for the final nine months of 2021 than what Wall Street pros already had on the easel. It's different this time.
Bumble now sees $752 million to $762 million in revenue for all of this year. Three months ago its raised guidance was calling for $724 million to $734 million. We're talking about jacking up both ends of its top-line outlook as well as the midpoint by $28 million after an $8.7 million beat in the second quarter. Bumble's adjusted EBITDA is also getting pumped up dramatically. The new range -- $195 million to $200 million -- is an $18 million improvement over what Bumble's crystal ball was showing three months ago.
It's refreshing to see the namesake app doing most of the heavy lifting here, unlike Match Group with dozens of moving parts. The Bumble app saw its revenue climb 55% to $127.3 million, or 68% of the total business here. Bumble's other app -- Badoo, the world's fourth-highest-grossing platform -- saw its revenue climb just 11% to $58.9 million. This is a good thing since premium users are spending more than twice as much on Bumble as they are on Badoo. It's not Badoo's fault, since its usage is strong in geographical markets that just aren't used to paying for a lot of premium online dating features.
Bumble also overtook Badoo for the first time in the sheer number of people paying to use the app that is mostly used for free. With Bumble coming through with another better-than-expected report it's surprising to see the stock still trading in the $40s after going public at $43 six months ago. It's never too late to find love, and it's apparently not too late to discover Bumble.
