In this podcast, Motley Fool hosts Ricky Mulvey and Deidre Woollard and engineer Dan Boyd discuss:

  • What brands are looking for from a major spend.
  • The increasing bifurcation of the watching experience.
  • If it takes more than a celebrity or three to make a great ad.

Motley Fool host Mary Long and contributor Rick Munarriz compare Match and Bumble and break down the prospects for these two publicly traded matchmakers.

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. To get started investing, check out our quick-start guide to investing in stocks. A full transcript follows the video.

This video was recorded on Feb. 12, 2024.

Deidre Woollard: We watch that. We have opinions. Motley Fool Money starts now. Welcome to Motley Fool Money. I'm Deidre Woollard here with my co-host, Ricky Mulvey, and our engineer, Dan Boyd. For a Special Ads Review Monday, we're going to evaluate some of the ads we saw yesterday. See if those publicly traded companies get their seven million dollars for 30 seconds money worth. Welcome guys. How do you enjoy the game?

Dan Boyd: Well, the game was actually good this time, so it's nice that the Super Bowl was a good game for once. It was a good time.

Ricky Mulvey: Good game. I appreciate the rule change that holding is no longer an offensive penalty.

Deidre Woollard: Well, I was thinking about the ads last night, dividing them up into the reasons that a company runs an ad that costs that much. I mean, obviously you've got the audience, but you have to have a reason, I think. There's general awareness. I mean that's like you're Budweiser or something like that. There's a special promotion like the Turbotax thing. You've got maybe a new flavor of something or a movie. What else? What other reasons do companies have for spending all this money?

Ricky Mulvey: I mean, I think there's the element on the biggest stage. Look at how good we are, look at how good we are as a brand. The NFL did that, Dove did that. I will save my comments about Pfizer. Also don't discount the ego element among some marketing executives. This is the biggest stage for marketers. You know, the folks in the C suite know that and this is their time to maybe show off a little bit to friends. Also, I would say rebranding. A few in that would be Snapchat. SnapChat had a big campaign that it's not social media, it's so much healthier than that, Diedre also, soda is good for you now all pops make in that case. The company in the middle of a little bit of a rebrand is Budweiser and Bud Light specifically. Instead of it had its scandal with TikTok, it also, it had a lighter touch in Super Bowl's last year with Miles Teller just dancing in an apartment, drinking Budweiser with his wife, listening to hold music. No, now it's back in neighborhood bars, you know. Remember us, you love us. You bring us to parties. Hey, we even cast a white guy as a genie. Look at us, we're all the way back. We're Bud Light.

Dan Boyd: One thing I had a problem with that commercial, but in a weird way, they were like waiting in line to get into a place. Then the genie like zapped him into the place and it turned out it was just some like regular old neighborhood bar looking place. I was like, they don't have lines at those, What do you do in Bud Light?

Deidre Woollard: But also it was popping, on Olipop. Clearly that brand didn't quite work. [laughs]

Dan Boyd: Could you say soda more in a commercial? Every other word was soda. It was extremely grating.

Ricky Mulvey: They got the message cleared, but I forgot the I don't know why I thought it was Olipop instead of Poppy.

Deidre Woollard: They look very similar. There's not a lot of differentiation there.

Dan Boyd: I also like the vagueness about the poppy. It was like it's soda, but it's good. How is it good? Trust us, it's good.

Deidre Woollard: Exactly well, and this year was different too 'cause it was on CBS, which is part of Paramount, which also owns Nickelodeon. You had this second Bunge, Bobby more family friendly feed. Mostly the same ads, although I guess there were some of them that were cheaper around 300,000 for just so that's much cheaper according to ad age. But I'm wondering about this division now because it seems like we're not necessarily gathering around the big linear TV anymore. Maybe people are watching on streaming, maybe people are watching on other channels. Is this the future where it's not all in one spot?

Ricky Mulvey: I think it makes a ton of sense. People have been doing this on Twitch for years now where you live. Like people want to see a stream of someone watching a thing. If you have, your kids are probably going to watch Sponge Bob a little bit more. I watched some of the highlight clips. A little cringy but also funny. You know, you have George Kittle explaining how he wants to meet Larry the lobster. Larry the lobster track, talking a little bit of trash back. I think it makes a ton of sense. Also if you're a marketer, you can focus in a little bit more if you're buying a cheaper ad on Nickelodeon where maybe the CPM is a little bit higher versus that like hugely expensive ad on the national broadcast.

Dan Boyd: My question is, did families even watch the Nickelodeon broadcast? Because the only people I know that watched it were irony poisoned 30 somethings who are doing it for a laugh.

Ricky Mulvey: I mean, how many irony poison 30 somethings do you know versus like.

Dan Boyd: I know a lot of both as a father of a toddler, you know, I travel in both circles Ricky.

Ricky Mulvey: I don't know how appealing it is to watch the entire game on like the Nickelodeon cast, but I don't know. I'm sure a lot of folks checked it out.

Deidre Woollard: I think it's a very different experience in terms of you're not I don't think you're gathering around and having a party around the Nickelodeon cast, but I could be wrong, and Paramount, they had the home field advantage in terms of putting lots of CBS promos on there, but you also had a lot of Disney. Who did it better? What do you think?

Dan Boyd: Well, the point I wanted to make real quick, I just want to backtrack a little bit and say Ricky is spot on with the twitch comparison. People love to watch people, they like watching something. Something like the Sponge Bob, Super Bowl broadcast, or I think they called it the Bikini Bottom broadcast.

Ricky Mulvey: Yeah, the game was transplanted to Bikini Bottom, Sandy Cheeks is a sideline reporter.

Dan Boyd: But I think that this kind of thing is only going to grow in popularity. I think that next Super Bowl will probably see some more, I don't want to say serious, but some more serious representations of this thing with Fox is my guess at least.

Ricky Mulvey: Then Diedre to your question, as we jump around the outline here, I mean, Disney was strongly represented, but it's tough when Paramount has that home field advantage. It's able to do its own broadcast. Disney's competing, basically, with a typewriter and a small ad for Disney plus. I would give Paramount the victory here.

Deidre Woollard: Let's talk about the Taylor Swift Factor. We got to talk about the Taylor Swift Factor. I mean, one of the things that I noticed is you had a different audience in there. I mean, you started off with an ad for a menopause drug early on. You've said you had ELF Cosmetics? You had Dove, which we talked about. You had a whole lot of Temu, I mean, my goodness, so much Temu, which is Pinduoduo shopping.

Dan Boyd: I believe it was Temu.

Deidre Woollard: Temu, I know. I should have learned. It's terrible. They spent so big, so much and the ads, they weren't great, they were annoying. Did that pay off at all?

Ricky Mulvey: I mean, let's focus first on Taylor Swift. They did not show her until the second quarter, so they waited a little bit.

Deidre Woollard: Because Travis wasn't doing anything the first quarter.

Ricky Mulvey: I know, but you can still get the reactions like go, no.

Dan Boyd: The restraint. It was amazing.

Ricky Mulvey: Bold strategy. You play the same low budget animation commercial three times over the Super Bowl. That space is $21 million. I think they had about a 21 million and $15 marketing budget. However, for as much hate as Temu is getting, if you look at the App Store right now, it's the number one shopping app. It has some class action lawsuits against it that I would recommend listeners check out before they start buying things on there. It also on the google search traffic page, it looks like the buzz is wearing off fairly quickly, but you know what, is it better to have a cringy advertisement that people are talking about? Or if you have something like, let's say Bass Pro Shop or Ford, where you spent a bunch of money on the Ad space. Then it's a complete fastball down the middle that's easily forgotten against the much more memorable advertisements. I'm going for the cringe.

Dan Boyd: That's a good point Ricky. Like are terrible ads good when it comes to something like the Super Bowl is something like Temu, because their ad was, so to put it mildly crappy and people are talking about it because it was an incredibly annoying song, poor animation. It looked like they'd got somebody on Fiver to do it for him, but we're talking about it on the show right now. I'm still not 100% sure what Temu is or what it does, or why I would want to use it but maybe the fact that it's a bad ad that gets a lot of reach, there might be something there.

Ricky Mulvey: They do incredibly cheap, like Internet goods, where they use like Drop Shippers to send it to you. It's a little bit, I would say almost a mix. It's like a weird cousin of Etsy and Amazon.

Dan Boyd: Is this like one of those things where they buy a bunch of super cheap stuff from like Aliexpress the market up 10 or 20% and then just sell it back to us.

Ricky Mulvey: Kind of.

Deidre Woollard: Except it's direct, so it's cheaper. It's really cheap, fast fashion.

Ricky Mulvey: One more thing on Temu. I will not remember the promo code that DoorDash tried to get me to remember that was like super long. I will remember Shop Like a Billionaire.

Dan Boyd: Yeah. What does that even mean?

Ricky Mulvey: It means that you're buying politicians and you own private jets, Dan Boyd.

Dan Boyd: They sell politicians and private jets on Temu, news to me.

Deidre Woollard: Well, speaking of billions. One of the things that I've been obsessed with is CoStar, which is the parent company apartments.com and homes.com, before the Super Bowl, they came out with this idea. We're telling agents basically we're going to spend billion dollars. We're basically buying our way into Zillow spot. They did all these promo things before the big game. These ads, I don't know, I was expecting something bigger. The real estate agents that I'm in social media groups with, they were also expecting something bigger. But for you guys, you don't really know that the homes.com or anything like that, did it move you? Would you be more likely to go there over Zillow?

Ricky Mulvey: See plus it didn't really work on me, I thought it was weird that none of the ads really showed people buying a home or an apartment from the ones I saw.

Dan Boyd: It seemed like it was just hey, look at these celebrities and look at them be goofy kind of thing. The good things about like Zillow and Redfin are their ubiquitousness and how you can look up any listing or get into any neighborhood and see what the intangibles are. What's the point of homes.com can they beat that personally? I like Redfin. I think they have a very great search engine over there. I don't know, it just seemed like a waste of money to me. I like Dan Levy, the actor who was in those ads acting extra goofy, but I don't think they did what they were looking for there.

Deidre Woollard: I think that's a question of the celebrity in general, because we had celebrities stuffed into everything. It used to be just like you'd get one celebrity in an ad. Now you've got 3, 4, 5, 6 all over the place stuffed in everywhere. You saw an awful lot of Dan Marino, a lot of Tom Brady. What worked for you in terms of celebrity ads?

Dan Boyd: The Dunkin ad. The Dunkin's with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, and J. LO, and Tom Brady and even Fat Joe for a split second. I thought that one was extremely funny, especially with Matt Damon's reluctance to continue to be Ben Affleck's friend. I thought it was a good time.

Ricky Mulvey: I have an overall take on this, I'll get to it later. But I thought Mountain Dew with Aubrey Plaza and Nick Offerman, that was a funny bit. They did a good bit and it was focused. I thought the real winner for the celebrity ad was Kate McKinnon with Hellman's Mayo with like the Talking Cat.

Deidre Woollard: So bad.

Ricky Mulvey: They made the joke work a little bit. I thought it was funny, and at least it wasn't the parade of celebrities for I would say the borrowing cool factor. They did a little bit of a celebrity parade. The Lionel Messi with Michelob ULTRA, like that was pretty cool watching Messi play soccer on a beach. I don't know if you needed Dan Marino in that. I was ready to believe that mixing carbonated alcohol and cardio is a wonderful idea after watching that.

Dan Boyd: The Kate McKinnon thing, at one point in that ad, she's eaten mayo directly out of the jar. I physically recoiled from my TV at that moment.

Ricky Mulvey: But you remember that?

Dan Boyd: I guess so. But I mean, I'm not a mayo guy so I wasn't going to buy Hellmann's anyways.

Ricky Mulvey: There you go. It's not for you.

Deidre Woollard: Well, what do you think was the worst? For me, Etsy. I've not been loving Etsy's ad campaigns lately. I get that the try to be more than gifts, now they're trying to be really just like gifts, gifts. Really, this is what you get us for. It didn't work for me. Are there ones that like really didn't work for you?

Dan Boyd: Temu was awful, but we already covered that.

Ricky Mulvey: That's not a celebrity ad though.

Deidre Woollard: No, we're not talking about celebrity ad. We can talk about worst ads in general.

Dan Boyd: Ricky. I felt gross watching Martin Scorsese do a Squarespace ad. That one was bad. I was cringing not this is awkward way. I was just like..Especially it was almost like a non sequitur too. It was like the ad didn't make any sense. Then you have Martin Scorsese in there and he's just in a car, like what's happening here?

Ricky Mulvey: Mr. I don't really like Marvel movies is now doing Alien Squarespace ads. It's been quite quite the turn for one of my favorite directors.

Dan Boyd: I didn't like the Beyonce T-Mobile ad. I thought that was..

Deidre Woollard: Verizon.

Dan Boyd: Verizon. Thank you. I thought it was wasting Beyonce. Beyonce is a charismatic force of nature, and Tony Hale, who has partnered with her in that ad, is a very funny actor and comedian. But that whole bit just fell extremely flat to me. I don't think they did well at all with that.

Deidre Woollard: Did you get that she was promoting her album though?

Dan Boyd: I think they were throwing in the release the music at the end of the ad every time and I guess there's a tie in. I don't know, it didn't make any sense. I didn't think it was anything more than just annoying, to be honest.

Ricky Mulvey: This is the circle of cynicism. I'll also say DoorDash. It felt like they were playing to only marketing executives by being like, look at how long this promo code is. Then I think the sign for me, I did some research before this, they gave viewers less than three seconds to scan a QR code. I will bet that there is a meeting where they are wondering why the direct response to the QR code is not going as well as they would have liked. It's because you have to be very quick on the gun to get that QR code during the Super Bowl.

Dan Boyd: Didn't you have your phone out the whole time chatting with your friends about the Super Bowl while you were watching it?

Ricky Mulvey: Sometimes, I mean, the Super Bowl is a second screen experience. I want to see what's going on on Twitter, but I'm also, I was making some food, I was talking.

Dan Boyd: I guess if you're at a Super Bowl party, you probably don't have the phone out on the couch. But again, father of a toddler over here. My Super Bowl party was my wife and I on the couch.

Ricky Mulvey: There you go.

Dan Boyd: We have phones out.

Ricky Mulvey: That's one of the best ways to do it.

Deidre Woollard: As we wrap up overall good use of money or bad use of money, Super Bowl ads.

Dan Boyd: I asked on the Motley Fool Money X account, what commercial was the best use of the money? Some of the responses, Silk with Jeremy Renner, a guy who almost died doesn't add for bone health. Perfect use of a celebrity. That's from RKT. Eliot's 3. Neil and Rockville said Dunkin Donuts, Analog 618, going with the E trade babies, pickleball is just mini tennis with a wiffle ball, LOL. Then our next Cloud 1 said none $7 million worth. I wish I had a better answer than I don't know. I really don't know if it's any of them are worth $7 million.

Dan Boyd: I think it was a down year for Super Bowl ads. Just nothing all that funny. I think that the Dunkin ad stands out as the funniest for me. But there was really no laugh out loud moments during the ads. That's something that was definitely missing. The whole part of the entertainment of Super Bowl ads, I think, is that you got to have funny ones. There were definitely some extremely not funny ads this time around with like the anti bullying campaign from the NFL and things of that nature, which are important and good, but it's not what I'm looking for when it comes to Super Bowl ad entertainment. I definitely would call it a down year. I liked the Hellmann's ad. That made me laugh. I know you didn't think it was funny. They got one person.

Ricky Mulvey: I'll also say to it.

Dan Boyd: Is that worth $7 million?

Deidre Woollard: Ricky thinks this is worth $7 million.

Ricky Mulvey: That's why I said I don't know. One thing though on the overall it did make me think about awareness marketing and, is it worth it? Who does it the best? Because the companies that spend a lot of money on awareness marketing are, I think of energy drinks. Monster Energy, you don't see them doing Super Bowl ads, but they spend a ton of money on awareness marketing. The reason it works for them is because they're able to fully integrate into very specific events, motocross, monster trucks, the UFC. They know their audience really well and they show you that logo again and again and again. I think that's really hard to do in a 30 second commercial when you're competing against so many other advertisers.

Dan Boyd: That's a good point. That's a really good point. Hey, not a whole lot of Crypto ads this year.

Ricky Mulvey: No, where'd they go?

Deidre Woollard: Interesting things change. Well, thanks guys.

Dan Boyd: Thanks Deidre.

Ricky Mulvey: Ricky Mulvey, co-host of Motley Fool Money here, have you been using Mint to manage your finances? Maybe you heard that it's shutting down. The good news is that there's a better alternative, Monarch Money. Valentine's Day is coming up in a few days and Monarch is helping me get on the same financial page with my fiance. We can create custom budgets, set goals, and collaborate better. Monarch is the top rated all in one personal finance app and now you can get an extended 30-day free trial when you go to monarchmoney.com/fool. Monarch has a tool that allows you to easily import your data from Mint and keep your tags in categories. The app's intuitive design makes it simple to use. The other thing I like about the app is that it's ad free and constantly improving based on customer feedback. Monarch does not sell your data to third parties. After checking out Monarch, I understand why it's the top rated personal finance app and now you can get an extended 30-day free trial when you go to monarchmoney.com/fool, that is monarchmoney.com/fool for your extended 30-day free trial.

Deidre Woollard: Bumble or Tinder might be the place to find your next date or BFF. But what about the stocks behind the apps? Mary Long talked with Rick Munarriz about what to look for in matchmaking companies and which ones might be worth making a commitment to.

Mary Long: I think to talk about dating apps stocks feels a bit like a story of David and Goliath, because in one corner you've got Match Group, which is a $10.2 billion behemoth that owns Tinder or Hinge, Match about 40 dating apps and sites. The other corner there's Bumble with a $1.87 billion market cap, why would a person put their money on Bumble, the seeming underdog in this fight?

Rick Munarriz: Well, Bumble slingshot in this fight is growth. This David, is consistently growing faster than the Goliath in this example. Bumble has turned annual revenue growth of at least 18% for four consecutive years. It's up 18% through the first nine months of 2023. Another reason to invest in Bumble is that this David is actually a Davina. Founder, Whitney Wolfe Herd was a member of the Tinder founding team in 2012, but left two years later to launch a site that places women at the center of the dating app balance. Bumble became one of the first apps for only female identifying and eventually non-binary users can initiate contact with an interested match. Finally, a knock on Bumble in the past it's lack of consistent profitability on a reported basis. It's been reporting adjusted earnings for some time, but on a reported basis not so much. It finally turned the corner last year. It has come through with back to back quarters of positive net income, and that's likely to grow in the years to come.

Mary Long: Bumble slingshot is growth. Match is, as we've mentioned, undoubtedly larger than Bumble, but growth doesn't really seem to be happening in the same capacity. The stock is off around 80% from its all time highest and the company's biggest segment, Tinder, has seen declining numbers of new users and paying users in the latest quarter. With that in mind, what is the bull case for Match Group?

Rick Munarriz: For Match, so obviously we'll start with the fact that it is the undisputed top dog. Tinder, which is the primary match app, is the world's most popular online dating app. This is a major advantage. When you tell someone after they break up that there's other fish in the sea, you want them to be splashing around in the largest ocean possible, that's Tinder. Match Group, yes, you mentioned it. It's not growing as quickly as Bumble. It delivered single digit growth in 2022 and again in 2023. But it has been profitable for years. It has that going for a long-term profitability. Finally, the third thing working right now in Match Group's favor, is that the starting line, it's kind. Right now the stock is down 80% from its all time high in 2021. It's down almost 30% from its summertime high just last summer. With profits starting to climb, now the stock is trading for just 16 times trailing earnings. This is like a meet-cute where growth and value just bump into one another at a train station. I think you can get both in Match Group.

Mary Long: Sounds like an ideal rom-com scenario. The thing with Match Group, it's got about 15.2 million total users to Bumble's, 3.8 across apps. I hear that first thing I think is more people, more options, yes. But also more data. If these apps are using algorithms to run people, Match, that having more people on its collection of apps gives it more data to make successful matches. Is that true? Do we see that massive amount of data that Match Group has access to actually gives its algorithms a leg up? Is there a way to quantify that?

Rick Munarriz: Well, obviously there are scalability advantages. Obviously, the more data you can feed into a platform, the better the potential algorithm and the better the potential outcomes. However, there's also a reason why Match Group has more than three dozen other sites just beyond Tinder being the Walmart or McDonald's of online dating is great, but sometimes folks who want a more specialized experience. Yes, just like Netflix can afford to spend more on content than any other streaming service, because it can divide its CapEx across a much larger base. Match Group has the ability to spend that much more to see what works and what doesn't. Unfortunately, for Match Group and dating apps in general, unlike Netflix, where it can actually see how long you went into a show when you stopped watching a series. Match Group doesn't follow you on your dates. It just matches you up, and that's all it really has. But again, the scalability advantages are definitely there. How much data it has to plug into a algorithm? That remains to be seen. The future is very exciting.

Mary Long: How much of this business is marketing? To get people to use, swipe and pay on one of these apps, you have to get them to believe up front that they're going to find their person on this app rather than that one. How closely do you look at each company's marketing spend? Is there a way to measure which company has a better return on that spend?

Rick Munarriz: Yes, so apps, obviously they live and die by how they manage their customer acquisition cost. Match has seen that sales and marketing costs go from 16% of its revenue a year ago to 18% in its latest quarter. Obviously not good when that figure is going up. Bumble on the other hand, its sales and marketing costs went 26 to 24% over the last year. Bumble is obviously higher, but it's trending in the right direction. However, you can't just take marketing cost or customer acquisition cost at face value. Bumble is doing a better job than average revenue per user and you also have to look at the lifetime of a customer. The irony of online dating sites is that if they're really good at what they do and they pair you up with that only person you want to date for the rest of your life, you don't need the app anymore. There's a reason why eHarmony, which is the top app gaze for people looking to find the one instead of the next one is more expensive as a platform because they know once you have that long-term relationship, your relationship with the app is a very short-term relationship. This works in the favor of Tinder or Bumble, that can be largely seen as hookup apps because they are geared more for people that want to date different people without having to get on bended knee or swap apartment keys or anything like that. I think you can spend years on either app and still feel good about yourself and not feel like you're falling short.

Mary Long: Match generated $785 million in free cash flow over the trailing 12 months. Management has said over the past two quarters that it intends to return at least 50% of that free cash flow to shareholders. A share buybacks and other means, how do the capital allocation strategies at each company differ?

Rick Munarriz: Bumble is similar, well it's smaller and it generated just about $150 million in free cash flow over the last 12 months. Obviously a lot less than Match Group. It has that same capacity where it feels, hey, my stock is down more than 80% from its all time high. It's been undervalued at the current levels and it's not afraid to eat its own cooking. Just as Match Group has no problem buying back its own shares and making that commitment. In November, Bumble doubled their share buyback authorization to $300 million.

Deidre Woollard: Bumble's founder, Whitney Wolfe Herd, you mentioned that she stepped away from the company in November of last year, and so Bumble has brought in former Slack CEO Lidiane Jones as Herd's replacement. Match has also had its mix up or its CEO shake up, Faye Iosotaluno was named CEO of Tinder. She's been at Match Group for a while. She's been at Tinder for about 18 months as COO before being named the Chief Executive Role. What are your benchmark exams for each leader? What do you want to have seen them initiated or accomplished in the next year, five years?

Rick Munarriz: There are a lot of new leaders here. Even for Match Group, the parent company, they got a new CEO less than two years ago. Obviously, Tinder, Bumble and Match Group as a whole, all with recent leadership. I think at Bumble the new term goal is pretty straightforward. They need to build on that new found profitability. They've always been a good revenue growth story. Now that they have a little taste of profitability on a reported basis and obviously much healthier on an adjusted basis, can they build on that? Over the next five years the goal has to be the same for both companies. This is that grow the business. A, you have to grow the business. B, you have to grow market share. C, you also have to improve its operating efficiency to the point where the bottom line is even stronger. I guess I didn't get to Match Group's their short term in one year. I think obviously their biggest problem right now, the thing that's scaring people is that their usage growth. The paying users has declined. It's lower than it was a year ago and even lower now than it was two years ago. They need to pick that up because even though the revenue per user is going up, you don't want to be in a situation where you feel that my company is losing market share, my investment is no longer the top dog. I think that it needs to find a way to grow its numbers again, regardless of the math involved.

Mary Long: There was a story making the rounds late last year about how more and more people are shunning traditional dating apps and opting more for, I'll use the term tertiary social media sites. They're finding love on Strava and Duolingo, and less so on Hinge say. We talked about struggling new user numbers, etc. Is this emblematic of a shift away from dating apps? How worried should either company be about this? I don't even know if we can call it a trend, but about this story.

Rick Munarriz: I hope not, but I don't see it that way. I think a lot of people aren't matching the numbers to the narrative that they want to believe in this case. The pandemic was a scary time obviously, and you might think there wasn't a lot of dating in 2020 when we were sheltering in place for months. But revenue of Match Group and Bumble rose 17% and 18% respectively that year. In 2021 we got vaccinations, businesses open, travel restrictions eased up. Business skyrocketed for both companies, and now we've had two years of back to back decelerating revenue growth at these two companies. I don't think that people are not going to give up on these apps just because they're on a certain app to me. Sure. The ability now that people can go to bars, concerts, festivals, it makes it less necessary to rely on the app to meet someone because you're actually out there in the wild and making connections on your own. But I do think that this is the kind of thing where I can't compare. I'm on Duolingo and I never approach it as the other people in my French Sapphire League are actually like trying to hit on your, vice versa. Just all we have is an affinity to want to learn a foreign language. Or maybe it's just that I've been married 33 years and I don't know what flirting is anymore.

Mary Long: The price to sales ratio for each of these companies is relatively similar. Match is trading at about 3.2 times sales, and Bumble, closer to two. Considering that and everything else that we've discussed today, if you can only give your final rose to one of these companies, which has your vote as the better buy?

Rick Munarriz: I'm handling the rose thorns at all knowing that I'll get pricked by the thorns, possibly in the process to bumble. I'm a growth investor and I'll take a disruptive speeder over the established leader if it's gaining market share. Especially now that it's become a Bumble line growth story too. Both stocks are trading. As I mentioned earlier, about 80% from their all time highs. I think both stocks are attracted now. I think both can beat the market. They have challenges, but I think both can beat the market in the next 1, 3 or 5 years. I'll take your pick. I think that's where they all do well. To me, the one red flag that I initially had in Bumble when Whitney Wolfe Herd stepped down in November was, she's gone. This was such a leadership driven company. But the more I just read about it and said, well, she has an amazing story being at the genesis of these two world's largest dating sites, Lidiane came in from leadership roles at Microsoft and Salesforce. She was at Salesforce when they acquired Slack. That's why she became CEO of Slack for a little while and they trusted her with that, and now Bumble gives her the company, hey, take over here. Bumble is no longer playing Cupid. I think it's at the point now where it's now a tech platform with the masses. I think she should do well there. I think Bumble as an investment will do well with the new leadership at this point.

Deidre Woollard: As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. I'm Deidre Woollard. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.