Grindr shares skidded 10% in after-hours trading after the company projected slowing revenue growth and posted a bigger fourth-quarter loss than a year earlier.
Grindr reported a net loss of $124 million for the last three months of 2024, wider than the $44.8 million net loss it reported in the same period last year. The company said its bottom line was hurt by a $139 million noncash accounting loss.
Softening the blow, Grindr reported sales numbers that beat estimates — $97.6 million, compared to the $95.3 million the Street expected — and said it would buy back $500 million in stock. For 2025, the company said it expects revenue to grow by 24%.
Grindr has grown significantly since it went public in November 2022 via a blank check company. Its annual sales have more than doubled in just three years: it made $145.8 million in 2021, compared to the $344.6 million it brought in in 2024.
Grindr’s CEO, George Arison, often describes his vision for the company not as a dating or hook-up app but as a social network, or “Global Gayborhood in Your Pocket.” (Yes, that is trademarked.) At a Monday event hosted by Morgan Stanley, Arison said Grindr is a “great distribution engine” for future business opportunities.
“The way I want people to think about Grindr is in five years, I want Grindr to be like Tesla is today,” he said. Tesla has “this insanely awesome engine of making money, which are the cars themselves. And then it’s now built at least three businesses that are either already there or on the coming.”
Things have looked much gloomier lately for Grindr’s heterosexual-focused counterparts.
Match Group, which owns Tinder and Bumble, reported earnings that missed Wall Street expectations. So did its competitor, Bumble. Both companies ousted their CEOs, with Bumble bringing back Whitney Wolfe Herd, the company’s founder who herself had stepped down as CEO at the beginning of 2024.
