IAC Reveal Early Performance of Tinder Plus

29th April 2015 Simon Edmunds

IAC have released its first quarterly earnings report since the launch of Tinder Plus.

Despite Tinder Plus being released in the final month of the quarter, the company said it “came in solidly against expectations”.

In terms of paid subscribers to their dating services, The Match Group saw a 500,000 increase compared to the previous quarter, hitting over 4m subscribers.

As you can see from the chart below, this 16% increase has easily been The Match Group’s biggest subscriber jump in recent quarters.

However when speaking about the early effects of Tinder Plus, The Match Group Chairman Greg Blatt was reserved, saying:

“Payment and renewal rates came in solidly against expectations. As we mentioned previously, however, there is lots of learning in these early stages, and while we expect momentum and contribution to build meaningfully over time, we don’t expect it to build on a straight line basis.

“Our principal focus will continue to be on maximising the customer experience, with revenue growth a secondary consideration in the near term, and there likely will be pivots along the way that make the near term growth trajectory a little bumpy.

“Christopher Payne started with us as the new CEO a month ago, and we’re confident his addition to the team positions Tinder to achieve our lofty objectives for this business. “

Blatt also said while Tinder’s revenue impact was “muted” – because it launched at the beginning of March – they expect its impact to increase over the year, saying:

“We expect revenue growth in Dating to climb into the high single digits in Q2, with The Match Group into the high teens, with comparable or modestly higher year over year growth rates in the second half of the year.”

For The Match Group, total revenue increased compared to Q1 last year, rising from $211.2m to $239.2 — a growth of 13%.

IAC’s general revenue increased by 4% compared to last year, from $772.5m to $740.2m.

Shares of IAC rose 2% yesterday after the quarterly report.

Read the full report here.