It has been a big few months for IAC, the conglomerate announcing long-rumoured plans to spin-off The Match Group, and acquiring Canadian dating site Plenty of Fish for a massive $575m.
And the company has just released its first financial earnings report since it announced both of these huge moves.
Speaking about The Match Group IPO, IAC said it plans to float 20% of the dating segment’s common stock, and expects the IPO to be completed during the fourth quarter of 2015.
And the company’s Q2 2015 results shows why it has made this decision – The Match Group continuing to push meaningful growth.
IAC announced that revenue for the segment increased by 19% year over year, hitting $254m, with much of this coming from contributions from The Princeton Review and FriendScout24.
The Barry Diller-helmed company also said its dating properties saw an 18% growth in paid subscribers, hitting over 4.1m globally.
Total dating revenue increased by 7%, mostly thanks to a 12% growth in new North American paid subscribers.
Total subscribers hit 2.7m in North America, and were up 34% internationally.
Regarding Tinder, IAC were once again coy on specific figures, but said the app has continued its “positive momentum.”
The Match Group Chairman Gregg Blatt said: “Tinder continues its positive momentum. Monetization continues to perform at or above our expectations on key metrics like renewal, conversion and resubscription rates, and we’ve seen no discernible negative correlation between monetisation and growth.
“We’ve also been focusing on the core user experience, and those efforts are starting to payoff, as we’ve seen our app store rating climb to an industry leading 4.5 stars, and a number of our user experience metrics are showing improvement.”
Blatt said that due to the “virtually endless” opportunities with Tinder, and because of the many features on its roadmap, Tinder’s monetisation might appear “uneven” at this stage, but this is because of belief in the app’s longterm possibilities.
Regarding the other dating properties, Blatt said the ongoing shift towards mobile continues to put pressure on conversion.
He said a recent redesign of one of Meetic’s mobile apps has pushed material user growth both in “raw numbers of users” as well as user engagement.
IAC also said it has spent around $9m migrating the recently acquired FriendScout24 to its Meetic platform, and expects to spend another $6m completing this move over the rest of the year.
Regarding its landmark $575m deal for Plenty of Fish, IAC were quiet, simply saying they expect to raise capital in the debt markets to finance the acquisition, which should be completed in the fourth quarter of 2015.
To read IAC’s full results, go here.