Bumble Inc. Loses Paying Subscribers During Third Quarter

Bumble Inc. announced its third quarter financial results at the close of trading on Wednesday. While the company beat analyst estimates on revenue, it posted a quarter-on-quarter decrease in paying subscribers for the first time since its February IPO.

Total revenue for the quarter was $200.5 million, ahead of the average analyst estimate of approximately $199 million. The Bumble app accounted for over 70% of this revenue and saw its own premium members increase by 19.5% year-on-year to 1.5 million.

However, Badoo lost over 100,000 subscribers during the quarter due to slower COVID recovery in key European markets like France and Italy.

The Bumble app took another significant step in its global expansion in Q3. It saw strong early traction following its localised launches in Mexico and Brazil, making major steps in the LATAM market for the first time.

Founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd said in a statement: “In the third quarter, we delivered strong revenue growth and successful execution across our strategic priorities including driving user engagement, expanding into new markets, launching innovative product and safety features, and improving our overall monetization.

“We will continue to provide our customers with differentiated, innovative and compelling ways to find the connections they seek and to advance our mission of creating healthy and equitable relationships.”

She added on the accompanying earnings call that the business “remained focused on a future rebrand” for Bumble BFF.

This is an update that has been discussed for a while now and plans are in place to provide a differentiated experience for seekers of platonic relationships. While not too much new information was disclosed at this stage, BFF will likely include a new community function to act as a better bridge to the more popular Date mode.

Testing will be conducted amongst smaller groups in the fourth quarter before expanding to wider testing in early 2022.

Bumble is also planning to use BFF as the driving force for its entry into the ‘Web 3.0’. Its executives received questions about the metaverse, but reiterated that they were focused on ‘Web 3.0’, which is based around blockchain technology and could lead to a more intelligent, connected and open internet.

At the time of writing, Bumble’s stock is trading 8% lower during pre-market as investors appear to be concerned about slowed subscriber growth.

The company also announced the hire of Stephine Lilak as Chief People Officer, which means its C-Suite is majority women. Seven out of the 12 members of its senior leadership team are now female-identifying.

Read the full results here.