Dating app Bumble looks to raise over $1 billion in U.S. IPO

[February 02, 2021]  (Reuters) - Bumble Inc, which operates its eponymous dating app, is looking to raise as much as $1.04 billion in its initial public offering, as it prepares for a high-profile stock market debut at a time when U.S. capital markets have touched record highs.

In a regulatory filing on Tuesday, Bumble said it would sell about 34.5 million shares in its IPO, priced at $30 each on the upper end of the range.

Bumble is seeking to cash in on what is the strongest U.S. IPO market in over two decades. Companies raised a record $168 billion through IPOs on stock exchanges in 2020, according to data from Dealogic.

Bumble was founded in 2014 by Whitney Wolfe Herd, who was also one of the founders of rival app Tinder, which she left earlier that year.

In 2019, private equity giant Blackstone took a majority stake in Bumble, valuing the firm at around $3 billion, according to PitchBook.

Austin, Texas-based Bumble had confidentially filed for an IPO late last year. It said it plans to list on Nasdaq under the symbol "BMBL".

Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are the lead underwriters for the offering.

(Reporting by Anirban Sen and Niket Nishant in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)

[© 2021 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]

Copyright 2021 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.  Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.