Dating sites Match and Tinder will go public, so you can buy stock in hooking up – Mashable

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Would you swipe left or right on Tinder stock?

Match Group, which owns a variety of online dating brands including Tinder, OkCupid and Match, has filed its paperwork to become a public company and have its stock begin trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Match, which filed the paperwork on Friday, is looking to raise $ 100 million with the offering. The company will trade under the uninspiring ticker symbol “MTCH,” even though more striking ones like KISS were apparently available.

Match is owned by IAC, the media conglomerate helmed by Barry Diller, which also controls a variety of other digital companies like About.com and Vimeo. IAC will retain virtually all voting control of Match by offering a non-voting type of stock in the offering.

The paperwork also reveals that Match agreed in July 2015 to acquire PlentyOfFish, another online dating site, for $ 575 million.

Match and Tinder, selling the possibility of love, have been growing steadily in the past few years. The company generated a little more than $ 888 million resulting in about $ 148 million in profit in 2014. In the first six months of 2015, Match generated revenue of $ 483 million and profit of $ 49.5 million.

IAC will realistically still have complete control over Match, but Diller previously noted that an IPO would provide with the dating company with “separation and independence from the mother church.”

Among its risk factors, Match noted the prevalence of cyber attacks as well as hacks perpetrated on companies that work with match. In July, AshleyMadison admitted that it had suffered a major cyberattack that appears to have scuttled its plans to go public.

The company stated the risks plainly in its filing:

We are frequently under attack by perpetrators of random or targeted malicious technology-related events, such as cyber attacks, computer viruses, worms or other destructive or disruptive software or distributed denial of service attacks. While we have invested heavily in the protection of our systems and infrastructures and in related training, there can be no assurance that our efforts will prevent significant breaches in our systems or other such events from occurring.

Match also noted that the dating industry has become competitive, with many other companies offering lower-priced or entirely free platforms. It also noted that it is easy for customers to switch between dating apps and websites.

Online dating has indeed been a difficult business. Zoosk, another dating company, had made plans to go public, but ended up withdrawing after more than a year of delays.