Barclays upgrades Match shares, says Tinder parent is now a value stock

Published Tue, Mar 14 20237:34 AM EDT

Barclays said it's "swiping right" on Match , viewing it now as a value stock. "We believe MTCH has effectively transitioned from an Internet growth stock over the past few years to now a value stock due to its high-margin profile and strong cash flow generation," analyst Mario Lu wrote in a client note on Tuesday. Lu upgraded Match shares to overweight from equal weight. He maintained his price target of $52, implying 49.5% upside from Monday's close price. The analyst noted the continued risk of Tinder, one of Match Group's primary dating platforms, seeing continuous decline in payer growth. However, he said that risk is overblown. "While there is continued risk that Tinder payer growth does not recover by 2H23 if macro continues to weaken, we believe the company's strategy in FY23 to focus on optimizations to drive payer growth is a prudent one that was highly effective in the past as they resulted in sequential payer net adds at a similar magnitude to new large features such as Tinder Gold," said Lu. Barclays anticipates "significant revenue upside" from new potential initiatives from Match. Lu estimates that a $500 subscription tier at Tinder could add approximately $560 million in revenue. Advertising revenue could also increase by $50 million, the analyst noted, if Tinder optimizes low average revenue per user, high monthly active user countries such as Brazil and India. "It is important to note that 1) the drivers of Tinder growth in FY23 is expected to be 2/3 from optimizations, meaning it will come from smaller adjustments within the app vs. larger bets like Tinder Coins and higher price tiers and 2) it does not rely on an influx of new users and is therefore more within the company's control, which is encouraging as we believe that further de-risks the lowered expectations for the company," Lu said. Match shares were up 2.1% on Tuesday during premarket hours. The stock has tumbled 16.1% in 2023 and 59.1% during the past 12 months. —CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed to this report.