Watch: Grindr Goes Public and Takes Over New York City in Gay Display
Grindr LLC is officially a publicly traded company via a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company, and the company got a chance to take over the New York Stock Exchange on Friday in a perfectly gay way.
As reported by Wall Street Journal, the LA-based company's chief financial officer Vanna Krantz says their new goals as a public company are to intensify its subscription efforts while cultivating its target audience: gay men.
Being a publicly traded company allows Grindr as a company to utilize more resources to grow its operations Krantz told WSJ.
"What this allows us to do is get ready for anything that we might see on the horizon, in terms of long-term bets, in terms of possible [mergers and acquisitions], just having this other currency that we didn't have prior," Krantz explained. "Obviously it would be more advantageous if the markets were in a better place, but the truth is, we don't really need the capital, because we are able to fund a vast majority of our growth internally."
Announced in May, Grindr LLC will combine with blank-check company Tiga Acquisition Corp, a transaction valued at $2.1 billion. From the deal, Grindr will receive roughly $384 million in proceeds, allowing it to help pay down its debts, WSJ reports.
Since the announcement, the company's stock surged 200%, reported Barron's, and most of that was just gay men gagging at the whole ordeal.
Going public was celebrated with a display over the NY Stock Exchange in the company's signature yellow shade and a drag performance outside.
"Ok wall street boners... looks like it's time to do some fundamental equity ANALysis on a new IPO. Sharpen your pencils #grnd #grindr," wrote one user.
Krantz said the company plans to additionally test alternative uses for its albums feature and pricing structure. "We just need to think and test, do some price testing," she said.
According to WSJ, "Grindr had nearly 11 million monthly active users at the end of last year, according to the latest figure the company agreed to share, with paying user penetration—a metric that divides average paying users by average monthly active users—at around 6%."
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