Investing

Millennium Management Initiates Stake in Grindr and Recently Announced These Trades

Ben Ward

Published: February 9, 2023 3:24 am

Last Updated: February 9, 2023 12:26 pm

On Tuesday afternoon, New York based hedge fund Millennium Management announced in a 13G filing an initial position in online dating app Grindr (US:GRND).

In the filing, Millennium disclosed an initial stake of 279,908 shares in the company worth around $1.75 million based on the recent closing price.

Grindr’s stock only recently listed in November of 2022 by way of a business combination merger with SPAC Tiga Acquisition Corp.

The company originally merged at an enterprise valuation of $2.1 billion and saw its valuation skyrocket after shares more than doubled upon completion of the deal when GRND began trading under the new ticker.

After the initial listing rally shares were sold down heavily, sinking well below the $10 starting price and settling around $5 by the end of December.

Since the beginning of trading in the new year, GRND seems to have bottomed out with shares gaining solid momentum up 25% year to date. Millennium may have picked the bottom point in the stocks rout.

Grindr reported third quarter results on the 5th of December, not long after listing. The company grew sales by 32% over the year to $50.4 million from $38.2 million in 2021.

Underlying profits measured by adjusted EBITDA rose 17% over the year to $24 million, but the group swung from a net profit of $1.9 million in 2021 to a net loss of -$4.7 million during the quarter.

Key positive performance metrics included paying user growth from 611K to 815K users over the year and growth in ARPU (average revenue per user) from $16.66 to $17.67.

Research on the Fintel platform also highlighted Grindr’s bullish Insider Sentiment Score of 89.72. The stock ranks in 226th spot or in the top 1.5% out of 14,784 screened global securities for the highest levels of insider buying activity.

This high score has been driven by 1 net insider who has bought 1.026% of the total float in the last 90 days. The insider is Grindr board director and founder of the Tiga Acquisition SPAC, George Raymond Zage.

Zage in the trading window post Q3 results bought shares over three transactions which occurred over the 1st, 15th and 16th of December. A total of 190,000 shares were purchased at prices ranging from $5.93 to $6.

Zage currently owns a total of 5.36 million shares after the transactions.

New positions and exited positions by Millennium filed in recent days:

The hedge fund started initial positions in the following SPAC’s Tristar Acquisition (US:TRIS) with 1.35M shares, TCV Acquisition corp (US:TCVA) with 3.31 million shares and TKB Critical Technologies (US:USCT) with 1.23 million shares.

The hedge fund completely exited positions in Popular Health Investment (US:PHIC), Big Sky Growth Partners (link), Bright Lights Acquisition Corp (US:BLTS), Social Capital Hedosophia Corp (US:IPOD), Iron Spak (US:ISAA) and North Mountain Merger Corp (US:NMMC).

The fund also initiated positions in two unlisted investments of Nogin Inc (link) with 315K shares and Akili Inc (link) with 2.54 million shares.

This article originally appeared on Fintel