Services

What to Expect When Match Reports After the Close

Chris Lange

Published: November 5, 2019 11:59 am

Last Updated: January 30, 2020 1:35 pm

Match Group Inc. (NASDAQ: MTCH) is scheduled to release its third-quarter financial results after the markets close on Tuesday. The consensus estimates are calling for $0.42 in earnings per share (EPS) and $540.58 million in revenue. The same period of last year had $0.39 in EPS and $443.94 million in revenue.

Earlier this quarter, Match saw a flurry of analyst calls following the launch of Facebook’s new dating service. While increased competition — especially with Facebook — can be daunting, Match has seen an incredible year already, and analysts appear to be in favor of Match.

Deutsche Bank analyst Kunal Madhukar upgraded Match to Buy from Hold with a $91 price target, writing that recent headlines shouldn’t affect the company’s financials. Madhukar went on to say that he thinks shares have recently overreacted to Facebook Dating coming to the United States and to the Federal Trade Commission lawsuit against Match.

Nomura Instinet’s Mark Kelly upgraded the shares to Buy from a Neutral rating and raised the price target to $88 from $81. That implies upside of 18% from the most recent closing price of $74.43.

Kelly said that he sees upside to margins from platform fee removal at Match. Assuming Tinder receives about 40% of its revenue from Android users, Nomura is revising up its gross margins by 3% in 2020 and nearly 4% in 2021.

Nomura detailed in its report:

Emerging Brands Are Underappreciated: Match has highlighted a number of emerging opportunities in its brand portfolio, both expansions of existing brands to new geographies (particularly in Asia) and new brands focused on specific demographic groups or later relationship stages. We see a strong opportunity for Match to leverage its institutional knowledge and leading brand position in several key markets to expand its reach.

Excluding Tuesday’s move, Match had outperformed the broad markets, with its stock up about 66.5% year to date. In the past 52 weeks, the stock was up closer to 40.5%.

A few other analysts weighed in on Match ahead of the report:

• Oppenheimer has an Outperform rating and an $89 price target.
• Evercore ISI has an Outperform rating with a $95 price target.
• Merrill Lynch’s Buy rating comes with a $102 price target.
• Citigroup has a Buy rating with a $95 target price.

Shares of Match traded down about 1.5% at $70.14, in a 52-week range of $33.30 to $95.32. The consensus price target is $90.00.