Bumble shares rise over 15% after the company announced a 30% workforce reduction and raised its Q2 revenue and EBITDA guidance
Bumble announced that it will lay off 240 roles, approximately 30% of the company’s employees.
As a result, it will book around $13 million to $18 million of non-recurring charges related to severance, benefits and other charges for the impacted employees.
It expects to save up to $40 million of annual cost savings due to the work force reduction, which will be invested in strategic programs such as product and technology.
The charges will be booked primarily in Q3 and Q4 of 2025.
Bumble also raised its Q2 2025 revenue guidance to a range of $244 million to $249 million, up from the previous range of $235 million to $243 million.
It also increased its adjusted EBITDA outlook to between $88 million and $93 million, compared to the prior range of $79 million to $84 million.
Bumble shares are up 15.5% in pre-market following the news.
I=8 Bumble falls almost 10% pre-Market after discounted share offering report
Bumble shares are down almost 10% pre-market following a report that shareholders are offering a block of shares at a significant discount.
According to the report, shares are being sold at a price range of $6.33 to $6.54 each, a discount of between 8.5% to 11.5% from yesterday’s closing price.
Block trade usually involves a significant amount of shares and is usually executed outside the regular trading hours to reduce market impact.
Blackstone registered to sell around 16% of its outstanding shares at 9% discount to Wednesday’s closing price
Blackstone registered to sell around 16.7M shares (around 16% of Bumble’s outstanding shares), cutting into its 27% stake. The sales, made through entities called “BX Buzz,” were priced around $6.50 per share, below the prior $7.15 close.
Whitney Wolfe Herd, who recently returned as CEO, filed to sell around 1.4M of her 2.1M shares (about $9.7M at the prior close).
Oh that’s not good. Vote of no confidence from key insiders and super large chunks being sold at once.
The reporting of news papers on total holdings can be misleading. Considering common units (which are equivalent to common shares and can be converted) Blackstone held in total 55M and Whitney Wolfe Herd 23M shares as of April 2025.
This means Blackstone filed to sell around 1/3 of holdings and Herd around 6%.
Hopefully they do this as they already have a buyer lined up.
If you find more insights on the topic or get more insights with gpt let us know.
The shares that are registered for sell are the Class A Common Stock. But you are right to compute the share based on the total shares (Common Units and Class A) given there is possibility that Common Units might have been converted. For instance, Herd is selling 1.4 million Class A shares yet in April she had only 926,709 Class A shares. The filling says she sold 1,000,000 of Class A Common Stock (converted from Common Units) and 365,116 of Class A Common Stock (purchased during IPO).
There is no definitive proof yet that the block trade has found a buyer. However, a TipRanks article, which was published after the Bloomberg report (that stated the block trades were being offered at a price range of $6.33 to $6.54), reported that the 18.055 million shares were priced at $6.33 and that UBS acted as the sole book-running manager for the offering. According to GPT, a book-running manager operates much like an underwriter i.e. it contacts potential buyers to gauge interest, sets a price range, collects orders, and determine the lowest price at which all shares can be sold at once. Considering the book-running process, the shift from a price range ($6.33–$6.54) to a final price ($6.33) may suggest that buyers may have been found and the book was covered.
Yes. Furthermore including the common units gives the reader a realistic view who owns what. Otherwise it appears that Whitney Herd is selling the majority of her shares, which is not the case.
We by now have the Form 4 filling which confirm changes of ownership. Blackstone sold 16.69M shares and Whitney Herd 1.37M shares.
The price was only $6.26 slightly below the indicated range and the final price named by TipRank.
S&P Global raised Bumble’s issuer credit rating to ‘B+’ from ‘B’ to reflect the company’s substantial debt reduction
S&P Global raised Bumble’s issuer credit rating to ‘B+’ from ‘B’ after Bumble settled its TRA liabilities of $419 million for $186 million of cash and voluntarily paid $25 million of its outstanding term loan, taking its pro forma leverage to 2.0x from 3.4x as of Sept. 30, 2025.
Its base-case scenario assumes Bumble’s leverage will increase to about 3.0x in 2026 and 2027 due to substantial EBITDA declines, while generating about $130 million of FOCF over the next 12 months .
It forecasts Bumble’s revenue will decline by around 10% and 13% in 2025 and 2026, respectively, before returning to growth in 2027.
I=7 Bumble and Match Group were hit by cyberattacks on January 27-28, 2026, but they said no significant data breach was witnessed
Bumble spokesperson said hacker made “a brief unauthorized access to a small portion of our network”, Bloomberg reported.
Match Group also confirmed that the breach affected a “limited amount of user data".
ShinyHunters, the group behind the cyberattack said it stole over 10 million of Match Group records, which include user IDs, transaction details, IP addresses with approximate locations, dating profile elements, phone numbers e.t.c.
Assessment
Based on comments from Bumble and Match Group management, it appears the incident is manageable. However, if their assessment is inaccurate, it may lead to class action lawsuits.
I wonder if the attack is related to some reports of Bumble app outage yesterday and today. Maybe Bumble initiated some protocols which is causing outages (Bumble App Outage Report (Google Sheets)).
A Texas woman launched a class action lawsuit against Bumble claiming it failed to protect users from a “massive and preventable cyberattack” last month.
At the core of her case are claims that she spent a lot of time trying to find ways to protect herself from the consequences of the cyberattack.
Bumble faced a similar lawsuit in 2022 after a 2020 data breach, which later went to arbitration as stipulated in the app’s terms of service, hence this lawsuit could also follow the same path.
Assessment
If the case is moved to arbitration, the settlement amount would be much smaller since claim are usually individidual.
Even if the case moves forward as class action lawsuit, I think the settlement amount would be less than $10 million based on past precedents.
Moody’s downgraded Bumble credit rating to B2 (junk) from B1, outlook negative
Moody’s downgrades Bumble credit rating to B2 (junk), citing around $600M term loan due January 2027, $50M revolver due June 2026 and expectation of continued decline in revenues through 2026 as Bumble undertake efforts to improve user quality and product experience.
Moody’s expects low-teens revenue decline in 2026 as Bumble prioritizes improving user quality and product experience.
Bumble debt leverage currently at around 2.5x, but Moody’s expects more than 3x in 2026 due to falling EBITDA.
I=9 Blackstone sold 4.95% of its Bumble economic interest on March 17
Blackstone entities sold 7,477,504 shares of its Bumble shares at an average price of $3.51 to unaffiliated financial institution on March 17, using a forward contract which may have been entered months ago..
The sale takes its economic interest (class A shares + common units) in Bumble to 19.8% from 24.75% in Feb 27.