Bumble Shares Tumble By 45% In 2024: CFO Exit, Competition And Slowing Industry Growth Prompt Analyst To Downgrade The Stock

Shares of Bumble Inc. BMBL fell over 2% on Thursday and slipped further during pre-market trading on Friday as Wolfe Research analyst Shweta Khajuria downgraded the stock to “peer perform” from “outperform.”

What Happened: Wolfe Research cited several risk factors for the downgrade, as reported by MarketInsider. These included the challenges of executing post-product reset, the recent departure of the CFO, increasing competition, and the broader slowdown in industry growth.

Khajuria, the managing director of global internet at Wolfe expects the company to provide conservative guidance for 2025 and views Bumble more as a trading vehicle than a long-term investment in the near to medium term.

See Also: SoFi Tech Downgraded Over Valuation Concerns: Stock Priced Three Times Its Peers

Why It Matters: Bumble’s bottom line during the third quarter of the current fiscal missed expectations, whereas revenue surpassed consensus. Revenue grew by 0.7% year-over-year, reaching $273.6 million. While paying subscribers increased to 4.3 million from 3.8 million, average revenue per user (ARPU) declined to $21.17 from $23.42.

In December, Bumble announced that CFO Anu Subramanian and Chief Marketing Officer Selby Drummond would be leaving the company on March 14, 2025, and in January 2025, respectively. The company appointed Neil Shah, a former executive at Slack, to the newly created role of Chief Business Officer.

Price Action: Bumble stock declined by 45% in 2024, as per Benzinga Pro. The shares have fallen by 8.18% over the last month and by 17.84% over the last six months.

About 27 analysts tracked by Benzinga have a “Hold” rating on the stock with a consensus price target of $16.06. The highest target price was $45 issued by BMO Capital on May 12, 2022, and the lowest was $6 issued by Morgan Stanley on Aug. 8, 2024. The three most recent analyst ratings between Susquehanna, Stifel, and Citigroup with an average price of $7.67 imply a 3.69% downside for Bumble.

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