The parent of the fast-growing dating app Tinder, Match Group Inc (NASDAQ:MTCH), announced on Tuesday evening that it has agreed to sell $400 million in aggregate principal amount of 6.375% senior notes due 2024 in a private offering to qualified investors. The offering should close by the first of next month. Match plans to use the money raised to repay certain existing indebtedness. Investors generally think this is a good move on Match’s part as it extends the duration of Match’s debt and potentially lowers its cost of capital. If management can successfully monetize Tinder, look for Match Group to do well. In addition, the development might attract more investors among the smart money, although currently, the stock is rather unpopular among hedge funds.
To the average investor, there are a large number of metrics stock market investors can use to assess publicly traded companies. A pair of the most under-the-radar metrics are hedge fund and insider trading activity. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the top hedge fund managers can outclass the broader indices by a solid margin (see the details here).
At the end of the first quarter, a total of nine of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, down by 50% from the previous quarter. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).
The largest position in Match Group among the funds tracked by Insider Monkey is held by Joshua Nash’s Ulysses Management, which reported a $10.1 million stake in its 13F filing for the end of the first quarter. Ulysses is followed by billionaire Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, which had $8.8 million invested in the stock heading into the second quarter. Other bullish investors include George McCabe Portolan Capital Management, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, with stakes worth $8.4 million and $6.5 million, and Lansdowne Partners, led by Alex Snow, which reported a $1.7 million position.
Seeing as the number of funds bullish on Match Group slid by nine during the first quarter, logic holds that several investors unloaded their shares during the first three months of 2016. Among these funds, John Thiessen’s Vertex One Asset Management dumped its entire stake that had been previously worth $17.30 million, while David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital sold out its $8.7 million stake. On the other hand, one of the investors that added Match Group to its equity portfolio is David E. Shaw’s D. E. Shaw, which reported holding $0.8 million worth of stock heading into the second quarter.
Disclosure: None
