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Dating App Momo Looks for Excitement With Tantan Overhaul



Many may know dating app Momo Inc. (Nasdaq: MOMO) for its moniker as the “Tinder of China,” due to its primary function as a place for people to hook up online. But a better comparison lately might be to a family in turmoil, following internal changes that began with last year’s ceding of the CEO title by founder Tang Yan, who remains as chairman.To get more news about tantan topup, you can visit topuplive.com official website.

Now we’re learning that Tang’s move from the CEO’s office was just the beginning of a bigger shakeup. That shakeup claimed new victims in April with the departure of the CEO and COO of the Tantan app that Momo acquired for $760 million in 2018.

The departure of the pair had first been rumored about a month ago. But Momo’s current CEO Wang Li, formerly Momo’s longtime COO who took over after Tang’s departure from the role last October, confirmed the changes at the top of Tantan on the company’s action-packed investor call following the release of its quarterly earnings this week.

This kind of housecleaning was probably needed for a while at Momo, which has been a major underperformer since it once excited investors as an early adopter of location-based services (LBS) for its core Momo app.

Investors seemed to welcome the news, with Momo’s shares up more than 10% since the announcement of the company’s latest quarterly results on Tuesday and a subsequent call where Tantan was a major point of discussion. Interestingly, the shakeup at Tantan wasn’t even mentioned in the earnings announcement, meaning anyone who didn’t listen to the call would have missed it.

“We have always believed that Tantan has the potential to grow bigger than where Momo is today,” said Wang, who is now also Tantan’s acting CEO, on the call. “After we took over in April, we’ve conducted a comprehensive review of Tantan’s marketing approaches.”

If we believe Wang, Momo could indeed be on the cusp of a rebirth following its years-long decline. The company was an investor darling after it listed on the Nasdaq in 2014, with its shares moving higher over the following years to roughly quadruple from their IPO price as recently as 2018.

But it has been in a state of decline since then, both in terms of revenue and profits as well as its stock price. Before this week’s rally, the stock was trading right around the level of its 2014 IPO price – not exactly the best return for anyone who had held the shares for the last seven years.

The stock currently trades at a price-to-earnings (PE) ratio of about 10, which would be low if this was an internet growth company. But clearly investors don’t see Momo as that kind of company after more than a year of declining revenue and profits.

Its closest publicly listed competitor from China is probably gay dating app BlueCity, which is losing money but trades at a price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of 1.6. Momo trades at a similar P/S ratio of 1.5. But whereas BlueCity’s revenue rose 47% last year, Momo’s fell 12%. BlueCity is also much smaller than Momo, with a market cap of $250 million for the former, compared with Momo’s much-larger $3.2 billion.