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BTIG Gets Bullish on Match and Bumble, But Trader Says One Looks Like a Better Bet

Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images

BTIG is falling for the dating app stocks. 

Analysts at the firm upgraded Match and initiated Bumble shares on Monday, both to buys. The calls are a bet on pent-up demand to socialize over the summer.

Those reopening tail winds are likely to drive the companies' growth, agreed Boris Schlossberg, managing director of FX strategy at BK Asset Management.

"If you go back in history, the last time we had a global pandemic, there was an enormous surge in socialization that lasted for years so I think it's a pretty decent thesis that yes, we're going to get demand for dating apps," Schlossberg told CNBC's "Trading Nation" on Monday.

Still, he said the stocks currently look expensive even after recent pullbacks, and potential investors should look past near-term volatility and focus on a three- to five-year outlook.

"That having been said, I really like Match more than I like Bumble," Schlossberg said. "Match has a wider, bigger portfolio with Tinder, but it also acquired this very interesting new technology called Hyperconnect from a South Korean firm that allows you to have peer-to-peer video communication which really creates low latency and very low cost on bandwidth."

This, he posits, could allow Match to introduce "instant dating" via brief video dates. Match made that $1.7 billion acquisition in early February.

Bumble is the newer stock of the two having gone public in February. Ari Wald, head of technical analysis at Oppenheimer, uses Match's price history as a proxy – it completely separated from IAC in July 2020.

"It's been correcting since February," Wald said during the same interview. "It more recently fell below its 100-day average so I think it can be considered in the near-term penalty box, if you will, below that 100 day, which currently comes in at around $148."

"With the price history we have since last summer, we can see that stairstep higher. I think the intermediate-term trend is positive. It's bullish above the January and March lows at $130 and as long as that's the case, I think that these stocks make it back to their February highs and potentially higher," said Wald.

Match is up 5% so far this month, while Bumble has fallen 6%.

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