Bernard Kim: Thanks for the question, Benjamin. I can take this one. Hinge is a great product and has a super clear brand narrative that continues to resonate in English-speaking markets, along with the European markets that we’ve just expanded to. They’ve really done a great job of focusing on single high-intent daters and has tremendous momentum and fantastic word of mouth. The combination of natural and driven user growth alongside monetization initiatives is driving accelerating revenue growth. The team continues to build on this position of strength. To answer your question on weekly subs, the weekly subs at Hinge is actually similar to that at Tinder, but it’s less apparent because of Hinge’s continued top-of-funnel strength.
Like Gary mentioned, we continue to believe that weekly subscription packages were the right decision for the company and are a strong driver of revenue growth, and it’s what daters want. Now, to tackle your $1 billion question, we expect Hinge to generate $400 million in direct revenue this year, and we expect a 35-plus percent growth rate for next year. So, we’re basically adding about $140 million-plus in revenue for next year. If we extrapolate that growth rate as well as the revenue that we’re adding, we can get to about $1 billion in maybe 4 to 5 years. Thanks for the question.
Benjamin Black: Thank you.
Operator: The next question comes from James Heaney of Jefferies. Please go ahead.
James Heaney: Thanks for taking the question. Just one for Gary, are the Tinder U.S. price increases still impacting the sequential payer growth in Q4, or is it really just the weekly subscriber turn dynamic and the weaker top-of-funnel, just wanted to put a finer point on that. Thanks.
Gary Swidler: Sure. Just to make sure that everybody understands, like you do, James, the way we implemented the U.S. price optimizations at Tinder in the U.S. was that not everybody saw the price changes immediately. It’s only after you turn for a period of time as a subscriber, as a payer, that you see the higher prices. And so, the effect of that is sort of moving its way through the Tinder payer base on a gradual basis. I would tell you that by now, probably a majority, maybe 60% or so, of Tinder payers have seen the higher prices. So, there’s still a tail of people who are going to see them over time. And so, there’s still a modest sequential impact from all that in Q3. I expect there’ll be a slightly more modest, I guess, impact on that in Q4.
And that will continue and keep declining as an impact, but still be there as a lingering impact for the next few quarters. But it is fairly modest. Frankly, it’s why you can’t really see it on the chart that we have on page 13 of the shareholder letter. , it’s such a small impact. And so, it’s modest, but it’s still there and will continue to be so for a bit longer now. And I would just say on the sequential impacts generally, you’ve got the impact from the U.S. price increase at Tinder, which is this modest impact that is continuing. And then, obviously, we’ve had the impact from the weekly subs. I think the impact from the weekly subs that we’ve introduced in 2023 will largely be neutralized by the end of this year. So, that’s not an ongoing lingering effect into next year, as is the case with the U.S. price optimizations.
Now, I do want to point out that we’re going to continue to optimize prices, introduce weeklies in other markets. They’re going to be smaller markets than the U.S. or some of these key international markets. But optimizations are something that Tinder is meant to be doing at all times. We didn’t do it for a while in the U.S., and we played catch up this year. But in general, there’s an always on kind of optimizations. There’s opportunity to roll out weekly subs and price optimizations in other markets. And so, we’ll do it. But because it’s going to be in smaller markets, the effects of that will be much more modest over time. This year was the bigger shock to the system. And we’re working our way through that, and we should be through that very soon.
