Following Sean Rad Controversial Interview, Match Group's Stock Soars

On its debut in the stock market, Match Group Inc performs well. The parent company of Tinder, popular dating app is performing well on its debut on stock market despite a peculiar interview by Tinder's founder a day before.

Match Group is a parent company of many online dating services. Starting as Match.com in 1995, the company owns more than 45 online dating services around the world, including OKCupid and the famous dating app, Tinder.

In total, Match Group's services have around 59 million active users and as of Q3, 8% of them are paid users. The company was scheduled to launch an IPO on Thursday. However, just one day ahead of the IPO, Tinder CEO and co-founder Sean Rad made an embarrassing interview in a London based neswpaper.

In that interview, Sean Rad dislosed his personal sex life including the number of sexual partner he has been in his life, about his addiction to his own Tinder app, and his dating habit. The interview itself is violating SEC rule on a quiet period before company's IPO. Prior to the IPO, SEC prohibits company's executive to discuss company's affair in public.

Therefore, after the interview was published,  CBS News reported that Match Group executives quickly tried to distance themselves from Rad's statements, asserting that Rad is "not on the executive team of the Match Group."

Tinder is a social dating app for iOS and Facebook and a subsidiary of Match Group. Tinder is so far, the most famous service by Match Group Inc with more than a billion swipe per day. Match Group itself is a subsidiary of IAC, the media and Internet company, that also the own Vimeo, Twoo, Investopedia and Ask.com.

Regardless such controversy the IPO ran well. According to Bloomberg, Match Group Inc closed more than 20 percent above its initial public offering on its first day of trading. In a trading managed by JPMorgan Chase & Co., Allen & Co. and Bank of America Corp., Match Group raised almost $400 million.

In regard to Rad's controversial interview, Match Group CEO's Greg Blatt told reporters, "It's certainly not his finest moment, but I think he's created an incredible asset and I've got a lot of confidence in him," he said. "I don't think we need to put a gag on him."

Tech Crunch also said that it is unclear what kind of affect the interview by Sean Rad — the CEO and co-founder of Tinder, but not an executive officer of Match Group — had on Match Group's IPO.The comment even enforce Match Group to issue a last-minute update to its S-1 filing disavowing themselves of Sean Rad.

After a controversial interview and followed by effort to save company's IPO, Match Group stock perform well on its first day in the market.