Grindr Shares Soar After Debut on New York Stock Exchange

Grindr made its public debut on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, with shares leaping from an opening price of $16.90 to $71.51.

As the gay hookup and dating app begins trading on the NYSE, the newly merged company will operate under Grindr Inc., and will trade under the ticker "GRND."

In celebration of the event, Grindr hosted a drag show on Wall Street.

The company announced in May that it had agreed to a merger with Tiga Acquisition Corp and would go public. The deal was valued at $2.1 billion, providing Grindr with about $384 million.

It joins other dating and hookup apps Match Group and Bumble on the NYSE.

Last year, the app had 11 million monthly users and reported that it had a revenue growth of 30 percent.

In October, George Arison took over as CEO of Grindr.

Arison told The Advocate that going public is a unique event. He said a queer-focused company publicly listed would have been unheard of 20 years ago. He explained that going public would allow for a better relationship with users and help the company expand.

"One of the things that I'm really excited about is for us to be able to regularly tell our story to investors [and] to the public," he said. "As a public company, on a quarterly basis, you have to get up there and tell your financial story and where you are, with your financials, etc. The reason I think that's really good is because we do have a great financial story to tell and being in that position to talk about that regularly will be great."