$GRND: Undisclosed SEC Investigation, Revolting User Base, Vanishing Moat, Inflated Metrics, and Selling Insiders Highlight Deep Risks. We are short Grindr ($GRND). Our investigation found a broken business being dismantled by management for personal gain. A thread 👇 (1/16)
$GRND's key metric, Average Paying Users (APU), appears inflated. The company quietly changed its definition to count daily purchases, not unique users. One user buying two items on different days = TWO paying users. (2/16)
A former $GRND director revealed an undisclosed SEC probe into Grindr's APU metric that began in late 2023. A data engineer who flagged the "double-counting" as a "material concern" was promptly fired, per our source.(3/16)
CEO George Arison calls $GRND a “world-class product.” Users are experiencing a collapsing, ad-saturated, and glitch-ridden “toxic wasteland.” In our opinion, this disconnect isn’t an accident; it's a deliberate strategy called Enshittification.(4/16)
A former employee alleged then-CFO Vanna Krantz described users as "lemons we could squeeze." $GRND's own internal tests showed bombarding users with ads directly causes churn and long-term revenue loss. Management does it anyway.(5/16)
The ultimate insult: $GRND now shows ads to its PAYING subscribers, despite promising a 'No Ads' experience. The content of the ads: boner pills. Users are paying a premium for a product that is actively being degraded with ads normally found on porn sites.(6/16)
The problem is so absurd that users mock the thriving gay dating scene in Antarctica and the recent influx of female profiles. This calls the integrity of $GRND entire 14 million user number into question. How many are real? (8/16)
Why is management torching $GRND? In our opinion: a perverse compensation scheme. Executives are rewarded with millions for hitting SECRET annual KPIs and short-term stock price hurdles, incentivizing short-term gain over long-term health.(9/16)
While management sells investors a growth story, their actions tell a different one. Insiders have dumped over $236 MILLION in stock in the last 12 months alone. The people who know $GRND best are racing for the exits.(10/16)
The single greatest risk to $GRND shareholders has gone almost completely unnoticed. The two largest insiders have pledged a staggering 59% OF THE ENTIRE COMPANY as collateral for personal loans.(11/16)
$GRND stock is already down >30% from its May high, when the last pledge was made. A further decline could trigger a margin call, forcing the liquidation of 113 million shares. In our opinion, this would create a self-reinforcing death spiral.(12/16)
Conclusion: $GRND is massively overvalued. Fabricated metrics, a product in decay, fleeing users, and insiders who have cashed out while creating an existential margin call risk for everyone left.(13/16)
Yet, $GRND trades at a massive premium to its peers. ~18.4x EV/EBITDA vs. Match Group ($MTCH) at ~11.4x and Bumble ($BMBL) at ~5.4x. The market has yet to realize the party is over.(14/16)
The union-busting RTO that gutted 80% of $GRND's engineering team has left the app a buggy mess, leading to a "self-inflicted brain drain".(15/16)
Read our full report for the complete story on $GRND, including details on the undisclosed SEC probe, global privacy failures, and the executive compensation that incentivizes this destruction: http://ningiresearch.com/?p=78... (16/16)
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