Dating firm finds stock market friends

Edinburgh-based Easydate made its debut on London's junior stock market, raising about 8.8m after fees to expand and further tap into the fast-growing online dating industry, estimated to be worth about 665m worldwide.

The group's shares opened at 60p, giving Easydate a market capitalisation of about 45m, before the stock gained 3 per cent.

Easydate was set up by Bill Dobbie and his Ukrainian business partner, Max Polyakov, in 2005 and has built up a base of more than nine million members in the UK and internationally. It runs a network of dating sites, also including benaughty.com and datingforparents.co.uk, and last year expanded outside the UK as part of a plan to target emerging markets.

Easydate made pre-tax profits of just over 2m in 2009 on turnover of 9.6m and is said to be expecting sales to hit 19 million next year.

The group is adding 200,000 new members each month and said its model is highly-scalable and low cost.

It employs about 140 staff, although the vast majority are based in an in-house technical and online marketing team based in Ukraine.

Founder and chief executive Mr Dobbie said he hopes the cash raised through the placing will grow Easydate into a "substantial global internet dating business".

"The response we have had from the market during the placing has been tremendous. After a lot of hard work to get the company this far, we are now looking forward to life as an AIM quoted company and the opportunities that will bring," he added.

The group said the online dating market is growing by between 6 per cent to 10 per cent in the UK, thanks to better internet connections through faster broadband and internet mobile phones.

Easydate is the first such group to float in the UK, although there are listed dating services in the US and France, with Matchmaker.com's parent group InterActive Corporation listed on Wall Street.

Easydate wants to secure more takeovers to extend its reach in the UK and overseas.