Match Group Inc, the owner of dating services such as Tinder, OkCupid and Match.com, filed with U.S. regulators on Friday for an initial public offering of common stock.The company is owned by media mogul Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI.O), which said in June it would float less than 20 percent of Match in an IPO.Dating sites and apps have gained popularity in recent years with their instant messaging, photosharing and geolocation services.Revenue rose 10.3 percent to $888.1 million in 2014, according to the company's IPO filing, while it jumped 19 percent to $254.7 million in the second quarter ended June."It looks like it will be well received by the IPO market ... it's got the financials that people are looking for," said Francis Gaskins, president of research firm IPO Desktop.The Match unit has driven solid results for the past few quarters at IAC, though the internet search and applications business is the largest.Match agreed to buy dating site PlentyOfFish for $575 million in July to expand in the lucrative mobile-based dating services business.Market leader Match competes with No. 2 eHarmony and companies such as Zoosk and Spark Networks, which owns JDate and ChristianMingle, in the more than $2 billion-a-year U.S. online dating market.JP Morgan, Allen & Co LLC and BofA Merrill Lynch are the underwriters for the offering, Match said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Match said it plans to list its stock on the Nasdaq under the symbol "MTCH" and set a nominal fundraising target of $100 million. The amount of money a company says it plans to raise in its first IPO filings is used to calculate registration fees. The final size of the IPO could be different. (Reporting by Sai Sachin R and Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)
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