You don’t need me to tell you that the internet changed the way we live. From emails that have pushed snail mail out of business to online shopping that endangers brick and mortar shops, our daily lives have been transformed forever. 

So why does internet dating still carry a stigma in some quarters — or does it? 

For those of us who lived most of our lives before the internet, cell phones or texting, the old way of meeting people — in our place of work, study or through friends or relatives — still takes precedence. But for people who’ve lived most of their lives with the internet, filling out an online dating profile is as familiar as downloading a tune.

#-ad_banner-#Among all age groups, though, the level of acceptance has been growing strongly. According to Pew Research Center, 41% of American adults say they know someone who uses online dating, and 29% indicate they know someone who has married or entered into a long-term partnership with someone they met online. 

In Pew’s first poll on online dating, few Americans had such an experience. That was 2005. In its latest national survey conducted last year, 15% of U.S. adults acknowledged they had have used online dating sites or mobile dating applications. That’s also significantly higher than in 2013, when about 11% of adults fessed up to having had that experience. 

Not surprisingly, it’s young people who are fully embracing the experience. In 2015, 27% of 18- to 24-year-olds said that they had dated after “meeting” someone online. This is up dramatically from 10% in early 2013.

But older adults have also begun to see online dating as a potential means to an end. The share of 55- to 64-year-olds who use online dating doubled in about two years, increasing to 12% in 2015 from 6%. 

If that’s not a trend, I don’t know what is. And these numbers are beginning to add up… 

The industry is already generating annual revenue of $2 billion, and growth will likely continue to outrun the pace of the overall economy. This web traffic is an advertiser’s dream, too, considering the demographic profile of adults who use online dating (mostly college graduates and the relatively affluent). 

A good play on the industry strength is Match Group (Nasdaq: MTCH). Its portfolio has more than 45 brands, including Match, OkCupid, Tinder, Meetic, Twoo, PlentyOfFish, OurTime, BlackPeopleMeet and FriendScout24. While having this many brands makes marketing more complicated (and expensive), there is a system behind this. Each Match Group brand targets a slightly different audience, and each is designed to increase users’ likelihood of finding a romantic connection. (Adding to its offerings is The Princeton Review, a test preparation, tutoring and college counseling business.)

A public company for a little less than a year, unlike most recent IPOs, MTCH is profitable. In the second quarter ended June 30, Match Group earned $34.1 million, or $0.14 a share, on revenue of $301.1 million. In the previous three months, the company earned $7.2 million, or $0.03 a share, on revenue of $285.3 million.

The stock is attractively valued — on a P/E basis, it trades at 19 times next year’s expected earnings. This compares favorably to its social media peers such as Facebook (NYSE: FB), with its P/E of 25.5, or Twitter (Nasdaq: TWTR), with its P/E of 39.

What makes the shares outright cheap is the company’s expected growth: Wall Street consensus sees annual growth exceeding 17% over the next few years.

Match Group makes its money mostly from membership fees. Classified as Dating Revenue in its reports, membership fees brought in $275.3 million in the most recent quarter, or 91% of its total revenue of $301.1 million. The rest of the revenues comes from the Princeton Review business, as well as from advertising.

All told, Match Group is still a relatively inexpensive stock that is in a strong position to capitalize on an emerging trend. That’s why I recently added shares of the stock to the portfolio of my premium investing newsletter, Game-Changing Stocks. So far, we’re up about 9% — but I expect more good things from this stock down the road.

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