Payment-processor Square headed by hipster CEO Jack Dorsey may have investor's attention but IAC Interactive's (IACI) Match has the profits. On Wednesday, the Match initial public offering priced at $12 a share.

In the run-up to this week's two big tech IPOs, Square has been winning the race for media coverage -- to no one's surprise. It's got the Silicon Valley glamour, dreamily-bearded Jack Dorsey in his black T-shirt, 50% revenue growth and an industry-transforming story. Square priced at $9 a share, short of expectations.

But the other deal that priced Wednesday, Match Group (MTCH) - Get Report , has charms of a different sort.

As the owner of dominant online and mobile dating services Match.com, PlentyofFish.com and the Tinder mobile app, the Match Group makes money -- lots of it. And it has a pretty good plan to make more in the future. Call it the attractions of a second marriage. Not as flashy, but dependably lucrative.

Match brought in $808 million in revenue during the first nine months of the year - a little less than Square's $892.8 million. The difference, though, is that Match earned an operating profit of $158.1 million while Square lost money. And Match chairman Greg Blatt says in the company's roadshow that Match can boost revenue 10% to 15% a year, while boosting profit margins to 40% from 31%.

At the $3.2 billion equity value implied by the $13-a-share midpoint of the company's pre-IPO range, the company's price is about 15 times operating profits and about 10 times profit before interest, taxes and non-cash charges.

"We're highly profitable, with great margins and highly focused on cash flow," Blatt said on the company's roadshow. "The Beatles sang, 'all you need is love,' not 'all you need is restaurant delivery.' While romance is critical, people hate the process of finding someone.''

The company's best attribute is its dominant position in online dating, said Kathleen Smith, president of Renaissance Capital in Greenwich, Conn. The company says its top four services are each at least twice as big as the next-ranking player in the field.

"It's a juggernaut in the dating space and it's profitable," Smith said.

Match has sold itself as a kind of two-stage rocket: Its paid-subscription dating services like Match.com provide slow, profitable growth appealing to over-35s - again with the second-spouse argument -- while the free mobile service Tinder expands Match's audience, makes it younger, attracts advertising revenue and gives it a place to find millions of customers it can convert to paid memberships later. The traditional business is marked by dominant market share and high renewal rates that pose a barrier to new competitors, Blatt says.

"Tinder is the rocket and the rest of our business is the locomotive," Blatt said.

Match, which is being spun off from Barry Diller's IAC/InterActive (IACI) , will still be controlled by the 73-year old Web mogul. And that is one reason investors won't pay as high a price for Match as they might if there weren't a controlling shareholder.

Another reason holding down the valuation is the company's debt load, which is about four times its annual earnings before interest, taxes and non-cash charges such as depreciation and amortization. Blatt said the company's growth will reduce the debt load to three times EBITDA, but Match could borrow more to make acquisitions later.

The debt is a risk, but this deal doesn't resemble the combination of high debt and slow growth that characterized the failed IPO attempt of First Data Corp. last month. The growth will give Match a way to reduce the debt, and Diller's history is that he takes care of shareholders through stock buybacks. He's also rarely attached to plans that aren't working, as long-term observers of his acquisitions and divestitures know.

Indeed, some of the comparables Smith cites for Match are companies Diller has controlled, which were parts of IAC after its early-2000s acquisitions binge. Expedia (EXPE) - Get Report , where Diller is still chairman, went through a long stint out of Wall Street's favor before rebooting its strategy in 2011, including spinning off TripAdvisor (TRIP) - Get Report . Expedia and TripAdvisor were each initially worth an estimated $26 a share when they split up - Expedia has nearly quintupled since, while TripAdvisor has almost tripled.

There's no guarantee Match will beat either of those records, of course. Tinder could fall out of fashion, for one thing. The only sure thing is that no executive is likely to top Blatt for unintentional groaners, like vowing that Match's sites will increase their market penetration. The most inadvertently hilarious is his declaration about users of the most casual-sex oriented of Match's sites, at least according to Internet lore: "Tinder's audience is very viral.''

But the unintentional humor stands in contrast to Match's very serious plan to make money. Blatt saying the company's mission is "romantic connectivity" may not be as sexy as Square or Facebook (FB) - Get Report , but Match management has proved enough of its strategy through the company's pre-spin operations to make the deal a decent bet.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.