Q4 2024 Eventbrite Inc Earnings Call
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INDexpense Independence INDependence INDependence
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and thank you for your patience. Your conference will begin shortly.
Once again, thank you for your patience. Your conference will begin shortly.
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Speaker Change: Good day everyone, and welcome to the Eventbrite, Inc. 4th Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call.
Speaker Change: At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. If you have any questions or comments during the presentation, you may press star 1 on your phone to enter the question queue at any time, and we'll open the floor for your questions and comments after the presentation.
Speaker Change: It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Katie Pickett. Ma'am, the floor is yours.
Speaker Change: Good afternoon and welcome to Eventbrite's fourth quarter 2024 earnings call. My name is Katie Pickett, Investor Relations.
Speaker Change: Please also refer to our investor relations website to find our shareholder letter announcing our financial results which was released prior to the call.
Speaker Change: Before we get started, I would like to remind you that during today's call, we'll be making forward-looking statements regarding future events and financial performance.
Speaker Change: We caution that such statements reflect our best judgment as of today, February 27th, based on the factors that are currently known to us, and that actual future events or results could differ materially due to several factors, many of which are beyond our control.
Speaker Change: For a more detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties affecting our future results, we refer you to the section titled forward-looking statements in our shareholder letter and our filings with the SEC.
Speaker Change: We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made during the call to reflect events or circumstances after today or to reflect new information or the occurrence of unanticipated events except as required by law.
Speaker Change: During this call, we'll present Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA Margin, which are non-GAAP financial measures.
Speaker Change: These non-GAAP financial measures are not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles and have limitations as an analytical tool. You should not consider them in isolation or as a substitute for analysis of our results of operations as reported under GAAP.
Speaker Change: A reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure is available in our shareholder letter. We encourage you to read our shareholder letter, which contains important information about GAAP and non-GAAP results. And with that, I'll now turn the call over to Julia.
Thank you, Katie. Welcome to our fourth quarter earnings call.
Julia: Before we dive in, I want to take a moment to welcome Anand to his first earnings call as our CFO. Since joining, Anand has already made a significant impact, bringing deep marketplace expertise and a disciplined approach to financial management.
Julia: I'm excited to have him as a partner as we continue executing our strategy and driving long-term value. Welcome Anand.
Now, let's get into our fourth quarter and year-end results.
Julia: The end of 2024 was about stabilization, and we closed out the last quarter strong, delivering $76.5 million in revenue at the upper end of our outlook range and $6.5 million in adjusted EBITDA, enabling us to exceed our 10% margin target for the fiscal year.
Julia: As a reminder, in September, we made a meaningful change to our pricing model by eliminating organizer side listing fees. This allows all creators to publish unlimited events without upfront fees.
Julia: Since then, we've seen steady improvements in creator acquisition, event volume, and ticket transactions.
Julia: Total ticketing volume returned to growth up 2% year-over-year in Q4. As we had anticipated, free ticket volume recovered faster, growing 8% in Q4, which was a 25% point swing from Q3, and paid ticketing trends improved sequentially from Q3 to Q4.
Additionally, paid transacting creators and paid event volume improved.
That momentum has continued into 2025.
Julia: Looking at January's year-over-year performance, both paid ticket sales and paid transacting creators improved over the previous month, and ticket sales per creator also continued to strengthen.
Julia: We're now tracking five consecutive months of improving year-over-year pay ticket trends adjusting for last year's leap year impact
Julia: Another key driver of momentum is Eventbrite Ads, which continues to scale.
Julia: Compared to last year, ads revenue grew 35% in Q4 and 83% for the full year, with more creators investing in promotion to expand their audiences.
Julia: Creators who used ads sold four times more tickets than those who didn't, creating a strong cycle where better event discovery leads to more ticket sales and deeper engagement across the platform.
Julia: With stabilizing ticketing trends, growing creator engagement, and expanding ad monetization, we're confident in our ability to accelerate from here.
Julia: Now I want to take a moment to frame how we're thinking about 2025.
Julia: We are guiding to a lower revenue range than last year, which may stand out at first glance. But to be clear, this is purely a function of structural revenue mix changes, not a reflection of weakening fundamentals.
Julia: With the pricing changes fully reflected in our 2025 guidance, we expect to exit the year as a stronger, more scalable business in ticketing revenue and marketplace monetization.
Julia: This is a year of transition, one that we believe will prepare us to scale efficiently and drive stronger growth in 2026 and beyond.
Julia: Now, we're entering 2025 with momentum, as I mentioned, and that's a direct result of our disciplined execution of a clear strategy. This year, we're sharpening our focus around three things, expanding our consumer reach, deepening creator engagement, and strengthening marketplace monetization.
Julia: For consumers, we're rolling out a redesigned Eventbrite app, making event discovery more immersive with video, social-driven recommendations, and enhanced tools for creators to showcase their events.
Julia: We're also launching ItLists, curated event recommendations from cultural tastemakers and brands to make finding great events easier than ever.
Julia: and we're also refreshing our brand to better connect with the next generation of Eventbrite users and drive greater awareness, engagement, and retention.
Julia: For creators, we're doubling down on those who drive the majority of ticket volume.
Julia: High-volume creators accounted for nearly 60% of paid tickets in 2024, and we're investing in retention programs, expanding segments like timed entry, rolling out Stripe point-of-sale at scale, and deepening relationships with high-value creators who drive consumers to the marketplace.
Julia: Take the Detroit Auto Show, for example. They recently returned to the platform and opted in to our early access release of the integrated Stripe point-of-sale solution. They sold over 100,000 paid tickets to their event, with a third of those sales processed in person at the event using this new extension of our platform with ease. They were thrilled.
Julia: This is exactly the type of customer we want to serve, high volume event creators who rely on Eventbrite to power their growth.
Julia: We're continuing to invest in this segment by offering powerful new solutions centered around efficiency and reach, such as improving tools for audience segmentation, social integrations, and data and insights to connect creators with their audiences.
Julia: We're also driving marketplace monetization through the continued expansion of Eventbrite ads by increasing adoption among high-volume creators who already see strong ROI on ticket sales when leveraging promoted listings.
Julia: We plan to enhance targeting and automation to increase advertisers efficiency and add new placement opportunities across the consumer journey to better connect consumers with the events they love.
Julia: So while our revenue outlook reflects a shift in mix, it does not reflect a weakening of the business. In fact, we're running a leaner, more efficient, and more scalable company than we were a year ago.
Julia: With five months of improving ticketing trends, growing adoption of Eventbrite ads, and a leaner operating structure, we are executing against our plan for a stronger, more scalable business.
Julia: Now I'll hand it over to Anand to walk you through our financials and provide more detail on how we're pacing towards these goals. Anand?
Anand: Thanks Julia. It's a pleasure to be here with you today. I've just completed my third month here at Eventbrite and I'm excited about the opportunity yet. I believe we have the brand, the product, the strategy, and the team to realize our vision of transforming Eventbrite into a vibrant two-sided marketplace.
Anand: and I'm looking forward to leveraging my background in scaling digital marketplaces to position Eventbrite as the go-to marketplace for live experiences.
Anand: At this time my top priority is returning Eventbrite to pay ticket volume growth while continuing to operate the business with financial discipline.
Anand: I believe we're on our way. The decisive elimination of organizer fees, combined with strong execution, are positioning us to deliver our fifth consecutive month of year-over-year improvement in paid ticket trends.
Anand: Now I'm going to walk you through the numbers and what we're seeing in the business.
Anand: Note that in the following commentary the comparisons I reference are all year-to-year versus 2023 unless I specify otherwise.
Anand: Let's first start with revenue and tickets. We reported Q4 revenue of 76.5 million, which was down 13% and was at the upper end of our outlook range.
Anand: Ticketing revenue declined 10% to $70.4 million, primarily driven by paid ticket volume, which continues to recover from the impacts of the organizer fees introduced in late 2023.
Marketplace revenue declined 35% to $6 million.
Anand: This decline was expected as a result of the loss of organizer fees, which was partially offset by the strength in Eventbrite ads, which was up 35%, reflecting strong continued adoption by Eventbrite creators.
Anand: As Julie and I have mentioned, we've seen improved business trends since we eliminated organizer fees in September. And let's walk through some of those specifics now.
Anand: First, total ticketing volume was $72 million in Q4, which represents a return to growth as we had expected and was up 2%.
Anand: This was driven by a strong rebound in free tickets, which is up 8% to 50 million. This represents a 25 percentage point sequential improvement from the 17% year-over-year decline we reported in Q3.
Anand: Paid ticket volume totaled $21.6 million in Q4, also a 10% decline. Importantly, this represents an improvement in the year-over-year trends from Q3, which was down 14%.
Anand: Transacting paid creators totaled 166,000 in Q4, a decline of 9%, which is also an improvement in year-over-year trends from Q3, which is down 12%.
Now let's turn to gross profit.
In Q4, gross profit was $52 million, down 15%.
Anand: This reflects a gross margin of 68.2% versus 70.1% a year ago.
Anand: This margin decline reflects the Q4 mix shift away from organizer fee revenue, partially offset by the continued growth in Eventbrite ads.
Now looking to expenses.
Anand: Total operating expenses were $60 million in Q4, compared to $71 million a year ago.
Anand: This decrease was largely driven by lower personnel costs due to the workforce reduction in Q3, as well as due to the absence of the annual performance bonus for the year 2024.
Anand: Note that we have budgeted an annual performance bonus in 2025.
Now, breaking out OPEX.
Anand: Product development expenses were $20 million in Q4, down 21% from $25 million, driven primarily by lower personnel costs.
Sales, marketing, and support expenses were $23 million in Q4.
which was an increase of 10% from 21 million.
Anand: This increase was driven primarily by increased chargebacks and fraud remediation expenses.
Anand: partially offset by a decrease in marketing personnel costs and other expenses.
Anand: General and administrative expenses were $17 million in Q4, down 31% from $25 million a year ago, driven primarily by lower personnel costs and by lower costs for third-party professional services.
Now we'll move to net loss and adjusted EBITDA.
Anand: Q4 net loss was $8.4 million, compared to a net loss of $900,000 in the same period a year ago.
Anand: Adjusted EBITDA on Q4 was $6.5 million compared to $8.8 million in the prior year.
For full year 2024, reported adjusted EBITDA was $35.1 million.
Anand: which included a net impact of $1.2 million in workforce reduction costs, partially offset by legal settlement benefits.
Thank you.
For 2023, fully reported adjusted EBITDA.
Anand: That was $28.7 million, which included restructuring and other costs totaling $10.1 million.
Now, turning to the balance sheet.
Anand: Cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash totaled $465 million at the end of Q4, down from $531 million at the end of Q3.
Anand: Excluding ticket sale proceeds payable to creators, the company's available liquidity at the end of Q4 was $230 million compared to $237 million as of the end of Q3.
reflecting three million shares we purchased during Q4.
Total debt at the end of Q4 was $241 million.
Anand: Managing our maturities of our debt is a key priority in the year ahead and we've made significant progress in Q3 with the repurchase of 120 million of our 2025 notes.
Now turning to our outlook for the year ahead.
First, looking at Q1.
Anand: Based on current information, we anticipate net revenue for the first quarter of 2025 to be within a range of 71 to 74 million with adjusted EBITDA margin in the mid-single-digit percentage range, excluding non-routine items.
Looking at the full year.
Anand: I'm going to walk you through how we're thinking about the model.
Anand: It's important to keep in mind that 2025 will be a year of transition, as we fully lap the multiple impacts of the introduction and then the elimination of organizer fees.
Going forward, ticketing and ads will essentially comprise Eventbrite's revenue.
Anand: We expect to see continued recovery in ticketing trends, with paid ticket volume returning to growth in the second half of the year.
Anand: Also, we anticipate Eventbrite ads to continue to deliver growth throughout the year.
Thanks for watching!
Anand: Looking at our deprecated revenue stream organizer fees, on a full-year basis for 2025, we expect the elimination of this revenue stream to result in an approximately 20 million revenue headwinds compared to 2024.
As a result of these impacts,
Anand: including the continued recovery in ticketing revenue and the elimination of organizer fees, we expect full year net revenue to be within a range of $295 million to $310 million.
Anand: We expect an adjusted EBITDA margin percentage in the mid-single digits for the year, excluding non-routine items.
Anand: This decline in year-over-year margin is primarily driven by the loss of high-margin organizer fee revenue.
Anand: Now, to recap, and as Julia highlighted, 2025 is a year of transition. We believe the progress we make and the financial discipline we maintain throughout the year will enable us to scale efficiently and provide us a strong foundation for long-term growth.
Now we'll turn it back to the operator.
Speaker Change: Certainly. Everyone at this time will be conducting a question and answer session. If you have any questions or comments, please press star 1 on your phone at this time. We do ask that while posing your question, please pick up your handset, if you're listening on speakerphone, to provide optimum sound quality.
Anand: Once again, if you have any questions or comments, please press star 1 on your phone.
Speaker Change: Your first question is coming from Navid Khan from B. Reilly. Your line is live.
Great. Thanks a lot.
Speaker Change: So, two questions. One, maybe just talk a little bit about the TikTok partnership.
Speaker Change: Last time you guys gave an update there, it seems like you're getting a pretty good volume, but not a lot of conversion. Has there been any improvement in the conversion side of things?
Speaker Change: and then the other question I have is this around the annual outlook and then so you know you guided to mid single digit kind of EBITDA margin and if I look at the
Speaker Change: The, you know, the top line outlook for the year adjusted for the 20 million impact from the from the discontinued You know offering
Speaker Change: you know it kind of compares to where you were in 2023 but back in 2023 you had
Speaker Change: close to 9% EBITDA margin. So why mid-single digit? Why not high single digit margin range?
Speaker Change: Thanks, Evan. Our partnership with TikTok continues to be an important channel for driving event discovery and ticket sales, especially when you consider, you know, the strong engagement from younger audiences who are actively discovering and purchasing tickets to events directly through the TikTok integration.
Speaker Change: and overall we will prioritize our distribution channels and integrations with places where people are convening communities, so where creators are organizing people around their niche interests and also where commerce is actively happening through contextual discovery.
Speaker Change: And with our partnership, we are focused on expanding discovery. So, you know, obviously TikTok helps our creators reach new audiences organically, especially in the categories that we...
Speaker Change: are prioritizing music, nightlife, and cultural experiences. We are working with them to put the native ticket integration into places like Search, where you can more efficiently drive viewers and impressions to conversion. So, still working on the conversion side. Happy with the native integration. Still think that we can make the ticketing more seamless, so we're working with their product team to...
Speaker Change: you know, cut down the number of clicks it takes to actually get that ticket. And, you know, from a risk perspective, we certainly saw some slowdown in their
There are
product
Speaker Change: partnership throughout the, you know, last maybe 60 days, but we believe that, you know, we have successfully diversified across multiple social discovery channels, including Google, Bands in Town, Facebook, Instagram, so that, you know, TikTok is
Speaker Change: while it's a very important growth lever, it's one of many. So we are balancing our focus and our investment to be prudent and also to just follow the creator where they are and whatever they're doing to put the right event in front of the right consumer at the right time. And they are now inactive, again, very active in building with us.
Anna: Anna, do you want to take the margin question? Yeah, kind of.
Anna: So, you know, as we're looking at 2023 versus 2025, I believe, in the guide for 2025. So, 2020, 2023 did have 325 million in revenue. And so, and about 9% EBITDA margin.
Anna: And so a big factor there is really where we're guiding on revenue for 2025. And since we are taking account the $20 million reduction in organizer fees,
Anna: And that itself, you know, comprises, say, 600 basis points of margin compression.
Anna: That's a big, you know, that is, that piece in particular is one other big piece. And there's some other puts and takes, for example, you know, in terms of incentive bonus compensation.
Anna: We did not pay that in 2024, but we are budgeted for that in 2025. That itself would be another 500 basis points of margin compression.
Anna: Those together, plus if you just take into account a little bit of just scale and de-leverage from ticketing revenue, which
Anna: you know, as we say, we'll return to growth in H2.
Anna: which, you know, implies there will be some year-over-year decline in ticketing revenue this year. You know, all those pieces compress the margin, so...
Anna: Now, we are guiding to mid-single, mid-digits even though margin despite the margin pressure that you know adds to over a thousand basis points. And that is reflecting, you know, the financial discipline and cost controls.
Anna: That, you know, are a big priority for this year. Part of that is, you know, we did do a reduction in force in August. We did see half of that benefit though last year. So the rest of it is really tied to.
Anna: how we're managing the business day-to-day and how we are very conscious of
Anna: adding costs or only tied to revenue growth or controlling costs, reducing costs to make sure they're at a appropriate level relative to revenue. So in our view, with those big movements and those big headwinds on margin,
You know, we could have been...
Anna: From those two pieces, just significantly worse year over year in margin comparison, but that's why we're guiding to mid-single digits this year. And again, these are dynamics that we feel are really part of this transition year. You know, we're not going to be going through
Anna: The situation of a 20 million decline in organized revenue that is, you know, the highest margin revenue. Right? So that is a one time kind of a piece that we're lapping by the end of 20 to 95. we will fully lap that.
And so, start 2026 without that pressure. Plus, you know...
Anna: you know, we will not have an issue, hopefully, of having, you know, a bumpy situation in terms of annual performance cost, right? And so you have those two pieces. Plus, if you take into account the fact that where our cost structure is today,
Anna: And the fact that we do believe that we have very healthy staffing levels.
Anna: As we scale and as we end this year on growth, so end this year on growth, both ticket revenue growth
Anna: and starting in the back half of the year, plus the sustained growth in ads. Those are really the ongoing piece of the business. So, and if you kind of try to set aside
The deprecated piece that's basically gone away.
Anna: That's the past, but if you look at ticketing and ads and how those are set up to grow when we exit 2025, you have 2026 trajectory of growth with a lower cost base.
that we believe
Anna: can contribute significant operating leverage because it does not need to scale to drive incremental revenue. You're setting yourself up for, you know, margin expansion, clear margin expansion as you see revenue scale.
Anna: And that model we plan, you know, that is part of the model that makes us believe that long-term, this business has very high EBITDA margin potential. Because of the ability that we have to scale,
Anna: with operating leverage and the fact that we're not relying on external things like very expensive, you know, acquisition marketing and things like that to pay for growth. So altogether, you know, we believe it sets us up for a good strong long-term margin profile despite this year of transition.
Julia: Thank you for the call. Thank you, Julia. Thank you, Alan.
Speaker Change: Thank you. Your next question is coming from Cameron Manson Perrone from Morgan Stanley. Your line is live.
Thank you and I'm welcome.
Speaker Change: to the earnings calls. I do have one question for you, but I'm going to start with Julia. Julia, a great recovery in free tickets in 4Q, but I was wondering if you could help us think about how free ticket activity ultimately translates into revenue growth for the business. Is it?
Speaker Change: important just in terms of growing kind of consumer brand and adoption you know over the longer term term or is there a successful track record of kind of
Speaker Change: free creators or organizers developing into paid organizers in a way that we should view the free ticketing growth as more of a leading indicator for paid ticket volume to some extent. Any insight there would be helpful. And then second, on
Speaker Change: Winning back creators in general, historically you guys have talked about the importance of frequent creators.
Speaker Change: I was wondering if you could unpack a little bit, you know, what you saw with organizer fees and creators leaving the platform and, more importantly, what you've been seeing in winning back creators, specifically with regard to frequent creators. Thanks.
Speaker Change: Sarah Cameron, thanks so much for the question. You were driving ticket volume recovery through a multifaceted approach focused really on creator retention, consumer engagement, and marketplace monetization. And as you brought up
Speaker Change: Free is a big part and the first step of that recovery since we reintroduced the free tier.
Speaker Change: and it does have to do with the virtuous cycle and the word of mouth of Eventbrite as well as our brand expansion.
Speaker Change: What gives us confidence in the consistent month-over-month improvement in paid ticket trends is, you know, are those two factors, that free ticket volume as well as the discovery-driven ticket sales, but also the fact that, you know, we're seeing
paid transacting creators sequentially improve.
and we're really seeing wind back accelerate.
and, you know,
Speaker Change: When we think about how we take these signals and make the marketplace recover as quickly as possible, we're really focused on making sure that we improve event discovery and demand generation through things like the launch of our new Consumer App Experience, which enhances personalized recommendations and simplifies ticket purchasing.
Speaker Change: You know, we're we're impatient, as I'm sure you are as well. And, you know, we the first thing we had to do to recover is really to remove the friction from our pricing changes.
Speaker Change: rebuild creator retention and event supply, which is already improving, and scale consumer engagement through our product and marketing efforts. And we know that will increase not just total ticket volume, but importantly, paid ticket volume. And we really expect this flywheel to fully regenerate by the second half of 2025 and lead to sustainable ticket volume expansion in 2026.
Speaker Change: and, you know, we've seen this over five consecutive months of improvement and so there's, you know, proof in the pudding, so to speak.
Speaker Change: Got it. Any comment on what you've been seeing with frequent creators?
Thank you. Bye bye.
Yeah, sorry about that.
So, you know,
Speaker Change: Frequent Creators are returning to the platform in line with large creators and I would be remiss not to point out that we've launched a core product feature focused on Frequent Creators, which is the ability to host timed entry events.
Speaker Change: We've been happy with, you know, the progress thus far. We launched in the U.S.
Speaker Change: And we now are expanding to Canada and we'll expand to Australia and the UK within the year.
Speaker Change: a couple of key benefits to us. One is the content. So, for example, we just went on sale with the Smurfs exhibition in San Francisco and RuPaul's DragCon is coming back to the marketplace. And these are the types of events that our consumers want to buy tickets to and that drive traffic to Eventbrite. So first and foremost, the high quality commercial content
I'm dentry.
Speaker Change: The second thing is that we launched with timed entry the ability to consolidate the payout for the creator, and that's a bit technical, but it's a big change to our product and to the end to end creator experience. So instead of getting a payout.
Speaker Change: on whatever schedule they've chosen for every event, they're getting one account level payout, which just eases up their bookkeeping capacity and time. So it just makes it super easy for them to use Eventbrite as their operating system. And actually there's a third, which is.
Speaker Change: Frequent creators, and especially, you know, timed entry experiences are ripe for Eventbrite ads and driving the value in that evergreen content to use Eventbrite to, as a promotional channel and we're seeing some really healthy adoption from frequent creators of our Eventbrite ads product.
Anant: Got it, that's helpful. And Anant, sorry, one for you as well.
You know when we look at the 200
Anant: plus of available liquidity you're ending the year here with. I know you mentioned
near-term maturities being a focus this year.
I was wondering if you could comment.
Anant: You know, big picture on how we should think about capital allocation evolving is that, you know, should we expect...
Anant: You still have 50 mil left, I think, on the authorization. Should we expect...
Anant: you to be less active from a share repurchase perspective as a byproduct of focusing more on debt maturities, or will it be balanced? Any color on kind of how you're weighing those two uses of capital will be helpful.
Hey, Cameron. Hey, Cameron. Thanks for the question.
Anant: So, you know, for the year ahead, we're going to take a balanced approach to capital allocation.
Anant: specifically with two priorities, managing our debt maturities and executing the share buyback program.
Anant: So, as you know, we repurchased 50 million of shares, 10 million of which in Q4. We're authorized for an additional 50 million. And obviously, you know, we feel our shares are priced quite attractively. And so over time, we do expect to complete these repurchases.
Anant: Looking at the near term, you know, we're mindful of managing our maturities, and we've made significant progress with the December 2025s, you know, repurchasing 120 of that, just 30 million left. And, you know, we're mindful of September 2026 maturities.
Anant: and we have multiple options available there. So, you know, we have a healthy balance sheet, strong cash position, a lot of options available, you know, for the 2026s.
Anant: So, you know, we're just going to balance all that, but I think, yeah, for long term, shares are tractively priced, so obviously,
Anant: completing that authorization is, you know, is quite appealing. In the near term though, you know, we're going to pay attention to these maturities and we're still well ahead for the 2026s but, you know, we're gonna, we like the idea of kind of taking a look, start kicking the tires earlier than we need to.
Understood. Thank you both.
Day-Li: Thank you. Your next question is coming from Day-Li from J.P. Morgan. Your line is live.
Day-Li: Great. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two. The first one, in your letter, you showed the marketplace flywheel with
Build Loyalty on the Consumer Side
Day-Li: So I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what loyalty means for Eventbrite and how you plan on building the loyalty given that you've historically been a more supplier or creator-focused platform.
Day-Li: Secondly, given your transition from a full-fledged marketplace platform to Eventbrite that is relatively early in the transformation,
Day-Li: I'm curious to hear what surprised you the most when you first joined Eventbrite and where do you see the opportunity to drive bigger changes?
Thanks Dave.
Day-Li: So consumer loyalty and engagement is obviously a critical driver for our marketplace flywheel and you know when we think about the most engaged and loyal consumers we think of our monthly active app users.
Day-Li: that you know we've grown app users I think in Q4 up 17% so we're continuing to continuing to build that engaged
Day-Li: audience and community of buyers. Why that matters is because once somebody has the Eventbrite app on their phone, typically they're downloading it to get their ticket for an event.
Day-Li: actually logging about two and a half times more sessions and orders than someone who's just using Eventbrite on the web. And so
Day-Li: You know, while we want to convert all of our consumers into app users, we're really focusing our consumer loyalty and engagement efforts on the app user to make the highest impact yielding investments with the most efficiency.
And so, you know, what we want to do is...
Day-Li: drive higher repeat attendance, fueling event demand. We want, you know, over almost half of the attendees on Eventbrite are.
Day-Li: buying tickets to multi-category events. So they're not just going to music events, you know, in New York, they really come to Eventbrite because we have that breadth of opportunity in our marketplace, and so we want to connect the dots for them faster.
We also want to
Day-Li: really be able to incentivize them and reward them and recognize them for sharing their event profile and their event graph, as it were, through the app and really helping their community discover great events. And one of the ways that we're leaning into curated content to drive consumer discovery is we're launching a new section of the app called ItList,
It's really leveraging local niche interest influencers to create discovery
Day-Li: lists and recommendations for consumers for particular events that are related to their interests.
Day-Li: And we see this functionality as something being one that we could open up to all users of the app to create their own micro lists of events that they recommend. And so that's just an example of what we're thinking about as we engage consumers and really build loyalty through our work on the consumer app.
Speaker Change: And I'll jump in. Thanks for the question, Day. You know, one thing I'll also add, just to piggyback on Julie's answer, just based on my experience with marketplaces,
Speaker Change: This, everything we're seeing about building loyalty on both sides of the marketplace.
Speaker Change: specifically repeat behavior retention are, as you know, as you know, for marketplaces really gold like that is, that's, you know, really a big drivers of flywheel and it's, and it is really.
Speaker Change: gratifying it's really encouraging to see you know already you know we're seeing better retention from creators and creators just since we you know eliminate organized reviews also we're seeing already you know higher MAUs so we're seeing all those green shoots
Speaker Change: that are logical for building a strong, vibrant marketplace that has the flywheel in effect. So all those.
Speaker Change: all those trends are there in the right direction. So that's a good tie-in to, you know, your question about, you know, my background coming from marketplaces and, you know, what I've seen here, potentially been surprised by here. So I think, so for me, actually,
Speaker Change: The opportunity to join Eventbrite and help accelerate the marketplace transition was the most compelling and exciting aspect here.
Speaker Change: you know, it was immediately clear to me that Eventbrite does have a really compelling opportunity to become an even much bigger two-sided marketplace than it is today.
Speaker Change: So Eventbrite, first of all, Eventbrite is close to two decades of cultivating deep relationships on both sides.
Speaker Change: with the supply creators and the consumers on the demand side. And, you know, as a snapshot, there's some stats that I think really emphasize that. You know, just since 2012, for instance,
Speaker Change: Over 2 million creators have sold tickets on Eventbrite. They've then had over 35 million events.
They've sold over 375 million tickets.
Speaker Change: of, sorry, over 375 million consumers have bought tickets on the platform.
Speaker Change: and over two billion tickets have been sold. So that depth of history, that broad reach and really what's built such a ubiquitous brand is itself such an important foundation.
for a compelling two-sided market blitz.
Speaker Change: And so that is an advantage that I would say most companies striving to be powerful marketplaces, except for the really big ones, you know, that are just today.
Speaker Change: Those are, you know, numbers that anyone would be proud to be able to cite in their lifetime, right?
And so, and just for reference points,
Speaker Change: I have seen companies build need to spend a lot of money.
to build powerful, large-scale marketplaces.
Speaker Change: but needing to do so in a very expensive way because they don't have that reach and they don't have that history.
Speaker Change: And so then that sets up a company that you have to question whether you're buying your growth.
Speaker Change: and that's not a situation, you know, fortunately that we have, you know, we have to worry about. Obviously, there's already all those opportunities to grow more and tap into different marketing channels, but the fact is...
Speaker Change: This reach and this brand awareness is really powerful. In a second view, the company is in a leadership position in a large and growing market. And being the clear established leader in the space for mid-market events,
Speaker Change: You know, we're the strongest product, the best tools for creators. You know, that also sets us up well to continue to power this flywheel.
Speaker Change: And part of the flywheel, then, going back to the consumer side, is the fact that we have all this organic traffic again. So you have all this organic traffic from the consumer side. You have this loyalty built of over 2 million creators who have sold ticks under that bright.
Speaker Change: We have all this awareness that's also helping with acquisition, and you think about the fact that
Speaker Change: We have cohorts built in both on the creator side and consumer side. And as we continue to improve acquisition for both sides and retention for both sides, it leads to a really compelling story of cohorts that stack over time and help contribute to scale and operating leverage.
Thank you.
Speaker Change: So, I guess, you know, the thing in terms of what I was surprised about
Speaker Change: coming here is, is really that the company with the current resourcing and with the current scale today
Speaker Change: has such strong foundations in place to capitalize on this transformation to his two Santa Mark places and what I've seen in the past
Speaker Change: is usually, you know, in the past, as you know, often companies that are really starting much more from the ground up, much more where each kind of element in the marketplace is really struggling to gain traction. And the fact that that's, you know, that is not the case at Eventbrite is a tremendous advantage. So.
Speaker Change: So, so, yeah, it's really excited. All this is a really excited and really passionate about the opportunity ahead of us.
Greg, thank you for the detailed response.
Speaker Change: Thank you. Your next question is coming from Hammad Korsand from BWS Financial. Your line is live.
Hi, so my first question was just...
Hammad Korsand: Given your change in business model, and all the restructurings you have taken in the past with the work, the headcount reductions, do you need to grow headcount here? Are you efficient?
Hammad Korsand: Is there anywhere you need to spend more, or do you have the business intact to lever up from here?
Thank you. Bye.
Hey Ahmed, thanks for the question.
So it's actually a great question because
Hammad Korsand: You know, we spent a lot of time thinking about our cost structure and really how to execute well, you know, financial discipline. And what we've done and what we've seen as we've dug into numbers is, you know, we feel really good about where our staffing is today. And what we've done is really tap into how to reallocate resources and focus on having the strongest talent.
Hammad Korsand: and keeping them here and allocating them to the areas that are most important to us.
So for us,
Growth is not dependent on growing the teams.
Hammad Korsand: Growth is independent of having the right talent and allocating those resources appropriately, and that's what we're spending a lot of time on. So that also is another belief why we have the opportunity to benefit tremendously from operating leverage, and again, as we scale the real building blocks to build a high margin business.
Speaker Change: And then my other question was going to be just from the standpoint of what are you putting behind as far as getting those high-volume creators back especially with your competitors and you know try and lock them down. Do you have to spend more? Do you have to offer a lot more money? What do you have to do to get those creators back?
Speaker Change: Since they've been gone, we've created even better and more effective marketing tools such as premium email marketing, paid social, advertising, and, of course, Eventbrite ads or promoted listings. On the sales-driven front, we're seeing success across the music category, which is a key driver of repeat ticketing and consumer engagement.
Speaker Change: and others in this space have reactivated their event ticketing on Eventbrite, again, coming because we start the conversation, we re-engage them, we're taking a very targeted and aggressive approach to make sure that they understand.
Speaker Change: where we have improved not only our platform and tooling, but also our service. And I think we've really honed a much more efficient, but focused and successful account management strategy for our high value customers.
Speaker Change: Take Elsewhere, for example, one of, it's one of New York's most prominent independent music venues. We partnered with them when they opened their doors and they left Eventbrite's platform during COVID about three years ago. After being with a competitor, they returned to Eventbrite and they...
Speaker Change: cited our audience reach so undeniably the fact that being on Eventbrite in the marketplace
drives more tickets for them on any given night.
Speaker Change: are discovery capabilities, so how they can use Eventbrite to amplify their show schedule, and the marketplace strength, you know, again, connecting the right consumer with their right show at the right time, and how stable and consistently reliant our platform is. And they have, you know, they draw nearly 300,000 attendees per year, and they're a lighthouse, you know, for nightlife.
on the East Coast.
Speaker Change: You know, I think we've seen some really positive things through sales, we've, you know, year over year bookings are up strong again in music and nightlife and food and drink. We're seeing the team really start to re-engage again, very specific.
Speaker Change: customers that have left the platform that we want back on the platform and I get and you know what I would say is that it's about knowing the right customers that are going to drive consumer engagement and activity in the marketplace and then
Speaker Change: really convincing them by showing them that we can drive more demand for them now than we could ever before, and really showing them the value of Eventbrite's product as it continues to get better and better. So,
Speaker Change: I would say it's going to be an uphill, you know, climb as is with any competitive environment. But I bet on Eventbrite all day long. We have the momentum, we have the reliability in the brand, we have the breadth, and we have the power to really help people expand their businesses.
Great, thank you.
Speaker Change: Thank you. That completes our Q&A session. Everyone, this concludes today's event. You may disconnect at this time and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.