Ticketing website Eventbrite has filed to go public
- Eventbrite, a ticketing and event management company, has filed to go public.
- The company sold 46.7 million tickets on its site last year, and posted a loss of $38.55 million.
Eventbrite on Thursday filed a document with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering, or IPO.
The San Francisco-based company didn't set a target amount it hopes to raise, which is typical of first S-1 filings, but said it hopes to use the proceeds to increase its capitalization and financial flexibility, and to pay off its debt which currently stands at $66.36 million.
For the year ended December 31, 2017, Eventbrite said it sold 46.7 million tickets and posted a net loss of $38.55 million - and those losses appear to be shrinking. The company said it lost just $15.58 million in the first six months of 2018.
To put Eventbrite's sales into context, LiveNation - which owns Ticketmaster - said in its 2017 annual report that it sold "nearly 500 million tickets," but still lost $6 million for the year.
Eventbrite, however, is focused on smaller scale creators, and allows anyone to create a ticketed event on its site. It makes money by skimming off any paid events ticketed on the site.
"To help event creators more easily and successfully engage attendees, we've created a platform for attendees to discover and connect with creators, finding the right experience for the right moment," founders Julia Hartz, Kevin Hartz, and Renaud Visage said in the filing.
"Our technology not only helps event creators reach their audience but also helps improve the daily lives of attendees all over the world."
For 2017, CEO Julia Hartz was awarded total compensation of $7.24 million, which included stock options on top of her $335,000 base salary. Randy Befumo, the CFO, raked in $2.8 million, while Matthew Rosenberg, the chief revenue officer, made $2.4 million.
In its 12 years as a private company, Eventbrite raised $332 million in venture capital over nine fundraising rounds. Tiger Global and Sequoia capital each currently own about 20% of the company, while T. Rowe Price owns about 7%, according to CrunchBase.
Goldman Sachs is the lead underwriter for the public offering.
"The global market for live experiences is large and rapidly increasing in size and diversity," Eventbrite said in the filing.
"We believe that a significant portion of our market opportunity is represented by categories that were previously not well served by event management technology. The landscape of services to manage the complexities of planning, promoting and producing events is highly fragmented. Creators use a variety of approaches and solutions to achieve these goals. We believe that the breadth of functionality on our platform, combined with its ease of use, has enabled creators to build businesses and introduce new types of live experiences."