Eventbrite Prepares For $200M IPO

Event ticketing service Eventbrite has announced its plans to raise up to $200 million in an initial public offering (IPO).

According to its prospectus, the company expects to debut on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol EB. Goldman Sachs is leading the IPO, along with JPMorgan, Allen & Co. and RBC Capital Markets.

Founded 12 years ago by Julia and Kevin Hartz, Eventbrite reported that it had a $15.6 million loss in the first half of 2018, while revenue increased 61 percent to $142.1 million. In 2017, losses totaled $38.6 million while earnings reached $201.6 million in revenue – a 51 percent sales growth from the previous year. Last year, the service issued more than 203 million tickets.

Also in 2017, the company acquired Ticketfly from Pandora for more than $200 million, as well as Ticketscript. As a result, net revenue in 2017 increased an additional $27.5 million.

But in June, Eventbrite revealed that a hacker had breached Ticketfly data. The company responded by briefly disabling the service and recorded a $6.6 million liability for potential costs due to the attack, with almost all of it being a loss in revenue.

As of June 30, the San Francisco-based company had 1,016 employees, with more than 10 percent based in Argentina.

Eventbrite’s biggest shareholder is Tiger Global, which owns 21 percent, while Sequoia Capital owns 20 percent and the Hartzes own a combined 17 percent. Last year, Square, the payment processing company, announced that it was partnering with Eventbrite and would make a $25 million investment in the company. Under partnership terms, Square will be in charge of online, mobile and in-person payments in countries where the payment processor is operational.

Users of Eventbrite are still able to process payments through the company’s internal system, but now online, mobile and in-person transactions from customers in the U.S., Canada, Australia and the U.K. will be processed through Square. Users are still be able to pay via PayPal.