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.
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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.
