Vivid Seats Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Vivid Seats first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Following management's prepared remarks, we will open the call for Q&A. I would now like to turn the call over to Kate Copples.

Good morning and welcome to Vivid Seats first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. I'm Kate Copples, head of investor relations at Vivid Seats. Joining me today to discuss Vivid Seats results are Stan Chia, Chief Executive Officer, and Larry Fay, Chief Financial Officer. By now, everyone should have access to our first quarter earnings press release, which we released earlier this morning. We have also provided supplemental earnings slides. The press release and earnings slides are available on the investor relations page of Vivid Seats website at investors.vividseats.com. During the course of this call, management may make forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements are subject to the risks and uncertainties as described in our earnings press release and other filings with the SEC. On today's call, we will refer to adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin, which are non-GAAP financial measures that provide useful information for our investors. you will find a historical reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin to the corresponding gap measure in the earnings press release, supplemental earnings slides, and SEC filings. And now, I would like to turn the call over to Stan.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm thrilled to share our exceptional first quarter 2023 results with you. As always, we prioritize initiatives that generate long-term value and stickiness in our marketplace, and I'm excited to report on our progress. Our first quarter financial results speak to our ability to relentlessly drive incremental efficiency and simultaneously invest in competitive product differentiation. To begin with, I'll walk through our financial and strategic highlights from the quarter, before turning it to Larry to take you through our financial results in more detail and to discuss our updated outlook for 2023. We set out strong in 2023, and I'm proud to report we generated $856 million of Marketplace GOV, $161 million of revenues, and $42 million of adjusted EBITDA in the first quarter. We delivered double-digit growth for Marketplace GOV and revenues and doubled adjusted EBITDA despite a highly competitive ticketing environment. Thanks to a strong march, we quickly exceeded expectations set during our Q4 call, and we are accordingly raising our 2023 Marketplace GOV revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance. The live event environment in the first quarter 2023 was robust, due to a combination of exciting event supply and exuberant fan demand. Consumers continued to crave live experiences in the first quarter, and we believe this trend will continue for many years. Consumers were eager to secure their seats for concert headliners like Drake and Beyonce, and for sporting events such as the World Baseball Classic and NCAA Women's Basketball Final Four. The Women's Final Four was the latest data point supporting an exciting trend of outsized growth across women's sports as a category that we believe will continue for decades to come. While consumers are seeking their favorite live events, our marketing campaigns are focused on ensuring fans are aware of our differentiated experience underpinned by our unique Vivid Seats Rewards program. Vivid Seats Rewards aligns us with fans by offering more rewards the more they buy. In addition to ticket savings, our loyalty program includes a host of other benefits ranging from surprise upgrades to exclusive game day experiences. Our buyer experience and engagement efforts, starting with our loyalty program, are designed to cultivate brand awareness and lasting affinity for our platform. Engagement during and between live events is crucial in our relatively low frequency category and we are seeing continued improvement as we invest in both marketing and product vehicles to drive engagement. With marketing efforts, whether at an on-site event or through our growing social presence, our buyers are engaging with us more than ever before. In social, we lead the competition with the highest positive sentiment, and we have been rapidly growing our social following. Our social engagement has grown 50 times since we began our initiatives in earnest and nearly doubled quarter over quarter in Q1. We continue to innovate and differentiate our product-focused engagement efforts to buyers and are excited to announce our first free-to-play product available directly within the Vivid Seeds app, fully powered by Vivid Picks. Launching in May, users will be able to play daily challenges with the chance to win free tickets. We're thrilled to get this product off the ground and offer another compelling engagement opportunity for our buyers within our app experience. On the seller side, Skybox Drive, our new automated pricing product that leverages our powerful marketplace data, continues to progress and has moved into its beta phase. We are incorporating feedback as we march towards an exciting launch in the latter half of the year. Our leading products are the result of consistent investments focused on driving long-term stickiness on both sides of our marketplace. Our install base of sellers on Skybox already includes more than 50% of professional sellers. On the buyer side, we continue to grow by adding new buyers and driving accretive repeat order activity. In tandem with our investments in loyalty and differentiated buyer experience, the portion of repeat orders placed on VividSeats increased to 56% in 2022 from 47% in 2018. We know our buyers better than ever before and offer personalized recommendations and campaigns. Even with our repeat rates trending higher across categories, there is still room to grow as we drive repeat behavior among passionate sports and music fans. At the same time, we will continue to attract cohorts of new buyers onto our platform, creating an ever-growing network to nurture for repeat purchases that provide a tailwind for our margins. Our strategic and operating principles are grounded in driving profitable growth. Our approach has always been to execute with disciplined rigor and maniacal testing, such that we continue to attract new buyers while increasing repeat rates through a consistent focus on things we can control. Raising and consuming capital to drive unsustainable volume is a strategy that does not endure. Sustained gains stem from differentiated product, service, and value, and that is where we invest and excel. To conclude, we made important strategic progress this quarter and delivered healthy growth, profitability, and cash flow. We continue to strengthen our product and market position while our strong balance sheet serves as a substantial asset that we are ready to deploy to continue our track record of outpacing industry growth. With that, I will turn it over to Larry.

Thanks, Dan. We kicked off 2023 with an exceptional first quarter and are raising our marketplace GOV revenues and adjusted EBITDA guidance to account for our results to date. I'll discuss the first quarter in detail before turning to our updated outlook for 2023. Our first quarter 2023 marketplace GOV of $856 million increased 15% year-over-year, driven by a 13% increase in total marketplace orders and a 2% increase in average order size. Our strong GOV growth reflects a robust live event calendar, particularly in March, coupled with a relatively easy Q1 2022 comp due to the negative impact the Omicron variant had on demanding Q1 of last year. MLB opening day, a marquee event that garners significant GOV, shifted back into the first quarter this year. We also saw unprecedented demand for the World Baseball Classic and top artist on sale activity, including Drake and Beyonce. Our first quarter 2023 revenues of $161 million increased 23% year over year, driven by marketplace GOV growth and an improvement in take rates. Our take rate calculated by dividing marketplace revenues by marketplace GOV was 16.0% in Q1 2023 compared to an unusually low 14.9% in Q1 2022 due to the MLB lockout and several prominent concert tour cancellations. Cancellations represented 1.4% of pre-canceled GOV in Q1 2023, which is down considerably from 4.5% in Q1 2022. This decline in cancellations provided several hundred basis points of year-over-year revenue growth. Our first quarter 2023 adjusted EBITDA of $42 million doubled year-over-year, driven by a combination of top-line growth and margin expansion. Margins benefited from improved marketing efficiency, which we achieved despite continuing intensity in the competitive environment, as we continually seek pockets of improvement. First quarter adjusted EBITDA margins also benefited from the cadence of certain brand-related marketing investments, along with tailwinds from changes to our loyalty program. In aggregate, marketing timing and loyalty changes benefited adjusted EBITDA by approximately $8 million in the first quarter. Accordingly, Q1 adjusted EBITDA margins were especially strong and will result in the first quarter likely representing an outsized portion of full-year EBITDA relative to a typical year. Non-recurring benefits aside, we are encouraged by our continued underlying progress towards our long-term EBITDA margin targets as we profitably captured underlying industry growth. Cashflow is also strong in the first quarter. We generated $65 million in cash from operation and expect 2023 EBITDA to cashflow conversion to approach historical levels. Our cash balance of 303 million exceeded our debt principle outstanding by $31 million at quarter end. Our cash balance also reflects $8 million of share purchases completed during Q1, as we fully utilized the remainder of our $40 million repurchase authorization during the quarter. Turning to our updated outlook, we are raising our guidance for each of Marketplace GOV, revenues, and adjusted EBITDA to account for a tremendous start to 2023. We now anticipate 2023 marketplace GOV in the range of $3.15 to $3.40 billion, revenues in the range of $605 to $630 million, and adjusted EBITDA in the range of $115 to $130 million. Our updated outlook contemplates continued intensity across the competitive landscape, coupled with awareness of a potentially weakening macroeconomic environment, although we have yet to see any weakening in demand for live events. Our 2023 outlook also reflects more challenging comps in Q2 and Q3 as we lap the periods that benefited from the occurrence of previously postponed concerts. We have multiple paths to accelerate our trajectory and build long-term value. We see a vibrant long-term growth outlook for live events, and we are very well positioned with our sizable cash balance, ongoing cash generation, loyal user base of buyers and sellers, and superior product and data. We have the balance sheet and internal capabilities to seize upon synergistic opportunities in ticketing or adjacent TAN enhancing areas that leverage our technology platform and ecosystem of buyers, sellers, and partners. We also continue to evaluate all available opportunities to optimize our capital structure to drive long-term shareholder returns. To wrap, it was an exceptional quarter for growth, profitability, and cash flow. The live event industry continues to see robust demand, and our team is delivering consistent outperformance, which serves as a testament to our ability to win in the long term. Back to you, Stan.

Thanks, Larry. It was a truly exciting quarter and start to 2023. I'm proud of what our team delivered and excited about what we can accomplish as the live event ticketing environment evolves and we continue to drive long-term value at VividSea. In addition to our exceptional financial results, I would like to highlight that we recently published our inaugural environmental, social, and governance update. Our 2023 ESG fact sheet outlines key initiatives, including our commitment to environmental sustainability, our dedication to diversity, our investments in our communities, and our responsibility to safety and security. We are committed to ethical decision-making across the organization, and we are proud of our combined majority diverse leadership team and board. We also recently celebrated World Wish Day with our partner, Make-A-Wish, who we have been working with to grant life-changing wishes, sending children and their families to events like the NCAA College Football Championship, the Daytona 500, and the NCAA College Basketball Final Four. As a newly public company, we look forward to continuing to make positive contributions to our communities while also delivering strong financial results. With that, operator, let's open it up for questions.

Sure, thanks. To ask a question, please press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. In the interest of time, please limit yourself to two questions. Please stand by, we'll compile the Q&A roster. One moment for our first question. Our first question will come from the line of Jason Basnet from Citi. Your line is open.

Thanks, I just had two quick questions. I was wondering if you could just talk about the increase in repeat orders and talk about what's driving it and how we should think about margin implications if that continues to improve? And then second, this is a little bit of a strange question since you raised your guidance, but can you just talk a little bit about the deferred revenue balance that I think sort of ticked down sequentially? And is that meaningful at all in the context of future revenue growth? Thanks.

Hey, morning, Jason. It's Dan. Yeah, look, you know, I think we've been really thoughtful and, you know, I think deliberate about our investments with respect to engagement and ensuring that, you know, our product is differentiated in a way that drives users to engage more with us. And we're seeing a lot of that fruit start to pay off as we've talked about repeat rates being higher. And, you know, I think since we started these investments in 2018 and almost 1,000 basis point shift in order mix to repeat buyers. So we're seeing a lot of that goodness. We're pretty excited about that and continue to invest in areas that drive that engagement, such as our free-to-play product that's launching later this month. When you look at margins, Brad, I think we've always talked about the ability for us to drive incremental margin leverage, and certainly through our repeat buyers. That is one element where we are significantly more profitable on a repeat buyer versus a new buyer, despite the fact that we are first transaction profitable on new buyers. So I think we continue to invest in all those things. We think as we continue to increase our product, we expect to continue driving increased engagement with consumers that we think will play out in our long-term story here. With that, I'll punt it to Larry. You can talk through his margin profile as well.

Yeah, and quickly on the repeat orders, I think this is a metric that we'll provide going forward on an annual basis because we think there's continued room to run for the foreseeable future. And we'll continue to see nice mix shift as we have more cohort aging and the improvement of each of those cohorts as we focus on our buyer experience continues to grow. On the deferred revenue balance, that primarily reflects our loyalty accruals. And so there was a quick note in the prepared remarks around continued refinement of our estimates on what utilization will be on the loyalty program. And so you'll generally see that number being pretty stable, but as those estimates continue to mature, as we get more data, since we're still pretty early in the overall program maturation phase, that was really the rebalancing. Okay. That's great. Thank you.

One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Ralph Shakart from William Blair.

Your line is open.

Good morning, and thanks for taking the question. Can you talk about some of the marketing efficiencies you saw in Q1? Blair, I think you talked about $8 million in benefits despite a tough competitive environment. Maybe a little bit more color on that and expectations going forward. And then just to sort of bolt onto that, and the letter talked about the timing of certain marketing investments. Can you also provide a little bit on that? And then I have a follow-up.

Yeah, so I characterized, I inverted a little bit, but I'll see the $8 million in the commentary. I characterized that as the element that was more timing with the balance of our performance being more of the sustainable efficiency. On the sustainable efficiency, I think we've acknowledged that we're in a pretty intense competitive environment, but that fact doesn't exempt us from continuing to drive efficiency as we've always done. And I think this quarter was a good example of that, where we saw, particularly in the performance marketing realm, some pockets of opportunity to continue to refine and drive efficiency Efficiency, it's pretty granular and detailed when you pick apart how we got there and a little bit of secret sauce, but I think it's sort of endemic to who we are that we'll continue finding those pockets. There definitely is a meaningful portion of this that we believe is a sustainable efficiency that we drove.

Great. And just one more, if I could. Just on the competitive environment, can you maybe just provide an update, I guess, what you saw this quarter, you know, the trends on competition and maybe how that may have compared to the previous quarter? Thank you.

Hey, Rob. It's Ben. You know, I think when we look at it, that's one of the pieces that we think is an important distinction. You know, I don't think we've seen a lessening of competitive activity If anything, I'd say the space, as we continue to see, consumer resiliency has become more competitive. So I think it's a testament to some of our efforts here and our ability to continue to drive efficiency even in that environment. I think this is just when you look at the advantages we have with our first-party data, with the ability to drive marketing algorithms combined with all of the infrastructure, our Skybox platform, our engagement engines, all of these things firing together such that even in a heightened competitive environment, we are still able to drive, you know, I think, earnings and profit in a really efficient manner.

Great. Thanks, Dan.

Thanks, Larry. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Maria Rips from Canaccord.

Your line is open.

Great. Thanks so much for taking my questions, and congrats on strong results. First, can you maybe share a little bit more call on macro environment and consumer discretionary spend, any notable changes in consumer purchase behavior that you would highlight? And as ticket prices sort of stay elevated, are you seeing sort of consumers trading down to less expensive events? And then I have a quick follow-up.

Yeah, I'd say no change observed consistent with prior quarters. I think we continue to acknowledge that there's a lot of chatter and concern out there that that will change in the not distant future, but continues to be the case that we're seeing very robust demand across our event categories, across price points. I think we continue to see average order size increasing broadly in line with historical levels. On top of that, I'd say, if anything, we've been pleasantly surprised by the supply calendar. There's a little bit of a disconnect, I'd say, between our tone on industry outlook for the balance of the year and perhaps some of the folks that are closer to it, namely Live Nation, who has information that we don't on on who's coming up in the calendar. And as it played out, I think we were happy to see that they did know something we didn't know with some of the major announcements coming, like Drake, most recently Aerosmith. And that has led to what has continued to be a really strong event calendar and gives us optimism that despite flapping a bunch of concert postponements, we have a very robust supply environment to match up to that great demand dynamic.

That's very helpful. And then secondly, you had really strong cash generation in Q1. Can you maybe just talk about key drivers behind that, sort of what that enables, and then how should we think about cash conversion going forward?

Yeah, so generally speaking, we have really nice cash conversion where the main uses of cash, as you said, from EBITDA to true cash generation, will be interest expense and taxes, partially offset by working capital benefit as we grow. The seasonal fluctuations beyond that conversion are really driven by working capital. And with the way our working capital dynamics work, you should think of it's less about the volume we deliver in a quarter and more about the volume we deliver in the last month of the quarter. And so March is a pretty strong month. So perhaps counterintuitively, Q1 ends up being seasonally stronger on working capital than Q4 because the end of Q4 slows down post-holidays. So because March ends strong, we saw a seasonal strength in Q1 that if you get into Q2, We'll soften a little bit at the end of June as post-NBA and NHL playoffs until you see a little bit less activity at the end of the quarter, which will flow through on the working capital. Speaking to general cash conversion, though, I think we've historically said we think our true cash generation in a year will be 60% to 70% of our EBITDA. Again, most of that delta is our interest expense and cash taxes. This year there's a little bit of noise. We'll likely be below that level in terms of cash taxes, which is great, offset by the remaining elements of our store credit redemptions. So the net of those two will probably be on the lower end of our historical range, but should be back in that range after 2022 where we had a bit more noise as we cleaned up some pandemic-related items.

Great. That's very helpful. Thank you very much for the call.

One moment for our next question.

Our next question comes from the line of Benjamin Black from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Hi, thank you for taking our question. This is for Ben. Could you please give some color on how Skybox is supporting growth here, possibly adding to your competitive strengths to maybe fuel the supply side of the equation on the platform?

Can you repeat the first part of the question? Sorry, I didn't catch all of it.

Yeah, so can you give some more color on how Skybox is supporting growth here, possibly adding to your competitive strength to fuel your supply side of the equation on the platform?

Yeah, sure thing. You know, I think Skybox continues to be the industry-leading platform ERP for the professional selling community. We have over 55% of professional sellers now on the platform. And when you think about that, that really means that if professional sellers represent 80% of the industry, then more than 40% of the entire industry flows through our infrastructure. And we utilize that data to ensure that we can power our best-in-class marketing algorithms, which allow us to compete efficiently for customer acquisition. Similarly, I think as we continue to develop technologies such as Skybox Drive, which we talked about is in its beta phase, that allows us to just deepen our relationship with sellers as well as we continue to power elements of their business.

Great. And maybe one more if I can. On AOS, like how should we think about phasing of AOS for the balance of the year?

Yeah, so generally speaking, we've pointed to 3% to 4% annualized growth. Coming out of the pandemic, there was a bit more noise and chop in the water. If you had a spike in demand, some inconsistent supply. And so if you look at our trending throughout 2020 and 2021, there's just distortions relative to normal levels. I'd say more typically, there's not huge fluctuation quarter to quarter from a seasonal standpoint. As a general comment, Q3 is usually pretty soft. That's largely because a disproportionate amount of volume is regular season baseball that has a lower ALS. Q4 is usually quite strong, driven by World Series. all major sports being in action, and then some major concerts going on sale for the following year. But nothing as we look to the back half or the remainder of this year where I would point to anything other than directional performance similar to Q1, where we're sort of back to year-over-year performance in the low single-digit growth over the prior year.

Okay, great. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Steven Ju from Credit Suisse.

Your line is open.

Okay. Thank you. So, Stan, Larry, a follow-up on the repeat order rate you disclosed earlier on the deck. So wondering if you could talk about how that moves around during the course of the year, and should we think about that rate stepping up or down on a quarterly basis when there are one-off major events, like the World Baseball Classic, where you may actually lean in to acquire more new users? Thanks.

Hey, Steven. Morning. I think we talked about it a little bit last quarter, too. When we look at repeat rates across the categories, I think what we've continued to see as our investments and engagements are starting to take root is that across each of the categories, we've seen the repeat rates for customers continue to trend higher. Right now, they're in the highest point that they've been historically, whether you're talking about baseball, basketball, any of the sports category or concerts. Now, I think when you go into the deeper part of, hey, should we see seasonality, I think you can almost expect, as with some of the cohorts and sports, you're going to see some of that maybe mix a little bit differently, i.e. there's 81 home games for baseball, which is unique versus other categories. And so, logically, you see repeat rates in that category, in particular, kind of a little higher than the rest. But overall, we remain really excited, and we continue to see a step function change and repeat across every single category that we have.

Thank you.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Logan Reach from RBC Capital Markets.

Your line is open.

Hey, good morning. This is Logan on for Brad Erickson. Congrats on the results this morning, guys. Just one quick question on the guide. It looks like your EBITDA guide implies some deleveraging for the balance of the year. Can you just talk about kind of what's included in the guidance for the expense side and particularly marketing and kind of how you guys think about margins for the balance of the year? Thanks.

Yeah, thanks, Logan. Yeah, it's only been two months since we gave our full year guidance. So I'd say thematically, the guide for the balance of the year remains consistent. Namely, we continue to take a cautious view regarding the macroeconomic environment and are building in some potential for softening at the macro level. And should that not happen, I think that would be a net tailwind relative to what we've assumed. I think specific to margins, probably the more salient item is competitive landscape, which we've alluded to, has been pretty intense. We anticipate it remaining so. And as we put together our EBITDA guidance for the balance of the year, we wanted to make sure we have sufficient flexibility to make targeted investments and respond in as flexible a manner as possible in light of that backdrop. And so we'll certainly be as thoughtful and efficient as possible, but we did want to make sure we retain that flexibility.

Great. Thank you very much. One moment for our next question.

Our next question comes from the line of Thomas Forte from DA Davidson. Your line is open.

Great. So, Stan and Larry, congrats on the quarter. One question and then one follow-up. Can you give your current thoughts on industry growth for 2023 and factors that could result in a higher growth rate for the year compared to the projected long-term CAGR? And then, can women's sports or other emerging categories increase the long-term CAGR?

Yeah, I think – hey, Tom, good morning. We look at the year, and Larry alluded to this a little bit earlier, and I think we've been pleasantly surprised by some of the, in particular, concert strength that's been announced this year, which is a little unseasonally typical for what we see at this point of the year. So I think if that were to persist in a non-typical manner, we're certainly excited about the upside that we see this year in that lineup. When you look at some of these other sports categories, which we've always looked at as a as a more fixed category given the larger league than the number of games per season. I think we've also been really pleasantly surprised with some of the strength in women's categories. If you look at F1 and kind of the resurgence or emergence of that as a, as a really strong category. So I think there's, there's a few categories there that we've, that we've continued to see emerge across both the, sports and concerts that give us some certainly upside potential in the remainder of this year and long-term as well.

Great. And then for my follow-up, can you quantify how VividPix has had a positive impact on your CAC for VividSeats?

Yeah, you know, look, when we talk about engagement, you know, I think we look at VividPix as a fundamental part of our engagement engine where we're We have a vehicle now to engage you between events, right, which we think is part of nurturing that entire lifecycle of the customer. There's the event, there's between events, there's at the event, and we've deployed our marketing to engage people at the event and certainly to acquire the user there. And between the events is where VividTix comes in. We've talked about the number of entries, you know, rising where, you know, I think our average entries now, you know, per month is in the mid to high double digits. And where we continue to see strength there is as we have users who are both using our VividPix product and VividSeats product, anytime they are cross-users of each, they are stronger users than if they were to just uniquely use one platform. Hence, we get really excited about our investments there, and in particular, launching our free-to-play product, which will open up our entire audience base to what we think is a very unique and engaging product.

Thank you, Stan.

One moment for our next question.

And our next question comes from Shweta Kajuria from Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

Okay. Thank you for taking my question. Stan, what do you think? How high can repeat orders as a percentage of total orders get? What are you shooting for? It seems like it's been trending up year after year to 56% now. Where can it go on your platform? And how does that compare to industry repeat rates perhaps? Do you have a sense of where it is on competitive platforms? Thank you. Yeah.

Yeah, look, I think I'd start with, you know, where it can run. You know, I think we continue to see runway for it to increase, right? So I think we're excited that, you know, over the past four to five years, we've raised that mix from an order-mix perspective by, you know, almost 1,000 bps. We continue to think there's runway up. But I think, you know, it's balanced when you think about the long-term and maybe even medium-term impacts here as, you know, CAC is high today. You know, I think, you know, when CAC renormalizes, I think there's a great opportunity for us with our multiple ways to acquire users to go out there and drive that. So I certainly expect in a world where CACs normalize, you might see a rebalancing, if you will. But certainly, I think if you decompose that into the actual repeat rates of the users as well, I think that continues to trend higher, and I think we're excited again about how our products will drive the repeat rates of the users that then drive the industry-level mix of repeat orders.

Okay, thanks, Dan. Any sense on where it is for the industry or even by categories? It sounds like sports is higher.

Yeah, I think, you know, when you look at, again, sports, I think just to make that point, yeah, you have a very unique difference versus perhaps others where there's just so many, you know, home games and the nature of those home games drive repeats. You know, I think when we look across the competitive landscape, I think we feel pretty strongly that our repeat rates are trending perhaps higher than the industry index. And I think as we continue to invest in the products, we think that outperformance there should grow on our side.

Okay. Thanks, Dan.

One moment for our next question.

Our next question comes from Matt Farrell from Piper Sandler.

Your line is open. Thanks, guys. Congrats on the strong results. I guess I wanted to touch on how you're thinking about balancing growth and profitability here amid the competitive dynamics and the macro uncertainty, but also still making sure that you're taking advantage of the strong consumer demand environment here in the near term.

Morning. Hey, thanks for the question. You know, maybe I'll give you two things. I think we've always focused, I think, on the long-term here, and in the long-term, making sure that we can build a sustainable business where we are able to deliver both growth and margins. And I think this is a quarter where I think we demonstrated we clearly have the assets and the technology and certainly the executional ability to drive both. You know, as we look... you know, into the long-term and how you balance that. You know, I think we've always said, you know, do we want to go out there and buy fleeting or temporary volume? You know, and I think that's just not a good long-term strategy to be deploying capital that doesn't really bring any, call it repeat behavior or long-term profits in. You know, and I think that's where you've seen when we look at repeat order mix with some of the questions we've gotten trending higher there. investing in products that drive repeat behavior. I think we're always going to do that. And in a world where I think the capital that's out there and being utilized in a manner that's not sustainable runs out, I think we'll have a heightened ability to then continue to go and build our user base in a stronger way. I'd point out as well, I think where others perhaps are buying that volume and depleting cash reserves, we certainly are on the other side of that where we're efficient in driving repeat behavior, but also extremely efficient on the cash generating side. And we sit here, I think, with a balance sheet that affords us a ton of opportunity as we look out and say, how can we deploy this capital? And as we see our investments working, we are unafraid to deploy them organically to drive growth and product innovation and we're certainly unafraid to deploy that inorganically as well should the right opportunities surface for us to accelerate any of our areas of strategic growth and then and then as a follow-up you know could you

just maybe help us understand where there's the potential for further integration for vivid pics over the course of 2023 and 2024 the the free ticket offering is an interesting one but where can we kind of be looking beyond that um as we think about the crossover opportunity yeah i mean i would think about it maybe in two ways you know i think we are certainly really excited about our our daily fantasy product which is a little bit more limited from a regulatory standpoint

being compliant there. And I think our launch of our free-to-play is the ability now for us to take the engagement engine that has been limited to certain audiences to be able now to drive that into every user that we have in one single app. And we remain bullish about the ability to do that, especially in a world where I think we talked about in the prepared remarks our social Our social engagement is now up 50 times from when we started that, and we have the highest net positive social sentiment amongst the competitive set. I think that combined with a free-to-play product across the entirety of our user base is where we think we've got a standout offering in ways to engage users between events.

Yeah, Matt, just a small addition to that. I think there's really fertile ground across Fallon 8. information from VividPix users into the VividPix user experience. So, for example, if we know that you've purchased a ticket to a game, we can use CRM to make you a targeted offer. We can cross-pollinate pricing. So, if you're on VividPix, you know, the base pricing will be real money, but there's opportunities for ticket discounts and other leaderboard-type awards where you're really driving the ecosystem benefit in a unique way.

All right. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Maroc from Raymond James.

Your line is open.

Hi, thanks for taking my question, too, if I could, please. First, I think you've given a little bit of color on this in the past around the MLB lockout and some of the concert cancellations in 1Q22. But as we look out into the event supply side of the equation, how big a deal can some of these high-end concert tours be, thinking like the Taylor Swift, the Drakes, the Blink-182s? I guess given that there's kind of a quote-unquote inorganic impact since they didn't happen in 22, kind of how big of an impact can an individual high-end tour have?

Yeah, I think we would directionally say we have a portfolio of events, and I think that perhaps echo comments others have made. While event calendars will have impacts in a given month or quarter, over the course of a year, it tends to even out. So it's not the proverbial hit-driven business that some other industries may be. So generally, I think we spoke to in Q1 of last year, a larger tour being potentially around 1% of full-year GOV if you're a true headliner. If you talk about the biggest headliner who perhaps may be on tour at the moment, In Taylor Swift, you could probably do a bit more than that on that one tour, but directionally, even the largest acts are going to be one-ish percent of GLB, so very diversified. The other dynamic, and we've referred to this before, you have the pros of a really robust 2023 event calendar with a number of huge acts, as you noted, Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Drake, Blink-182. 2022 had its fair share of very good acts and then also had postponed tailwinds, which was why in our guide, because we had taken a fairly cautious view around the high bar we had to get above to drive growth in 23, even with a really robust calendar. And as it's played out, the 23 calendar has been sufficiently robust to get to above the bar, but with the potential exception of the largest of the tours, there will be big names that go on in 24. I think you heard Live Nation perhaps refer to their output for sustained high single-digit growth in 24 and beyond. In fact, we're confident that the calendar will continue rolling on.

Great, thank you. And you kind of led into my second question, which is on the impact of lapping those postponed events from 22. Is that primarily going to hit orders, or is there an AOS component to that as well?

Thank you.

So Q1, our GOV growth was 15%, and of that, 2% was AOS. The balance, 13%, was And I think, as we alluded to, no reason to believe that AOS trajectory will meaningfully diverge from what we saw in Q1, which is generally consistent with what we've seen throughout cycles over prior years, something in the 3% to 4% annualized growth range with the balance of growth being driven by quarter count.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our last question comes from the line of Dan Kernos from the Benchmark Company.

Your line is open.

Great. Thanks. Good morning. Really strong results, guys. Just want to dig in on two areas that you've kind of already touched on. Obviously, a lot of questions have been asked already, but With one of the players filing confidential IPO, it's sort of an interesting dynamic as I feel like they're probably in the weakest position of the group. And so as you guys think about the dynamics, I don't know if you're seeing either sort of a widening of take rate across categories, so maybe more aggressive in sports versus concerts, which I think you've called out in the past, and subsequently sort of their need to show profitability, how either you, Stan, or Larry are thinking about, you know, if they have to moderate spend at some point in order to, you know, proceed with that process. Why don't we start there, and then I've got a follow-up for you.

Hey, Dan. Good morning, Stan. Thanks for the question. You know, I think, look, yeah, when we when we hear of, you know, potential things, you know, I think we focus really on the things that we can control. And I think, honestly, you know, we welcome a uniform, transparent reporting field, you know, where I think, again, our differentiation certainly on the P&L side will be very well differentiated, you know, in terms of an entity or a company that is burning cash versus one that's generating cash. So I certainly think our ability to stand out and be differentiated, should that hypothetically be what comes to market, I think it's something that we look forward to. I think, you know, again, as we continue our investments in that arena to drive our long-term strategy, you know, I think our balance sheet is going to be really important here. And certainly, you know, I think where we see opportunities, I think we've talked about our levers to drive either growth or profitability or innovation through product. I think certainly when there's an opportunity to deploy that cash balance sheet to drive disproportionate growth, I think we're certainly willing to do that. And in an environment where, you know, I think we see competition perhaps with a shrinking cash balance again, I think we are excited and unafraid to deploy our capital to continue to win the long game here.

And, Dan, I think part of the peculiar dynamic as we see it today embedded in your question, you said they need to pursue and demonstrate profitability. Which one would I think reasonably presume in the current environment? That the growth at all cost profile has gone somewhat out of favor, demonstrating sustainable unit economics is important. We don't have direct insight, so we can't say this with certainty, but generally our metrics that we can see are pretty accurate and predictive, and we are not seeing that behavior. And so when we talk about the potential unlock, if we see folks shift to pursuing profitability in the current period, that's when we think we will really see a benefit and a tailwind in both volume and margin. It's one thing to say, you know, next year, we promise. It's another to deliver it in a current period, and we're excited for when you have to deliver it in the current period on equal footing to what we're doing.

Got it. No, that's super helpful. But, Stan, you know, outside of marketing, you kind of alluded to this. I mean, given the earlier question on cash conversion and the really strong flow through in Q1 as you guys were able to, you know, maybe delay or push off the marketing spend and have a really strong flow through, I mean, you guys are going to generate a boatload of cash this year. You're already, what, net debt, you know, net cash positive at this point. So, I mean, you have some opportunities in front of you. I don't know what the environment from either M&A or kind of where you're headed is that for capital deployment, given that, you know, share buybacks, a little bit of a trickier proposition from here, but just help us think through sort of maybe, you know, other uses of cash at this point, other than just, you know, it's always nice to have a building on the balance sheet in an uncertain environment, right?

Yeah, for sure, Dan. You know, like I said, I think the best way to frame it is, you know, on the capital structure, I certainly say we're always going to look for ways to optimize that to ultimately deliver, you know, the most shareholder value that we can. But certainly, you know, as we look at the industry, if anything, as we continue to generate cash, you know, I think our posture towards both organic investments and inorganic ones, should the right opportunity surface, I think you'll see us aggressively pursue things that we think are accretive to the asset base that we have that will continue to drive things. So I'd say aggressive posture and certainly a balance sheet to support it across all dimensions.

All right, great. Thanks very much, guys. Appreciate it.

Thank you. And that ends our Q&A session for today. And with that, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.