Eventbrite, Inc.

Good afternoon and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Eventbrite 3rd Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question today, please press star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Ms. Catherine Chen, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon and welcome to Eventbrite's third quarter 2021 earnings call. Prior to this call, we released our shareholder letter announcing our financial results, which can be found on our website at investor.eventbrite.com. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that during today's call, we will be making forward-looking statements regarding future events and financial performance. We caution that such statements reflect our best judgment as of today, October 28th, based on 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. 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. 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. During this call, we will present adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP financial measure. This non-GAAP financial measure is not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles and has limitations as an analytical tool. You should not consider it in isolation or as a substitute for analysis of the results of operations as reported under GAAP. A reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure is available in our shareholder letter. We encourage you to read our shareholder letter as it contains important information about GAAP and non-GAAP results. And with that, I'll now turn the call over to Julia Hart, co-founder and chief executive officer.

Thank you, Catherine. Hi, everyone, and thank you for joining us this afternoon. I hope everyone on this call and all of your families are well. Without a doubt, we are seeing tremendous anticipation around the resurgence of live events. Eventbrite's third quarter results have captured that momentum and rising demand. Over 250,000 creators around the world chose Eventbrite to power their events, exceeding 1.2 million in the quarter. And more than 28 million unique buyers came to Eventbrite to connect with others through live events. We are thrilled to see in-person gatherings improving our everyday lives again, and we are honored to be supporting our creator community as the world recognizes and celebrates the value of live experiences. After a prolonged period of social isolation, we are in the early days of surging interest for unique and local events. Gathering together safely enables us to achieve that memorable experience only brought on by human connection. So far this year, over 75 searches on Eventbrite are for in-person events, which account for over 65% of total ticket volume. Zeroing in on Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, paid ticket volume for in-person events has approached quarterly records. I'll also note that recent vaccination trends are extremely encouraging. Full vaccination rates are up from the single digits six months ago to exceeding 55% of the population in all of our major markets. Some regions are even pushing into the 60% and 70% range. We believe this meaningful improvement will lead to greater comfort with live events, and it's a positive indicator that demand will grow both in the intermediate and long term. We know that events have permanently changed for both creators and attendees. And Eventbrite is supporting creators who have found innovative ways to thrive in this dynamic and changing landscape. In San Francisco, the success of outdoor events has turned temporary venues like sidewalks, streets, and even vacant parking lots into permanent event spaces. At last count, nearly 2,500 applications have been submitted to use these new venues. Creators are building avenues to reach new audiences by hosting both virtual and in-person events on the platform. One example is Black Bourbon Society, which is furthering appreciation for bourbon through tastings and tours that celebrate the diverse history of distilling. A core tenet of their mission is to broaden the inclusivity of the spirits industry. When in-person events were canceled, they embraced the opportunity to expand their reach through virtual events. They've already tripled their number of events and tickets year to date in 2021. and they plan to keep their online community of over 8,000 followers engaged with local and online experiences. Our platform offers creators a way to market, sell, and manage any kind of event from the same store. Through all the ways that live events have changed in the last year, our distinct creator-centric focus has helped us stay highly engaged with our customer community. we've achieved sequential growth in the number of total, paid, and frequent creators in each of the last five quarters. And in the third quarter alone, total creators grew 29%, paid creators increased 56%, and frequent creators rose 24% compared to a year ago. What's even more exciting is that we've also acquired 90,000 new creators in this period. As our core customer community expands we will continue to lean into the product-driven growth strategy that is helping creators build smarter businesses and bigger audiences. Frequent creators, in particular, remain our North Star and an important focus of our strategy. For the third quarter, paid ticket volume from frequent creators nearly doubled from a year ago. Approximately two-thirds of paid ticket volume came from these creators who host at least one event a month. As more creators return to the platform to reactivate their event series, they want our help to build and engage new audiences. Launched this year, Eventbrite Boost meets this need. Early data shows that in some categories, creators are seeing a lift of 25% in ticket volume after using Boost to help market their events. And we are excited to keep adding features and functionality to Boost that will help users reach more audiences in a simple and efficient way. In our most recent product release, we've made the campaign setup process more seamless and intuitive by using data about the creator and their events to generate personalized recommendations. The automation and customization makes it easier than ever for event entrepreneurs to launch campaigns regardless of their experience level. Our future releases will focus on making event marketing easier and more effective for the small business owner. As the world awakens from the isolation of the pandemic and people look for great things to do together, we see an opportunity to directly support our customers in building their businesses. Year to date, the reach and visibility of our platform has helped drive more than $350 million in gross ticket sales for our creators' content. In our view, demand generation can be a natural extension of our focus on marketing and audience growth. We are thinking strategically about the right way to ship these capabilities to our customers. Meanwhile, creators of free events can also benefit from participating in our marketing services while continuing to use our core ticketing function at no cost. Free tickets were 74% of our total transactions for the third quarter, and we are excited to explore ways to deepen our engagement with this cohort and potentially develop these avenues for future monetization. Extending beyond our platform, we are also leading the global community of experienced creators in two distinct ways. First, after a very successful virtual customer summit called Reconvene in May, we are continuing the momentum by hosting Reconvene Sessions. This program of ongoing in-person and virtual events are tailored toward the event community. They provide a vital forum to share ideas, foster community, and accelerate business growth. Second, we are lending our voice to the ongoing movement to relieve the mental health impact of social isolation. I'm proud to announce that Eventbrite recently joined the coalition to end social isolation and loneliness. We aim to increase awareness of this timely issue and advocate for live events as a way to improve social connectedness. We believe this work directly supports our mission to bring the world together through live experiences. We look forward to working with our partners to advance this important cause. The entire Eventbrite team is thankful to have the partnership of our creators, our employees, and our shareholders as we strive to build the best self-service ticketing and marketing solution for event creators and event goers. We are proud of what we've achieved and excited to keep you updated on our progress. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Lanny.