This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
spk08: Good afternoon. Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Eventbrite first quarter fiscal year 2022 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 one 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.
spk01: good afternoon and welcome to eventbrite's first quarter fiscal year 2022 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 april 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 and adjusted EBITDA margin, non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures are not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles and have limitations as an analytical tool. You should not consider them in isolation or as a substitute for analysis of our 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.
spk03: Thank you, Catherine, and thank you everyone for joining us today. I hope you and your families are healthy and that you've been able to get back out and enjoy the thrill of live events once again. As I look at the progress we've made in the first quarter, I'm feeling increasingly confident about our strategy, our connection to creators, and the products we're building for them. Our entire team is united around a singular focus to build the best marketing and ticketing platform for frequent creators. Our momentum toward that goal is feeling tangible success for creators on our platform, and we believe our impact will be amplified as live events continue to rebound. A few numbers from our first quarter illustrates these key takeaways. We grew the number of paid creators transacting on our platform by 60% year to year, thanks to the ongoing recovery of live events and the accumulating strength of our product and marketing investments. We then converted that 60% growth in paid creators into a 76% increase in paid tickets by focusing on the needs of frequent creators and helping them connect with even larger audiences. And we leveraged 76% growth in paid tickets to achieve 100% increase in revenue, thanks to an uptick in average ticket value and take rate improved by product advances and sustainable business model improvements. Now, when you combine that revenue flywheel together with expanding gross margins, strong operating leverage, and our third consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA, you can see why we're excited about our strategy and our momentum. Going a layer deeper, we have delivered several key product wins this quarter, and this is where our product-led strategy is delivering impact above and beyond the recovery of our industry. We rolled out a brand new and much improved creator navigation experience during the first quarter, and already nearly half of the creators have adopted this upgraded user experience. Many customers are reporting their new discovery of existing features that they simply had never known about. Meanwhile, adoption of calendar, collections, and more advanced reporting functionalities are increasing, and we believe these deepening usage patterns will help strengthen customer retention over time. We introduced a new paid email feature within Boost at the start of the quarter, and this premium-priced offering is proving to be just as highly popular among creators as we anticipated. Since January, more than one-third of Boost new subscribers have been drawn in by premium paid email. Our creators' total email campaign volume has increased by more than 50% over the same time frame. One of our featured creators, Matt Orlov, is producing some of the most sought-after parties in the country right now. He has over 91,000 email subscribers in Los Angeles alone. Prior to using Eventbrite's premium email campaign tool, he struggled to get a strong click-through rate for his weekly emails. Now Orlov estimates that emails sent via Boost are three times more effective than other services he's tried because his customers trust the Eventbrite brand. We also upgraded Boost's social media marketing features in the quarter, adding AI-generated keyword recommendations and automated audience targeting. Both of these features save creators time and leverage Eventbrite's extensive live events data. Creators have now marketed more than 30,000 events via Boost, and the average return on ad spend among these users has been an attractive five to one return. The last set of T1 product wins I'll call out today center on improving the customer checkout experience. Upgrades to the ticket buyer payment experience have lifted checkout conversion rates and delivered a direct sales volume benefit to our creators. We also added Apple Pay in our largest markets in the first quarter, And this too shows encouraging signs for conversion rates. When we step back and take the full measure of our product initiatives, a few key themes stand out. First, our focus on frequent creators means that our product roadmap addresses the needs of the largest and broadest set of creators in our market. As a result, new products we introduce are making faster, wider ripples across a large base of valuable customers. Second, our commitment to delivering a self-service product experience means we are continually redesigning for greater ease and efficiency. These are value propositions that resonate with busy creators and strengthen our user loyalty. And third, our close connection to our creators means that we have an intimate understanding of their needs and expectations. This reduces the risk and increases the probability of success associated with our product investment decisions. While the creators we serve are often individuals or small, nimble teams, our platform serves these businesses collectively at enormous scale. Over 300,000 creators chose Eventbrite to power nearly 1.4 million events during the first quarter. We transacted over 62 million tickets to these events, which translates to nearly 700,000 tickets processed every day all around the world. We believe our ticketing volume places Eventbrite at the top of our industry, and we are committed to extending our leadership position. Our commitment is not only to help new creators join the live experiences economy, but also to build a strong creator community where all participants can benefit. For example, we're extending our industry reach beyond our product investments into the vibrant community of creators who rely on Eventbrite. In Q1, we announced the launch of two new programs aligned with our customers, the Creator Collective and the Reconvene Accelerator. The Creator Collective is an ambassador program for established event influencers to connect with us and each other, setting the agenda for our Reconvene Summit and Series and amplifying their work across our marketing channels. The Reconvene Accelerator will sponsor emerging creators with grants and mentorship opportunities. These initiatives generate valuable insight for our product development team to incorporate into our roadmap. Looking ahead, we'll continue investing in our frequent creator tools as we also lean into a continuous release cycle for Eventbrite Boost. We're developing Boost into a comprehensive solution for both paid and free creators to manage their events, engage their communities, and raise their brand awareness. Features like organic social media, new social media integrations, and promoted content are all in different stages of development, and we look forward to updating you on these in the future. Demand generation within Boost is an attractive opportunity with strong interest and appeal among our creators. We're making progress on product development here and actively assessing the best paths to monetization. Eventbrite-driven tickets are already a valuable benefit for creators who host events on our platform. These tickets made up 26% of total ticket volume in the first quarter. That's equivalent to over $174 million in gross ticket sales. That's a remarkable number that really highlights the existing sophistication of our demand generation capabilities. It's also why we're so encouraged about the impact we can drive for creators as they work to build bigger audiences. Another area of Eventbrite leadership will be our social impact program. As everyone on this call knows, our mission is to bring the world together through live experiences. And an important offshoot of that mission is the impact we can have on combating the negative mental health consequences of social isolation. We believe we're uniquely positioned to activate creators and events on our platform to help alleviate isolation, especially among young people. We'll have more details to share when the program launches next month. We're kicking off 2022 with strong financial results that reflect the recovery of live events accentuated by the impact of our product-led strategy. Like me, our whole team is energized by the progress we've achieved and the opportunity ahead. Our product roadmap will accelerate throughout the year with marketing tools and demand generation shifting upwards on our priority list. And we remain well positioned in a highly attractive market as the leading ticketing solution for independent entrepreneurial creators. These are the people who are fueling the next phase of growth for live events. And our team is laser focused on this momentum. We're excited to share more details about our strategy and see many of you in person at our investor day on June 2nd. As we look forward to those updates, I have one more important announcement to share today. We're always looking for new perspectives and expertise to inform our strategy and strengthen decision making. Our board of directors is highly engaged in these areas, and I'm thrilled to announce that April Underwood has been nominated to join our board later this year. April is an experienced public company board director and has a wealth of product knowledge gathered through her impressive career at places such as Slack, Twitter, and Google. On behalf of the entire team, I want to thank our creators our employees, and our shareholders for your ongoing support and dedication. Now let me turn the call over to Lanny.
spk07: Thank you, Julia. As you just said, our strong first quarter financial results reflect clear strategy, focused execution, and the inherent strength of a product-driven business model that places the needs of our customers at its very core. It's not a coincidence that our own strong growth in the first quarter of 2022 comes at the same time that creators on our platform are attaining new heights in their businesses. Specifically, paid tickets per creator and gross ticket sales per creator both grew at double-digit rates year-to-year in the first quarter, a clear sign of the success creators are having on our platform. First quarter revenue of $55.9 million more than doubled last year's first quarter results. and surpassed our expectations for the period. As the external environment for live events improved after early February, and with our own product and marketing investments contributing to creator acquisition and volume growth, we achieved strong month-over-month growth throughout the first quarter. In fact, after a relatively slow start in January, March 2022 was the best month for gross ticket sales and for revenue that we've seen since the pandemic hit in early 2020. The revenue growth we achieved in the first quarter can be linked right back to the key business metrics we've shared with you, as these really are the gears that drive our revenue engine. Over 135,000 event creators ticketed and marketed nearly 440,000 paid events on our platform during the quarter, increases of 60 and 32% respectively over last year's first quarter. In March, we surpassed 100,000 monthly transacting creators for the first time since early 2020. And for the quarter, the number of paid frequent creators grew by 40% year to year. With more frequent creators on our platform, the number of paid events per creator averaged 3.2 events for the quarter. up from 2.7 events in the same quarter of 2019 prior to the pandemic. Paid tickets per event improved by 34% over last year's first quarter, reflecting strong consumer demand, as well as our ability to connect creators with audiences. Average ticket value grew 5% year over year, reaching its highest level in two years. And finally, our revenue take rate improved by more than half a percentage point year over year, which helped propel revenue per ticket to $3.09 for the quarter, which is above what we saw even in the two years prior to COVID. Turning to the profitability side of the equation, gross margin was 64.3% in the first quarter, nearly 14 percentage points higher than a year ago. driven by higher revenue against the partially fixed cost of revenue structure. Total operating expenses grew 26% year to year, reflecting purposeful investments into our product and our team. Almost 40% of our operating expenses are now dedicated to product development. We're managing all expenses carefully amidst what has been a highly competitive talent market and in an environment where our revenue has been growing 100% plus year to year. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $2.4 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 4%, compared to a loss of $8.5 million in the first quarter of 2021. Comparing that year to year change in adjusted EBITDA to the year to year increase in revenue in the first quarter, We delivered a revenue flow-through rate in the high 30% in the first quarter, which aligns with our objectives for driving adjusted EBITDA profitability and sustainable margin improvement as ticket volume and revenue grow through time. Finally, our balance sheet is also strong at the end of the first quarter. We ended the quarter with $710 million in cash and cash equivalents and net liquidity of $355 million. ample funding to support our investments and our growth objectives. Turning to our business outlook, based on the information and expectations we have today, we anticipate second quarter revenue to be between $60 and $63 million, representing double-digit growth at the midpoint over our first quarter results. This outlook reflects a stronger Q1 to Q2 revenue progression than we've seen historically pre-pandemic. And the primary factor behind that difference is the softness we saw at the start of the first quarter. We are prepared for the possibility that COVID-related impacts could lead to greater than normal month-to-month volatility in results. Longer term, the product and customer momentum we've built up over the last 24 months and our higher than anticipated first quarter results provide real encouragement that our product-led strategy can lead to strong and sustainable revenue growth. accompanied by steady margin improvement. We look forward to taking a much deeper dive into our long-term growth strategy and our financial plan when we meet live on June 2nd at our Investor Day. And with that, I'll turn the call over to the operator for the question and answer portion of the call.
spk08: Absolutely. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you would like to remove that question, please press star followed by two. Again, to ask a question, it is star one. As a reminder, if you're using a speaker phone today, please remember to pick up your handset before asking your question. We will pause here briefly as questions are registered. Our first question goes to Ryan Sunbee with William Blair. Ryan, your line is open. Please go ahead.
spk09: Yeah, thanks. Hey, Julia. Hey, Manny. Hey, Catherine. Thanks for the questions. Yeah, really great to see revenue and paid ticket volume succeed expectations, despite, I guess, all the hedge funds we've seen so far this year. I think in the shareholder letter, you talked about a surge in events from January to March as Omicron is playing. Can you just zoom in a little bit more and talk about what that recovery looked like inter-quarter? Because I would assume a lot of those 18 million paid tickets were heavily weighted to March, which sounds like the best month since the start of the pandemic.
spk07: Ryan, you're right. March was the best month that we've seen since the start of the pandemic, and particularly so in the face value of tickets and in the volume of tickets as well as transacting creators. So it's a really strong month. Now, normally the progression from December to January to February to March is kind of like a 5% increase in January and then a 5% increase in February and then a stronger kind of mid-teens increase in March. This year we saw it. a big downtick between December and January. It's hard to remember now, but that's really when Omicron was sweeping across the entire United States and putting a real restriction on local gatherings. But that abated, and we saw probably three, four, five times as much month-over-month growth in February and March as we normally see in those months. But if you sort of put it all together, Ryan, I think that's where I think the real – kind of the big takeaway comes because the month-to-month stuff is not so interesting. If we look at where we are in March relative to where we were in December, we're about 10-plus points ahead of where we'd be normally under kind of normal seasonality. So we've fully come back and then some. And I think, as we said, a lot of that can be attributed to the product momentum, the marketing momentum, and the leadership that we have in the category that really seems to be helping us out in this improved environment. That's great to hear.
spk09: Nice to see it all come together. On the revenue per ticket reaching its highest quarterly level since 2018, I think there are a couple factors there. Higher average ticket values, improved take rate, decline in ticket refund activity. Could you resize each of those for us? And then I guess with the improved take rate, is that due to a change in pricing or mix, or is that more of a reflection of some of the new tools you've added with things like Boost?
spk07: It's not really due to Boost, so let me try to break it down. The take rate has improved primarily because of focus on frequent creators, and the product market fit that we have between our software, our solution, our platform, and frequent creators, it's valued by frequent creators very, very highly. They are our wheelhouse, and there's a strong recognition of Eventbrite being the solution for them. Certainly helps from a pricing perspective. Secondly, we have seen a little bit of an improvement in ticket price, about 5% year over year, but the year to year increase in revenue per ticket has been kind of low teens. So you can think of it as five points of improvement in the price of the ticket and another call it seven or eight points in growth from the take rate And that improvement in the take rate has had, there's a little bit of a reduction in the reserve, or sorry, refund activity. But I think more than anything else, it's been really kind of that focus on our core customers who value the product most highly. And frankly, if you look back, we compared the revenue per ticket to where we were in 2018 and 2019. And we did that to show that we're, number one, to explain to people, hey, we're at a level that we haven't been at before. And number two, when we think, and any customer looks at the difference in our product today versus where it was in 2018, 2019, we've made substantial progress. And I think that's what's being reflected in the revenue per ticket.
spk09: Got it. And maybe last one for me. It sounds like you're seeing free and paid traders take up more of these tools like calendars. On the free side, are you starting to see the adoption of those tools start to drive conversion end of page yet, or are we maybe too early for that?
spk03: One of the things about the free event creators that we like is that they're discovering the capability to market their events and reach a wider audience through Boost. So 20% of Boost customers today are free event creators. And Boost is a paid subscription service. So it's really the first time in Eventbrite's history where we've been able to offer something of great value to professional creators who are hosting free events, and they are paying for that value, which includes particularly the ability to market their events efficiently out in social media, as well as Most notably, what's driven this uptick in free creator adoption of Boost has been our premium email campaign. So we're seeing an increase of about 50% volume of our premium email versus our legacy email tool. And predominantly, that's speaking to these creators of large free events. Where the revenue is not necessarily in the ticket price, That's why it's a free event. But the revenue is actually elsewhere within the event. So it's either lead gen or it's food and beverage or it's, you know, merchandise. So we'll continue to lean into that opportunity. And that's really what we saw as some early signals here in the quarter. In terms of conversion from free to paid, Ryan, I would say that what helps us on that is building trust with those creators such that they're bringing over their paid events. and then also giving them insight into what they could be making if they charged a ticket price for their event. But that's a longer cycle. That's not something that we'll see right away, usually when somebody signs up on the platform.
spk09: That makes sense. Yeah, see you guys in June. Thanks.
spk03: Thanks, Ryan.
spk08: Thank you, Ryan. Our next question goes to Cameron Perrone with Morgan Stanley. Cameron, your line is open. Please go ahead.
spk10: Thank you for taking the question. Hey, guys. First, on growth margin, understanding that it was up year over year, it ticked down a little bit sequentially. So, anything you guys can call out there, or should we just expect to see a little bit of noise in that quarter to quarter? To follow up on the paid ARPU strength for the 5% contribution coming from kind of core price call it, are there types of creators or events that you can kind of intentionally foster to drive rate? Or is it, you know, on the core pricing front, kind of less of a managed outcome?
spk07: Sure. I'll take the first one, the gross margin, Kim. The, you know, if you look at where we were in the fourth quarter to where we were in the first quarter, half of the change in gross margin was just due to the change in revenue level against some of the fixed costs that exist within cost of revenue. So that piece, as we recover from where we were at the very start of the year and start to scale, ticket volume and revenue higher, that piece will reverse, I think, pretty quickly. They're also at the start of the year in that Omicron environment with a little bit higher refund activity. We anticipate a little bit higher refund activity. So there's another small portion of the gross margin comparison first quarter versus fourth quarter that included a higher reserve rate for future refunds. That, too, should sort of unwind in a more normal environment. And then the last small difference were some of the composition of where ticket sales were occurring geographically. Not every part of the world has the exact same transaction processing costs, and we had a little bit more volume in some of our more expensive markets this quarter relative to the last quarter. I think, you know, kind of zooming out on that question from the month to month and quarter picture, you know, we've said it before and we'll say it again, our cost base within, there's a portion of the gross profit that is fixed. Most of it is, sorry, the cost of revenue that is fixed. The variable expenses are about 25 cents on the dollar. And so as the dollars, as the revenue dollars grow, we would expect that the gross margin continues to move upward kind of in a gradual and steady rate to a number in the high 60 to 70% range.
spk02: Got it. Helpful.
spk07: Yeah, great. On your second question, I'll take a start and then, Julia, you can add to this. The strength that we've seen so far in the revenue per ticket and in the take rate, it really does reflect a focus, a customer focus. And that is, it sort of stands to reason that your primary customers who value your product the most, for whom it is the best solution and the tightest fit to all of their needs, are the place where you face, we see, we enjoy the best pricing. We have, you know, there have been other parts, kind of the fringes of our model where we've had, you know, had to discount in the past that we don't have to discount today. The competitive dynamic has changed. So really what you've seen from a pricing perspective is a focus on the healthiest customers and on the best customers in the marketplace, rather than any, you know, step function change on pricing that we've taken. We haven't done that. As Julia talked about a moment ago, boost is an incremental phase or premium email product is an incremental fee. And those things over time will drive the take rate. They're very, very small today. In terms of your question about different types of events that we could think about, Julia, maybe you could talk about that.
spk03: Sure. So typically speaking, we see higher ticket prices in music, in business, professional events, as well as bigger episodic events. And so I think as the mix shift continues to play out, as events start coming back, as businesses start thinking about hosting more conferences, as music venues are opening up more shows, and then as, you know, bigger gatherings where you see sort of more of the, you know, 1,000 to 10,000 people gathering around a festival start to come back, I think we'll start to see a stronger average ticket price. And we will see, you know, our revenue scale with that. I would say that Lani's point on delivering value to our customers and them understanding that value is a key point for us in any pricing scenario. So when I talk to creators today, they're really appreciating Eventbrite for our brand value. So their customers are opening emails from them when they're sending it through Eventbrite. because they recognize the brand, they're trusting that event because the event is on Eventbrite. So a lot of our customers use the words validating and they're seeing what we're doing in marketing and they're getting really excited about it. So it's early days for us to be pushing into marketing and demand generation, but the savvy frequent creators that we're focused on can see what we're doing and they want this help. So the value conversation is shifting. And I think that will be a really good thing for us as we think about pricing in the future and how we deliver this great product.
spk02: Makes a lot of sense. Thank you, Julia. That's all I had. Thanks, guys.
spk03: Thanks, Cam.
spk02: Take care.
spk08: Thank you, Cam. Our next question goes to Lamont Williams with Stifel. Lamont, your line is open. Please go ahead.
spk04: Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. The first question is, is there anything you can discuss about April? It seems that we've seen some COVID kind of disurgence in some markets. And I just kind of get a feel of if the transition after a strong March has kind of turned it up and continued into April or haven't kind of seen a little bit of dislocation with some of the COVID disurgence. And then secondly, Manny, in terms of kind of the investments that you're doing in product development and some higher headcount costs? Is there any kind of color you can give us around the progression of the investment kind of over the next couple of quarters through the balance of the year?
spk07: Sure. I think, you know, April, we haven't made any comments about April. I'm not going to do it right now, but I would say comparing what we're seeing right now with Omicron 2, with COVID to what we saw in January and February is like not even a close comparison. It's hard now to remember, but if you do spend a minute, just go look at any of the graphs of the infection rates that were prevailing in late December and into January on COVID. It was a straight up line there for several weeks that really was changing the life gathering marketplace. And we don't see that happening. And as we've said now for kind of two years, you can take a pretty, you know, there's a pretty direct reverse, inverse correlation between a surge in COVID and a decline in ticket purchases for live events as well as a lot of other things. But you're just not seeing that kind of case count right now. So it hasn't been so far, you know, hasn't been much of a disturbance at the end of the first quarter. In terms of our investment in product development and headcount, We're really excited. We've made over 150 hires since the start of this year. The bulk of that has been engineering and into some really key engineering roles that go from the back end and our data teams through the frequent creator kind of core product offering and particularly into some of the things that we're talking a lot about around boost and demand generation and the consumer side of our business. We're really excited about the progress we've been able to make there. It's been purposeful. It's been planned out for this year and, frankly, as part of kind of a three-year strategy that we've been talking about now. So I think you'll see a fairly steady progression there as we continue to add to the team that's bringing the product to market. That's the difference between the external environment and the growth rate of the company, which is getting clearer and clearer.
spk00: Okay, thank you.
spk08: Thank you, Lamont. Our last question goes to Dave Lee with JPMorgan. Dave, your line is open. Please go ahead.
spk05: Great. Thanks for taking the questions. I have two. First one for Julia. Feels like pent-up demand and desire to connect are clearly driving strong momentum in your business, but I guess looking ahead, investors are increasingly concerned about macro factors, including inflation weighing on consumer demand. As we look ahead to peak event season, how do you feel about the durability of the strong momentum that you're seeing in the business right now? And are you seeing any signs of consumer demand softening in your business? And then secondly, for Lani, I'm sorry to go back to net revenue per pay ticket again, but judging by what you said so far, it feels like the drivers of the strong performance this quarter appears to be sustainable. So as we look ahead, is this a good level of net revenue per page that you can expect from your business?
spk03: Yeah, thanks so much for the question. So when I look ahead at what we're all facing in terms of, you know, an impending recession and obviously the current inflation that we're experiencing, I'm not concerned about the durability and resilience of our business. And that's twofold. One is that we've already lived through a recessionary period as a company. In 2009, what we saw, obviously on a different scale than where we are today, but what we saw happening on the platform is people getting out and gathering even more. So there were a few different societal and secular trends that we saw going on during that time. One is that everybody... who was looking for a job needed to be out and be networking to find their next job. So we saw a huge rise of networking and professional skill building conferences and workshops. And the second thing is that we tended to see more event categories around hedonism rise, like music and food and beverage, interestingly enough. What we know about the consumer trends in our market where there are millions of events and the average ticket price is around $40 is that these types of gatherings and these behavioral trends that we've seen in the past have a high likelihood of repeating themselves in the future. The second thing is that since March of 2020, Eventbrite is a structurally different company. And as we've really thoughtfully built back from that place of taking $100 million plus out of our OpEx, we have built back in a much more resilient manner. I mean, you can see it in the way that we're investing, where we're investing in, how we're investing, and the profitability of the business. So I would say we're battle tested. We have a plan for the future that includes many different scenarios. And so that's what keeps me confident is both the longevity of Eventbrite and what we've seen in the past, as well as the preparation that we've taken for the future. And then finally, I'll just say that our event creators, the ones that are hosting these events that are happening multiple times a month and a week, they're small business owners that are very savvy and entrepreneurial, and they've been through a really tough period of time during COVID. And so the creators that are on the platform are the ones that have figured out how to operate through as tough of an environment as you can imagine in live experiences. So I have a lot of faith in them, and I know that those three factors will get us through the future.
spk07: On the takeaway question, and it's not just a takeaway question, it's really a unit economics of revenue per ticket. A couple things I'd say. Let's start with the ticket price. Our ticket price this quarter, you can see, was just below $40, $39.70. And if you were to go back to kind of 2018, 2019 there and look at the ticket prices that were prevailing at that time, there's another 10 or 15% growth in the average ticket value to get back to where we were previously. One thing we did see right at the start of COVID was because, I think because of the uncertainty of would an event happen, would it not happen, um there was some kind of across every category across every market across every format pricing in of some of that uncertainty that led to ticket prices kind of in every category in every format to come down a bit and that seems to be reversing right now so there's there's that kind of stuff call it 10 to 15 percent in ticket prices potentially um that's one part of the drivers of our revenue equation that you know we don't frankly control entirely that's really a matter of the product market fit between the creators the creator's creation and attendee interests, as well as their ability to market those events very, very well and drive demand for them. But there's that. Over the same timeframe, we've improved the take rate by probably three quarters of a percentage point. And I talked about that earlier. That's been a focus on high value customers and a lot of investment in improving the product so that it has a great fit. It's driving their success. We look at one of the first comments that I made in my prepared remarks was that tickets per creator and revenue per creator or ticket sales value per creator is that, you know, just it increases year over year. And when we're helping enable that, it's certainly helpful to sort of celebrate our product's effect in that success for creators. And that leads to a pricing color for us. And that's reflected in the take rates. As we look forward on the take rate, there's a little bit of room probably to continue to move it up on the core product. But I think the biggest opportunity for us is really some of the stuff that we've been talking about and Julia's talking about today around boost and around demand generation and bringing entirely new pockets of support and service and growth to the table for creators. And we know they have a interest in those things. They have a willingness to pay for demand generation. They have a willingness to, they have an ability to pay for incremental ticket sales. And those would be the places where I would look, we are looking for the most long-term upside in the take rate. So it's not really about kind of pricing on the core product. Our big opportunities are really to touch more and serve more of the creator's operating budget. And, you know, most creators spend between 20 and 40% of their budget on marketing. That's a very, very sizable, addressable market right next door to the part of the market that we're already addressing pretty profitably and with some real growth.
spk00: Okay, thanks for the insight, both. Thank you, Dave.
spk08: That concludes today's Eventbrite first quarter fiscal year 2022 earnings conference call. Thank you for your participation. You can now disconnect your lines.
Disclaimer