Eventbrite, Inc.

Good afternoon, and thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Eventbrite first quarter fiscal year 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in 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. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Miss Catherine Chen, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon and welcome to Eventbrite's first quarter 2023 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 get started, 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, May 9th, 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 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, adjusted EBITDA margin, and available liquidity, which are 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, which contains important information about GAAP and on GAAP results. And with that, I'll now turn the call over to Julia Hartz, co-founder and chief executive officer.

Thanks, Katherine, and thank you to everyone for joining our call today. We're off to a great start in 2023 with strong first quarter performance. We powered nearly $1 billion in gross ticket sales as consumer demand for live events kept growing. Revenue was up 39% versus last year, which was the highest quarterly level in three years. We're also seeing great returns from improving the product experience and platform capabilities focused on creators of frequent events. Adjusted EBITDA was positive for the seventh quarter in a row while we made meaningful investments in demand generation growth. In fact, revenue from boost in ads tripled year over year. It's exciting to see that positive momentum in our marketplace strategy, and I think meaningful value creation is ahead as we seize that opportunity. In the first quarter, we grew our reach to 172,000 paid event creators, which was 27% higher than a year ago. In fact, we actually accelerated creator acquisition growth to the highest level in a year and added 115,000 new creators in the first quarter. These creators connected to 11 million consumers who bought 23 million paid tickets, which represents 28% year-over-year growth. People want to connect with other people through local and unique events, and the demand for great things to do with friends continues to grow. In the first quarter, we ticketed 1.5 million free and paid events across a wide variety of categories and geos. Consumer growth in the first quarter at 17%, was 10 points higher than the average growth in 2022. We continue to add tremendous value by connecting creators to consumer demand. Eventbrite driven demand accounted for over $200 million of gross ticket sales during the first quarter. For the average creator, that means roughly 20% of their ticketing income is associated with listing on Eventbrite. But the value of each additional ticket buyer goes far beyond the face value of the ticket. Our recent creator survey showed that over 50% of average revenue for Eventbrite listed events comes from things like merchandise, food and beverage, and lead generation. Therefore, every single incremental person at an event represents not only an outsized economic value to our customers, but also pure profit margin once they've cleared the cost of producing the event. Additionally, over 25% of Boosted Ads customers run historically free ticketed events where the revenue is somewhere else in the event, just not in the ticket. This is obviously an exciting opportunity for us to monetize that event inventory, which is critical to our marketplace. We are dedicated to always improving our product experience. As we've accelerated our marketplace strategy, our product execution is anchored in a deep empathy for our customers. We've made good strides in our delivery pace and positive impact of the product improvements. but our work is far from over and we remain focused on helping creators drive demand for their live events and get time back by making the product easier to use. While the improvements to the current experience were plentiful in the first quarter at over 20 updates, I want to take a moment to highlight four areas of significant improvement. First, we've rolled out AI to some of the most important areas of the product where user-generated content is key to enable our creators to be more successful. Starting with Boost, we already see creators who use AI assistance with social paid ad copy launch their campaigns 30% faster. These creators also are launching nearly three times as many campaigns because of the efficiency and the effectiveness. We're fast following with AI generated features on our event listings page, the most trafficked part of Eventbrite. This will meaningfully drive down the amount of time it takes to create a new event and will likely improve conversion. Second, we expanded the surface areas for Eventbrite ads, which is a way for creators to promote their listings in high intent discovery experiences on Eventbrite. We rolled out ads on category and city browse, which have quickly become the two highest performing pages for Eventbrite ads click-through rates. We also expanded the availability of ads to new markets in Canada and Australia. Third, we made it easier for creators to understand where their sales are coming from and which channels drove the most amount of traffic and highest conversion. This dashboard report also helps highlight Eventbrite's contribution to driving ticket sales and purchase conversion rates as we reinforce our marketplace positioning. Fourth, we have made event listings more beautiful and engaging with the addition of image carousels and video. We've seen quick adoption of this feature, with over 20% of new listings taking advantage of a better way to showcase the vibe of their event. We are also pleased to see positive impact to our creators' businesses from improvements we've made prior to Q1. Ads alone delivered close to 55 million impressions in less than a year since launch. And combined, boost in ads grew year over year to exit Q1 at an $8 million annualized run rate. Additionally, our redesigned Follow feature is drawing 40% more clicks from consumers who want to follow their favorite creators. We're committed to continuous improvement and delivery, and taken together, the compounding effect of these improvements is yielding greater consumer engagement. Website and app combined traffic is up 36% year-over-year, and MAUs on the mobile app is at an all-time high. Keeping the needs and goals of our customers at the center of all we do is driving retention. I hear more and more comments from customers who recognize and appreciate the constant improvement over the last three years, which is excellent. Last, before I turn the call to Lani, I'd like to take a moment and acknowledge a few recognitions. Eventbrite was recently named one of Fast Company's 50 Most Innovative Companies And our Social Connection Project was featured on its 2023 World Changing Ideas list. The Social Connection Project is Eventbrite's initiative to help people feel less isolated and more connected through the power of live experiences. We are joining with leading partners like U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy to combat loneliness, which is our next public health crisis. We are working to design practical interventions and inspire event creators to be agents of positive change. Our newly published corporate responsibility report details all of our hard work in these important areas. I'm proud of all we've achieved and feel truly honored to work with teammates who live these values every day. Now, Lanny will discuss our Q1 results and Q2 outlook. Lanny?