Eventbrite, Inc.

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Eventbrite Inc. Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and we will open the floor for your questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Katie Pickett, Investor Relations at Eventbrite Inc. Ma'am, the floor is yours.

Good afternoon, and welcome to Eventbrite's Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. My name is Katie Pickett, Investor Relations. With us today are Julia Hartz, our co-founder and chief executive officer, and Lani Baker, our chief operating and financial officer. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded and will be available for replay on Eventbrite's Investor Relations website at investor.eventbrite.com. Please also refer to our Investor Relations website to find our shareholder letter announcing our financial results, which was released prior to the call. Before we get started, I would like to remind you that during today's call, we'll be making forward-looking statements regarding future events and financial performance. We caution that such statements reflect our best judgment as of today, November 7th, based on the 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 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'll present adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin, 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 an 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 non-GAAP results. And with that, I'll now turn the call over to Julia.

Thank you, Katie, and welcome, everyone. In the third quarter, we delivered revenue of $77.8 million, exceeding our outlook range. Importantly, our strategic actions are driving clear results. New creator acquisition is accelerating following our September pricing changes. Our win-back campaign is seeing early success. and our enhanced product offerings are attracting both creators and consumers. We've strengthened our financial position while continuing to invest in growth, and the third quarter revenue upside is flowing into our updated full-year outlook. I'd like to frame our progress through three key priorities. First, returning to growth in our core ticketing business is our top priority, and this begins with attracting more creators and events to our marketplace. Following changes to our pricing model in September, we're observing early signs of stabilization. Our expanded free tier, which allows creators to publish unlimited events without upfront fees, has begun to show impact. Paid events return to year-over-year growth in the month of launch. We're seeing positive trends in key metrics. Creator acquisition, event volume, and ticket transactions are improving across both free and paid events. Our returning creator base is trending more consistently with historical patterns, and we believe these improvements combined with our win-back initiatives will strengthen our marketplace over time. Let me bring this to life with a concrete example of the type of creator we're focused on winning. Mega Events, one of our largest partners in EMEA, exemplifies the creative entrepreneurship we aim to support. They've pioneered an innovative concept called Silent Discos in Incredible Places, hosting events in unexpected venues like museums, caves, airfields, and even cathedrals. What's particularly compelling about mega events is how they consistently tap into cultural trends and scale them effectively across multiple markets. Under the leadership of founder Nathan Reed, they've become an important partner by understanding what people want to do and making it happen on a massive scale. This type of strategic inventory not only drives significant ticket volume, but also attracts new audiences to our platform, strengthening our marketplace flywheel. The success of creators like Mega Events validates our strategy. of investing in both innovative features and enhanced support capabilities to serve high-value creators who can scale rapidly across markets. Building on this type of creator success, we're pursuing an active win-back campaign with encouraging results. With a steady cadence of targeted email marketing, paid advertising, and in-product messaging, we're communicating not only about the expanded free tier but also about compelling new features and our growing demand generation capabilities. Since early September, former Eventbrite customers we have won back have sold more than three quarters of a million paid tickets on our platform, and we see significant opportunity ahead. We plan to continue these campaigns into the fourth quarter as we strengthen our sales motion, product capability, and support offerings. Our sales team is driving marketplace growth through strategic inventory expansion. With new leadership in place, we closed $4.5 million in new bookings this quarter, with significant pipeline improvements across music, food and drink, and comedy shows. We're particularly encouraged by our momentum in holiday and New Year's Eve events, which are key drivers of consumer engagement. Complementing our sales efforts, we're transforming our creator support model. Through technology improvements and adding a second support center, We've achieved an 80% reduction in response times and expanded to 24-7 phone support for premium creators. These enhancements, combined with redesigned onboarding and expanded customer success coverage, have yielded strong renewal rates among our larger creators. Our second key priority is enhancing the Eventbrite experience with product capabilities. Two weeks ago, we introduced Timed Entry, which is designed to give creators greater control over managing the flow of attendees. Let me bring to life how this new functionality is already creating value for creators and driving marketplace growth. Unicorn World, created by Patrick and Lauren Mines, offers an immersive, family-friendly adventure complete with life-size animatronic unicorns and interactive experiences. They're exactly the type of innovative creator who benefits from our new timed entry capabilities as they manage large crowds across multiple time slots throughout their event days. Currently hosting events in three to four cities per month on Eventbrite, they're continually expanding their tour dates to bring their experience to more communities. The success of creators like Unicorn World demonstrates the significant opportunity we see in the experiential events market. Since launching timed entry in beta this August, we've seen strong initial uptake among larger and more frequent creators, particularly in categories such as music, food and drink, and seasonal events. In total, creators who have adopted timed entry have already generated nearly 400,000 tickets, validating our strategy of expanding into new segments of the event market with sophisticated ticketing needs. This leads me to our third key priority, executing our vision to become the indispensable live experiences marketplace. These product innovations and early successes reflect our broader vision and are focused on the strategic pillars that will drive our transformation over the longer term. First, we're evolving into a consumer-centered brand with a particular focus on social scouts, the 21 to 35 year olds who actively seek out and share unique local experiences. This demographic is twice as likely to discover events through Eventbrite and significantly more likely to attend with friends, creating powerful network effects. Second, we're building a managed marketplace that matches supply and demand at the local level. This means not just connecting creators and consumers, but also ensuring high quality inventory that resonates with our target audience. The success of mega events in Unicorn World exemplifies the type of innovative, scalable experiences we aim to bring to more communities. Third, we're expanding our distribution and reach to meet consumers where they are. This is where our TikTok partnership comes in. It's a prime example of how we're extending our platform to reach younger audiences, actively seeking unique experiences to share with friends. In the third quarter, the number of consumers coming to Eventbrite to search for local events grew by nearly 20% compared to last year. To further strengthen our consumer experience, we are excited about our plans to introduce a reimagined mobile app to the market. Currently in live beta testing, this new app will launch early next year and is designed to enhance personalization, discovery, and consumer engagement. Notably, we see the greatest consumer engagement and purchase frequency within our mobile app, where logged-in usage is higher, localization and personalization can be stronger, and consumer purchase frequency is twice as great as on our web surfaces. These strategic pillars drive our marketplace flywheel. By focusing on creators who host popular events in major cities, we're building a self-reinforcing cycle of growth. The results are clear. Creators using our marketing tools show 27% higher revenue and stronger retention. More than 10,000 creators now use Eventbrite ads monthly, and 1 in 10 subscribe to enhanced marketing capabilities. As creators succeed, they become more loyal, attracting more consumers, who in turn draw more high-quality creators to our platform. As we execute our marketplace transformation, we're also announcing an important leadership update designed to support our next phase of growth. I'm excited to welcome Anand Gandhi as our new Chief Financial Officer. Anand will join us from Viator, where he helped transform financial performance while more than doubling revenue. Anand brings valuable perspectives from across the consumer entertainment landscape, including Disney, Fox, Viacom, and Time, as well as experience scaling high growth platforms as the CFO of Skillshare. Anand's appointment enables Lanny to focus on his role as chief operating officer, where he'll drive revenue generation and lead our sales and customer experience teams. Lanny has been a valued partner since joining as CFO in 2019, and this transition leverages his strengths in driving operational excellence. We look forward to welcoming Anan on November 19th. Let me close with our clear path forward. Our strategic initiatives are delivering tangible results through accelerating event creation and successful win-back campaigns. We're well positioned to capture the opportunity ahead with enhanced platform capabilities, strong distribution partnerships, and financial discipline. We remain confident in our ability to deliver increasing value for creators, consumers, and shareholders. I would like to thank our Breitlings for their hard work and dedication this year as we set the stage to deliver on our strategy and drive profitable long-term growth. And with that, I'll turn it over to Lanny to walk you through our third quarter results and our outlook for the fourth quarter. Lanny?