Following a July report that claimed Eventbrite Inc. has secretly filed for an initial public offering, the online ticketing giant today officially announced plans to join this year’s tech IPO wave.

Eventbrite will debut on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “EB.” The company hopes to raise as much as $200 million through the offering, which will add to the more than $330 million it has received so far from private investors. Eventbrite’s backers include T. Rowe Price Group Inc. and Sequoia.

Eventbrite has used the capital it raised from investors to build an event management juggernaut that, according to the IPO filing, processed 203 million tickets in 2017 alone.  The company’s website provides the ability to set up landing pages for everything from industry conferences to wine tastings. Eventbrite also gives event organizers access to various tools including a homegrown payment processing system.

The company monetizes its service by charging a fee for every ticket sold. According to the IPO filing, Eventbrite lost $38.6 million in 2017 on revenues of $201.6 million, which amounted to a 51 percent sales increase over the previous year. The figure included $27.5 million in extra revenue that the company gained after acquiring rivals Ticketfly and Ticketscript.

Eventbrite hopes that investors will be willing to overlook the losses on account of its rapid sales growth. This strategy has worked out for a number of the other tech firms that went public recently. Spotify Technologies SA’s shares immediately jumped 26 percent after it debuted the New York Stock Exchange in April, while Dropbox Inc. managed to raise a massive $756 million.

Besides the fact that Eventbrite is unprofitable, potential investors will no doubt take into account the strong competition it faces. The company’s rivals range from big names such as Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc. to niche providers focused on specific event types. Moreover, it warned in the SEC filing that major tech firms could potentially join the fray as well in the future.

“For instance, large e-commerce companies such as eBay and Amazon have in the past, or currently, operate within the ticketing space,” Eventbrite’s filing reads. “In addition, other large companies with large user-bases that have substantial event-related activity may be successful in adding a product in this space, such as Facebook, Google and Twitter. These competitors may be better able to undertake more extensive marketing campaigns and/or offer their solutions and services at a discount to ours.”

Eventbrite didn’t provide a time frame for the IPO. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Allen & Co. are acting as underwriters for the offering. 

Photo: Eventbrite