SEAT

Image source: The Motley Fool. Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2026 at 8:30 a.m. ET General Counsel - Austin Arnett Chief Executive Officer - Larry Fey Chief Financial Officer - Joe Thomas Operator: Good morning, and welcome to Vivid Seats' Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Following management's prepared remarks, we will open the call for Q&A. I would now like to turn the call over to Austin Arnett. Austin Arnett: Good morning, and welcome to Vivid Seats' Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. I am Austin Arnett, Vivid Seats' General Counsel. I'm joined today by Larry Fey, Chief Executive Officer, and Joe Thomas, Chief Financial Officer. By now, everyone should have access to the earnings press release we issued earlier this morning. The release and supplemental earnings slides are available on our Investor Relations website. Today's call will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. These statements are subject to risks that could cause actual results to differ materially, including those discussed in our earnings release, most recent annual report on Form 10-K, and subsequent filings with the SEC. Today's call will also include references to adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP financial measure. To the extent reasonably available, a reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to net income or loss, its most directly comparable GAAP financial measure, can be found in our earnings release and supplemental earnings slides. And now I'll turn the call over to Larry. Lawrence Fey: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Two quarters into the year, we are encouraged by the progress we have made and believe our strategic actions are delivering measurable results. Our second quarter results exceeded expectations as we delivered sequential quarterly growth across GOV, revenue, and adjusted EBITDA. Q2 benefited from extraordinary demand surrounding the FIFA World Cup with consumer engagement and transaction activity well above typical seasonal levels. Last quarter, we said that we expected the World Cup to generate demand somewhere between an A-List concert tour and Taylor Swift's record-breaking Eras Tour. The opportunity proved even more significant. The volume of activity was comparable to the entire Eras Tour, but largely concentrated into the second quarter rather than spread across 2 years. We successfully capitalized on the World Cup opportunity through our unique customer value proposition that is led by our lowest price guarantee and Vivid Seats Rewards Program. Perhaps more importantly, we met customer expectations throughout the tournament with a continued focus on operational excellence centered around a great customer experience. Customer stress levels were understandably elevated given the high price points and once-in-a-lifetime nature of World Cup matches. While the event organizers' newly implemented ticketing system introduced operational complexity, we maintained a greater than 99.7% successful fulfillment rate for World Cup orders sold through our marketplace. This achievement reflects the outstanding execution of our award-winning customer service and operations teams. As always, every purchase on our platform is backed by our 100% Buyer Guarantee, ensuring tickets are valid, accurate, and delivered before the event. Although we don't expect every quarter to benefit from this same level of marquee event activity, these exceptional moments are an exciting part of the live events ecosystem. Whether it's a record-setting global concert tour, a long-awaited championship run, or a major cultural event, these demand catalysts will continue to create meaningful opportunities for our business. As we look ahead, we remain focused on building momentum across our core business, executing our long-term strategy, and preparing for other seminal events like the 2028 Olympics. At the beginning of the year, we outlined a strategy focused on delivering differentiated value propositions to buyers and sellers while returning the business to sustainable growth. We will achieve those objectives by building and expanding upon Vivid Seats' core strengths, a leading customer value proposition, industry-leading seller technology, differentiated marketplace data and insights, and operational excellence. As we stated previously, we are focused on optimizing our core transaction funnel and improving the customer journey. Throughout the quarter, we deployed foundational enhancements across our app and web experiences, designed to streamline event discovery, reduce friction, and improve conversion. We are excited about our robust product roadmap, which spans improved personalization, event discovery, seat selection, and transactional efficiency. With continued execution of this roadmap, we believe we will remain on track to return to year-over-year growth in the second half of 2026. Shifting to the seller side of our business, we are proud that SkyBox remains the leading ERP for professional sellers. Vivid Seats has a proud history supporting the needs of sellers, and we are eagerly returning to our roots as we align with sellers and deploy new capabilities. To that end, we recently launched our SkyBox broker-to-broker marketplace, which is designed to enable sellers to optimize inventory across the SkyBox network with minimal friction and expense. While we only just launched this product, we are encouraged by the positive reception to its seamless integration with our SkyBox ERP. As we look ahead, our priorities remain unchanged. We are focused on enhancing the buyer experience through a unique value proposition, supporting our sellers, growing market share, improving profitability, and investing with discipline. The progress we've made thus far this year reinforces our confidence in our ability to execute our strategy and deliver long-term value creation. With that, I'll turn it over to Joe to walk through our second quarter financial results in more detail. Joseph Thomas: Thank you, Larry, and good morning, everyone. In the second quarter, we delivered sequential growth in GOV, revenue, and adjusted EBITDA, reflecting continued execution of our operational plan outlined at the beginning of the year. Q2 2026 Marketplace GOV was $659 million compared to $612 million in Q1 2026, reflecting quarter-to-quarter growth of $47 million, or 8%. Q2 2026 consolidated revenue was $130 million compared to $126 million in Q1 2026, reflecting quarter-to-quarter growth of $4 million or 3%. Within consolidated revenue, private label revenue grew 16% quarter-to-quarter, highlighting continued growth in the channel from the start of the year. Marketplace take rate was 15.8% in Q2 2026, essentially flat to 15.9% in Q1 2026. We continue to expect take rates to remain around 16% on a consolidated basis for the remainder of fiscal year 2026. Q2 2026 adjusted EBITDA was $12.6 million compared to $9.5 million in Q1 2026. Adjusted EBITDA grew $3.1 million or 33%, showcasing the benefit of our operating leverage on an improved GOV and revenue base led this quarter by World Cup outperformance. We ended the second quarter with $137 million in cash. Alongside this cash balance, we are pleased to announce the renewal of our revolving credit facility, which includes an extended maturity date through August 2029. This extension reflects the continued long-term support of our banking syndicate and enhances our liquidity and financial flexibility as we pursue meaningful growth in 2027 and beyond. In terms of year-end outlook, we are encouraged by our first half results. For fiscal year 2026, we now expect Marketplace GOV in the range of $2.3 billion to $2.6 billion and adjusted EBITDA in the range of $34 million to $40 million. Our outlook reflects continued execution of our operational plan and financial strategy alongside our current view of industry demand trends. As Larry mentioned, our results this quarter benefited from an unprecedented World Cup. We estimate that a mid-teens percentage of our Q2 GOV was generated by the World Cup, making it a significant driver of our quarterly performance. I will now turn the call back to Larry for closing remarks. Lawrence Fey: This quarter showcased what our platform can do when consumers have an extraordinary lineup of live events. We capitalized on the opportunity, supported our customers, and delivered strong results. At the same time, it's important to recognize that event cycles are inherently episodic. Our focus remains on growing our business and optimizing the elements we control to deliver long-term value creation. Operator, please open the call for questions. Operator: Our first question comes from Cameron Mansson-Perrone from Morgan Stanley. Cameron Mansson-Perrone: First, I wanted to ask just on the competitive backdrop and any color you'd be willing to provide on how that's been pacing this year, particularly through a recent period that between the NBA Finals and the World Cup, we've obviously seen a lot of attractive GOV opportunity in resale. And then I was also hoping you could hit on take rate and how you view that as a competitive tool, particularly within these active periods. If I look back to the Eras Tour, I think take rate, kind of, dropped to the 15% range as you, I think, leaned into trying to capture as much of that GOV as possible. So curious within the World Cup framework, kind of, how you approach that and what your logic today is around take rate and policy going forward. Lawrence Fey: Yes, thanks, Cameron. On competitive landscape, I think there has been a continuation of the trend we've spoken to in the past that relative to peak levels, we've seen some amount of moderation from our largest competitor. I think moderate or modest is probably the operative word. There continues to be substantial activity and competitive intensity from them, even though it is off of peak levels. And I think this year, year-to-date, we've seen several others continue to seek to fill the gap that the largest competitor has left, particularly in performance marketing channels. And when you roll it up, I would say it is a little bit better than it was at its worst. But it is still at what I would consider elevated levels where it appears a priority is being placed on volume, scale, and share relative to whatever the optimal efficient frontier would be on a profitability basis. To a degree, that ties into the answer on the take rate question. I think we've consistently seen when you have the largest events that have higher price points, there's a bit more pressure on take rate. Super Bowl is an annual example of that. World Series, to a degree, is a recurring example where these large price points settled in an equilibrium with a lower percentage take rate, but still a healthy absolute dollar fee. I think in accordance, we continue to aspire to fulfill our broader ambition of delivering a unique and differentiated value proposition. And so as market levels move, we need to adjust accordingly. And I think the World Cup, you can see it in the aggregate numbers to a degree. Not quite as low as the Taylor Swift dynamic, and that's at least partially because there's more one-time customers in this World Cup group, so less, in our estimation, less lifetime value to be had. But the World Cup did come in a take rate below the, call it average, or the broader landscape as we sought to compete and offer a differentiated value. Operator: Our next question comes from Dan Kurnos from Benchmark. Daniel Kurnos: Larry, maybe let me ask the World Cup question a little bit differently. Seems like you obviously had a nice boost from it, but given what you guys are trying to accomplish and shifting traffic to an app and the differentiated brand proposition, like, how much did that resonate? I understand your commentary on a lot of these guys are, kind of, one-time, right? That may not be recurring, especially if they came from abroad. But just in terms of the messaging that you're trying to get out there, were you able to push that in the marketplace? Do you think it resonated? Were you able to shift incremental traffic as a result of this event? And do you think that you gained a little bit of momentum out of it? Lawrence Fey: Yes, I think we were pleased with the overall results. I think we outpunched our weight by a bit on our share of the World Cup volume, which is exciting. And to your point, I think that implicitly indicates that we were reasonably successful in getting our message out and having folks find the value proposition in the app, or at least enough folks. I think that if everyone found it, we would have done even better. So there's still a balance of proliferating that message and turning it into broad awareness and transactions. I think the second part, not only did we outpace on the share of the event that we got, couldn't be more pleased with how we delivered against that massive event. A lot of chatter, a lot of eyeballs, a lot of stories on social media postings, and when I look at what we delivered from a customer experience standpoint, it couldn't have gone better. On every metric, our World Cup performance was better than the average event despite it being a higher stress, higher complexity customer experience. Now we need time to play out and hopefully all those folks who had a good experience will come back, but it's a good indicative example of how we see this flywheel working. If you can punch above your weight on the initial customer acquisition, deliver a differentiated customer experience, unless you do something wrong in the future, you should get more than your share of folks coming back. Daniel Kurnos: Got it. That's helpful. And then I have to ask just on the flip side, Larry, obviously a lot of noise coming out of D.C. Some people think that there might be some expanded state-by-state type of regulation. Just any thoughts as that begins to roll out or if you have any kind of broader, higher-level thoughts would be helpful. Lawrence Fey: Yes, I think there continues to be maybe a bit of elevated chatter. We talked about Maine, we talked about Vermont, now D.C., and the natural ebbs and flows that you'll often see across the regulatory landscape. In the near term, nothing that's happened makes us think there will be a meaningful impact due to a couple of reasons. I think the jurisdictions that have made changes are on the smaller side. There's delayed implementations. But maybe more importantly, the process and the frameworks that have been used, I think, leaves some room for questioning. If you take D.C. specifically, they excluded primary, they excluded sports. That's an interesting starting point, right? Why sports and primary would be different than secondary theater shows as an example. So we'll see where those move in the future. When we think at the longer term, we continue to be of the view that there will inevitably be events. World Cup is the perfect quintessential example where there are fundamentally more people who want to attend the event than there are seats. There are more people who want to sit in great seats than there are available seats. You need a mechanism to separate who are going to be the lucky folks who get to attend that event. When you have demand that outpaces supply, across the history of economics, price-based mechanisms have been demonstrated to be the most effective pathways. They're not the only pathways, but when you start doing other pathways, you tend to create these shadow markets, back alley markets, the demand will find its level, and so keeping legitimate, transparent pathways to us feels like the customer-friendly way to service this market, and I've yet to see a compelling alternative put forward. Operator: Our next question comes from Ryan Sigdahl from Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Ryan Sigdahl: Larry, Joe, I want to say on World Cup, I think I caught it right, 99.7% fulfillment rate in the prepared remarks. That's very, very good. There have been a lot of public controversy, let's just say, around one of your peers, around that fulfillment rate and some of the experiences consumers had. I guess, do you think a highly publicized event like this with some of that bad publicity can change the narrative in a bigger, faster way for you guys, as you guys highlight the value and user experience and fulfillment rate and everything else you guys provide? Or is it much of the same that everyone, kind of, forgets about it shortly after the event happens? Lawrence Fey: Thanks, Ryan. It's a great question. The bet we are making is that in this world of increased communication transparency, word of mouth, social media connectivity, that it will spread, right? Your good deeds will become known and people have positive experiences. They will tell their friends, they will recommend accordingly, especially if you're stacking good experiences. Oh, I got, not only got the better experience and got taken care of when something went wrong, but I also did that while getting a better price. Okay. Hopefully that spreads. I think it would be a fair observation and statement that across the history of this industry, there have been components that have viewed it as a bit more transactional. And that makes some logical sense. It's a lower frequency category and the feedback is not nearly as immediate. If you have a bad experience ordering for food delivery, 3 days later when you're ordering your next meal, you're going to see it in the numbers. In our instance, it can oftentimes be 6, 9, 12 months later. And you already have a number of folks who just structurally are not repeating. And so it can be tougher to, in the near term, get your head around making that proper investment. But that's the bet we're making, and it is not the bet everyone's making. And so only time will tell, but we believe it's the right thing to do and that over time it will prove to be the economically right thing to do. Ryan Sigdahl: Maybe transitioning that, you have some product enhancements in the roadmap. Maybe talk through what you guys accomplished in Q2, what's coming to the back half of the year, or maybe into 2027? Lawrence Fey: Yes, we talked about our core transaction funnel. And so when I say core transaction funnel, what I'm referring to is not someone who is coming to browse or explore, discover what event they want to attend, but someone who knows what they want to see. And the journey is arriving at the site, finding the show they want to see, and then having a journey that delivers the best seat for them at the best value relative to their preferences with no unnecessary friction in the process. No unnecessary friction while buying. No unnecessary friction while receiving the ticket and attending. So that's been the first focus is bringing through with as little friction as possible. You'll see changes on both our web and app properties. I think app's a little bit ahead of some of the web improvements, but if you think about what are sources of friction? Well, unnecessary text on pages would be sources of friction. Unnecessary clicks, multiple steps. God forbid you click a button and it doesn't take you to the right place? A bunch of cleanup across those dimensions later in the buying process has been where we started. Where we get very excited heading into the second half of the year is the upper funnel journey, as you're actually identifying the seat that you want to choose, where there's multiple dimensions. We all know price is part of it, the view is part of it, the relative value is part of it, amenities and other features are a part of it. How can we better surface the requisite information to give customer the ultimate confidence that they're making the right purchase. And if you can do that effectively and efficiently, I think you'll see an uplift in conversion. And then on the app side, it's really about how do you create reasons to stick around and come back. So we've been rolling out some upgraded options onboarding, so the first time you download the app, how do we have a better welcome experience? And then how do we create a future with many reasons to return and an ongoing engagement? It doesn't need to be daily. But once a month you have a reason to pop in and see what Vivid Seats is offering, what perks they're giving, that's the maintenance of the relationship that when you are ready to buy you'll come back and give us a consideration and we have confidence that if you give us a shot by coming to the app, we'll deliver more times than not that we have a better offering than what's out there in the market. Operator: Our next question comes from Ralph Schackart from William Blair. Ralph Schackart: Larry, maybe, kind of, piggyback on your last response there on the app. Can you maybe talk about the growth that you saw in app traffic in the quarter and just maybe more broadly remind us sort of the strategies you have there to encourage more app traffic, maybe just an update you saw in Q2, and just, kind of, your thoughts going forward to just continue to drive more traffic to the app. Lawrence Fey: Yes, thanks, Ralph. So we want to make sure people are aware that our app value proposition, we believe, is best in class. We will generally, if not always, have lower prices available in the app than on the website, communicating that and building awareness, it's easy to say it, harder to build ubiquitous awareness. But as folks download the app, typically as part of the fulfillment journey, you've bought tickets to an event, you want to attend the event. You will need instructions on where to get your tickets. You'll often have questions on logistics the day of having the app be a clear repository of information that helps you through that fulfillment process. And then while you're going to your prior event, start to plant seeds for why the app is the right destination for your future event. Because not just because it's better for us, but because it's better for you as a customer, a better value proposition, ability to engage, the ability to share information that will enable better personalization moving forward. So that's been the whole exercise. How do you create an awareness building welcoming funnel so that folks know that their next journey starting on the app will lead to their optimal outcome? We started that initiative Q3 of last year. We've continued to see compelling metrics across the board since we've rolled that initiative out. We've continued to see our app volume growth outpace the broader market, and we are about to start lapping those changes, and so the bar is going up as we move into this Q3, but we've continued to innovate and push out new upgrades, optimizations. If our bet is right, over time, you'll have folks who had a good experience in Q3 of last year, Q4 of last year, Q1 of this year who are coming upon their next buying cycle and we should see more sessions and more orders coming through the app if we've delivered a quality experience. Operator: Our next question comes from Brad Erickson from RBC. Audrey Stuart: This is Audrey Stuart on for Brad. Your new private label partner ramped better than expected in Q1. Can you provide an update on, kind of, Q2 performance for this partner? Walk us through what gives you confidence in this relationship and that your rebuilt onboarding stack will enable you to, kind of, add more partners from this pipeline in the near term. Lawrence Fey: Yes, thanks. We continue to see that partner outperform the expectations we had when they launched. And I think it's important to note that these weren't necessarily expectations that were just imagined with a new entrant to the space. This was a competitive win, a partner who had a volume baseline that our platform has been able to drive the material uplift against, which I think is a testament to the both absolute and relative efficacy of our private label offering. We've continued to push a bunch of incremental upgrades throughout the year. There's more coming in the second half. A lot of them do center around how do you, as quickly as possible, bring someone online and give them the tools, features, and capabilities at their choice so they can create a bespoke experience relative to the journey they want to offer their customers. We have heard pretty notable shift in our customers' view of not only the pacing of our delivery, but the predictability of it and what that allows them to do in terms of planning on their side. And so if step 1 is help your current customers' business thrive and if you're doing that well, eventually that means you'll be offering a compelling opportunity for the next wave of folks, all of those leading indicators are flashing positively. So we're pretty excited about having the opportunity to build a pipeline, execute against it in an automated way, and the underlying data in private label is encouraging. Last thing I'd say, I think we've touched on the large private label customer loss that happened at the end of July last year. So as we sit here today, we have now lapped that customer loss and are excited to see private label return from a substantial headwind into a growth driver moving forward. Operator: Our next question comes from Tom Forte from Maxim Group. Thomas Forte: Great. Larry and Joe, congrats on the quarter. I have 1 question, 1 follow-up. I'll go one at a time. So, Larry, lots of great questions and comments in the World Cup. I have another. The World Cup was a great example of the universal appeal of live sports and fans' passion for their teams. The Tartan Army, in particular, was epic. Can you provide your current thoughts on your international expansion efforts? Lawrence Fey: Yes, thanks, Tom. It was a very fun event. Lots of fun. Great memorable moments. Mine was the Viking Clap. I got a kick out of that. On the international front, we continue to see a lot of reasons to believe that the international opportunity is getting bigger, will continue to get bigger, and that it's untapped potential on our side. We started our journey a couple years ago now. I think we paused some of the investment as we ended last year, entered this year to make sure that we focused sufficiently and a lot of the upgraded core transaction funnel optimizations that we're doing for our North American business will directly benefit the international business. I think we are approaching a point in our product roadmap and the enhancement of our core transaction funnel. Probably by the end of this year, we'll be able to return to pushing out targeted international upgrades specific to those markets, which I think we're of the belief will re-accelerate growth in international. But sitting here today, it's been a good journey where we built a lot of GOV, we're contribution margin positive, well ahead of schedule. We continue to see that margin grow. We've had some nice events this year with World Cup, Celine Dion. So it continues to be an exciting opportunity and a vector that we're looking to deliver more against as we head into 2027. Thomas Forte: Excellent. All right, so my follow-up's more boring. I apologize. But can you give us your current thoughts on cash conversion for '26? Lawrence Fey: I think it remains pretty consistent with the framework and the results are coming in accordingly. If you look at our CapEx, interest expense, and taxes, maybe interest expense has ticked up a little bit with rate expectations, offset by our CapEx coming in a little bit lighter than it had been running as a result of some of our efficiency initiatives. You sum those up and it ends up in that, kind of, high $30 million to $40 million range, such that you need that level of EBITDA assuming flat GOV and then working capital growth or contraction linked to GOV growth or contraction will be the ultimate determinant. As we head into the back half, we've touched on our continued focus on returning to growth, which would put working capital as a source of cash. So, on a recurring fundamental basis, the expectation would be if we deliver that GOV growth with the EBITDA guidance that we're putting forward, that this would be a cash generative year. Operator: Our next question is from Steven McDermott from Bank of America. Steven McDermott: So World Cup and sports are getting a lot of focus this quarter, but if you look at the other verticals, it looked like concert improved, theater stayed somewhat soft. I was wondering if you could just provide some color on some of the dynamics you're seeing in the other verticals. Thank you. Lawrence Fey: Yes, two dimensions. I'd say overall industry volumes in Q2 outside of where World Cup were softer. I think there's room for speculation. Is that because there is softness or is that because the World Cup sucked some of the oxygen out of the room? I think we generally subscribe to the latter. If you are making plans and spending a significant amount of money to attend a World Cup game, it will come at the expense of some other event that you might have otherwise attended. We will see in Q3 and Q4 as we embark on the balance of the event calendar, things have been relatively quiet, a little bit softer post-World Cup, but the jury, I think, is still out on the back half of the year and in particular the fourth quarter on-sale calendar, which will determine our ultimate levels as we finish this year and head into next. The second dimension against just the aggregate industry volume is competitive intensity. We have continued to see what I would describe as increasing competitive intensity in the theater category in particular, which is interesting, especially given the nature of the competition in that slice. That's part of what you're seeing in the theater results. The other part of the theater results, that's where a lot of our Vegas performance appears, because Vegas is a theater-heavy market. And we have continued, I think if you follow the gambling operators in Vegas, you're seeing a number of folks talk about leisure travel being soft, continuing to be soft in Vegas this year. And in particular, the lower end consumer within the leisure market. Overall Vegas stability you're seeing has been propped up by the high end and the conference attendees. So you are seeing some of that Vegas weakness come through that theater result. Steven McDermott: Got you, that helps. Thank you. And then just for AOVs, I know the World Cup certainly helped AOVs in Q2. As we think about Q3, the World Cup obviously bleeds into July a little bit. So how are you thinking about AOVs within this quarter or more broadly the back half of the year? That's it. Thank you. Lawrence Fey: It's a difficult metric to predict. I think your question highlighted why it's so difficult to predict when you have a large high profile event like the World Cup, I think it is reasonable to assume that even with only 19 days of it in the third quarter, it will have a positive effect and I would be surprised if AOV is not up year-over-year in Q3. When you look forward to Q4, pretty speculative, especially in Q4 where you have a lot of new concert on-sales. I don't have insight into who those will be but depending on that roster I think you have a fairly broad range of outcomes. The other one I'd point to is World Series matchups, right? You have a bunch of that volume in October. If you have Dodgers-Yankees, it's a wonderful tailwind. If you have Royals-Brewers, not so much. And so predicting that, a lot of speculation. So we generally are of the view that AOVs over the long term are going to increase at inflation plus a couple hundred basis points over time. But predicting any single year or any single quarter is a path filled with landmines. Operator: Thank you. This concludes the question and answer session. Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Before you buy stock in Vivid Seats, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Vivid Seats wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. 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Our analysts just identified a stock with the potential to be the next Nvidia. Tell us how you invest and we'll show you why it's our #1 pick. Tap here. Second quarter performance was significantly bolstered by the FIFA World Cup, which generated transaction volume comparable to the entire multi-year Eras Tour but concentrated within a single quarter. Management attributes successful fulfillment of high-stress World Cup orders to operational excellence, maintaining a 99.7% success rate despite the complexity of new ticketing systems implemented by organizers. Strategic focus remains on the 'core transaction funnel,' specifically reducing friction in the buyer journey through app and web enhancements to improve conversion rates. The company is re-aligning with its seller roots through the launch of the SkyBox broker-to-broker marketplace, designed to reduce friction and expense for professional sellers within the SkyBox ERP network. Market share gains were supported by a differentiated value proposition, including the lowest price guarantee and the Vivid Seats Rewards program, which helped the company 'outpunch its weight' during marquee events. Performance in the theater vertical and the Las Vegas market reflected broader macro softness in leisure travel, particularly among lower-end consumers, contrasting with the strength seen in major sporting events. Management expects a return to year-over-year growth in the second half of 2026, driven by product roadmap execution and the lapping of a major private label customer loss. Take rates are projected to remain stable at approximately 16% on a consolidated basis for the remainder of fiscal year 2026. The product roadmap for the second half of 2026 focuses on 'upper funnel' improvements, including enhanced event discovery, personalization, and seat selection tools to build consumer confidence. International expansion efforts are expected to re-accelerate in late 2026 and into 2027 as North American core funnel optimizations are adapted for global markets. Fiscal year 2026 guidance assumes continued execution of the operational plan, with Marketplace GOV targeted between $2.3 billion and $2.6 billion. The World Cup was a massive non-recurring driver, accounting for a mid-teens percentage of total Q2 Marketplace GOV. Management noted elevated competitive intensity in performance marketing channels, with some peers prioritizing volume and scale over efficient profitability. Regulatory chatter in jurisdictions like D.C. is viewed as having minimal near-term impact due to specific exemptions for sports and primary ticketing, though management continues to monitor the landscape. The renewal of the revolving credit facility through August 2029 provides enhanced liquidity and financial flexibility for growth initiatives in 2027 and beyond. One stock. Nvidia-level potential. 30M+ investors trust Moby to find it first. Get the pick. Tap here. Management observed that while the largest competitor has moderated activity from peak levels, other players have increased intensity in performance marketing channels. Take rates for marquee events like the World Cup typically settle at lower percentages due to high price points, but the company maintains healthy absolute dollar fees while remaining competitive. The company successfully used the World Cup to drive app downloads, noting that app volume growth continues to outpace the broader market. Management believes delivering a superior fulfillment experience during high-stress events creates a 'flywheel' effect that will drive long-term repeat business. The new private label partner exceeded expectations, and the company has now fully lapped the loss of a large legacy partner from the prior year. Upgrades to the onboarding stack have improved the predictability and speed of bringing new partners online, strengthening the future pipeline. AOV is expected to be up year-over-year in Q3 due to the tail end of the World Cup, but Q4 remains speculative depending on concert on-sales and World Series matchups. Long-term AOV is expected to grow at a rate of inflation plus a few hundred basis points, though quarterly fluctuations remain difficult to predict.

Interested in Vivid Seats Inc.? Here are five stocks we like better. Second-quarter performance benefited significantly from FIFA World Cup demand: Marketplace GOV rose 8% sequentially to $659 million, revenue increased to $130 million, and adjusted EBITDA climbed 33% to $12.6 million. The World Cup represented a mid-teens percentage of quarterly GOV, while fulfillment remained above 99.7%. Vivid Seats raised its focus on growth and financial flexibility: Fiscal 2026 guidance calls for marketplace GOV of $2.3 billion to $2.6 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $34 million to $40 million. The company also extended its revolving credit facility to August 2029 and expects take rates to remain near 16%. Management is investing in its platform and future expansion despite softer underlying demand: Product and app improvements, the SkyBox broker-to-broker marketplace and stronger private-label partnerships are intended to drive growth. Competitive intensity remains elevated, non-World Cup activity was softer, and international investment is expected to resume by the end of 2026. Vivid Seats (NASDAQ:SEAT) reported sequential growth in gross order value, revenue and adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter of 2026, aided by demand related to the FIFA World Cup. Management said the event generated an unusually large concentration of marketplace activity, while the company continued to invest in its buyer experience, seller tools and private-label business. Chief Executive Officer Larry Fey said World Cup activity exceeded the company’s expectations. Vivid Seats had previously anticipated that the tournament could create demand comparable with a major concert tour, but Fey said the volume of activity ultimately resembled that of the entire Eras Tour, concentrated largely in a single quarter rather than spread over two years. → SpaceX’s First Earnings Report Could Decide Whether Shorts or Bulls Have Control “Q2 benefited from extraordinary demand surrounding the FIFA World Cup, with consumer engagement and transaction activity well above typical seasonal levels,” Fey said. Chief Financial Officer Joseph Thomas said marketplace gross order value, or GOV, was $659 million in the second quarter, up 8% from $612 million in the first quarter. Consolidated revenue rose 3% sequentially to $130 million from $126 million. Marketplace GOV: $659 million, up $47 million sequentially. Consolidated revenue: $130 million, up $4 million sequentially. Private-label revenue: Up 16% sequentially. Marketplace take rate: 15.8%, compared with 15.9% in the first quarter. Adjusted EBITDA: $12.6 million, up 33% from $9.5 million in the first quarter. Cash balance at quarter-end: $137 million. → Financials Hit Record Highs as the AI Trade Unravels—Can They Keep Leading? Thomas said the improvement in adjusted EBITDA reflected operating leverage from higher GOV and revenue, with World Cup performance contributing to the results. The company estimated that the tournament accounted for a mid-teens percentage of second-quarter GOV. Vivid Seats renewed its revolving credit facility during the quarter, extending its maturity to August 2029. Thomas said the agreement enhances the company’s liquidity and financial flexibility as it seeks growth in 2027 and beyond. → Why Rare Earth Processing Could Be the Real 2027 Opportunity For fiscal 2026, the company now expects marketplace GOV of $2.3 billion to $2.6 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $34 million to $40 million. Thomas said the outlook reflects the company’s operational plan, financial strategy and its current view of industry demand trends. Fey said Vivid Seats maintained a successful fulfillment rate above 99.7% for World Cup orders sold through its marketplace, despite the complexity introduced by the event organizer’s ticketing system. He attributed the result to the company’s operations and customer-service teams, noting that purchases on the platform are backed by its buyer guarantee. Management said Vivid Seats’ share of World Cup activity outpaced its broader market position, indicating that its customer proposition and app offering resonated with consumers. Fey said performance metrics for the tournament exceeded those for the average event despite the high prices, complexity and customer stress associated with a once-in-a-lifetime event. The company also acknowledged that take rates on high-priced marquee events can be lower than its broader average. Fey said events such as the Super Bowl, World Series and World Cup can settle at lower percentage take rates while generating healthy absolute-dollar fees. World Cup take rates were below the company’s average as it competed on value, he said. Thomas said Vivid Seats expects consolidated take rates to remain around 16% for the rest of fiscal 2026. Vivid Seats continued deploying enhancements to its website and app during the quarter, with an emphasis on reducing friction in the transaction process, improving event discovery and increasing conversion. Fey said the company is working on personalization, seat selection and transaction efficiency, and expects its product roadmap to support a return to year-over-year growth in the second half of 2026. On the app side, the company is seeking to make users more aware that it generally offers lower prices in the app than on its website, according to Fey. It is also improving the onboarding process and using the app as a source of ticket-delivery and event-logistics information. Fey said app volume growth has continued to outpace the broader market since the company began the initiative in the third quarter of last year. For professional sellers, Vivid Seats recently launched a SkyBox broker-to-broker marketplace. Fey said the offering is designed to help sellers optimize inventory across the SkyBox network with limited friction and expense, and has received a positive initial reception because of its integration with the SkyBox enterprise resource planning platform. The company also said a newer private-label partner continued to exceed its initial expectations during the second quarter. Fey described the relationship as a competitive win in which Vivid Seats has driven a material lift from the partner’s prior volume baseline. He added that private label has moved beyond the impact of a large customer loss at the end of July 2025 and is positioned to become a growth driver. During the question-and-answer session, Fey said competitive intensity remains elevated, although activity from Vivid Seats’ largest competitor has moderated from peak levels. He said other companies have sought to fill gaps in performance-marketing channels, with the industry still emphasizing volume, scale and share. Outside the World Cup, Fey said industry volumes were softer in the second quarter. He said it remains unclear whether that reflects broader softness or spending being redirected toward the tournament. Theater performance also faced increased competitive intensity and weaker leisure travel in Las Vegas, where Vivid Seats’ theater category has meaningful exposure. Fey said average order values could remain elevated year over year in the third quarter because the World Cup extended into July. However, he said fourth-quarter order values are difficult to predict because they depend on concert on-sales and factors such as World Series matchups. On international expansion, Fey said the company has built GOV and reached contribution-margin profitability ahead of schedule, but had paused some investment to prioritize improvements to its core North American transaction funnel. He said Vivid Seats expects to return to targeted international product upgrades by the end of 2026 and sees international markets as a larger opportunity heading into 2027. Management also addressed recent regulatory discussion in jurisdictions including Maine, Vermont and Washington, D.C. Fey said the company does not currently expect meaningful near-term effects, citing the smaller size of the jurisdictions, delayed implementation timelines and aspects of the regulatory frameworks. He argued that transparent, legitimate resale markets remain important when demand for an event exceeds available seating. Vivid Seats, traded on NASDAQ under the ticker SEAT, operates an online ticket marketplace that connects buyers and sellers of live event tickets. The company specializes in facilitating purchases for sports games, concerts, theater productions and other entertainment experiences. Through its digital platform and mobile application, Vivid Seats offers real-time access to available tickets, transparent pricing and a 100% Buyer Guarantee, which ensures ticket authenticity and timely delivery. Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, Vivid Seats has grown from a regional reseller into one of North America's leading ticket marketplaces. This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to [email protected]. The article "Vivid Seats Q2 Earnings Call Highlights" was originally published by MarketBeat. View MarketBeat's top stocks for August 2026.

CHICAGO, Aug. 04, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Vivid Seats Inc. (Nasdaq: SEAT) (“Vivid Seats” or “we”), a leading marketplace that utilizes its technology platform to connect millions of buyers with thousands of ticket sellers across hundreds of thousands of events each year, today provided financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2026. “We are encouraged by the progress we’ve made through the first half of the year. Our second quarter results exceeded expectations as we delivered sequential growth driven by the extraordinary demand created by the FIFA World Cup,” said Lawrence Fey, Chief Executive Officer of Vivid Seats. “We continue to successfully execute against our strategic objectives. With leading technology, a compelling value proposition, differentiated data, and a relentless focus on operational excellence, we remain confident in our ability to drive long-term shareholder value.” Second Quarter 2026 Key Financial Highlights Marketplace GOV of $659.4 million Revenues of $129.9 million Net loss of $14.3 million Adjusted EBITDA of $12.6 million Key Business Metrics & Non-U.S. GAAP Financial Measure We use the following key business metrics and non-U.S. GAAP financial measure to evaluate our performance, identify trends, formulate financial projections, and make strategic decisions. We believe this information is useful to investors and others in understanding and evaluating our results of operations in the same manner as management. The following table summarizes our key business metrics and non-U.S. GAAP financial measure for the three and six months ended June 30, 2026 and 2025 (in thousands): 2026 Financial Outlook For the year ending December 31, 2026, we now anticipate: Marketplace GOV in the range of $2.3 billion to $2.6 billion (previously $2.2 billion to $2.6 billion) Adjusted EBITDA in the range of $34.0 million to $40.0 million (previously $30.0 million to $40.0 million)* * We calculate forward-looking adjusted EBITDA based on internal forecasts that omit certain information that would be included in forward-looking net loss, the most directly comparable U.S. GAAP financial measure. We do not attempt to provide a reconciliation of forward-looking adjusted EBITDA to forward-looking net loss because the timing and/or probable significance of certain excluded items that have not yet occurred and are outside of our control is inherently uncertain and unavailable without unreasonable efforts. Such items could have a significant and unpredictable impact on our future U.S. GAAP financial results. Webcast Details Vivid Seats will host a webcast at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time today to discuss the second quarter 2026 financial results, business updates, and financial outlook. Participants may access the webcast and supplemental earnings presentation by visting investors.vividseats.com/events-and-presentations. About Vivid Seats Founded in 2001, Vivid Seats (Nasdaq: SEAT) is a leading online ticket marketplace connecting fans to the live events, artists, and teams they love. Vivid Seats is committed to delivering the most rewarding ticket-buying experience for fans through competitive everyday pricing backed by its Lowest Price Guarantee, an industry-leading rewards program, and award-winning customer service. The Chicago-based company offers one of the widest selections of live events across North America, powered by proprietary technology that makes discovering and buying tickets simple, affordable, and reliable. Learn more by downloading the Vivid Seats app or visiting vividseats.com. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “can,” “continue,” “could,” “design,” “estimate,” “expect,” “forecast,” “future,” “goal,” “intend,” “likely,” “may,” “plan,” “project,” “propose,” “seek,” “should,” “target,” “will,” and “would,” as well as similar expressions that predict or indicate future events or do not relate to historical matters, are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements may relate to, without limitation: our business strategy and objectives; our future operating results and financial performance, including our expectations with respect to our fiscal year 2026 Marketplace GOV and adjusted EBITDA; and our expectations with respect to live event industry growth, the supply of and demand for live events, and our competitive positioning. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, conditions, or results, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that can be difficult to predict and/or outside of our control. Therefore, actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by any such forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: the supply of and demand for live events; the impact of adverse economic conditions and other factors affecting discretionary consumer and corporate spending; our ability to develop and maintain relationships with ticket buyers, sellers, and partners; the impact of changes to internet search engine algorithms and mobile app marketplace rules; the impact of artificial intelligence on how consumers search for live event tickets; our ability to attract ticket sellers and buyers to our platform in the increasingly competitive ticketing industry; our ability to continue to maintain and improve our platform; the impact of extraordinary events, including disease epidemics; our ability to identify suitable acquisition targets and to complete and realize the expected benefits of acquisitions and other strategic investments; our ability to attract, hire, motivate, and retain our senior management team and other highly skilled personnel; our ability to comply with applicable laws and regulations; the ability of ticket holders to sell their tickets on the secondary market unencumbered; the impact of unfavorable outcomes in legislation and legal proceedings; our ability to maintain the integrity of our information systems and infrastructure, and to identify, assess, and manage relevant cybersecurity risks; our ability to generate sufficient cash flows and/or obtain additional financing when necessary or desirable; and other factors discussed in the “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” sections of our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, as well as in our press releases and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by applicable law, we undertake no obligation to update or revise any such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. Contact: [email protected] [email protected] Adjusted EBITDA Adjusted EBITDA is a non-U.S. GAAP financial measure that is used by investors and others to evaluate companies in our industry. Adjusted EBITDA is also used by management to make operating decisions, including those related to analyzing operating expenses, evaluating performance, and performing strategic planning and annual budgeting. We believe adjusted EBITDA is useful for understanding, evaluating, and highlighting trends in our operating results and for making period-to-period comparisons of our business performance because it excludes the impact of items that are outside of our control and/or not reflective of ongoing performance related directly to the operation of our business. Adjusted EBITDA is not based on any comprehensive set of accounting rules or principles and should not be considered a substitute for, or superior to, financial measures calculated in accordance with U.S. GAAP. Adjusted EBITDA does not reflect all amounts associated with our operating results as determined in accordance with U.S. GAAP and specifically excludes certain recurring costs such as: income tax expense (benefit); interest expense – net; depreciation and amortization; sales tax liabilities; transaction costs; equity-based compensation; litigation, settlements, and related costs; loss on asset disposals; change in fair value of derivative asset; foreign currency loss (gain) – net; severance compensation; change in fair value of warrants; loss on extinguishment of debt; adjustment of liabilities under our former Tax Receivable Agreement (“TRA”) entered into with the existing unitholders of Hoya Intermediate, LLC; and impairment charges. In addition, other companies may calculate adjusted EBITDA differently than we do, thereby limiting its usefulness as a comparative tool. We compensate for these limitations by providing specific information regarding the U.S. GAAP amounts that are excluded from our presentation of adjusted EBITDA. The following table presents a reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to net loss, the most directly comparable U.S. GAAP financial measure, for the three and six months ended June 30, 2026 and 2025 (in thousands):

Rimini Street (RMNI) came out with quarterly earnings of $0.07 per share, in line with the Zacks Consensus Estimate . This compares to break-even earnings per share a year ago. These figures are adjusted for non-recurring items. A quarter ago, it was expected that this company would post earnings of $0.08 per share when it actually produced earnings of $0.03, delivering a surprise of -62.5%. Over the last four quarters, the company has not been able to surpass consensus EPS estimates. Rimini Street, which belongs to the Zacks Internet - Software industry, posted revenues of $111.08 million for the quarter ended June 2026, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 4.59%. This compares to year-ago revenues of $104.11 million. The company has topped consensus revenue estimates three times over the last four quarters. The sustainability of the stock's immediate price movement based on the recently-released numbers and future earnings expectations will mostly depend on management's commentary on the earnings call. Rimini Street shares have added about 27.3% since the beginning of the year versus the S&P 500's gain of 6.9%. While Rimini Street has outperformed the market so far this year, the question that comes to investors' minds is: what's next for the stock? There are no easy answers to this key question, but one reliable measure that can help investors address this is the company's earnings outlook. Not only does this include current consensus earnings expectations for the coming quarter(s), but also how these expectations have changed lately. Empirical research shows a strong correlation between near-term stock movements and trends in earnings estimate revisions. Investors can track such revisions by themselves or rely on a tried-and-tested rating tool like the Zacks Rank, which has an impressive track record of harnessing the power of earnings estimate revisions. Ahead of this earnings release, the estimate revisions trend for Rimini Street was mixed. While the magnitude and direction of estimate revisions could change following the company's just-released earnings report, the current status translates into a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) for the stock. So, the shares are expected to perform in line with the market in the near future. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. It will be interesting to see how estimates for the coming quarters and the current fiscal year change in the days ahead. The current consensus EPS estimate is $0.12 on $110.71 million in revenues for the coming quarter and $0.39 on $440.99 million in revenues for the current fiscal year. Investors should be mindful of the fact that the outlook for the industry can have a material impact on the performance of the stock as well. In terms of the Zacks Industry Rank, Internet - Software is currently in the bottom 41% of the 250 plus Zacks industries. Our research shows that the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries outperform the bottom 50% by a factor of more than 2 to 1. Another stock from the same industry, Vivid Seats Inc. (SEAT), has yet to report results for the quarter ended June 2026. The results are expected to be released on August 4. This company is expected to post quarterly loss of $1.03 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of -118.4%. The consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has remained unchanged over the last 30 days. Vivid Seats Inc.'s revenues are expected to be $121.22 million, down 15.6% from the year-ago quarter. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Rimini Street, Inc. (RMNI) : Free Stock Analysis Report Vivid Seats Inc. (SEAT) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

Vivid Seats delivered a stronger-than-expected Q1 with marketplace GOV of $612M (up 5.5% sequential), adjusted EBITDA of $9.5M (vs. $1M in Q4), and cash up >$40M to $144M, and management reaffirmed fiscal 2026 guidance of GOV $2.2B–$2.6B and adjusted EBITDA $30M–$40M. App momentum is driving efficiency and conversion: app GOV rose 20% YoY and exceeded 40% of total GOV, with the company targeting a majority app share on a run-rate basis by 2027 as app users convert more and rely less on paid acquisition. Private-label activity and industry dynamics are shaping mix and take rates — the company added a “significant” new private-label partner and extended another, which helped growth but contributed to a lower consolidated take rate (15.9%) due to private-label mix; management expects H2 growth to be helped by lapping the prior-year loss of a large private-label customer. Interested in Vivid Seats Inc.? Here are five stocks we like better. Vivid Seats (NASDAQ:SEAT) reported first-quarter fiscal 2026 results that management said landed at the high end or above prior guidance, driven by sequential gains in gross order value (GOV), adjusted EBITDA, and cash. Chief Executive Officer Larry Fey told investors the company began the year with “a clear focus and roadmap to enhance our market position and financial trajectory,” and said the sequential improvement supports confidence in returning to year-over-year growth in the second half of fiscal 2026. Fey emphasized that Vivid Seats is aligning product, pricing, and marketing around a “most rewarding ticketing company” positioning, including competitive pricing, a “lowest price guarantee,” and its rewards program. The company’s product work is focused on improving the core customer journey, including funnel efficiency and conversion. → Roblox Stock Slides to New Low as Safety Changes Weigh on Outlook Fey said Vivid Seats recently deployed an upgraded app checkout flow intended to accelerate the customer journey and improve conversion rates, with additional app and web enhancements planned for the second and third quarters. In Q1 2026, Fey said app GOV increased 20% year-over-year, and app share of GOV exceeded 40% for the quarter. He added that app users tend to be more engaged and convert at higher rates while relying less on paid performance marketing channels. During the Q&A, Fey said the company’s ambition is for a majority of the business to come through the app, with a “realistic timetable” of reaching that on a run-rate basis “at some point in 2027.” → The Real SpaceX Play: 5 Chip Stocks Powering the IPO Before It Launches Asked about differences between app and web users, Fey said the largest distinction is frequency: the most frequent live event attendees are more likely to download and use the app, and those customers “over-index” toward sports due to recurring events. Vivid Seats also highlighted activity in its private label channel. Fey said the company launched a “significant new private label partner” during the quarter and that performance was already exceeding expectations. He also said Vivid Seats extended an agreement with a “large existing private label customer.” → 3 Emerging Markets ETFs to Maximize Exposure to High-Potential Countries During the Q&A, Fey told RBC Capital Markets that the company’s expectation of returning to growth in the second half is influenced by lapping the loss of a large private label customer in July of the prior year, with July and August representing the “first true clean month” without that customer. He outlined two potential upside drivers for private label: adding new partners and improving partner performance by making marketplace product enhancements configurable and available to private label partners. On industry competition, Fey told Morgan Stanley that moderation that began in Q4 from StubHub in paid search has continued, though it has been “somewhat counterbalanced” by aggressiveness from other players. He also noted a recent shift toward price testing and said the ecosystem remains competitive on pricing, “particularly in sports,” while the marketing landscape has stabilized. Chief Financial Officer Joe Thomas said Q1 performance came at or above the top end of guidance and included “meaningful sequential increases” in GOV and adjusted EBITDA versus Q4 2025. Marketplace GOV: $612 million, up from $581 million in Q4 2025 (a $31 million or 5.5% sequential increase). Consolidated revenue: $126 million, essentially flat versus $127 million in Q4 2025. Marketplace take rate: 15.9% versus 16.8% in Q4 2025, which Thomas said was primarily due to mix shift as private label revenue carries lower take rates. He said the company expects near-term take rates to remain around 16% on a consolidated basis. Adjusted EBITDA: $9.5 million, up from $1 million in Q4 2025. Thomas attributed the improvement to a “material reduction in operating costs” alongside a growing GOV and revenue base. Cash: Increased by more than $40 million in the quarter to $144 million, with Thomas citing improved profitability and seasonally strong working capital dynamics. Thomas reaffirmed the company’s fiscal 2026 outlook, calling for marketplace GOV of $2.2 billion to $2.6 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $30 million to $40 million. Management discussed industry demand trends and the event calendar. Fey told Craig-Hallum that industry data suggested Q1 was up “a smidge” in the low single digits, starting strong in January and moderating into February and March. For Q2 to date, he said trends were roughly flat, noting Easter timing and that April improved with “a couple meaningful concert on sales” in the last two weeks. Fey also referenced increased tour cancellations and delays, including The Pussycat Dolls, Zayn Malik, and Post Malone, which he said could reflect mispricing or a cap on growth. On the consumer environment, Fey told William Blair he did not see a clear demand shift tied to the Iran conflict or oil price moves. However, he said Vivid Seats has seen some weakness at “the lower end of the Vegas market,” adding that 2026 is expected to be more of a “blocking and tackling” year in Las Vegas as the company looks ahead to supply tailwinds in 2027 with the reopening of the Mirage. Fey also discussed the World Cup as a potential tailwind, telling Maxim Group it has been meaningful and is tracking to expectations. He framed the opportunity as larger than a typical A-list concert tour but smaller than the Taylor Swift tour, and said the event is tracking to be “low to mid single digits as a percentage of full year GOV.” On expenses, Fey told Bank of America that cost reductions are “flowing through” without productivity losses, and he said deployment rates have increased alongside efficiency gains, aided in part by AI tools. Fey said the objective remains operating leverage, with expenses remaining steady on the G&A side even as the company returns to growth, though he noted some variable costs scale with transaction volume. Thomas provided additional color on cash flow expectations, telling Maxim Group that capital expenditures may be “a little bit lower” than previously estimated. He cited net interest expense in the $20 million range, “CapEx software in the low to mid-teens,” and some taxes related to international operations. Thomas said that at adjusted EBITDA of $35 million to $40 million, the company would be cash flow positive before working capital, and reiterated management’s view that working capital will be a source of cash over the course of the year. On artificial intelligence, Fey said Vivid Seats has begun running ads on ChatGPT and is working with “leading AI platforms.” He told RBC Capital Markets that, so far, AI has been more impactful in operational efficiency than in disrupting top-of-funnel customer acquisition, and he said the company has not seen indications of near-term “fully captive” transactions that would box out ticket marketplaces. Fey also addressed the company’s partnership with United Airlines, telling Bank of America it has been “a nice tailwind” but not a “needle mover” for Q1 results. Looking internationally, Fey told Canaccord that the company remains encouraged and is prioritizing “universal upgrades” that benefit both international markets and North America, while noting a roadmap of international-specific upgrades that may be addressed over coming quarters. Vivid Seats, traded on NASDAQ under the ticker SEAT, operates an online ticket marketplace that connects buyers and sellers of live event tickets. The company specializes in facilitating purchases for sports games, concerts, theater productions and other entertainment experiences. Through its digital platform and mobile application, Vivid Seats offers real-time access to available tickets, transparent pricing and a 100% Buyer Guarantee, which ensures ticket authenticity and timely delivery. Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, Vivid Seats has grown from a regional reseller into one of North America's leading ticket marketplaces. The article "Vivid Seats Q1 Earnings Call Highlights" was originally published by MarketBeat.

Image source: The Motley Fool. May 5, 2026, 8:30 a.m. ET Chief Executive Officer — Lawrence Fey Chief Financial Officer — Joseph Thomas Lawrence Fey: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We entered fiscal year 2026 with a clear focus and road map to enhance our market position and financial trajectory. With that focus, we delivered measurable progress in the first quarter, resulting in meaningful improvements across our business. Our first quarter results came in at the high end or above guidance. On a sequential basis, we delivered growth in GOV, adjusted EBITDA and our cash balance relative to Q4 2025. This momentum and sequential improvement support our confidence in returning to year-over-year growth in the second half of fiscal year 2026 and beyond. Our long-term strategy centers around Vivid Seats foundational strengths, leading technology and product innovation, operational excellence and a differentiated value proposition for our customers and partners. Pairing a seamless user experience with a differentiated value proposition is central to our mission. Vivid Seats strives to be the most rewarding ticketing company, and we are increasingly aligning our product, pricing and messaging around that core idea. We deliver value through competitive pricing, seamless user experiences and meaningful rewards that deepen customer loyalty over time. We are currently focusing our product innovation efforts on the core customer journey. We are improving funnel efficiency, enhancing conversion and delivering a faster, more intuitive experience. We recently deployed an upgraded app checkout experience, delivering a streamlined flow to accelerate the customer journey while improving conversion rates. We are encouraged by the early results and are excited about the pipeline of enhancements to both our app and web properties that will be deployed in Q2 and Q3. Our enhanced app value proposition continues to deliver encouraging results. In Q1 2026, Vivid Seats app GOV was up 20% year-over-year. This growth led to Vivid Seats app share of GOV exceeding 40% for the quarter. Increasing app adoption reflects the combined impact of the Vivid Seats Reward program, our lowest price guarantee and continued product improvements. Together, these investments represent a highly differentiated value proposition. App users are more engaged, return more frequently, convert at higher rates and touch paid performance marketing channels less often. As volume shifts into the app over time, we anticipate more efficient customer acquisition alongside enhanced customer retention and growing lifetime value. Alongside our app progress, we are continuing to invest in innovation across customer acquisition by working closely with leading AI platforms. This includes our recently launched ads on ChatGPT. While still in the early stages, we believe these efforts will help us capitalize on the long-term opportunities AI presents within the ticketing ecosystem. In tandem with the encouraging trends we are seeing with Vivid Seats branded properties, we were pleased to launch a significant new private label partner during Q1 with performance already exceeding our expectations. We also recently extended our agreement with a large existing private label customer, underscoring the value proposition we deliver to our private label partners. We are pleased to see the private label business deliver sequential revenue growth in Q1 2026 and believe this trend supports our expectation of a return to growth in the second half of the year. With that, I'll turn it over to Joe to walk through our first quarter financial results in more detail. Joseph Thomas: Thank you, Larry, and good morning, everyone. As Larry mentioned, our first quarter performance landed at or above the top end of our guidance, underscoring strong execution across the business. We achieved meaningful sequential increases in GOV and adjusted EBITDA compared to Q4 2025. This improvement is encouraging as we pursue a return to growth in fiscal year 2026 and beyond. Q1 2026 Marketplace GOV was $612 million compared to $581 million in Q4 2025, reflecting quarter-to-quarter growth of $31 million or 5.5%. This is particularly encouraging as the fourth quarter typically represents the highest GOV quarter each year due in part to robust sports volumes with all major leagues in the season. Q1 2026 consolidated revenue was $126 million, essentially flat with $127 million in Q4 2025. Within consolidated revenue, private label revenue grew 20% quarter-to-quarter, highlighting a meaningful growth trend in the channel despite continued year-over-year private label declines as we lap the 2025 loss of a large customer as previously disclosed. Marketplace take rate was 15.9% in Q1 2026 compared to 16.8% in Q4 2025. The lower take rate primarily reflects mix shift as private label revenue tends to come with lower take rates. We continue to expect near-term take rates to remain around 16% on a consolidated basis. Q1 2026 adjusted EBITDA was $9.5 million compared to $1 million in Q4 2025. Adjusted EBITDA grew $8.5 million, marking substantial improvement on a sequential basis and highlighting the benefit of a material reduction in operating costs relative to a growing GOV and revenue base. Cash increased over $40 million in the first quarter to $144 million. Cash flow benefited from improved profitability alongside seasonally strong working capital dynamics. Our first quarter results show significant progress across our operational and financial goals. Accordingly, we are reaffirming our 2026 outlook. For fiscal year 2026, we continue to expect marketplace GOV in the range of $2.2 billion to $2.6 billion and adjusted EBITDA in the range of $30 million to $40 million. This outlook reflects continued execution of our operating plan and financial profile. I will now turn the call back to Larry for closing remarks. Lawrence Fey: Our first quarter results indicate our strategy is working, and we are moving in the right direction. We are excited about our momentum in the Vivid Seats app, where improving conversion and increasing engagement are supporting double-digit GOV growth. We are also encouraged by the sequential trends in our private label business as we seek to return to year-over-year growth later in the year. As we move through the year, we are confident that our core strengths, leading technology and data, operational excellence and a differentiated customer value proposition will shine through. We are excited to continue executing against our strategy and to deliver long-term value to all stakeholders. With that, operator, please open the call for questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Cameron Mansson-Perrone with Morgan Stanley. Cameron Mansson-Perrone: Larry, last quarter, you highlighted that you're seeing some encouraging trends in terms of the competitive environment kind of rationalizing. Wondering if you're continuing to see that and whether there's any event category where you're seeing more or less industry competition for activity and whether competitive intensity from an event-specific angle is -- whether the rate of change is better or worse in any specific category? I appreciate it. Lawrence Fey: Yes. Thanks, Cameron. I think the moderation that we saw started in Q4 from StubHub on the paid search side has continued. That's been somewhat counterbalanced by continued aggressiveness in that channel by some other players. But no question, they've stepped back from their peak spend that we saw early middle of 2025. On the marketing spend side, I think perhaps a little surprising to us in the last few weeks, we've seen them shift to some price testing, price competitiveness. And so we continue to see, particularly in sports across the ecosystem, competitiveness across pricing, while the marketing landscape seems to have really stabilized and moderated a bit. Cameron Mansson-Perrone: Got it. Anything to follow-up on that, anything that you could add on. I think the benefits on the push to kind of drive activity in-app probably makes you a little bit more insulated in terms of the vagaries of competitive intensity in the industry. Any additional color on kind of how you think about that and what the opportunity could be as more activity shifts to in-app? Lawrence Fey: Yes. I think that's exactly right in terms of the goal and the strategy. We're happy to have exceeded 40%. I think implicitly though, at 40%, we still have exposure to the wins of paid search and marketing expense. But the objective is very much to control our own future, bring folks into the ecosystem once and then have it more about building a long-term relationship with those customers versus continually needing to go back into the pond and acquire folks. But we do benefit when things moderate, right, given the remaining piece of the business that's still out there. So we're pleased to see that. But the surface area of that exposure has shrunk quite a bit relative to what it was 2 years ago. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Ryan Sigdahl with Craig-Hallum. Ryan Sigdahl: Larry, Joe, nice job on the sequential improvements and stabilization. I want to start on industry volume and curious what you guys saw in Q1 and then Q2 quarter-to-date, acknowledging I know April was a very tough comp, but just curious to try and compare your results relative to the industry and what you saw there. Lawrence Fey: Yes. In Q1, the data we're seeing was -- industry was probably up a smidge, so low single-digits, started pretty nice in January and then it moderated a bit into February and March. So net growth, but single-digits. And then Q2 thus far, I'd say, is roughly flat, got off to a slower start with Easter timing, but April picked up with a couple of meaningful concert on sales in the last 2 weeks. So we're back to roughly flattish. I think at the moment, generally continue to subscribe to what we had put forward at the outset of the year of modest industry growth. I think we've all seen the increase in some cancellations of certain tours over the last few weeks. I think most recent was The Pussycat Dolls, we also saw Zayn Malik, a couple of others Post Malone delayed, which I think on some level is reflecting either mispricing or some cap on potential for growth for the year. Ryan Sigdahl: Then just on market share, how that looked for you guys looking at SkyBox data on a sequential basis for the marketplace? And then secondly, on the market share, what you guys are seeing from SkyBox from your ERP customers? Lawrence Fey: Yes. So our share has been sequentially steady in our data when we look at Q4 into Q1 into Q2. As we've started to lap our most difficult comps last year, which started around now with the, call it, peak spending in the performance marketing channels, we've seen in our data, our share shift to being up year-over-year, not dramatically, but up, which is refreshing. And as you probably heard our theme throughout the call, I think we're well situated to return to growth in the back half of the year, and those are the types of metrics that you love to see flipping green in advance of that. Ryan Sigdahl: Great. Then maybe just on SkyBox too, if you're willing to comment specifically to the ERP customer market share? Lawrence Fey: Yes. There continues to be competition for those customers, but we have not seen any meaningful defections in recent months. So we're vigilant. We're continuing to reinvest and refocus on upgrading the platform to defend those relationships. But we've seen alongside our stabilizing and improving share in volumes, improvement in that dialogue and discourse with all of our sellers. So excited about the outlook on the SkyBox front. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Ralph Schackart with William Blair. Ralph Schackart: Two, if I could. Just first on the macro environment and sort of the reads on the consumer now that we have some elevated oil prices. Larry had said that maybe there's some cap on prices. I'm not sure if those are related, but just any comments as it relates to that? And then I have a follow-up. Lawrence Fey: Yes. We -- there's nothing we could point to in terms of the kink in the curve where the Iran conflict started, oil prices moved and you can see a discernible shift in demand or purchasing in any clear way. As we touched on earlier, with some of the concert tours being canceled, perhaps that's a reflection of at least some subset of the market being tapped out. It also may just be part of the natural oscillation of some artists misprice the tours, which is, I think, the leaning at the moment. We have seen some weakness. The lower end of the Vegas market has probably been the most palpable place where we've seen the impact of potential consumer weakness. I think that's a comment I've really seen a number of the local operators reinforce, and we have continued to see that continue into the year. So in Vegas, we're really looking ahead to 2027 when supply tailwinds arrive with the reopening of the Mirage. But I think for this year, it's going to be more of a blocking and tackling type year in Vegas. Ralph Schackart: Okay. Great. And just maybe kind of switching gears to the app and some of the improvements you talked about in conversion rates. I think you said you're above 40% traffic now on the app. Maybe just kind of a sense how that's trended over the last year or so? And just any thoughts on where you think that you could take that rate over time? Lawrence Fey: Yes. We've seen really nice increases in the share of GOV coming through the app. And ultimately, the GOV function is how do you get more people into the app and how do you drive higher conversion. So our activities are centered on both of those. A lot of effort in the back half of last year on how do we make folks who see the app want to download and keep it through better messaging, the better value proposition, reinforcing the value proposition. The focus this year has shifted to the conversion side of things, how do you optimize the product experience? How do you collect more data to have better personalized information appear in front of folks, have a pretty exciting deployment calendar over Q2 and Q3 on the app side of things. So we're north of 40% in Q1. I think the ambition is for a majority of the business to come through the app. I think realistic timetable for that would be at some point in 2027 to achieve that on a run rate basis, but that's what we're aspiring to deliver. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Brad Erickson with RBC Capital Markets. Bradley Erickson: So in terms of the return to growth, you pointed to, I think, the new private label partner giving you some added confidence there for the second half. Can you remind us any other items that could go -- kind of go right this year that gets you back to that growth in the second half of the year or at a high end of the guide type scenario? What would those drivers be? Lawrence Fey: Yes. I think as we frame why second half is where we draw the line for when we expect to flip back to growth. We lost the large private label customer in July of last year. So July and really August will be the first true clean month without that customer in there. Subsequent to losing that customer, as we noted, we brought a new meaningful private label customer on in Q1, which enabled sequential growth from Q4. I think within private label, the path to incremental upside is twofold. There's always the option of winning and bringing additional customers on. There's an interesting stick or 2 in the fire on that front. And then the other piece that we've redoubled efforts is how do we make sure our product and our support of our partners to maximize their organic performance is where it needs to be, and we're seeing encouraging progress on that front as well. With one of the big changes being any product enhancement that we are developing for the Vivid Seats marketplace, we want to make sure we make it configurable and available to our partners in short order. And some of the upgrades that get us excited on the Vivid side that they get pushed to our private label platform, I think provide an opportunity for organic outperformance in the second half of this year, but probably more prominent as you think about growth into 2027 and full year impact. Beyond that, I think the concert calendar and supply slate is largely baked at this point. So upside from here, I think, will largely be driven by fundamental performance, right? So can these new product releases that we have upcoming in Q2 and Q3 deliver the type of conversion uplift that we anticipate or event mix. And I think the World Cup is probably the elephant in the room. If you get some great matchups in the quarter finals, semifinals, finals and you have a series of Super Bowl size events, that would be a wonderful tailwind. We'll see. Bradley Erickson: Got it. And then just bigger picture, as you continue to have conversations presumably with the LLM companies, I don't know, have you seen any indications or just any updates you can give us on how you're thinking about their desire, ability, et cetera, to potentially grab economics of bringing the booking kind of closer to the 4 walls of the LLM. And then just generally, when you think about the risks related to that, remind us like what do you point to as kind of the specific points of insulation where the ticketing sector can maintain all of its economics within kind of an LLM booking environment? Lawrence Fey: Yes. I'd say on the AI journey broadly, we've actually seen to date, quite little progress on the top of the funnel disruption and quite a bit of progress on optimizing the way we operate the business on our side. So not to say it can't change, but everything we've seen to date has been more in the camp of the tools and capabilities allow us to be much more efficient and effective on a series of parameters to deliver a better customer experience, whether that's building the software more quickly, automating processes, better information sharing. It really has been a nice tailwind on the operational side, including specifically our customer service experience. If you look longer-term, nothing that we've seen indicates that the premise of like a fully captive transaction where the marketplace is boxed out is likely in the near-term or the focus of the LLMs in the near-term. I think the biggest barrier is this idea of when you have dynamic inventory in a deep vertical search category where you have a ton of individual preference. You need a lot of data. And they don't have -- the LLMs don't have that data across every subcategory that they service. So they're ultimately reliant on the folks like Vivid Seats or our competitors who have aggregated the inventory, have built the seat maps, have the dynamic real-time pricing. And so unless we compile all that information and provide to them, they won't have it. And then it's incumbent on us in the industry to make sure that we don't just give away the farm without being properly compensated. But that, I think, is at least what we're seeing today. That's a multiyear journey and not one we're seeing progress being made on the LLM front at the moment. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Steven McDermott with Bank of America. Steven McDermott: I was wondering if we could shift a little bit to your partnership with United, kind of any updates there? And is that really driving any incrementality that you're seeing? And then I have a follow-up after. Lawrence Fey: Yes. United is a great example of one of the, call it, many partnerships and partners we have across the ecosystem. It's been a nice tailwind throughout the year. It's not an explicit needle mover of results. So it's been great to add them, excited to continue to grow the partnership and iterate on how to maximize it, but I would not consider that a primary influence on the results that you're seeing in Q1. Steven McDermott: Got you. And then as we look at your cost position after your recent reductions, do you feel as though you're kind of in a comfortable position to return to growth? And to that, can we expect a more aggressive OpEx spend in the second half of this year? Lawrence Fey: Yes. I think the cost side of the equation continues to be a bright spot. I think first and foremost, the cost reductions that we've actioned are flowing through. So they are real. Second, we have not seen any loss in productivity or capability. And in fact, I think I've actually seen our productivity and deployment rates increase alongside the efficiency gains, and that's one part optimizing and getting the right people in the right seats and one part utilizing some of these AI capabilities I was alluding to earlier. So as we sit here today, our objective is operating leverage. So as we grow, disproportionate amount of that growth flows through to the bottom line. And I think we have more opportunity to capture on the expense side as we move into next year. So there are some variable costs, right, as you complete transactions, even including in our G&A line, right, some software that's per dip and that type of thing. But I think our objective is even as we return to growth, our expenses remain steady on the G&A side. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Thomas Forte with Maxim Group. Thomas Forte: Great. So first off, Larry and Joe, congrats on the quarter. Larry, sorry about the Illini and at least OKC is playing the Lakers in this round. My first question is more exciting. My second question is a little boring. On the more exciting front, what gives you confidence you can maintain your share and capitalize on World Cup this year? And if you're able to do that, how might World Cup contribute to your numbers this year? Lawrence Fey: Yes. I think World Cup has been a pretty meaningful tailwind. I think broadly consistent with what we've touched on in prior quarters where we framed the opportunity as something larger than an A-List concert tour, but perhaps less than Taylor Swift. What we've seen in terms of volume flowing through to date, the World Cup first went on sale in November. So we've been selling for 6, 7 months now with a couple of months to go as we approach the start of the games. It's tracking to those levels, right? So if a typical A-List tour is 1% of GOV for the year, Taylor Swift, more like high single-digits, it looks like overall, the event will be low to mid-single digits as a percentage of full year GOV. So we've had really nice performance and strength to date. These are high AOS events. And what we've generally found is that value proposition matters quite a bit when you're talking about these high AOS events. And so incumbent on us to continue to get the message out that our app is the place to purchase these high AOS tickets. And if we're able to continue doing that, I think we'll get our fair share a little bit better as we enter the playing phase of the tournament. Thomas Forte: Great. And then for my boring one, now that we're a quarter in, do you want to give your updated thoughts on cash conversion for adjusted EBITDA for '26? Lawrence Fey: Yes. I think largely consistent where if anything, our CapEx is maybe coming in a little bit lower than we had previously estimated. But directionally, net interest expense in the $20-ish million range, CapEx, cap software in the low to mid-teens and then a smidge of taxes relating to our international operations. So if you get to EBITDA in the $35 million to $40 million range, you'll be cash flow positive before considering working capital. And as we have outlined, we feel pretty good about our volume trajectory and that overall working capital will be a source of cash on balance over the course of the year. And so believe that we're tracking, assuming we continue to deliver against the numbers and guidance for a cash flow positive year. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Kunal Madhukar with DB. Kunal Madhukar: A couple, if I could. One, on the app side, I wanted to understand how the app user demographics differs from the regular customers that you have on the website in terms of maybe age, in terms of their interest, in terms of engagement, in terms of geography, in terms of the type of tickets, concert versus sports that they are buying? And then I have a follow-up. Lawrence Fey: Yes. I think the biggest delineation between app and web users tends to be that the most frequent live event attendees, those who repeat most often are the ones intuitively, who would download an app for buying live event tickets. And that generally corresponds to the categories that have the highest recurrence, which would be sports, right? The highest recurrence example would be Major League Baseball, right? There's 81 home games. If you go to baseball game a year, there's a decent chance you'll consider going to 2 or 3. In contrast, Taylor Swift goes on tour once every 5 or 6 years. So the fact that you bought a Taylor Swift ticket might mean that you're interested in buying a Sabrina Carpenter ticket. But the fact that you bought a Cubs ticket means you're really likely to be interested in buying another Cubs ticket. So the biggest element that we see across the app is folks repeat more often, right? So if you buy on our app, the prospect for you buying again is higher. The second is that you over-index to sports because of the inherent recurrence within sports. Beyond that, there is not a lot to flag across our geography or demographics that I would say is of note. It's really more the frequency profile with a bit more sports orientation. Kunal Madhukar: Got it. And then when I was doing basic back of the envelope math, given app grew 20% and is now over 40% of the overall GOV, that suggests that the non-app GOV probably declined about 40%. And then you mentioned that we should expect that by 2027, app GOV on a run rate basis should be a majority of the business. So what kind of growth rate should we expect on the app side versus the non-app side for the remainder of the year? Lawrence Fey: Yes. First, definitionally, when we reference app GOV, that's of our Vivid Seats properties. So we're not speaking across the entire GOV footprint of the business, namely Vegas and Wavedash and our private label would not be part of that definition. So I would tweak the math a bit. I don't think we're in the business of forecasting or projecting by device type explicitly. But I think implicitly, we're expecting the business to grow, app to grow disproportionately. As we start lapping some of the most competitively intensive periods, I think we expect that we can get web back to growth. But whenever you're looking at these aggregate GOV numbers, you just have to fully decompose it, right? You have to pull private label out. We lose private label partner that is different than competitiveness in the web, competitive landscape lens us versus StubHub versus SeatGeek. So yes, it's an implicitly true statement that app was up and other parts of the business were down, but decomposing is pretty important. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Marok with Raymond James. Andrew Marok: One, with this quarter's results coming in nicely and the reiteration of the guide, is the business just kind of becoming a bit more visible in your view? Are you able to maybe have a little bit more forecasting confidence than you have had in the past? And then I have a follow-up. Lawrence Fey: Yes. Thanks, Andrew. I think I would agree with the statement overall. Certainly, as we move through a year, right, as we get to Q4 where the concert on sale calendar solidifies and crystallizes it through the back half of Q4, first half of Q1, we sit here with a pretty good sense of what the supply side of the calendar will look like. I think the fact that we've really tightened up our expense base lowers the bar, if you will, which helps mute impact. And then the last piece is we've reduced the surface area and exposure to paid search. It's still present, but we've reduced it. I think that helps diminish volatility from things that are exogenous, namely competitive or competitor posture. So there will still be variance, right? Event mix is still a real thing, right? If we have great World Cup matchups or bad World Cup matchups, long series, short series, more concert cancellations, right? Those are all exogenous and can introduce volatility. Competitor behavior, competitor posture can still introduce some volatility. But in terms of the controllables, I think we've dialed them in quite a bit and feel better about putting outlooks in place. Andrew Marok: Appreciate that. And then maybe as it relates to the app business, I think you mentioned this a little bit in your prepared remarks, but I just kind of want to ask it directly. There's kind of this meme out there for older people, especially where big purchases are done on the desktop, right, like ticketing, hotel bookings, flights, et cetera. How do you sort of combat that to drive app growth? Is it purely demographic? Or are there kind of nudges that you can give your consumers to get them to buy on the app? Lawrence Fey: Yes. Thanks, Andrew. It's a great question because I guess this probably reveals where I sit on the age bucket. But I will do that as well, right? When you're in discovery mode, you want to be able to either consider a bunch of different events or a bunch of different seating areas. Sometimes I'll actually do some searching on the bigger screen. But I think the objective we have is to make sure folks know that there's a better value proposition available in the app. And so if you want to transact on desktop, that's great. And we're going to deliver the optimal experience for that. But if you also wanted to discover on desktop and then download the app, properly messaging that the lowest price guarantee and typically our lowest prices will be available in the app. Increasingly, we're going to have our rewards program prominently appear in the app and less so on web. So there will be material inducement to transact in the app, but we, of course, want to support people wherever their workflow wants them to transact. Operator: Your last question comes from the line of Maria Ripps with Canaccord. Maria Ripps: First, I just wanted to follow-up on your private label business. So you mentioned a new customer addition there, which is encouraging. But how should we think about that segment going forward beyond sort of returning to growth? Do you think sort of it can return to the run rate you had the business at about a year or 2 ago? Lawrence Fey: I think in absolute size, it's unlikely that we'll in the near-term, reclaim where we had been before the large customer loss. What I think we aspire to deliver is that the segment will grow at or above the broader marketplace and at or above industry rates. And so I think the 2 paths there would be enabling our existing customers to organically outpace the industry. And then what gets exciting is you have the option and the opportunity to add new customer wins on top of that organic growth. And so we're seeing all of those signs pointing in the right direction where we can have both happening in parallel, which could lead to some nice sequential growth and starting in Q3 set us up for delivering sustained year-over-year growth. But from an absolute standpoint, I don't think returning to the pre-customer loss levels that we saw in 2024 or early 2025 is a near-term target that we think we can deliver. Maria Ripps: Got it. That's helpful. And then just a quick follow-up. Can you maybe update us on your international strategy? And how important is it kind of on the list of your investment priorities at this point? Lawrence Fey: Yes. We continue to be encouraged by the international opportunity. I think we mentioned in our last call or 2 that we've achieved -- we're positive on the contribution margin standpoint in 2025. We grew GOV triple-digits in 2025. We've continued to see GOV grow into 2026. But in the spirit of focusing our efforts on the highest impact priorities, what we're focusing on are upgrades that benefit not only international, but also North America. And so as you think about things like our checkout, irregardless of your location or your geography, that will benefit the business. So the near-term road map is really focused on that type of improvement. And then as we get through these universal upgrades that will benefit international, but also benefit North America. We do have an interesting road map of international upgrades queued up. It's just a matter of if we can get to it in the next quarter or the next couple of quarters. Operator: Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program, and you may now disconnect. Before you buy stock in Vivid Seats, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Vivid Seats wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. 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Achieved sequential growth in GOV and adjusted EBITDA by focusing on funnel efficiency and a material reduction in operating costs relative to the revenue base. Strategic shift toward app adoption resulted in app GOV growing 20% year-over-year, now exceeding 40% of total GOV, which reduces reliance on expensive paid search channels. Management attributes the app's success to a differentiated value proposition combining the Vivid Seats Rewards program, a lowest price guarantee, and a streamlined checkout experience. The private label business delivered sequential revenue growth of 20% in Q1, supported by the launch of a significant new partner and the extension of an existing large-scale agreement. Observed a moderation in competitive marketing spend from major players like StubHub since late 2025, though this has been partially offset by increased price-testing and aggressiveness in sports categories. Performance attribution for the quarter highlights that while industry volume grew in the low single-digits, Vivid Seats landed at the high end of guidance through disciplined execution and product innovation. Reaffirmed fiscal year 2026 guidance with the expectation of returning to year-over-year growth in the second half as the company laps the loss of a large private label customer. Anticipates achieving a majority of business through the app on a run rate basis by 2027, driven by upcoming product enhancements in Q2 and Q3 focused on conversion and personalization. Guidance assumes modest industry growth but acknowledges potential headwinds from recent concert tour cancellations and consumer weakness in specific markets like Las Vegas. Strategic roadmap prioritizes 'universal upgrades' such as checkout optimization that benefit both North American and international operations before pursuing region-specific investments. Management targets sustained operating leverage, aiming to keep G&A expenses steady even as the company returns to growth by utilizing AI-driven productivity gains. The marketplace take rate declined to 15.9% from 16.8% sequentially, primarily reflecting a mix shift toward private label revenue which typically carries lower take rates. Identified a 'cap' on growth for certain concert tours, suggesting that mispricing or consumer exhaustion may be leading to recent high-profile tour cancellations and delays. The 2026 World Cup is identified as a significant tailwind, expected to contribute low-to-mid single digits as a percentage of full-year GOV, comparable to a major A-list tour. Vegas market performance remains a headwind due to local consumer weakness; management does not expect significant supply tailwinds there until the Mirage reopening in 2027. Our analysts just identified a stock with the potential to be the next Nvidia. Tell us how you invest and we'll show you why it's our #1 pick. Tap here. Management confirmed that StubHub has stepped back from peak 2025 spend levels in paid search, though they have recently pivoted toward aggressive price testing. Vivid Seats is insulating itself from these competitive shifts by migrating users to the app, where the 'surface area' of exposure to paid marketing is significantly smaller. Management sees AI as an operational tailwind for software development and customer service rather than a near-term threat to the top-of-funnel search economics. Argued that LLMs lack the real-time dynamic inventory and seat map data required for captive transactions, maintaining the marketplace's role as the essential data aggregator. App users over-index in sports due to the inherent recurrence of league schedules (e.g., MLB) compared to infrequent concert tours. The strategy involves using the desktop for discovery while providing material inducements, like the rewards program and lowest price guarantee, to drive the final transaction into the app. Management clarified that while the private label segment is growing, it is unlikely to return to pre-2025 levels in the near-term following the loss of a major client. Growth will be driven by making Vivid Seats' proprietary marketplace enhancements configurable for private label partners to drive organic outperformance. One stock. Nvidia-level potential. 30M+ investors trust Moby to find it first. Get the pick. Tap here.

CHICAGO, May 05, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Vivid Seats Inc. (NASDAQ: SEAT) (“Vivid Seats” or “we”), a leading marketplace that utilizes its technology platform to connect millions of buyers with thousands of ticket sellers across hundreds of thousands of events each year, today provided financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2026. “Our first quarter performance reflects strong execution and meaningful progress against our Fiscal 2026 priorities with results at or above the high end of our guidance,” said Lawrence Fey, Chief Executive Officer of Vivid Seats. “We delivered sequential growth in GOV and Adjusted EBITDA along with substantial cash generation in the quarter. The improvements we are seeing are important steps as we pursue a return to growth over the course of 2026 and beyond.” First Quarter 2026 Key Financial Highlights Marketplace GOV of $612.4 million Revenues of $125.8 million Net loss of $14.6 million Adjusted EBITDA of $9.5 million Key Business Metrics & Non-U.S. GAAP Financial Measure We use the following key business metrics and non-U.S. GAAP financial measure to evaluate our performance, identify trends, formulate financial projections, and make strategic decisions. We believe this information is useful to investors and others in understanding and evaluating our results of operations in the same manner as management. The following table summarizes our key business metrics and non-U.S. GAAP financial measure for the three months ended March 31, 2026 and 2025 (in thousands): 2026 Financial Outlook For the year ending December 31, 2026, Vivid Seats anticipates: Marketplace GOV in the range of $2.2 billion to $2.6 billion Adjusted EBITDA in the range of $30.0 million to $40.0 million* * We calculate forward-looking adjusted EBITDA based on internal forecasts that omit certain information that would be included in forward-looking net loss, the most directly comparable U.S. GAAP financial measure. We do not attempt to provide a reconciliation of forward-looking adjusted EBITDA to forward-looking net loss because the timing and/or probable significance of certain excluded items that have not yet occurred and are outside of our control is inherently uncertain and unavailable without unreasonable efforts. Such items could have a significant and unpredictable impact on our future U.S. GAAP financial results. Webcast Details Vivid Seats will host a webcast at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time today to discuss the first quarter 2026 financial results, business updates, and financial outlook. Participants may access the live webcast and supplemental earnings presentation on the events page of the Vivid Seats Investor Relations website at investors.vividseats.com/events-and-presentations. About Vivid Seats Founded in 2001, Vivid Seats (NASDAQ: SEAT) is a leading online ticket marketplace connecting fans to the live events, artists, and teams they love. Vivid Seats is committed to delivering the most rewarding ticket-buying experience for fans through competitive everyday pricing backed by its Lowest Price Guarantee, an industry-leading rewards program, and award-winning customer service. The Chicago-based company offers one of the widest selections of live events across North America, powered by proprietary technology that makes discovering and buying tickets simple, affordable, and reliable. Learn more by downloading the Vivid Seats app or visiting vividseats.com. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the “safe harbor” provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “can,” “continue,” “could,” “design,” “estimate,” “expect,” “forecast,” “future,” “goal,” “intend,” “likely,” “may,” “plan,” “project,” “propose,” “seek,” “should,” “target,” “will,” and “would,” as well as similar expressions that predict or indicate future events and trends or do not relate to historical matters, are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release relate to, without limitation: our future operating results and financial performance, including our expectations with respect to our return to growth and our fiscal year 2026 Marketplace GOV and adjusted EBITDA; our expectations with respect to live event industry growth, the supply of and demand for live events, and our competitive positioning; and our business strategy and objectives. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, conditions, or results, and are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that can be difficult to predict and/or are outside of our control. Therefore, actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by any forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to: the supply of and demand for live events; the impact of adverse economic conditions and other factors affecting discretionary consumer and corporate spending; our ability to develop and maintain relationships with ticket buyers, sellers, and partners; the impact of changes to internet search engine algorithms and mobile app marketplace rules; the impact of artificial intelligence on how consumers search for live event tickets; our ability to attract ticket sellers and buyers to our platform in the increasingly competitive ticketing industry; our ability to continue to maintain and improve our platform; the impact of extraordinary events, including disease epidemics; our ability to identify suitable acquisition targets and to complete and realize the expected benefits of acquisitions and other strategic investments; our ability to attract, hire, motivate, and retain our senior management team and other highly skilled personnel; our ability to comply with applicable laws and regulations; the ability of ticket holders to sell their tickets on the secondary market unencumbered; the impact of unfavorable outcomes in legislation and legal proceedings; our ability to maintain the integrity of our information systems and infrastructure, and to identify, assess, and manage relevant cybersecurity risks; our ability to generate sufficient cash flows and/or obtain additional financing when necessary or desirable; and other factors discussed in the “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” sections of our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, as well as in our press releases and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. Except as required by applicable law, we undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements contained in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Contact: Investors [email protected] Media [email protected] Adjusted EBITDA We present adjusted EBITDA, which is a non-U.S. GAAP financial measure, because it is a key measure used by analysts, investors, and others to evaluate companies in our industry. Adjusted EBITDA is also used by management to make operating decisions, including those related to analyzing operating expenses, evaluating performance, and performing strategic planning and annual budgeting. We believe adjusted EBITDA is useful for understanding, evaluating, and highlighting trends in our operating results and for making period-to-period comparisons of our business performance because it excludes the impact of items that are outside of our control and/or not reflective of ongoing performance related directly to the operation of our business. Adjusted EBITDA is not based on any comprehensive set of accounting rules or principles and should not be considered a substitute for, or superior to, financial measures calculated in accordance with U.S. GAAP. Adjusted EBITDA does not reflect all amounts associated with our operating results as determined in accordance with U.S. GAAP and specifically excludes certain recurring costs such as: income tax expense (benefit); interest expense – net; depreciation and amortization; sales tax liabilities; transaction costs; equity-based compensation; litigation, settlements, and related costs; loss on asset disposals; change in fair value of derivative asset; foreign currency loss (gain) – net; severance compensation; change in fair value of the Intermediate Warrants (as defined below); and loss on extinguishment of debt. In addition, other companies may calculate adjusted EBITDA differently than we do, thereby limiting its usefulness as a comparative tool. We compensate for these limitations by providing specific information regarding the U.S. GAAP amounts that are excluded from our presentation of adjusted EBITDA. The following table presents a reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to net loss, the most directly comparable U.S. GAAP financial measure, for the three months ended March 31, 2026 and 2025 (in thousands):