管理層發言
Good morning, and welcome to Vivid Seats' First 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.
Good morning, and welcome to Vivid Seats' First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. I'm 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 our earnings press release, which was issued earlier this morning. The release as well as supplemental earnings slides are available on our Investor Relations website at investors.vividseats.com. Today's call will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our projections, including the risks discussed in our earnings release, our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and our subsequent filings with the SEC. Today's call will also include references to adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP financial measure that provides useful information to our investors. To the extent reasonably available, a reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to 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.
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.
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.
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.
分析師問答
Your first question comes from Cameron Mansson-Perrone of Morgan Stanley.
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.
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 to middle of 2025. On the marketing spend side, perhaps a little surprising to us in the last few weeks, we've seen them shift to some price testing and price competitiveness. And so we continue to see, particularly in sports across the ecosystem, competitiveness across pricing, while the marketing landscape seems to have stabilized and moderated a bit.
Got it. Anything to follow up on that, anything that you could add on? I think the benefits of the push to 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 how you think about that and what the opportunity could be as more activity shifts to in-app?
Yes. I think that's exactly right in terms of the goal and the strategy. We're happy to have exceeded 40%. Implicitly though, at 40% we still have exposure to paid search and marketing expense. The objective is very much to control our own future, bring folks into the ecosystem once and then have it be more about building a long-term relationship with those customers versus continually needing to reacquire them. But we do benefit when things moderate, given the remaining part of the business that's still out there. So we're pleased to see that. The surface area of that exposure has shrunk quite a bit relative to what it was two years ago.
Your next question comes from the line of Ryan Sigdahl with Craig-Hallum.
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.
Yes. In Q1, the data we're seeing indicates the industry was up a smidge, so low single-digits, starting pretty strong in January and then moderating a bit into February and March. So net growth, but single digits. And then Q2 thus far, I'd say, is roughly flat. It got off to a slower start with Easter timing, but April picked up with a couple of meaningful concert onsales in the last two weeks, so we're back to roughly flat. At the moment, we continue to subscribe to the modest industry growth outlook we put forward at the outset of the year. We've also seen an increase in some cancellations of certain tours over the last few weeks — most recently The Pussycat Dolls, Zayn Malik, and a couple of others; Post Malone delayed — which I think may reflect either mispricing or some cap on potential for growth for the year.
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?
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 began around the 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. As we've noted throughout the call, we think we're well situated to return to growth in the back half of the year, and those are the types of metrics you like to see flipping positive in advance of that.
Great. Then maybe just on SkyBox too, if you're willing to comment specifically to the ERP customer market share?
There continues to be competition for those customers, but we have not seen any meaningful defections in recent months. We're vigilant and continue to reinvest and refocus on upgrading the platform to defend those relationships. Alongside our stabilizing and improving share in volumes, we've seen improvement in dialogue with our sellers. So we're excited about the outlook on the SkyBox front.
Your next question comes from the line of Ralph Schackart with William Blair.
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.
We don't see a clear kink in the curve directly tied to the Iran conflict and rising oil prices where demand shifted in any obvious way. As we mentioned earlier, some concert tours being canceled may reflect a subset of the market being tapped out, or it may reflect artists mispricing their tours. We have seen some weakness; the lower end of the Las Vegas market has probably been the most palpable place where we've seen impact from potential consumer weakness. Several local operators have noted this as well. We're looking ahead to 2027 for supply tailwinds in Vegas with the reopening of the Mirage, but for this year it will be more of a blocking-and-tackling type year in Vegas.
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 a sense how that's trended over the last year or so? And any thoughts on where you think that you could take that rate over time?
We've seen really nice increases in the share of GOV coming through the app. Ultimately, the GOV function is how do you get more people into the app and how do you drive higher conversion. Our activities are centered on both of those. A lot of effort in the back half of last year focused on making folks who see the app want to download and keep it through better messaging and a better value proposition. The focus this year has shifted to the conversion side: how do you optimize the product experience, collect more data to provide better personalization, and deploy enhancements. We have an exciting deployment calendar over Q2 and Q3 on the app side. We're north of 40% in Q1. The ambition is for a majority of the business to come through the app. A realistic timetable for that would be at some point in 2027 on a run-rate basis, but that's our aspiration.
Your next question comes from the line of Brad Erickson with RBC Capital Markets.
So in terms of the return to growth, you pointed to the new private label partner giving you some added confidence for the second half. Can you remind us any other items that could go right this year that gets you back to that growth in the second half of the year or at the high end of the guide type scenario? What would those drivers be?
Yes. We framed the second half as when we expect to flip back to growth for a few reasons. We lost a large private label customer in July of last year, so July and August will be the first true clean months without that customer. Since then, we brought a new meaningful private label customer on in Q1, enabling sequential growth from Q4. Within private label, upside can come from winning additional customers and from enabling our existing partners to maximize organic performance. We're making product enhancements developed for the Vivid Seats marketplace configurable and available to our partners quickly. Those upgrades can drive organic outperformance in the second half and be more prominent heading into 2027. Beyond that, the concert calendar and supply slate are largely baked, so upside will be driven by fundamental performance: product releases in Q2 and Q3 delivering the conversion uplift we expect and event mix. The World Cup is a potential tailwind if matchups and interest are strong in the knockout rounds.
Got it. And then bigger picture, as you continue to have conversations presumably with the large language model companies, have you seen any indications or updates you can give on how you're thinking about their desire or ability to potentially capture economics by bringing the booking closer to the LLM? And generally, when you think about the risks related to that, what are the specific points of insulation where the ticketing sector can maintain its economics within an LLM booking environment?
On the AI journey broadly, we've actually seen quite little progress to date on top-of-funnel disruption and more progress on optimizing how we operate the business. The tools and capabilities have allowed us to be more efficient and effective across many parameters and to deliver a better customer experience, including customer service. Nothing we've seen indicates a fully captive transaction where the marketplace is boxed out is likely in the near term or the focus of LLMs right now. The biggest barrier is the need for deep, dynamic inventory data in a vertical search category with lots of individual preference. LLMs don't have that data across every subcategory, so they rely on marketplaces like Vivid Seats that have aggregated inventory, seat maps and dynamic pricing. It's incumbent on the industry to ensure we don't give away that value without proper compensation. This is a multiyear journey, and we are not seeing immediate progress on the LLM front that threatens our model.
Your next question comes from the line of Steven McDermott with Bank of America.
I was wondering if we could shift a little bit to your partnership with United, any updates there? And is that really driving any incrementality that you're seeing? And then I have a follow-up after.
United is a great example of one of the many partnerships we have across the ecosystem. It's been a nice tailwind throughout the year. It's not an explicit needle mover of results. It's been great to add them, and we're excited to continue to grow the partnership and iterate on maximizing it, but I would not consider it a primary influence on the results in Q1.
Got you. And then as we look at your cost position after your recent reductions, do you feel as though you're 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?
The cost reductions we've implemented are flowing through and are real. We have not seen any loss in productivity or capability; in fact, productivity and deployment rates have increased alongside efficiency gains. That is partly due to optimizing and getting the right people in the right roles and partly due to using AI capabilities. Our objective is operating leverage, so as we grow, a disproportionate amount of that growth should flow through to the bottom line. We have more opportunity to capture on the expense side into next year. There are some variable costs tied to completing transactions, including software that's per-transaction, but our objective is that even as we return to growth, expenses remain steady on the G&A side.
Your next question comes from the line of Thomas Forte with Maxim Group.
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?
World Cup has been a meaningful tailwind and is larger than an A-list concert tour but not at the scale of Taylor Swift. The World Cup went on sale in November, so we've been selling for six to seven months with a couple of months to go. It's tracking to our expectations. If a typical A-list tour is 1% of GOV for the year and Taylor Swift is high single digits, overall the event looks like it will be low to mid-single digits as a percentage of full-year GOV. We've had strong performance to date; these are high average order size events. Our value proposition matters a lot for high-AOS events, so it's incumbent on us to continue messaging that our app is the place to purchase these tickets. If we do that well, we should get our fair share and possibly a bit more as the tournament plays out.
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?
Directionally, CapEx is coming in a bit lower than we had previously estimated. Net interest expense is in the roughly $20 million range, CapEx and capitalized software in the low-to-mid teens, and there is a bit of tax related to international operations. If adjusted EBITDA is in the $35 million to $40 million range, you'll be cash flow positive before considering working capital. We also expect working capital to be a source of cash over the course of the year. Assuming we deliver against our guidance, we believe we're tracking to a cash flow positive year.
Your next question comes from the line of Kunal Madhukar with DB.
A couple, if I could. One, on the app side, I wanted to understand how the app user demographics differ from regular customers on the website in terms of age, interest, engagement, geography, and the type of tickets, concert versus sports that they are buying? And then I have a follow-up.
The biggest delineation between app and web users is frequency. The most frequent live event attendees, those who repeat most often, are more likely to download an app for buying tickets. That corresponds to categories with the highest recurrence, which is sports. For example, Major League Baseball has many home games, so a fan who attends multiple games is more likely to be a repeat purchaser and to use an app. In contrast, major concerts are infrequent for many customers. So app users repeat more often and over-index to sports because of recurrence. Beyond that, there isn't a notable difference across geography or demographics; it's primarily the frequency profile with a stronger sports orientation.
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%. You mentioned that by 2027 app GOV on a run-rate basis should be a majority of the business. What kind of growth rate should we expect on the app side versus the non-app side for the remainder of the year?
First, when we reference app GOV, that's of our Vivid Seats branded properties and does not include Vegas, Wavedash or private label. So that tweak is important to the math. We don't forecast by device type explicitly. Implicitly, we expect the business to grow with the app growing disproportionately. As we lap some of the most competitively intensive periods, we expect web to return to growth. When looking at aggregate GOV numbers, you need to decompose private label and other components. So yes, app was up and other parts were down, but decomposition is important.
Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Marok with Raymond James.
With this quarter's results coming in nicely and the reiteration of the guide, is the business becoming a bit more visible in your view? Are you able to have a little more forecasting confidence than you have had in the past? And then I have a follow-up.
Overall, yes. As we move through the year, by Q4 the concert on-sale calendar typically solidifies and gives us a good sense of supply. Tightening the expense base lowers the bar and mutes impact, and reducing exposure to paid search also helps diminish volatility from exogenous competitive actions. There will still be variance from event mix and competitor behavior, but in terms of the controllables, we've dialed them in and feel better about issuing outlooks.
App question: there's a perception that older people do big purchases on desktop for tickets, hotels, flights, etc. How do you combat that to drive app growth? Is it purely demographic or are there nudges you can give consumers to get them to buy on the app?
When in discovery mode, people may search on a larger screen, but our objective is to make folks aware that a better value proposition exists in the app. If someone wants to transact on desktop, we support that and will optimize the experience. But we also want to encourage discovery on desktop and then conversion in-app by messaging that the lowest price guarantee and rewards are available in the app. We will prominently present our rewards program in the app as an inducement to transact there, while supporting people wherever they prefer to transact.
Your last question comes from the line of Maria Ripps with Canaccord.
First, a follow-up on your private label business. You mentioned a new customer addition, which is encouraging. How should we think about that segment going forward beyond returning to growth? Do you think it can return to the run rate you had about a year or two ago?
In absolute size, it's unlikely we'll reclaim the levels we had before the large customer loss in the near term. Our aspiration is for the segment to grow at or above the broader marketplace and industry rates. That can happen by enabling existing customers to outpace the industry organically and by adding new customers. We're seeing signs of both, which could lead to sequential growth and position us to deliver sustained year-over-year growth starting in Q3. But returning to pre-customer-loss absolute levels in 2024 or early 2025 is not a near-term target.
Got it. And then a quick follow-up: can you update us on your international strategy, and how important is it on the list of investment priorities at this point?
We continue to be encouraged by the international opportunity. We achieved positive contribution margin in 2025 and grew GOV triple-digits in 2025, with GOV continuing to grow into 2026. To focus on highest-impact priorities, we're prioritizing upgrades that benefit both international and North America, such as checkout improvements. The near-term roadmap focuses on universal upgrades that benefit international and North America; we have an interesting queue of international-specific upgrades that we'll get to as capacity allows over the coming quarters.
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.