Earnings Call Transcript - SEAT Q3 FY2025

Speaker 5

Good morning, and welcome to the Vivid Seats 3rd Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Following management-prepared remarks, we will open the call for Q&A. I would now like to turn the call over to Kate Africk.

Speaker 4

Good morning, and welcome to Vivid Seats 3rd Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. I am Kate Africk, Head of Investor Relations at Vivid Seats. This morning, we issued our 3rd Quarter Financial Results. The press release, as well as supplemental earnings slides, are available on the Investor Relations page of our website at Investors.VividSeats.com. During the course of today's call, we may make forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, including the risks and uncertainties described in our earnings press release, our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, our subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and our other filings with the SEC. On today's call, we will refer to adjusted EBITDA, which is a non-GAAP financial measure that provides useful information for investors. A reconciliation of this non-GAAP financial measure to its corresponding gap measure can be found in our earnings press release and supplemental earnings slides. This morning, we also announced a leadership transition that is effective today. Lawrence Faye, who has served as Chief Financial Officer since 2020, will succeed Stan Chia as Chief Executive Officer. Additionally, Ted Pickus, who has served as Chief Accounting Officer since 2022, has been appointed as Interim Chief Financial Officer until a successor is identified. Accordingly, Larry and Ted are joining me today on the call. With Larry's extensive history with VividSeats dating back to 2017, the VividSeats Board believes he is uniquely qualified to navigate the evolving industry environment and steer the company back to growth. Larry will share more detail on his vision for VividSeats' next chapter today. And now, I would like to turn the call over to Larry.

Lawrence Fey, CEO

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. First, I would like to discuss the leadership transition and express my gratitude to Stan for his leadership and service over the last seven years. His accomplishments include successfully leading Vivid Seats through a global pandemic, bringing Vivid Seats to the public markets, and launching key innovations such as the Vivid Seats Reward Program, which provides a foundation on which we will continue to build as we deliver a unique and leading value proposition to our customers. I recognize the responsibility of this role and will look to take decisive action to reverse recent trends and build a resilient business well-positioned for long-term success. The core pillars of our strategy start with the foundational advantages that have been in place at Vivid Seats for years and build from there. There is much work to be done, but the foundation to return to profitable growth is in place, and our path forward is clear. VividSeats has long been known for its leading tech capabilities, unique data, and focus on efficiency. In recent years, as paid search has become more competitive and customer acquisition economics have become strained, VividSeats has increasingly invested in its app with a focus on building a loyal and recurring customer base. We are now increasing our focus and investment in delivering a leading value proposition to our customers. Alongside our loyalty program, with rewards redeemable in the app, late in the third quarter, we launched our lowest price guarantee, also in the app. We believe the combination of our lowest price guarantee and our loyalty program represents the most compelling value proposition in the industry, and we are already seeing positive responses from our customers. With our enhanced value proposition, we expect to see a growing number of app users and resulting transactions. Our app users return more often, convert at a higher rate, and touch performance marketing channels less. Over time, as our volume increasingly moves into the app, our performance will be increasingly insulated from the heightened competitiveness we have seen in performance marketing channels in recent years. Further, we believe that information transparency will only increase as AI proliferates and impacts the way consumers interact with brands across the Internet. It will take time to build comprehensive awareness of our enhanced app value proposition, but we are confident we will disproportionately benefit as AI reshapes consumer discovery and decision-making as we match consumer demand with the most compelling value in the industry. One of our initial efforts to build awareness of our app value proposition is our recently renewed partnership with ESPN. With ESPN, we have launched a national marketing campaign on Disney streaming, which is reaching more than 127 million global subscribers across over 700 live sports events monthly. We are excited to see how fans respond to our new offering as awareness continues to We believe our investments in delivering a leading value proposition will drive order volume but reduce our take rates. Funding these investments in a sustainable manner will require a commitment to operating the most efficient platform in ticketing. We will focus on operating as a lean and agile organization enabled by powerful technology and unique data. We announced the cost reduction program last quarter, and we are now more than doubling our fixed cost reduction target from $25 million to $60 million. We have made substantial progress towards our updated target with savings spanning fixed marketing, G&A, and stock-based compensation. these savings and our considerable reinvestment in our app value proposition are reflected in our initial 2026 guidance. Continuing with our theme of driving efficiency through clear focus, we executed our corporate simplification agreement, which included the termination of our cash receivable agreement and the collapse of our dual-class share structure early in the fourth quarter. The corporate simplification will yield substantial immediate and ongoing savings. As part of the termination, we issued approximately 400,000 Class A shares to the former TRA parties. In return, we will avoid $6 million of cash TRA payments otherwise due in Q1-2026, while capturing up to $180 million of lifetime tax savings, subject to generating sufficient profitability. In addition, by simplifying our structure, we expect to save approximately $1 million per year from reduced financial reporting and compliance costs, while also removing tax inefficiencies in our structure. At current levels of profitability, we anticipate our annual cash income taxes to be approximately $3 million. The savings between our cost reduction program and corporate simplification will create a more focused and agile organization, one that can invest strategically for growth while maintaining discipline and profitability. Next, I'll address trends in our third quarter results, which we believe validate our path forward and underpin our initial 2026 outlook, which TED will provide. While private label remains under pressure, we are encouraged to see stabilization and early signs of momentum across our owned properties. Against a flat sequential industry backdrop, VividSeats and Vegas.com delivered sequential GOV growth, while the VividSeats app delivered double-digit sequential growth and returned to year-over-year GOV growth. This is a direct result of our ongoing investment in product development and our enhanced value proposition. As we look to the fourth quarter and into 2026, there are no quick fixes, but our priorities are clear. We are committed to improving our financial performance by leveraging Bivisky's foundational advantages, including leading technology, unique data, best-in-class efficiency, and continued investment into a unique and differentiated value proposition. Now I'll turn it to Ted to discuss the quarter and financial outlook in more detail. As we mentioned earlier, Ted, our Chief Accounting Officer, will take on the role of Interim Chief Financial Officer. Ted has been at VividCast leading our accounting function for more than a decade. I have full confidence in Ted and am glad to have him step into the Interim CFO role as we manage our leadership transition.

Ted Pickus, CFO

Thank you, Larry, and hello, everyone. I am honored to be with you today and to assume this role during a transformational time for the business. Turning to our results, in the third quarter, we delivered $618 million of Marketplace GOV, $136 million of revenues, and $5 million of adjusted EBITDA. These results reflect an intense competitive environment that impacted our private label business, which was also impacted by the loss of a large partner. We generated $618 million of Marketplace GOV in Q3, which was down 29% year over year. Total marketplace orders were also down 29% with average order size flat. Looking at sequential trends compared to Q2 of this year, overall marketplace GOV was down 10% due to private label headwinds, while own property GOV increased in a flat sequential industry environment. We generated $136 million of revenues in Q3, down 27% year over year. Our Q3 marketplace take rate was 17.0%, down from 17.5% in Q3 2024. We expect near-term take rates in the 16% range. Our third quarter adjusted EBITDA was $5 million, down substantially from the prior year due to lower volume, lower take rates, and negative operating leverage. We expect improved operating performance as we enter 2026 with the full benefit of our recent cost reduction. Next, I'll address our 2026 initial outlook. With stabilizing owned property volumes, we expect 2026 Marketplace GOV in the range of $2.2 to $2.6 billion. At the midpoint, this assumes Marketplace GOV roughly in line with our third quarter run rate. We intend to reinvest cost savings into our enhanced customer value proposition and, as such, currently anticipate $30 to $40 million of 2026 adjusted EBITDA. Our 2026 initial outlook assumes industry volumes are flat year over year as the core concert on-sale season, which provides supply visibility for the coming year, has yet to occur. We ended Q3 with $391 million of debt, $145 million of cash, and net debt of $246 million. Against a flat industry environment, we saw working capital continue to consume cash, but at a substantially lower level than seen the first half of the year. I'll now hand it back to Larry for concluding remarks.

Speaker 8

Thanks, Ted.

Lawrence Fey, CEO

But despite challenging year-over-year trends, the third quarter offered signs of stabilization, including sequential growth in owned property GOV, year-over-year growth in app GOV, and substantial cost reduction progress. From here, diligent execution is crucial, but we believe our investment into our app value proposition provides a clear path to return to growth.

Speaker 8

With that, operator, let's open it up for questions.

Speaker 5

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star, then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. And if you would like to withdraw your question, press star 1 again. We do request for today's session that you please limit the two questions only. We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Cameron Manson-Perroni with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Speaker 7

Thanks, Marnie. Thanks for taking the questions. And, Ted, welcome to the call. I guess the first question is really just I'd like to hear a little bit more about what gives you confidence in issuing 26 guidance this early, given the pressures that have existed in the business recently. I heard you on the stabilization front, but just a little bit more on what gives you kind of that increased visibility relative to the past, I think would be helpful. And then if you could just kind of try and help contextualize what's reflected in the high and low end of the guide for next year with regard to competitive environment and expectations and any other gating factors around what would determine whether you shake out on the high or low end.

Speaker 8

Thanks, Cameron.

Lawrence Fey, CEO

I think what you've heard us say in the past that we prefer to give guidance on our Q4 call once the Q4 on-sale calendar has run its course is you'll have more industry visibility. And so the important caveat in the guidance we put forward is it presumes a flat year-over-year industry outlook. And I think to your question on what would govern the low end versus the high end. I would start with, you know, if the industry under-indexes to flat, that would push you towards the low end. If it over-indexes or grows, that would push you, you know, towards the higher end. You know, we certainly saw the Live Nation commentary, which if you interpolate what they said, it feels like they're pointing towards another, you know, positive growth year in North America. So, you know, hopefully there's some conservatism built in. We'll learn more over the coming months. on exactly where the industry settles out, but tried to put a baseline that we think is reasonably skewed to the cautious side of the spectrum on the industry performance. Why do we put guidance out? Why do we have confidence? I'd point to a few elements. One, we obviously pulled 2025 guidance, so it's been a while since there's been a flag or a stake in the ground for folks to look at. you can see a number of changes playing out in Q3 where we've talked about our cost reduction initiatives, we've talked about some of our reinvestment in our value proposition, and lots of puts and takes. And rather than having there be a vacuum where people are waiting in suspense for four months on what the net of all of those are, we wanted to distill it down to a target. It probably goes without saying, if competition or competitive intensity reaches new highs, that will pressure, and if they abate, that will be a release valve relative to the range we put forward. But we've assumed essentially a broad continuation of the competitive intensity we've seen in the second half of 2025.

Speaker 7

Got it. That's all clear and helpful. Thanks, Larry.

Speaker 5

Next question comes from the line of Dan Quirnos with Benchmark Company. Your line is open.

Dan Quirnos, Analyst — The Benchmark Company

Yeah, thanks. Good morning. Larry, I guess maybe just to double-click on the leadership transition, obviously, Dan had a lot of digital experience from his history, so I guess maybe why now make this move? If you could just give us some color on the thought process, and obviously, to be clear here, I think you're eminently qualified to lead the company, Larry. It just, you know, would be helpful to get sort of some of the thought process on the timing. And then, you know, in an agentic world, you talked about discovery with OpenAI. If you're going to push apps, which is fine, everyone else is putting their app into OpenAI for discoverability. So, you know, I don't know what your thoughts are about that, given some of the puts and takes on demand gen and OpenAI potentially becoming the source of demand gen. but just help us think about your willingness to increase visibility via that channel and other ways that you might increase the visibility of the value prop.

Speaker 8

Yeah, thanks, Dan.

Lawrence Fey, CEO

Yeah, I'd start with the thanks to Stan, of course, were sincere. Seven years was a great run. I think it was just reaching a time for a shift and preparing the business for the efficiency push that we're embarking on in the near term. To the second question, I think you touched on a theme that is spot on. Yes, we're pushing on app, and I almost think of the customer universe as two buckets. There's the new customer acquisition, and there's a competitive dynamic around that. and then there's the folks who have already done their research and made informed decisions around which marketplaces they buy from or which marketplaces they consider, and that generally occurs in the app. Where I think there could be a really interesting blurring of those lines or fusion of the two as we move forward. If one of the fundamental tenets of AI is increasing information synthesis, increasing information transparency, as we increasingly place the best value proposition out into the ether. We then, of course, have an obligation to make sure that value proposition is digestible by these new AI platforms that are looking for all of the best information to synthesize and distill for customers. But you better have something that's compelling. If they do their job and put forward the best value proposition, you better be front of the line. And so that's where we're going with the app. I think in the near term, while we wait for the commerce portion of the AI disruption to fully arrive, we're going to continue focusing on retaining our customers in the app ecosystem. And then we think there's opportunity coming on that customer acquisition as the technology format evolves.

Speaker 8

Great. Thanks, Larry. Appreciate the color.

Speaker 5

Next question comes from the line of Maria Ripps with Caneco Regenity. Your line is open.

Maria Ripps, Analyst — Caneco Regenity

Great. Good morning and thanks for taking my questions. Larry and Ted, congrats on the transition. Can you maybe share a little bit more color on the competitive backdrop right now? Are you seeing any early signs that maybe some of the competitors in the space are starting to focus more on profitability?

Lawrence Fey, CEO

Yeah, thanks, Maria. We've talked in the past a bit about ebbs and flows flows and it can be a little dangerous to extrapolate short-term behavior and assume it continues indefinitely. But I would say broadly aligning with, call it changes in corporate status, we have seen a shift in competitive posture. It was a fairly methodical increase in share that we saw from StubHub over the last couple of years. It would come in waves, but it kind of went one direction. And we've actually seen that reverse and roll over in September and October, where they're now down year over year on share. And I think that is directly tied to what we perceive as a shift in marketing aggressiveness. The magnitude, obviously, was enough to reverse that trend, but it wasn't like a reversion to 2022 or 2023 levels. And we, of course, know that they reserve the right to change their mind and posture as we embark into 2026, but a notable change over the last, call it, six to eight weeks.

Maria Ripps, Analyst — Caneco Regenity

Got it. That's very helpful. And then any early thoughts you can share on the quality of concert lineup in 2026?

Speaker 8

Yeah, we, you know, I'd say continue to be looking to Live Nation for the perspective,

Lawrence Fey, CEO

pretty positive commentary. When I read the release, you know, I think they touched on what clearly looks like positive North American growth is skewed towards larger venues. Thus far in the year, you know, you get into these year-over-year comparisons where timing just varies slightly year over year, but we're in the midst this year. Morgan Wallen just announced that. I think it will be one of the top tours of the year. We've seen several others. So at this point, I would say, other than week-to-week variants, it looks like the Live Nation commentary is flowing through in what we're seeing.

Maria Ripps, Analyst — Caneco Regenity

Got it. That's very helpful.

Speaker 5

Thank you so much.

Speaker 8

Thank you.

Speaker 5

Next question comes from the line of Ryan Sigdal.

Lawrence Fey, CEO

with Greg Halloum. Your line is open. Hey, good morning, Larry, Ted. In response to the FTC lawsuit, Ticketmaster shutting down Trade Desk for concerts. They're also limiting Ticketmaster accounts even further as it appears, as they take more action on pricing. Curious your perspective on this. Does this present an opportunity for Vivid to take share on the POS side? But at the same time i guess the negative would be you know how much contraction and and negative do you see from a supply standpoint in the secondary ticketing yeah thanks ryan i think you you framed it uh properly in that um you know any disruption to trade desk i think can only be a tailwind uh and we think skybox will be waiting with open arms with its best-in-class capabilities to to support any customers who no longer have the full suite uh that they need to run their business and can only help our position. And then, as you said, counterbalance, if there is additional pressure. I'd start from our fundamental view is that the vast majority of what drives this industry is a fundamental financial, well-functioning financial market where you have artists and teams who are looking to diversify risk. You have artists and teams who are looking to offload risk well in advance of shows and that there is a healthy, vibrant financial instrument via the secondary market that facilitates and benefits all parties. To the extent folks are violating the rules of the game, we have always said this, we continue to say it, we can, should, will support anything and everything that needs to be done to ensure folks do play by the proper rules as defined by the artists and the primary ticketing platforms. To the extent there are folks that are, I'm sure there are, right? There's got to be a bad actor out there. To the extent those folks' behaviors are forced to modify, I think what will be unknown, right, and we'll find out as you all find out, does that contract the secondary market or does it just change the form where you now have increased fragmentation where new smaller sellers fill in the gap and the overall market opportunity remains the same. So we'll keep a close eye on it. But I do think there's a positive tailwind on Trade Desk, a potential headwind, but maybe not on the change

Speaker 8

to take master policies.

Lawrence Fey, CEO

Then just the other hot topic, kind of from an industry standpoint, direct issuance. Bivid has a smaller DI type offering with the College Basketball Crown, But curious what you think about the ambitions of some of your peers in the space on this model specifically, and then kind of to your point on rules of the game, I guess, contractually, etc. I guess just your thoughts on direct issuance and the viability of doing that in an accelerated way going forward, and what that potentially means from a secondary marketplace standpoint, if that further limits the supply of broker supply. Yeah, I think, you know, obviously, strategies are subject to change. And so just, you know, reacting to the way we have seen the direct issuance opportunity defined to date, and maybe they changed us, but to date, it's been primarily focused, as we understand it, on unsold inventory. and so you can imagine you know regular season baseball games less popular theater shows where you have you're well past the event going on sale substantial available inventory available from the primary and if that gets piped directly into a secondary marketplace that would recommend would represent incremental supply i think the threshold question for the robustness of that opportunity would start with is this a supply or demand constrained industry and does the fact that you took an event that already had a decent amount of supply and made more available will that stimulate incremental demand or will it cannibalize the eyeballs that you were already getting on the site and to sell more you still need to get additional eyeballs and spend the marketing dollars to bring them in um you know our our viewpoint has been that generally this is a demand constrained exercise not supply constrained in all but the the um most rarefied air right like you could see taylor swift tickets really selling out but most events including you know world series super bowl right there is there are tickets available all the way up until the event starts even for the highest-profile events. So I'd say we're a bit more muted on our belief of the impact that could have, but we certainly have heard that the ambitions are big,

Speaker 8

and so we'll keep a close eye. Thanks, Larry. Good luck, guys.

Speaker 5

Next question comes from the line of Ralph Schaukart with William Blair. Your line is open.

Ralph Schaukart, Analyst — William Blair

Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. And Larry, I just kind of want to circle back on sort of driving more awareness of the app and sort of the efforts there. I know you talked about having ESPN as a partner do that, which is obviously a great partner to have there. But maybe you just sort of provide a little bit more color, how you drive more direct traffic here and build more awareness. And would you be contemplating potentially like a marketing campaign or other efforts to grow more awareness to go direct to the app?

Speaker 8

Yeah, thanks, Ralph.

Lawrence Fey, CEO

You know, I think we're doing what I would call our brand marketing surge via ESPN that is going to be concentrated in the near term, you know, kind of throughout Q4, which is peak sports season. You know, I think this is an industry where there's been many attempts to do broad-based brand marketing, and it is challenging to prove compelling ROI from that. So I don't think we're going to, you know, reverse course and jump headfirst back into broad brand marketing. I think we're going to continue to focus on thoughtful different slices of, call it more targeted performance-based metrics. One of the advantages we have, foundational strengths we have, is we've been one of the leading marketplaces for a long time. And as a result, we sold a lot of tickets to a lot of people. And we have a really robust existing user base, really robust CRM database. And so a lot of our effort has been increasing our personalization, improving the nature of our messaging, and now when we're delivering a message with a fundamentally improved value proposition, I think that leads to more engagement across that existing user base. And then continuing as people, we acquire them on the web, making them immediately aware of what awaits. If they trusted us enough to buy on the web, that's wonderful. and we have perks that would compel them to come back to the app and making sure that that hyper-addressable audience gets made fully aware of the proposition. Those are the two major buckets that I think we'll be focusing on in the near term.

Speaker 8

Okay, great. Thanks, Larry.

Speaker 5

Next question comes from the line of Stephen Locktermut with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Stephen Locktermut, Analyst — Bank of America

Hey, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Just two quick ones. Firstly, for 2026, what World Cup assumptions are kind of built into that outlook?

Speaker 8

Yeah, we essentially have not assumed a meaningful impact from World Cup.

Lawrence Fey, CEO

I think that is primarily due to two things. One, there's not a lot of precedent that we can rely on. The U.S. World Cup in an era with online secondary ticketing has zero precedent data points. When we look at the last two World Cups, they were in markets that we basically don't operate in, in Russia and Qatar. And so trying to strike a cautious tone given a lack of conviction beyond that. The second observation, you know, I think it's fairly well documented, but we've seen, you know, FIFA be, let's say, quite aggressive in seeking to monetize, optimize their monetization of the event. I think it's safe to assume there will be incremental volume. We will benefit from it. But between those two factors, we've opted to essentially disregard it as we've contemplated our outlook for next year, and it would purely represent upside.

Stephen Locktermut, Analyst — Bank of America

Got it. Thank you. Appreciate that, Keller. And then my second question, it sounds like you said Subhub pulled back on marketing spend a bit. Is it fair to say that the Q3 exit rate improved on a year-over-year basis?

Lawrence Fey, CEO

Yeah, I think it would be fair to say that over the course of Q3, we saw a shift in their behavior and a corresponding shift in volumes across marketplaces. Yeah, that happened closer to the end of Q3 than the beginning.

Stephen Locktermut, Analyst — Bank of America

That's very helpful.

Speaker 5

Next question comes from the line of Brad Erickson with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Brad Erickson, Analyst — RBC Capital Markets

Okay, thanks. I'll just follow up on that last one, actually. Larry, when you say, when you look at kind of what's instructing the stabilization commentary on the owned property business, so you mentioned competitive intensity easing several times. Is that kind of the main driver? Any other drivers you'd call out there, either things in your control or other market forces?

Speaker 8

Yeah, I think the biggest one is, so yeah, for the competitive landscape, of course, matters.

Lawrence Fey, CEO

but I'd say of similar, if not equal, if not slightly more importance in terms of what we've seen in the immediate term has been this value proposition push. And inherent in what we're trying to achieve, as we get more volume in our app, I think that is a more protected ecosystem. You can bid whatever you want for a Google link, but if someone already has our app, already trusts us, is already looking at us, they will likely look at us. And if we have a structurally better offer, it doesn't matter who else is buying the top Google link. And so you control your own destiny more on app. That's why we're pushing, right? Reduce the surface area and exposure to competitive response. That's a long game play, right? You don't make that change and immediately have, you know, profound shift of volume from one channel to the other. But we have seen market increases in the volume that's moving into the app. And I think this is one of those, like, layer cake dynamics where every month it goes where you bring in a new cohort of customers who have done their research, seen the value prop, they're going to be fundamentally stickier. And over time, that will compound and build into something pretty exciting.

Brad Erickson, Analyst — RBC Capital Markets

And then I appreciate the 26 guide and all you gave the EBITDA numbers. Any color you can give maybe on cash conversion relative to that EBITDA guide?

Speaker 8

Yeah, so I appreciate that question.

Lawrence Fey, CEO

Yeah, I think if we look at our cash obligations moving forward, you have roughly $20 million of net interest expense. We'll have a bit less than $20 million of X-CAP software. And then we mentioned in this release that Proforma for the TRA transaction will have about $3 million of cash taxes, primarily from international operations. So you sum those up. Before you consider working capital, you have a roughly $40 million set of cash obligations. As we've talked about quite a bit the last few quarters, when we're growing, working capital is a source. When we're shrinking, it's a use of cash. So I think at the epicenter of will cash balance grow next year is do you believe that we can sequentially grow GOV? I think it's reasonable to assume that take Q1 as we lap the private label losses that we saw in Q3, continue to lap those. The overall year-over-year GOV numbers will continue to be down, but if the sequential help, because the balance sheet kind of remarks to market every quarter, is stable and growing, you can see working capital reverse course. And so the base case plan is at the midpoint or better of our guidance, we would expect to be cash-generative next year.

Speaker 8

Understood. Thanks.

Speaker 5

Next question comes from the line of Ben Black with Dolce Bank. Your line is open.

Kunal M., Analyst — Dolce Bank

Hi. Thanks for taking the question. This is Kunal for Ben. Quick one on the outlook. and you just talked about the cash flow consequences that we could see. One thing with regard to the assumption that underlie that, so are you assuming that the comparative intensity remains at the September-October levels in 2026? Or are you assuming that maybe things go back to what we had seen earlier in this year? And that is what determines the market share that you expect. in 26. And then the second one would be with regard to the traffic that you are getting and the traffic that you have on your app. What is different from other providers that makes your value proposition so unique that people will not go anywhere else to shop?

Lawrence Fey, CEO

Thank you. Yeah, so let me start with the app value prop. I think that's a really compelling one. I think we've talked about our loyalty program for a number of years. We continue to be on a journey to build awareness of that loyalty program, but those who find and use that program, I think, structurally buy more at a multiple of the typical user. And even before the more recent changes to our value proposition, I think, resulted in kind of a clear best-in-class value prop. And then, you know, recently what we've really pushed is, you know, base for everyday pricing. And then we're continually innovating on what kind of inducements and incentives we can provide as customers move through their journey, their lifetime journey with us. So we think if you create an experience where someone comes in and realizes that your pricing without paying consideration to any incentives, without paying consideration to loyalty, are the best in the industry relative to our largest competitors, you have a good experience, you get great customer service, you enjoy the layout of the site. And then subsequent to that, you get thoughtful recommendations, you get incentives and inducements, you sign up for loyalty, and that price advantage becomes even more significant. That's a really compelling lifetime experience. Now, is that to say that others can't offer various elements of that? I don't think there's anything philosophically that would prevent folks from doing it. I think it's an economic question. If you're spending significant amounts bidding for the top keywords on search, can you do that and offer these lower price points? If you have very large partnership obligations, can you do those and offer these inducements and incentives? So we'll see. I think our belief is that we can operate the leanest platform and that uniquely enables us to sustainably deliver a best-in-class value prop. and others will need to respond as they see fit. As it relates to the first question on the competitive environment contemplated, it's difficult to be precise on this. We certainly have seen that it's been kind of an up and to the right level of intensity over the last two years and we want to make sure we don't just forget that. We also want to reflect that we have seen a change And so I would characterize the midpoint as, you know, call it something in between what we've seen September and October and what we saw as the worst of it, kind of late Q1, early Q2. And so a little bit of reversion from the run rate, but not all the way back to the most extreme point that we saw.

Speaker 8

Thank you.

Speaker 5

Next question comes from the line of Thomas Forte with Maxim Group. Your line is open.

Thomas Forte, Analyst — Maxim Group

great thank you so first off congratulations Larry and Ted on the new opportunities and best wishes to stand for his future endeavors one question one follow-up so Larry are you seeing any changes in consumer behavior when it comes to the secondary ticket market for example when you have a game seven in a playoff series are they still willing to pay premium prices for the

Speaker 8

experience as they have in the past yeah thanks Tom I would say as a broad aggregate statement

Lawrence Fey, CEO

continues to feel like live events are a central piece of what consumers want to spend their money on. We had a tough World Series comp, right? You can't really get better than the Yankees and Dodgers. And so World Series volumes and average order size were down relative to that. But when we look at the World Series relative to every year post-COVID other than the Yankees and Dodgers, this was the second best year. And so healthy, robust demand, we're seeing that across a lot of high-profile events. I think we alluded to this last quarter. To the extent we have seen softness, it's more been on the lower end of the market, and I think we actually see that manifest in Vegas more than in our core business. You know, they call it weekday, you know, lower ALS shows have been feeling, I think, some of this, you know, much talked about consumer softness.

Thomas Forte, Analyst — Maxim Group

Excellent. And then I might be a little early in this one, but can you talk about your allocation priorities, including reinvesting in the business, international expansion, strategic M&A and buybacks?

Lawrence Fey, CEO

Yeah, I think, you know, for now, it's reasonable to assume that we won't be looking to complete acquisitive M&A, you know, that would be, call it adjacencies. I think we've long believed that there could be a compelling consolidation in this space. And so we would be eager participants in that. But, you know, TAM expansion, I think we've got to, you know, batten the hatches and focus on the core. Yeah, given the performance on both EBITDA and cash flow this year, I think, you know, we'll display a lot of prudence on any cash leading the system, including share of purchases in the near term. And I think we think that there's a very compelling value at these prices, but step one is not bad in the hatches and assure that we have all of the capital we need to continue investing and all of the initiatives that we see really compelling ROIs against, such as international. And so we'll keep doing the defend the core. And then once we have a little more of a proven track record of stabilization, return to growth, return to cash, we can open up the aperture of it.

Thomas Forte, Analyst — Maxim Group

Thank you, Larry. Thank you, Ted.

Speaker 5

Next question comes from the line of Andrew Mayrock with Raymond James. Your line is open.

Thomas Forte, Analyst — Maxim Group

Thanks for taking my question. Maybe on the international part there, I guess what signals are you seeing in kind of that what you call the core international business that give you the impetus to continue investing there as opposed to maybe rationalizing some incremental cost savings out of that business.

Speaker 7

Thank you.

Speaker 8

Yeah, thanks, Andrew.

Lawrence Fey, CEO

I'd start with, you know, we've been pleasantly surprised at the quickness with which we've been able to bring the international business to be contribution margin positive. So we are there today already. I think we've had, just to refresh on the context, You know, Viagogo has a very substantial market position in Europe. And as a result, when we have shown up in pockets where we have fully competitive supply, and I would say that has initially been areas where it's either, you know, NFL comes to Europe, U.S. artists go on global tours or other events where U.S. sellers have meaningful positions, we immediately have fully competitive supply. When we have competed for traffic and eyeballs on those areas with competitive supply and competitive pricing, we have seen abundant success. The task ahead then is to continue to add pockets across various countries, especially with a focus on local events where we can have that fully competitive supply and pricing. From what we've seen, the ability to market profitably will follow quickly once you have that supply in place. That's some hand-to-hand knife fighting to get to that point, and so that's the journey we're on from here.

Speaker 5

There are no further questions at this time. That concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.