Fuck!
I bought some stock in Vivid Seats a few years ago.
At $10.55.
It is at $3.70 right this second.
Nothing huge.
I just like to have a touch of skin in the game.
This is why I don’t buy individual stocks very often! (Not investment advice.)
This week, Vivid released its Fourth Quarter earnings report.
It isn’t a good read if you are an investor.
Here is the relevant bit:
- Order value down.
- Revenues up, but sales value down.
- Income down.
EBITDA is up!
EBITDA is also one of those numbers that I don’t fully trust because it is supposed to symbolize the profitability of the underlying business.
But I’m old school and like to see my profits on the bottom line.
What does this mean for you?
- The decreased total value on increased sales shows us the folly of waiting for an event to “be hot” to push prices higher.
- Improved primary pricing could be slowing down secondary market sales.
- It also shows that customers are waiting longer to buy.
- We’d need to see the numbers of other marketplaces, but it would probably point to a weakness in the secondary market. This is problematic because my working hypothesis is that the secondary market has been floating a lot of sportsbiz ticket sales and if the brokers/consolidators are struggling, that could be bad for everyone.
Even more practical considerations:
- What is driving the decline in sales?
- Is this going to continue?
- What will the impact of the continuing economic uncertainty be to ticket sales?
- How do you address these risks now?
What do you think?
DW