Vivid Seats Inc. (NASDAQ:SEAT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Larry Fey: And maybe the bright way to hone this too as we think about the timing impact, which I think, is front of everybody’s mind, which we just don’t know how long it persists. I think the right question, which we certainly oriented around is when you spend, whether that’s in the form of marketing, whether that’s in the form of degraded take rate, all the things that we’re seeing now in the industry, the question is just when you stop spending that and when you stop degrading your take rate, does that volume remain? And if that volume doesn’t remain, then all of that acquisition is just unsustainable. So our perspective has always been, we are in this for the long haul and as we’ve prioritized, I think, making sure that we are diligent and smart about how we invest to both remain profitable, drive growth, and continue to grow our cash balance for potential offensive inorganic activities, I think, what you see is continued investment in the sustainable cohorts of customers that we continue to reap benefit from both now and we think even more so in the long term.

Stan Chia: And just to wrap it up, I certainly don’t €“ I do need to strike a balance, right? We’re not going to roll over and let competitors it keep the volume without a fight. Similarly, we’re not going to follow them down what we think is somewhat short-sighted path. So finding the balance between those two into the pockets where you can pursue the most economic volume, the most economic customers in terms of lifetime value, that’s where we feel like a lot of our commentary around our unique data, and some of our agility and marketing capabilities can really show it though.

Logan Reich: Great. Thanks for the color.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question coming from the line of Daniel Kurnos with Benchmark. Your line is now open.

Daniel Kurnos: Yes, thanks. Good morning. I know you guys just tried to kind of put an exclamation point on sort of your strategy. I guess the question that we get is in this environment and given the uncertainty of the consumer, if you put further pressure on your competitors, would you not accelerate sort of the cut off or do you not think that’s a possibility given how much better your balance sheet is? And given look, we understand that the dynamics are somewhat like online travel when there is certain segments of cohorts that will be loyal to one, and then there will be certain segments of the cohort group that were probably loyal to none and just to price alone. And it feels like your competitors are: a) have no tools to get better loyalty; and b) are more efficient in that non-repeat rate bucket. But is there no way that you guys could put incremental pressure on them beyond just sort of striking the balance given how strong your balance sheet is right now?

Stan Chia: Yes, it’s a great question, Dan, and it’s a topic that we wrestle with a fair bit. I think if we saw an opportunity to clearly accelerate that, we would lean into it. I think the flip side is we can’t speak with precision or conviction around what fundraising or capital access looks like for competitors. And so, we’re trying to take a balance where we continue to put pressure, steady pressure that gets to the end result we want, but also doesn’t unduly camper near term performance only to find out that they have more capital stashed away.

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