StubHub (STUB) stock starts trading on NYSE, opens at $25.35

StubHub shares dropped 6.4% in their New York Stock Exchange debut on Wednesday after the online ticket seller priced its initial public offering in the middle of its expected range.

The pricing late Tuesday at $23.50 per share raised $800 million for the company, now trading under ticker symbol “STUB.” The stock opened at $25.35 and closed at $22, valuing StubHub at $8.1 billion.

StubHub’s long-awaited IPO comes after the company paused its plans in April, when President Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs sent the stock market into a tailspin. It was the second such delay, after market volatility forced StubHub to temporarily shelve its IPO plans in July 2024.

The IPO is the latest in a flurry of tech offerings as the market rebounds from a dismal few years. Swedish buy now, pay later firm Klarna and Gemini, the crypto firm founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, rose in their respective debuts last week. Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange Bullish, design software company Figma and stablecoin issuer Circle have also hit the market in recent months.

StubHub has been through numerous transactions in its 25-year history to get to this point. It was purchased by eBay for $310 million in 2007, but was reacquired by its co-founder Eric Baker in 2020 for roughly $4 billion through his new company Viagogo.

StubHub has benefited from a resurgence in the live events market in the years following the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns. Sales have also boomed from massively popular shows such as Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour, as well as sporting events such as the Super Bowl.

The company said in its updated prospectus filed last month that those sorts of events can also make StubHub’s revenues lumpy and difficult to predict.

In the first quarter, StubHub reported revenue growth of 10% from a year earlier to $397.6 million. Its net loss widened to $35.9 million from $29.7 million a year ago. Gross merchandise sales, which represent the total dollar value paid by ticket buyers, reached $2.08 billion in the three months that ended March 31.

StubHub primarily generates revenue from connecting buyers with ticket resellers. More than 40 million tickets were sold on StubHub’s marketplace last year from roughly one million sellers, the company said in August.

It competes with Vivid Seats, which was taken public via a special purpose acquisition company in 2021; SeatGeek; and Ticketmaster parent Live Nation Entertainment.

The Federal Trade Commission is in the advanced stages of probing Ticketmaster over whether it has done enough to keep automated bots from circumventing its per-person ticket limits for popular events, Bloomberg reported Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The FTC in May sent a warning letter to StubHub saying it must comply with the agency’s “junk fees” rule, and alleging some of its ticket listings failed to display the total price, including all mandatory fees and charges.

Madrone Partners is StubHub’s largest investor with ownership of 24.5% of Class A shares prior to the offering. WestCap is second at 12.3%, followed by Bessemer Venture Partners at 8.8%.