Event tech service Eventbrite is hoping to raise $200 million in an initial public offering during what has already been a busy year for IPOs.
San Francisco-based Eventbrite lets users list and sell tickets to any type of event, from fundraisers to music festivals—for a fee on each ticket. The company had $201.6 million in revenue in 2017, about $68 million more than the previous year, according to a securities document the business filed Thursday.
Still, Eventbrite operated at a net loss of $38.5 million last year, as its operating expenses totaled more than $153 million from making new hires and investing in technology and acquisitions, the filing says. It had 1,016 employees as of June 30.
The IPO market has surged in 2018 for both tech and life science businesses. As Xconomy reported earlier this week, 151 companies have filed to go public so far this year, up from 133 during the same period a year ago, according to IPO research firm Renaissance Capital. Monitoring only venture-backed companies, research firm PitchBook said in a June 28 report that it expected 85 total IPOs from VC-backed companies in 2018.
Two-thirds of the venture-funded companies that have filed so far are healthcare businesses, according to the PitchBook report. Earlier this week, Waltham, MA-based Entasis Therapeutics and Principia Biopharma, of South San Francisco, CA, filed IPO paperwork with the SEC.
