On Tuesday, Vivid Seats ( SEAT ) discussed first-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below.

This content is powered by Benzinga APIs. For comprehensive financial data and transcripts, visit https://www.benzinga.com/apis/.

The full earnings call is available at https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/ahjab2d8/

Summary

Vivid Seats ( SEAT ) reported Q1 2026 results at or above guidance, with sequential growth in gross order value (GOV), adjusted EBITDA, and cash balance.

The company is focused on enhancing user experience and conversion rates, highlighted by a 20% year-over-year increase in app GOV, which now accounts for over 40% of total GOV.

Vivid Seats ( SEAT ) is investing in AI partnerships, including ads on ChatGPT, to optimize customer acquisition and retention strategies.

Private label revenue grew 20% quarter-over-quarter, with a new significant partner launched in Q1, supporting expectations for growth in the second half of 2026.

The company reaffirmed its 2026 outlook, expecting Marketplace GOV between $2.2 and $2.6 billion and adjusted EBITDA between $30 and $40 million.

Management highlighted the strategic focus on operational excellence, technology innovation, and a differentiated customer value proposition.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Good morning and welcome to Vivid Seats' ( SEAT ) first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Following management's prepared remarks, we will open the call for Q&A. I would now like to turn the call over to Austin Arnett.

Austin Arnett (General Counsel)

Good morning and welcome to Vivid Seats ( SEAT ) first quarter 2026 earnings call. I'm Austin Arnett Vivid Seats', General Counsel. I'm joined today by Larry Fay, Chief Executive Officer and Joe Thomas, Chief Financial Officer. By now everyone should have access to our earnings press release which was issued earlier this morning. The release as well as supplemental earnings slides are available on our Investor relations [email protected] Today's call will include forward looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our projections, including the risks discussed in our earnings release, our most recent annual report on Form 10K, and our subsequent filings with the SEC. Today's call will also include references to Adjusted EBITDA, a non GAAP financial measure that provides useful information to our investors to the extent reasonably available. A reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to its most directly comparable GAAP financial measure can be found in our earnings release and supplemental earnings slides. And now I'll turn the call over to Larry Good morning everyone and thank

Larry Fay (Chief Executive Officer)

you for joining us today. We entered fiscal year 2026 with a clear focus and roadmap to enhance our market position financial trajectory. With that focus, we delivered measurable progress in the first quarter resulting in meaningful improvements across our business. Our first quarter results came in at the high end or above guidance. On a sequential basis. We delivered growth in GOV adjusted EBITDA and our cash balance relative to Q4 2025. This momentum and sequential improvement support our confidence returning to year over year growth in the second half of fiscal year 2026 and beyond. Our long term strategy centers around Vivid Seats' ( SEAT ) foundational strengths, leading technology and product innovation, operational excellence and a differentiated value proposition for our customers and partners. Pairing a seamless user experience with a differentiated value proposition is central to our mission. Vivid Seats ( SEAT ) strives to be the most rewarding ticketing company and we are increasingly aligning our product pricing and messaging around that core idea. We deliver value through competitive pricing, seamless user experiences and meaningful rewards that deepen customer loyalty over time. We are currently focusing our product innovation efforts on the core customer journey. We are improving funnel efficiency, enhancing conversion and delivering a faster, more intuitive experience. We recently deployed an upgraded app checkout experience, delivering a streamlined flow to accelerate the customer journey while improving conversion rates. We are encouraged by the early results and are excited about the pipeline of enhancements to both our app and web properties that will be deployed in Q2 and Q3. Our enhanced app value proposition continues to deliver encouraging results. In Q1 2026 Vivid Seats ( SEAT ) app GOV was up 20% year over year. This growth led to Vividseat's app share of. GOV exceeding 40% for the quarter. Increasing app adoption reflects the combined impact of the Vivid Seats ( SEAT ) reward program, our lowest price guarantee and continued product improvements. Together, these investments represent a highly differentiated value proposition. App users are more engaged, return more frequently, convert at higher rates, and touch paid performance marketing channels less often as volume shifts into the app over time. We anticipate more efficient customer acquisition alongside enhanced customer retention and growing lifetime value alongside our app progress. We are continuing to invest in innovation across customer acquisition by working closely with leading AI platforms. This includes our recently launched ads on ChatGPT. While still in the early stages, we believe these efforts will help us capitalize on the long term opportunities AI presents within the ticketing ecosystem. In tandem with the encouraging trends we are seeing with Vivid Seats ( SEAT ) branded properties, we were pleased to launch a significant new private Label partner during Q1 with performance already exceeding our expectations. We also recently extended our agreement with a large existing private label customer, underscoring the value proposition we deliver to our private label partners. We are pleased to see the private label business deliver sequential revenue growth in Q1 2026 and believe this trend supports our expectation of a return to growth in the second half of the year. With that, I'll turn it over to Joe to walk through our first quarter financial results in more detail.

Joe Thomas (Chief Financial Officer)

Thank you Larry and good morning everyone. As Larry mentioned, our first quarter performance landed at or above the top end of our guidance, underscoring strong execution across the business. We achieved meaningful sequential increases in GOV and adjusted EBITDA compared to Q4 2025. This improvement is encouraging as we pursue a return to growth in fiscal year 2026 and beyond. Q1 2026 Marketplace GOV was $612 million compared to $581 million in Q4 2025, reflecting quarter to quarter growth of $31 million or 5.5%. This is particularly encouraging as the fourth quarter typically represents the highest GOV quarter each year, due in part to robust sports volumes. With all major leagues in season. Q1 2026 consolidated revenue was 126 million, essentially flat with 127 million in Q4 2025 within consolidated revenue, private label revenue grew 20% quarter to quarter, highlighting a meaningful growth trend in the channel despite continued year over year private label declines as we lap the 2025 loss of a large customer. As previously disclosed, marketplace take rate was 15.9% in Q1 2026 compared to 16.8% in Q4 2025. The lower take rate primarily reflects mix shift as private label revenue tends to come with lower take rates. We continue to expect near term take rates to remain around 16% on a consolidated basis. Q1 2026 adjusted EBITDA was 9.5 million compared to 1 million in Q4 2025 adjusted EBITDA grew 8.5 million, marking substantial improvement on a sequential basis and highlighting the benefit of a material reduction in operating costs relative to a growing GOV and revenue base. Cash increased over 40 million in the first quarter to 144 million. Cash flow benefited from improved profitability alongside seasonally strong working capital dynamics. Our first quarter results show significant progress across our operational and financial goals. Accordingly, we are reaffirming our 2026 outlook for fiscal year 2026. We continue to expect Marketplace GOV in the range of 2.2 to to 2.6 billion and adjusted EBITDA in the range of 30 to 40 million. This outlook reflects continued execution of our operating plan and financial profile. I will now turn the call back to Larry for closing remarks.

Larry Fay (Chief Executive Officer)

Our first quarter results indicate our strategy is working and we are moving in the right direction. We are excited about our momentum in the Vivid Seats ( SEAT ) app where improving conversion and increasing engagement are supporting double digit Gov growth. We are also encouraged by the sequential trends in our private label business as we seek a return to year over year growth later in the year. As we move through the year, we are confident that our core strengths leading technology and data, operational excellence and a differentiated customer value proposition will shine through. We are excited to continue executing against our strategy and to deliver long term value to all stakeholders. With that operator, please open the call for questions.

OPERATOR

Thank you. At this time we'll conduct a question and answer session. To ask a question, you'll need to press Star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please limit yourself to one question and a follow up. Please stand by while we compile our Q&A roster. Your first question comes to the line of Cameron Monsoon Perrone with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Cameron Mansoon Perrone (Equity Analyst)

Thank you. Morning guys. Larry, Last quarter you highlighted that you're seeing some encouraging trends in terms of the competitive environment. Kind of rationalizing, wondering if you're continuing to see that and whether there's any event category where you're seeing more or less industry competition for activity and whether competitive intensity from an event specific angle is whether the rate of change is better or worse in any specific category. I appreciate it. Yes, thanks, Cameron. I think the moderation that we saw start in Q4 from StubHub, on the paid search side has continued. That's been somewhat counterbalanced by continued aggressiveness in that channel by some other players. But no question they have stepped back from their peak spend that we saw early to middle of 2025. On the marketing spend side, I think perhaps surprising to us, in the last few weeks we've seen them

Larry Fay (Chief Executive Officer)

shift to some price testing, price competitiveness. And so you continue to see, particularly in sports across the ecosystem, competitiveness across pricing while the marketing landscape seems to have have really stabilized and moderated a bit. Got it. Anything to follow up on that? Anything that you could add on? I think the benefits on the push to kind of drive activity in app probably makes you a little bit more insulated in terms of the vagaries of competitive intensity in the industry. Any additional color on kind of how you think about that and what the opportunity could be as more activity shifts to in app? Yes, I think that's exactly right in terms of the goal and the strategy. You know, we're happy to have exceeded 40%. I think implicitly though at 40% we still have exposure to the winds of paid search and marketing expense. But the objective is very much to control our own future, bring folks into the ecosystem once and then have it more about building a long term relationship with those customers versus continually needing to go back into the pond and acquire folks. But we do benefit when things moderate given the remaining piece of the business that's still out there. So we're pleased to see that. But the surface area of that exposure has shrunk quite a bit relative to what it was two years ago. Got it. Helpful. Thank you.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Your next question comes online of Ryan Sigdal with Craig-Hallum. Your line is now open.

Ryan Sigdal (Equity Analyst)

Hey Larry, Joel, nice job on this. The sequential improvements and stabilization. Want to start on industry volume and curious what you guys saw in Q1 and then Q2 quarter date acknowledging. I know April was a very tough comp but just curious to try and compare your results relative to the industry and what you saw there.

Larry Fay (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, in Q1 the data we're seeing industry was probably up a smidge. So Low single digits started pretty nice in January and then moderated a bit into February and March. So net growth but single digits and then Q2 thus far I'd say is roughly flat. Got off to a slower start with Easter timing, but April picked up with a couple meaningful concert on sales in the last two weeks. So we're back to roughly flattish I think at the moment. Generally continue to subscribe to what we had put forward at the outset of the year of modest industry growth. I think we've all seen the increase in some cancellations of certain tours over the last few weeks. Most recent was the Pussycat Dolls. We also saw Zayn Malik, a couple others post Malone delayed, which I think on some level is reflecting either mispricing or some cap on potential for growth for the year.

Ryan Sigdal (Equity Analyst)

Thanks, Larry. Then just on market share, how that looked for you guys looking at Skybox data on a sequential basis for the marketplace and then secondly on the market share what you guys are seeing from SkyBox from your ERP customers. Yeah, so our share has been sequentially steady in our data. When we look at Q4 into Q1 into Q2 as we've started to lap our most difficult comps last year which started around now with the call it peak spending in the performance marketing channels, we've seen our in our data our share shift to being up year over year, not dramatically but up, which is refreshing. And as you probably heard our theme throughout the call, I think we're well situated to return to growth in the back half of the year. And those are the types of metrics that you love to see flipping green in advance of that. Great. Then maybe just on SkyBox too, if you're willing to comment specifically to the ERP, customer market share. Yeah, there continues to be competition for those customers, but we have not seen any meaningful defections in recent months. So we're vigilant. We're continuing to reinvest and refocus on upgrading the platform to defend those relationships. But we've seen alongside our stabilizing and improving share and volumes improvement in that dialogue and discourse with all of our sellers. So excited about the outlook on the SkyBox front. Excellent. Good luck guys.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Your next question comes to the line of Ralph Schackart with William Blair,. Your line is now open.

Ralph Shacker (Equity Analyst)

Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. 2. If I could just first on the macro environment and sort of the reads on the consumer now that we have some elevated oil prices. Larry had said that maybe there's some cap on prices. I'm not sure if those are related, but just any comments as it relates to that and then I have a follow up. Yeah, we there's nothing they could point to in terms of a kink in the curve where the Iran conflict, started, oil prices moved and you can see a discernible shift in demand or purchasing in any clear way. As we touched on earlier with some of the concert tours being canceled, perhaps that's a reflection of at least some subset of the market being tapped out. Or it also made us be part of the natural oscillation of some artif mispriced their tours, which is I think the leaning at the moment.

Larry Fay (Chief Executive Officer)

We have seen some weakness. The lower end of the Las Vegas market is probably then the most palpable place where we've seen the impact of potential consumer weakness. I think that's a comment you've heard or I believe seen a number of the local operators reinforce and we have continued to see that continue into the year. So in Las Vegas we're really looking ahead to 2027 when supply tailwinds arrive with the reopening of the The Mirage. I think for this year it's going to be more of a blocking and tackling type here in Las Vegas. Okay, great. And just kind of switching gears to the app and some of the improvements you've talked about in conversion rates. I think you said you're above 4, 40% traffic now on the app. Maybe just kind of a sense how that's trended over the last year or so. And just any thoughts on where you think that you could take that rate over time? Thank you. Yeah, we've seen really nice increases in the share of. Gov coming through the app and ultimately the Gov function is how do you get more people into the app and how do you drive higher conversion. So our activities are centered on both of those. A lot of effort in the back half of last year on how do we make folks who see the app want to download and keep it through better messaging, the better value proposition. Reinforcing the value proposition, the focus this year has shifted to the conversion side of things. How do you optimize the product experience? How do you collect more data to have better personalized information appear in front of folks? Have a pretty exciting deployment calendar over Q2 and Q3 on the app side of things. So we're north of 40% in Q1. I think the ambition is for a majority of the business to come through the app. I think realistic timetable for that would be at some point in 2027 to achieve that on a run Rate basis, but that's what we're aspiring to deliver. Okay, great. Thanks, Larry. Thanks.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Your next question comes to the line of Brad Erickson with RBC Capital Markets,. Your line is now open.

Brad Erickson (Equity Analyst)

Hey, morning guys. Thanks for taking the question. So in terms of the return to growth, you pointed to, I think the new private label partner giving you some added confidence there for the second half. Can you remind us any other items that could go kind of could go right this year that dipped you back to that growth in the second half of the year or at a high end of the guide type scenario, what would those drivers be? Yeah, I think as we frame why second half is where we draw the line for when we expect to flip back to growth. We lost the large private label customer in July of last year. So July and really August will be the first true clean month without that customer in there. Subsequent to losing that customer. As we noted, we brought a new meaningful private label customer on in Q1, which enabled sequential growth from Q4. I think within private label, the path to incremental upside is twofold. There's always the option of winning and bringing additional customers on. There's an interesting stick or two in the fire on that front. And then the other piece that we've redoubled efforts is how do we make sure our product and our support of our partners to maximize their organic performance is where it needs to be. And we're seeing encouraging progress on that front as well. With one of the big changes being any product enhancement that we are developing for the Vivid Seats ( SEAT ) marketplace. We want to make sure we make it configurable and available to our partners in short order. And some of the upgrades that get us excited on the Vivid side, that they get pushed to our private label platform, I think provide an opportunity for organic outperformance in the second half of this year. But probably more prominent if you think about growth into 2027 and full year

Larry Fay (Chief Executive Officer)

impact beyond that, I think the concert calendar and supply slate is largely baked at this point. So upside from here I think will largely be driven by fundamental performance. Right. So can these new product releases that we have upcoming in Q2 and Q3 deliver the type of conversion uplift that we anticipate or event mix? And I think the World Cup's probably the elephant in the room. If you get some great matchups in the quarterfinal, semifinals, finals, and you have, you know, a series of super bowl size events, that would be a wonderful tailwind. Got it. And then just bigger picture, as you continue to have conversations Assumably with the Large Language Model (LLM) companies, I don't know, have you seen any indications or just any updates you can give us on how you're thinking about, you know, their desire, ability, etc. To potentially grab economics of bringing the booking kind of closer to the four walls of the Large Language Model (LLM)? And then just generally when you think about the risks related to that, remind us, what do you point to as kind of the specific points of insulation where the ticketing sector can maintain all of its economics within an Large Language Model (LLM) booking environment? Yeah, I'd say on the AI journey broadly, we've actually seen to date quite little progress on the top of the funnel disruption and quite a bit of progress on optimizing the way we operate the business on our side. So not to say it can't change, but everything we've seen to date has been more in the camp of the tools and capabilities allow us to be much more efficient and effective on a series of parameters to deliver a better customer experience. Whether that's building the software more quickly, automating processes, better information sharing, it really has been a nice tailwind on the operational side, including specifically our customer service experience. If you look longer term, nothing that we've seen indicates that the premise of a fully captive transaction where the marketplace is boxed out, is likely in the near term or the focus of the Large Language Model (LLM)s in the near term. I think the biggest barrier, it's this idea of when you have dynamic inventory in a deep vertical search category where you have a ton of individual preference, you need a lot of data and they don't have. The Large Language Model (LLM)s don't have that data across every subcategory that they service. So they're ultimately reliant on the folks like Vivid Seats ( SEAT ) or our competitors who have aggregated the inventory, have built the seat maps, have the dynamic real time pricing and so unless we compile all that information and provide to them, they won't have it. And then it's incumbent on us in the industry to make sure that we don't just give away the farm without being properly compensated. But that I think is at least what we're seeing today. That's a multi year journey and not one we're seeing progress being made on the Large Language Model (LLM) front at the moment. Understood. Thanks Larry. Thank you.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Your next question comes to the line of Stephen McDermott with Bank of America,. Your line is now open.

Stephen McDermott (Equity Analyst)

Hi, thank you for taking the question. I was wondering if we could shift a little bit to your partnership with United, kind of any updates there and

Larry Fay (Chief Executive Officer)

Is that really driving any incrementality that you're seeing? And then I have a follow up after. Yeah, you know, United Airlines is a great example of one of the, they call it many partnerships and partners we have across the ecosystem. You know, it's been a nice tailwind throughout the year. It's not a, you know, explicit significant driver of results. So it's been great to add them. Excited to continue to grow the partnership and iterate on how to maximize it, but would not consider that a primary influence on the results that you're seeing in Q1.

Stephen McDermott (Equity Analyst)

Thank you. And then, you know, as we look at your cost position after your recent reductions, do you feel as though you're kind of in a comfortable position to return to growth and to that can we expect some more aggressive OPEX spend in the second half of this year?

Larry Fay (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, I think the cost side of the equation continues to be a bright spot. I think first and foremost, the cost reductions that we've actioned are flowing through. So they are real. Second, we have not seen any loss in productivity or capability. And in fact, I think have actually seen our productivity and deployment rates increase alongside the efficiency gains. And that's one part optimizing and getting the right people in the right seats and one part utilizing some of these AI capabilities I was alluding to earlier. So as we sit here today, our objective is operating leverage. So as we grow, disproportionate amount of that growth flows through to the bottom line. And I think we have more opportunity to capture on the expense side as we move into next year. So there are some variable costs, right. As you complete transactions, even including in our G&A line. Right. Some software that's per dip and that type of thing. But I think our objective is even as we return to growth, our expenses remain steady on the G and A side. Gotcha. Thank you so much. Thank you.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Your next question comes in line of Thomas Forte with Maxim Group,. Your line is now open.

Thomas Forte (Equity Analyst)

Great. So first off, Larry and Joe, congrats on the quarter. Larry, sorry about the Illini and at least OKC is playing the Lakers in this round. My first question is more exciting. My second question is a little boring. On the more exciting front, what gives you confidence you can maintain your share and capitalize on World cup this year? And if you're able to do that, how might World cup contribute to your numbers this year? Yeah, I think World Cup has been a pretty meaningful tailwind. I think broadly consistent with what we touched on in prior quarters where we Framed the opportunity as something larger than an A list concert tour, but perhaps less than Taylor Swift. What we've seen in terms of volume flowing through to date. So the World Cup first went on sale in November, so we've been selling for six, seven months now with a couple months to go as we approach the start of the games, it's tracking to those levels. Right. So if a typical A list tour is 1% of GOV for the year, Taylor Swift more like high single digits it looks like overall the event will be low to mid single digits as a percentage of full year GOV. So we've had really nice performance and strength to date. These are high ALS events and what we generally found is that value proposition matters quite a bit when you're talking about these high AOS events and so incumbent on us to continue to get the message out that our app is the place to purchase these high ALS tickets. And if we're able to continue doing that, I think we'll get our fair share a little bit better as we enter the playing phase of the tournament. Great. And then for my boring one, now that we're a quarter in, do you want to give your updated thoughts on cash conversion for adjusted EBITDA for 26?

Larry Fay (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, I think largely consistent where, you know, if anything our capex is maybe coming in a little bit lower than we had previously estimated, but directionally net interest expense in the 20 ish million range, capital expenditures (CapEx) on software in the low to mid teens and then a smidge of taxes relating to our international operations. So if you get to ebitda in the 35 to 40 range, you'll be cash flow positive before considering working capital. And as we have outlined, we feel pretty good about our volume trajectory and that overall working capital will be a source of cash on balance over the course of the year. And so believe what we're tracking, assuming we continue to deliver against the numbers and guidance for a cash flow positive year. Great. Thank you Larry. Thank you Joe. Thank you.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Your next question comes online of Kunal Madhikar with Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.

Kunal Madiker (Equity Analyst)

Hi, thank you for taking the question. A couple if I could, one on the app side wanted to understand how the app user demographic differs from the regular customers that you have on the website in terms of maybe age, in terms of their interests, terms of engagement, in terms of geography, in terms of the type of tickets, concert versus sports that they are buying. And then I have a follow up.

Larry Fay (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, I think the biggest delineation between app and web users tends to be that the most frequent live event attendees, those who repeat most often, are the ones intuitively who would download an app for buying live event tickets. And that generally corresponds to the categories that have the highest recurrence, which would be sports. The highest recurrence example would be Major League Baseball. Right. There's 81 home games. If you go to one baseball game a year, there's a decent chance you'll consider going to two or three. In contrast, Taylor Swift goes on tour once every five or six years. So the fact that you bought a Taylor Swift ticket might mean that you're interested in buying a Sabrina Carpenter ticket, but the fact that you bought a Cubs ticket means you're really likely to be interested in buying another Cubs ticket. So the biggest element that we see across the app is folks repeat more often. Right. So if you buy on their app, the prospect for you buying again is higher. The second is that you over index the sports because of the inherent recurrence within sports. Beyond that, there's not a lot to flag across like geography or demographics. That I would say is of note. It's really more the frequency profile with a bit more sports orientation.

Kunal Madiker (Equity Analyst)

Got it. And then when I was doing basic back of the envelope math given app grew 20% and is now over 40% of the overall gov. That suggests that the non appgov probably declined about 40%. And then you mentioned that we should expect that by 2027, AppGov on a run rate basis should be a majority of the business. So what kind of growth rate should we expect on the app side versus the non app side for the remainder of the year?

Larry Fay (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, first, definitionally, when we reference AppGov ETS of our vivid seats properties. So we're not speaking across the entire GOV footprint of the business, namely Las Vegas and Wavedash, and our private label would not be part of that definition. So I would tweak the math a bit. You know, I don't think we're in the business of forecasting or projecting by device type explicitly, but implicitly, we're expecting the business to grow app to grow disproportionately as we start lapping some of the most competitively intensive periods. I think we expect that we can get web back to growth, but whenever you're looking at these aggregate GOV numbers, you just have to fully decompose it. You have to pull private label out. We lose private label partner. That is different than competitiveness in the web competitive landscape when it's us versus StubHub versus SeatGeek. So yes, it is. It's an implicitly true statement that app was up and other parts of the business were down, but decomposing is pretty important.

Kunal Madiker (Equity Analyst)

Got it. Thank you.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Your next question comes to the line of Andrew Marok with Raymond James,. Your line is now open.

Andrew Marek (Equity Analyst)

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. One, with this quarter's results coming in nicely and the reiteration of the guide, is the business just kind of becoming a bit more visible in your view? Are you able to maybe have a little bit more forecasting confidence than you have had in the past? And then I have a follow up.

Larry Fay (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, thanks, Andrew. I think I would agree with the statement overall. Certainly. As we move through a year, right, as we get to Q4, where the concert on sale calendar solidifies and crystallizes it through the back half of Q4, first half of Q1, you know, we sit here with a pretty good sense of what the supply side of the calendar will look like. I think the fact that we've really tightened up our expense base lowers the bar, if you will, which helps mute impact. And then the last piece is we've reduced the surface area and exposure to paid search. It's still present, but we've reduced it. I think that helps diminish volatility from things that are exogenous, namely competitive or competitor posture. So there'll still be variance, right? Event mix is still a real thing, right? If we have great World cup matchups or bad World cup matchups, long series, short series, more concert cancellations, those are all exogenous and can introduce volatility, competitor behavior, competitor posture can still introduce some volatility. But in terms of the controllables, I think we've dialed them in quite a bit and feel better about putting outlooks in place.

Andrew Marek (Equity Analyst)

Appreciate that. And then maybe as it relates to the app business, you mentioned this a little bit in your prepared remarks, but I just kind of want to ask it directly. There's kind of this, you know, meme out there for older people, especially where big purchases are done on the desktop, right, like ticketing hotel bookings, flights, etc. How do you sort of combat that to drive app growth? Is it purely demographic or are there kind of nudges that you can give your consumers to get them to buy on the app? Thank you.

Larry Fay (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, thanks, Andrew. It's a great question because I guess this probably reveals where I sit on the age bucket, but I will do that as well. When you're in discovery mode, you want to be able to either consider a bunch of different events or a bunch of different seating areas. Sometimes I'll actually do some searching on the bigger screen. But I think the objective we have is to make sure folks know that there's a better value proposition available in the app. And so if you want to transact on desktop, that's great and we're going to deliver the optimal experience for that. But if you also wanted to discover on desktop and then download the app, properly messaging that the lowest price guarantee and typically our lowest prices will be available in the app, increasingly we're going to have our rewards program prominently appear in the app and less so on web. So there'll be material inducement to transact in the app. But we of course want to support people wherever their workflow wants them to transact. Appreciate it. Thank you.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Your last question comes from the line of Maria Ripps with Canaccord Genuity. Your line is now open. Great. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions First, I just wanted to follow up on your private label business. So you mentioned a new customer addition there, which is encouraging. But how should we think about that segment going forward beyond sort of returning to growth? Do you think it can return to the run rate you had that business at about a year or two ago?

Maria Rips

I think in absolute size it's unlikely that we'll in the near term reclaim where we had been before the large customer loss. What I think we aspire to deliver is that the segment will grow at or above the broader marketplace and at or above industry rates. And so I think the two paths there would be enabling our existing customers to organically outpace the industry. And then where it gets exciting is you have the option and the opportunity to add new customer wins on top of that organic growth. And so we're seeing all of those signs pointing in the right direction where we can have both happening in parallel which could lead to some nice sequential growth starting in Q3 set us up for delivering sustained year over year growth. But from an absolute standpoint, I don't think returning to the the pre customer loss levels that we saw in 2024, early 2025 is a near term target that we think we can deliver. Got it. That's helpful. And then just a quick follow up can maybe update us on your international strategy and how important is it kind of on the list of your investment priorities at this point?

Larry Fay (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, we continue to be encouraged by the international opportunity. I think we mentioned in our last call or two that we've achieved positive on the contribution margin standpoint in 2025 we grew GOV triple digits in 2025, we've continued to see GOV grow into 2026. But in the spirit of focusing our efforts on the highest impact priorities, what we're focusing on are upgrades that benefit not only international but also North America. And so as you think about things like our checkout, irregardless of your location or your geography, that'll benefit the business.

Larry Fay (Chief Executive Officer)

So the near term roadmap is really focused on that type of improvement. And then as we get through these universal upgrades that will benefit international but also benefit North America, we do have an interesting roadmap of international upgrades queued up. It's just a matter of if we can get to it in the next quarter or the next couple quarters.

Larry Fay (Chief Executive Officer)

Got it. That's helpful. Thank you, Larry. Thank you.

Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company's SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants' and analysts' statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.