StubHub's Stock Soars 10% in NYSE Debut After Ticket Seller's Long-Awaited IPO

StubHub shares soared nearly 10% at $25.76 in their New York Stock Exchange debut on Wednesday after the online ticket seller priced its IPO 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.”

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 a number of 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 lockdowns. Sales have also boomed from massively popular shows like Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour, as well as sporting events like 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 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.