Eventbrite gains 60% in its market debut
- Shares of Eventbrite opened at $36 in the stock's market debut.
- The stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "EB."
- With its first-day gains, Eventbrite's IPO is one of the biggest opening-day pops in recent months.
Online ticketing company Eventbrite soared as much as 70 percent in its stock market debut Thursday.
Shares opened at $36 and climbed as high as $39.30 before ending the session 59 percent up at $36.50.
The company priced shares at $23 on Wednesday, at the high end of its range, nudging its implied valuation above $1.76 billion as it raised $230 million. The stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "EB."
Eventbrite joins a growing pool of tech companies to hit the market this year, including consumer companies Spotify and Dropbox and business software providers DocuSign, Zuora and Domo. With its first-day gains, Eventbrite's IPO is one of the biggest opening-day pops in recent months.
"We really are focused on investing in the future, and so whether that's expanding into more categories or countries, that's really where we're focused," Eventbrite CEO Julia Hartz told CNBC's "Squawk Alley." "I think that we've proven that we can be great stewards of capital, so we're going to keep doing that."
The company, founded 12 years ago by Julia and Kevin Hartz, reported a $15.6 million loss for the first half of the year when it filed its initial prospectus last month. On Sept. 7, the company estimated that it would price shares at $19 to $21, and on Tuesday the company raised the estimated range to $21 to $23.
Eventbrite charges creators for the tickets people buy to attend events. Last year more than 203 million tickets were issued through the service.
"I think the appetite for a platform like Eventbrite that serves the mid-market of events, ticketing 3 million events last year, is something that's quite rare and I think the appetite is reaffirming for us that we have a strong business and decades more to go," Hartz said.
Tiger Global owns 21 percent of Eventbrite, Sequoia Capital owns 20 percent of the shares, and the Hartzs own a combined 17 percent.
Goldman Sachs led the offering, along with J.P. Morgan, Allen & Co. and RBC Capital Markets.
—CNBC's Ari Levy and Waverly Colville contributed to this report.