Vivid Seats (NASDAQ: SEAT) saw a sharp drop in its share price this week after a secondary sale of company shares was announced. The Secondary Offering of Common Stock will see the offering of 18.5 million shares of common stock released for sale by an existing stockholder, with the potential for another 2.775 million to be sold beyond that amount.
The shares will be offered at a price to the public of $6.50/share, with that pricing arrangement announced on Friday. The offering will close on December 12.
With the news, released late Wednesday, the secondary ticket marketplace’s share price tumbled by more than a dollar between market closing and early market Thursday – from $8.30 a share at one point Wednesday afternoon to below $7 as of 10 a.m. Thursday. The drop represents a more than 20% drop, though the price has recovered slightly on Friday, trading at just above $7/share as of lunchtime.
According to a release from Vivid Seats, the selling stockholder, Hoya Topco, LLC, is offering the potentially more than 20 million shares in the company’s Class A stock. Vivid Seats is a subsidiary company of Hoya Topco, which was created as the shell organization that merged with Horizon Acquisition Corp. in a SPAC merger that brought the resale platform public in 2021.
Vivid Seats share prices have largely stayed flat since that merger, trading at below $10/share since the spring of 2022, having initially launched at more than $12.share during its first days of public trading. The shares did receive a bit of a bump with strong Q3 numbers last month, coupled with the announcement of its acquisition of Vegas.com – rising from an October low of less than $6/share to above $8 – but that momentum has been undone by this latest announcement.
