Event tech giant Cvent, which announced in July that it would be going public again via a deal with special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Dragoneer Growth Opportunities Corp. II has released an achievement report in advance of its second public trading launch highlighting its progress over the past four months and is optimistic about the future of the industry.
The company shared that it has continued to win significant event contracts, including from companies that previously only ran in-person events but are now looking to leverage event tech for more virtual events moving forward as well. In a recent webinar hosted by IPO Edge, Cvent Founder and CEO Reggie Aggarwal noted that the idea of an all-in-one platform that can seamlessly deliver all event formats will also continue to be a growing trend.
“2020 and 21 was all about one delivery model — virtual events,” said Aggarwal. “2022 and beyond is going to be about the three delivery models — hybrid, virtual, and in-person…This triple threat on one platform is one of the biggest things that you're going to see in our industry that we think is going to flourish as a concept. And this is just the beginning — there are so many other exciting changes going on in the events industry.”
In terms of financial results, Cvent reported total third quarter revenue of $134.1 million, which represents a 13.1 percent increase from the same period last year. The company also reported that of the $134.1 million in revenue, Event Cloud revenue accounted for $92.5 million, which is an increase of 27.3 percent year over year.
On the webcast, Aggarwal also emphasized the growing market for virtual and hybrid products, which Cvent is banking on for the foreseeable future. “Out of our [approximately] 11,000 event cloud customers, we had about 1,200 buy our virtual product, and out of those, the average company went up almost 60% in terms of increasing our contract value,” he shared.
“So not cannibalizing with the virtual, it’s actually incrementally adding — it’s just this exciting new market as things do come back, and you combine that coming back plus this new vector of growth, that's why we think we have a long-term view of growth in an exciting market that's transforming.”
Aggarwal views his company’s new public launch as beneficial for the industry as a whole: “It’s a tremendous opportunity for our space,” he said. “What’s great is that we're bringing attention to our space as we talk to investors and remind them that $1 trillion is spent on meetings and events.”
Of course, as one of the largest event tech companies, Cvent’s progress isn’t necessarily representative of the state of affairs across the industry. Nevertheless, its updates are encouraging as events begin to resume more confidently — barring recent Omicron concerns — and bringing more attention to this global industry that has often flown under the radar is ultimately a positive thing.
Cvent has announced that its SPAC transaction is expected to close on December 8th and that assuming everything is in order, it will begin trading publicly on December 9th under the ticker symbol “CVT”.