Cvent IPO

November 13 2013

Cvent (NYSE: CVT) is a leading provider of cloud-based event and meeting planner software and services. The company provides solutions for event planning, ticketing, email marketing, surveys, as well as budgeting, planning, and sourcing of event venues. Cvent is based in McLean Virginia, and was founded in 1999. Consensus revenue estimates call for $108 million in 2013, followed by $135 million the following year. EPS is expected to be $0.06 in both years. Cvent staged its 5.6 million share IPO on August 9, 2013 on the NYSE. The offering was priced at $21 per share, and was led by five investment banks: Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Stifel Nicolaus, Pacific Crest, and Needham. Cvent carries a current market cap. exceeding $1.2 billion.

Cvent targets the events and meeting industry, which includes event and meeting planners, as well as the hotels and other venues at which meetings are held. Cvent’s software and services are utilized to plan meetings, conferences, and tradeshows, and customers include a wide range of corporations, Trade Associations, non-profits, government agencies, and education, including universities. The company counts over 6,200 event and meeting planner customers, including Visa, Wal-mart, Proctor and Gamble, Edwards Lifesciences, as well as 4,700 hotels and and other venues, including Hilton, Marriott, and Starwood. With a wide range of software solutions and services targeted to meet the demands for large meetings, Cvent is well-positioned to provide the hand-holding required to ensure a particular meeting’s success. Toward that end 56 percent of its employee base of 1,300 resides in India.

Principal risks to Cvent, include the fact that the company is barely profitable, and may need to rely on accessing the public markets in the future. The company has a relatively low revenue per employee of roughly $100,000, providing less leverage in its business model than other cloud-based software companies, which typically have revenue in excess of $200,000 per employee. This figure is likely to rise if cloud based software, which is currently 70 percent of sales, continues to rise.

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