StubHub shares plunged 20% in premarket trading as uncertainty surrounding its second-half outlook fueled concerns that World Cup demand temporarily pulled forward discretionary spending on entertainment and events.
..back near four month lows...
StubHub's second-quarter results were mixed. Revenue climbed 33% to $573.1 million, beating the $513.3 million Bloomberg consensus estimate, while adjusted EBITDA of $105.7 million also topped expectations. Earnings per share were flat, missing the 9-cent consensus estimate.
2Q26 Earnings Snapshot:
The key takeaway from BMO Capital Markets analyst Brian Pitz was that StubHub delivered a "strong" second quarter:
STUB reported strong 2Q26 results, with GMS, revenue, and adjusted EBITDA all coming in ahead of consensus by 24%, 12%, and 10%, respectively. Year-over-year GMS grew 34% to a record $3.1B, revenue grew 33% to $573.1M, and adjusted EBITDA grew 94% to $105.7M. Management raised FY26 guidance for GMS to $10.1-10.3B, 2% above consensus at the midpoint, and reiterated adjusted EBITDA guidance of $400-420M, 2% below consensus at the midpoint. Maintain Outperform rating and $15 target price.
Continued Strong Marketplace Momentum: STUB delivered another quarter of strong growth, supported by robust global demand for live events, continued leadership in the secondary ticketing market, and elevated World Cup-related activity. GMS increased 34% YoY to $3.1B, while revenue grew 33% to $573M. Profitability expanded meaningfully, with the adjusted EBITDA margin improving 580 bps YoY to 18.4%.
Improving the Balance Sheet to Support Growth Investments: Strong earnings growth and cash generation continue to strengthen the balance sheet while preserving capacity for future growth investments. The company reduced debt by an additional $200M YTD, including $100M repayments in both May and July. Over the past 12 months, total debt has been reduced by $1.1B. As a result, net leverage declined to 3.0x trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA as of June 2026, compared with 4.5x at year-end 2025, generating approximately $73M in annualized interest expense savings.
International Business Remains Robust: International sales growth exceeded North American growth during the quarter, albeit from a smaller base, underscoring the company's expanding global footprint and sustained demand for live events outside the U.S. During the World Cup, fans from more than 150 countries purchased tickets through STUB, and roughly one in seven tickets was purchased by buyers outside the U.S. and Canada.
Updated 2026E Outlook: Reflecting stronger-than-expected 2Q performance, STUB increased its full-year 2026E GMS outlook to $10.1-10.3B, 2% above consensus at the midpoint. STUB reiterated adjusted EBITDA guidance of $400-420M, demonstrating confidence in its profitability outlook while continuing to invest in growth initiatives.
BMO Model Updates: We are fine-tuning our 2026E and 2027E estimates, with GMS rising slightly to $10.3B and $11.3B from $10.0B and $11.1B, respectively, and revenue declining to $2.04B and $2.27B from $2.10B and $2.49B. Adjusted EBITDA rises to $415.3M and $568.3M from $415.1M and $565.8M.
But it was only on the earnings call that management acknowledged uncertainty over whether the World Cup temporarily pulled forward discretionary spending. This prompted BMO to lower its 2026 revenue estimate to $2.04 billion from $2.1 billion while slightly raising its adjusted EBITDA forecast to $415.3 million.
And if demand was pulled forward, another question looms: How many consumers relied on buy now, pay later services to finance their ticket purchases?
Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 09:35Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has decided that "all parts of the country need to play their part."
That means middle-class families and leafy villages must now accept large numbers of asylum seekers so the poorest areas are no longer the only ones carrying the load.
This approach obviously does nothing to stop the root of the problem, the sheer number of migrants washing up in boats. It simply advertises better accommodation to the next wave of illegal arrivals.
'All parts of the country need to play their part.'
Prime Minister Andy Burnham addresses the village of Piddington, which is facing a migrant detention centre being built in its community. pic.twitter.com/uo0XsKZUsD
Burnham's comments came in direct response to the ongoing revolt in the Oxfordshire village of Piddington. Residents there face plans to house up to 1,250 single adult male asylum seekers on a former military site near a community of roughly 400 people.
The numbers would leave locals heavily outnumbered. Children have written letters pleading with the Prime Minister not to destroy their village. Families held a symbolic independence referendum in which 96 percent voted to leave the United Kingdom in protest.
Seven-year-old Rex Perkin said his family had lived in the village for over 100 years and that he walked to his sister's grave. He worried he would no longer be able to do that. Other children begged to keep their park, their dog walks, and the quiet life they knew. Parents described the prospect of being so outnumbered that daily life would change completely.
Burnham told GB News he understood concerns and would look into the issues raised by "the good people of Piddington." He then made the wider point clear: "We cannot have a situation where it's only the poorest communities in the country that receive all of the dispersal of refugees and asylum seekers. I do believe all parts of the country need to work, to play their part."
Borders minister Anna Turley doubled down, defending the plan to impose the numbers on the tiny village and insisting the policy was about "fairness" and a "more fair and equitable system."
Borders minister defends imposing 1,200 migrants on an Oxfordshire village of just 400 people after PM said middle class areas must accept more asylum seekers https://t.co/k0aBSANsG9
— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) August 12, 2026She said the men would be "contained" on the site but still allowed out. The message to anyone watching from the French coast is straightforward: break into Britain and you may end up in a secure facility near a prosperous English village rather than a rundown hotel in a deprived town.
The parts of the UK with no asylum seekers mapped as Andy Burnham vows to make middle-class areas take more migrants https://t.co/RBRd3pjyZh
— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) August 12, 2026The Centre for Migration Control put the core problem bluntly:
Telling migrants that if they break into Britain they will be housed in Kensington or the Cotswolds is hardly going to deter them from crossing the Channel.
The government simply does not understand the pull factors driving the crisis. pic.twitter.com/NS5oqgDWU5
Labour MP Graham Stringer, speaking on TalkTV, rejected the idea that opposition was rooted in racism.
Labour MP Graham Stringer responds to Andy Burnham's calls for middle class communities to accept asylum seeker accommodation.
"They don't want them, not because they are racists – it is an unfair and very difficult burden to put in those communities."@TVKev pic.twitter.com/6LxxvZsB2O
GB News coverage highlighted the demographic reality. Certain areas could see locals outnumbered three to one if the redistribution continues on this scale.
'They're going to be outnumbered three to one'.@forster_k highlights how certain areas could leave locals outnumbered if the Government follow through with Andy Burnham's premise that middle class areas should take in more migrants. pic.twitter.com/k5m84faW7Q
— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 12, 2026Piddington is not an isolated case. Earlier this summer the village made national headlines when residents staged their symbolic breakaway vote after discovering the Home Office intended to convert the MoD Bicester site for 1,250 men with almost no local consultation.
Infrastructure, policing, and community safety were secondary concerns. The site sits next to a children's playing field and nature reserve. Parish council chairman Tim McNally described the process as residents being "driven into a corner."
Similar scenes have played out elsewhere. In Crowborough, East Sussex, residents formed a volunteer security group after hundreds of single adult males were placed at a former army camp.
Women reported feeling unsafe walking alone. The group of vetted locals began patrolling streets because official policing could not provide the reassurance needed.
Crowborough had already braced for up to 600 men from countries including Pakistan, Eritrea, Iran, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. Protests drew thousands. Locals installed extra security and questioned why their town was chosen with minimal consultation.
The housing pressure is also structural. Projections show migrants are set to take a huge share of new homes built in Britain by 2030. Net migration on current trends will require hundreds of thousands of additional properties, crowding out British families already struggling with supply.
Burnham's redistribution plan is presented as fairness after poorer areas have carried a disproportionate load for years. In practice it expands the destinations available to people who arrive illegally by boat.
Closing hotels and moving arrivals into former military sites or middle-class districts does not remove the incentive to cross. It upgrades the offer. The Channel remains open. The gangs adapt. Record numbers continue to arrive in single large boats even as ministers claim progress.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp called the approach a "vindictive punishment beating" to the middle classes after years of tax rises and rising bills.
The deeper failure is strategic. A policy that signals better housing outcomes for those who reach Britain illegally cannot reduce arrivals. It can only increase them.
Piddington's children wrote letters. Their parents voted to leave the country in protest. Other towns have formed their own security teams. The government response is to spread the same model further into the places that once felt insulated.
The boats will keep coming as long as the destination remains attractive. Housing the next arrivals in nice unspoiled villages does not change that calculation. It reinforces it.
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Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 09:20Following yesterday's cooling (in-line) consumer price inflation data (driven in large part by energy deflation), US producer prices were expected to rebound modestly in July from a 0.3% MoM decline (headline) in June.
Instead, headline Producer Prices were unchanged MoM (cooler than expected), pushing the annual change down from +5.5% to +4.7% YoY...
Source: Bloomberg
Core PPI (Ex Food and Energy) also printed cooler than expected (+0.2% MoM vs +0.3% MoM), dragging Core PPI YoY down to +4.2%...
Final demand services: Prices for final demand services advanced 0.2 percent in July after rising 0.5 percent in June. The July increase can be traced to the index for final demand services less trade, transportation, and warehousing, which moved up 0.6 percent. Conversely, the indexes for final demand transportation and warehousing services and for final demand trade services decreased 1.8
percent and 0.1 percent, respectively.
As stocks accelerate to new highs so portfolio management costs soar...
Final demand goods: The index for final demand goods fell 0.7 percent in July after moving down 1.4 percent in June. A major factor in the July decrease was a 3.1-percent decline in prices for final demand energy. The index for final demand foods moved down 0.9 percent. Conversely, prices for final demand goods less foods and energy increased 0.1 percent.
Energy remains a major driver of the deflationary impulse...
The full breakdown:
Goods deflated for the second month in a row while services rose for the second month in a row...
The recent rapid surge in memory prices has stabilized (but is not dropping)...
The CPI-PPI spread continues to (broadly speaking) signal increased pressure on corporate margins...
So, the bottom line is that energy price declines are now deflationary while soaring memory costs and stock portfolio management fees are driving aggregate prices higher...
So should The Fed pop the AI/Memory/Compute bubble? (in the same way it's unable to impact a supply shortage in the energy markets)
Which overall means that the market is now pricing in LESS THAN ONE rate hike in 2026...
Rate-hike expectations remain flat from yesterday as today's PPI merely confirmed the lack of pressure on Warsh to act with any urgency.
Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 09:15The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the first time rose to 209k last week, rebounding off the lowest levels since 1969...
Michigan and New York saw the largest surge in initial jobless claims last week, while Puerto Rico and Ohio saw the biggest weekly declines...
Continuing jobless claims, however, dipped back below 1.8 million Americans, clearly trending lower again...
Combined with Friday's disappointing payrolls print, the labor market appears to remain in the 'no hire, no fire' regime.
Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 09:07Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) executive Heidi Beirich was arrested in California on Wednesday under a superseding indictment in the Justice Department's ongoing case against the organization, according to a CNN report confirmed by federal officials.
Heidi Beirich. What even...Beirich, who directed the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project until 2019, faces three counts: conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to submit false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to conceal money laundering. She was expected to make an initial appearance in Riverside later Wednesday.
"I believe she was part of the effort to open bank accounts in completely fictitious companies' names and make payments to individuals for reasons that were not accurate as described," Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters Wednesday. "This is exactly what we said would happen in a case like this."
At the center of the allegations is an SPLC program that paid informants embedded in extremist organizations the nonprofit publicly monitored and campaigned against. Prosecutors allege Beirich helped oversee those payments and shared a bank account with one of the informants receiving them.
That informant, identified in charging documents as F-9, allegedly infiltrated the neo-Nazi National Alliance. Prosecutors further allege that Beirich was living with him and romantically involved with him while the payments were being made.
Reporting on the June superseding indictment said roughly $140,000 in donor funds moved from the SPLC's operating account into joint accounts held by Beirich and F-9 between 2015 and 2021. The organization is also alleged to have paid the informant more than $1 million since 2007.
Other payments under the same program allegedly went to separate recipients. The indictment, for example, describes funds reaching an Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America - a different individual from the informant with whom Beirich allegedly had a relationship.
According to prosecutors, F-9 also broke into the headquarters of a white supremacist organization and removed approximately 25 boxes of documents. Those materials allegedly became the basis for a 2015 Hatewatch article written by Beirich titled "Chaos at the Compound." A second informant was allegedly paid about $6,000 to take responsibility for the burglary and conceal the identity of the original source.
An attorney for Beirich denied wrongdoing, calling the case meritless and politically motivated and saying she looks forward to presenting her side in court. An SPLC spokesperson had no immediate comment.
The SPLC has contested the government's case from the beginning, arguing that prosecutors are mischaracterizing a long-running intelligence-gathering program designed to monitor violent extremists. Its attorneys have also emphasized that law-enforcement agencies made use of information generated by SPLC informants.
Initial IndictmentA federal grand jury in Montgomery indicted the SPLC on April 21 on 11 counts: six of wire fraud, four of bank fraud, and one of money laundering.
Prosecutors allege the organization funneled more than $3 million in donated funds to at least eight informants associated with groups including the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, the National Alliance, and the National Socialist Party of America between 2014 and 2023.
According to the indictment, some of those payments were routed through bank accounts opened in the names of fictitious entities such as Rare Books Warehouse and Tech Writers Group.
"The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence," Blanche said when the original charges were announced.
The SPLC pleaded not guilty in July and moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing that the prosecution was vindictive and that the administration was retaliating against the organization for identifying and criticizing extremist groups.
On Aug. 7, U.S. District Judge Emily Marks rejected that motion, finding that the SPLC had not demonstrated prosecutorial animus. We covered that ruling here, as well as the unusual timing of an Atlantic story targeting FBI Director Kash Patel three days before the original indictment here.
The FBI severed its relationship with the SPLC in October 2025. In its most recent available filing, the organization reported gross receipts of $339.3 million and assets totaling $822.2 million.
At a June 9 House Judiciary Committee hearing titled "Manufacturing Hate, Part II," witnesses testified that the SPLC's "hate group" designations had been used as screening criteria by payment processors, donor-advised funds, corporate-giving platforms, and web-hosting companies.
WATCH: "The SPLC is little more than a highly profitable scam."
ADF's @ryanlbangert delivers his opening statement to @JudiciaryGOP on @splcenter pic.twitter.com/nbxBBhN63a
In practice, witnesses argued, the SPLC's privately maintained list could carry consequences resembling those of an official government designation, despite there being no formal due-process mechanism for organizations placed on it.
One witness told the committee that his organization lost access to charitable-giving platforms, web hosting, and nonprofit software pricing after appearing on the SPLC's hate map.
Those claims remain witness characterizations rather than judicial findings. But they are now part of the congressional record, and the fact that federal law-enforcement agencies previously relied on intelligence produced by the SPLC is not in dispute.
Beirich left the SPLC in 2019 amid the upheaval that followed the firing of co-founder Morris Dees and the departure of much of the organization's senior leadership. She later co-founded the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, where she continued working as an extremism researcher.
Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 09:01