Cvent posted $59.6 million in second-quarter earnings, with
year-over-year growth at 26 percent. The meetings technology firm grew its
Hospitality Cloud earnings 26.7 percent and Event Cloud earnings 25.7 percent.
Highlights of the quarter included the firms’ largest-ever customer conference,
which attracted more than 2,800 attendees, according to Cvent. The tech company
also won significant new enterprise and midmarket business, and adoption of its
mobile products continued to gain.
On July 12, Cvent stockholders approved
the proposal to merge with Vista Equity Partners, which already owns Lanyon,
a rival meetings technology firm of Cvent. The U.S. Department of Justice
continued its antitrust inquiry into the deal after issuing a second
request for information on July 1.
A recent report from The Capitol Forum, which specializes in
antitrust issues, identified lack of competition, specifically in the strategic
meetings management market, as a sticking point for the merger and discussed arguments
both for and against the merger. According to The Capitol Forum estimate, a
tie-up that included Lanyon and Cvent would capture 90 percent of the SMM
technology market, giving the merged company an unfair opportunity to raise
prices without losing customers. On the other hand, the report presented the
argument that the SMM slice of the entire meetings and event management market might
not constitute a “sufficiently discrete market for the purposes of merger
analysis.” It also noted that even if SMM is considered a separate market, the
limited competition could be the result of SMM being a relatively new set of
tools and that the level of innovation in the industry would eventually produce
competing products.
Cvent and Vista Partners hope to close the
merger in the third quarter; however, the second request from the DOJ could challenge
that timeline.