Live Nation Entertainment Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
May 4, 2023

There are 11 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day, everyone. My name is John, and I will be your conference operator on today's call. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Live Nation Entertainment's First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. Following management's prepared remarks, we will open the call for Q and A.

Operator

Instructions will be given at that time. Before we begin, Live Nation has asked me to remind you that this afternoon's call will contain certain forward looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ, including statements related to company's anticipated financial performance, business prospects, new developments and similar matters. Please refer to Live Nation's SEC filings, including the risk factors and cautionary statements included in the company's most recent filings on Forms 10 ks, 10 Q and 8 ks for a description of risks and uncertainties that could impact the actual results. Live Nation will also refer to some non GAAP measures on this call. In accordance with the SEC Regulation G.

Operator

Live Nation has provided definitions of these measures and a full reconciliation to the most comparable GAAP measures in their earnings release or website supplement, which also contains other financial or statistical information to be discussed on this call. Release reconciliation and website supplement can be found under the Financial Information section on Live Nation's website at investors. Livenationentertainment.com. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Michael Rapinoe, President and Chief Executive Officer of Live Nation Entertainment. Please go ahead, sir.

Speaker 1

Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. 2023 is off to a tremendous start. For the first time in 3 years, all of our markets are fully opened. And the common theme we are seeing around the world that live experiences are a high priority for fans. In Q1, delivered record results across all divisions, as well as record support for artists.

Speaker 1

From ticket sales to attendance and on-site spend, Every sign points to incredible demand for live events. In the Q1, over 19,000,000 fans attended our shows across 45 countries. We sold over 145,000,000 tickets with record levels of activity across all markets. We delivered revenue of $3,100,000,000 and AOI of $320,000,000 up 73% 53%, respectively, relative to Q1 last year. In general, all my comments will be relative to Q1 last year.

Speaker 1

This performance is indicative of a continued long term growth and set the stage for a record 2023, as we are more positive than ever about artists touring, bands attending concerts to see their favorite artists and our role helping make this happen. But it's clear as we look at our results and operating metrics is that global demand for live events continues to reach new heights. Demand has been growing for a long time and is showing no signs of letting up. Talking to fans, they say that live experiences are the number one leisure activity where they expect to spend more in the future. Naturally, this is leading to record levels of activity in both our concerts and ticketing business.

Speaker 1

1st in concerts, we sold nearly 90,000,000 tickets for shows this year, tracking more than 20% ahead of this point last year. These are early sales and have been driven by a record number of stadium shows and continued strong growth and arenas tours. With many major tours from Beyonce, Drake to Bruce Springsteen, demand has been so strong that even when artists add a number of additional shows, they still aren't able to meet all of the fan demand. As a further initiative to make tickets affordable to all fans. We launched today our summer concert week with $25 tickets available to nearly 4,000 shows.

Speaker 1

When fans attend shows, they continue spending to enhance the experience. While our key outdoor season has not yet started. Early reads from U. S. And European indoor venues that we operate demonstrate further growth in average per fan revenue.

Speaker 1

As we provide more elevated hospitality options for fans, we've launched VIBE, host destination events centered around live music and launched this week with the sale of the YouTube Sphere VIP packages selling out. We've also continued building our venue nation portfolio with new venues expected to host nearly 3,000,000 fans 1,000 shows this year, driving long term growth and profitability across all our businesses. Our ticketing business benefits from the same structural tailwinds concerts, with further growth driven by our success in adding new clients, notably in international markets. As a result, we sold 73,000,000 fee bearing tickets in the 1st quarter, up 40% and delivered 7,700,000,000 and Fee Bear and GTV, up 60%. We are seeing growth in both volume and pricing across our global markets.

Speaker 1

This holds true across all event types from sports to concerts, from the biggest superstars to new artists. Our brand partners recognize the passion for live music has never been greater. And Live Nation provides a unique on-site and online platform to connect with fans in meaningful ways on a global scale. And in the Q1, we continued adding partners for 2023 and beyond, including Google Pixel, PayPal and Levi's. With this, we have commitments for over 80% of our planned sponsorship of the year.

Speaker 1

Equally important, fans are embracing the value brands can provide to the concert experience. With over 70% of live music goers agreeing that brands can enhance their time at the show. Our team is the best in the industry and working with brands to develop programs to deliver value to fans, which in turn grows our brand relationships and attracts new ones. Results for the Q1 demonstrate the success of our strategy and sets up for a strong growth in 2023. We expect to host a record number of fans this year, even against the 2022 comparison, which benefited from rescheduled shows attended by 20,000,000 fans.

Speaker 1

Ticketmaster should deliver record activity with around 600,000,000 tickets managed globally this year. And our sponsorship business, even after incredible growth last year, looks to be on track for double digit AOI growth this year. As we look 2024 and beyond. We have all the necessary levers to build our Flywheel globally and continue to compound AOI by double digits for the foreseeable future. With that, I will turn the call over to Joe to take you through more details.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Michael, and good afternoon, everyone. Building on 2022, we started out this year with a record Q1, our highest first quarter revenue, AOI, fan count and ticket sales. All of our markets tickets are fully open, selling tickets, hosting tours and connecting brands with fans. Our reported revenue of $3,100,000,000 for the quarter was 1 $3,000,000,000 better than Q1 2022, an increase of 73%. On a constant currency basis, revenue was $3,200,000,000 for the quarter, so there was roughly a 2% unfavorable impact due to the slight strengthening of the U.

Speaker 2

S. Dollar, primarily against the Canadian and Australian dollars. Given the limited FX impact on our numbers, the rest of my comments will just be a reported currency. Our reported AOI of $320,000,000 for the quarter was $111,000,000 better than 2022, up 53%, with an improvement of $65,000,000 in ticketing, dollars 50,000,000 in concerts and $26,000,000 in sponsorship. Over half of our AOI growth came from our Asia Pacific and Latin America markets, where we are expanding our global touring activity and diversifying our historical seasonality.

Speaker 2

We converted roughly 59% of this AOI to adjusted free cash flow of $190,000,000 which is significantly higher than our 43% conversion in Q1 2022. In our deferred revenue, a key leading indicator of growth, ended this quarter at $4,400,000,000 up 28% from this point last year. Let me give a bit more color on each division. First in concerts. We had the highest concert attendance ever for Q1 with 19,500,000 fans attending our shows up 79% compared to 2022 when we had approximately 11,000,000 fans.

Speaker 2

Show count was 9,600 events, up 43% compared to 2022, with more fans per show due to a heavier mix stadium and arena events and stronger than historical average attendance levels. As a result, our concerts revenue for the year grew by 89 percent to $2,300,000,000 while we delivered $1,000,000 in AOI, a $50,000,000 improvement over Q1 2022. This is the beginning of what we see as a very solid year for our Concert segment, including margin expansion relative to last year. Looking a bit deeper at our fan metrics, we had strong growth across the board. Stadium attendance more than quadrupled to 3 300,000 fans this quarter, up from 800,000 fans in 2022.

Speaker 2

This growth primarily came from our Asia Pacific and Latin American markets. Arena attendance was 6,700,000 fans for the quarter, up 3,000,000 or almost 80% from 2022, largely as a result of growth in Europe and Australia Touring. Theater and fan club count was up 45%, and while it's not a large quarter for festivals, we did see festival fan count grow by 50% from our Mexico and Australia and New Zealand expansion. Overall, our international markets drove fan count growth accounting for over 90% of our increase versus 2022. This was due in part to the closures still in effect in Q1 2022.

Speaker 2

That said, we expect continued strength across all global markets Q1, along with some seasonal shift toward Q1 activity. Last year, we discussed the various cost headwinds at our operated music festivals. Thus far this year, cost pressures are declining and our operational cost per fan is down across our indoor buildings, and we are forecasting that cost increases will remain below general inflation levels for our festivals and amphitheaters. As a result of these improved conditions. We expect overall profitability per fan will again increase this year as cost increases are more than mitigated by increasing average revenue per fan, pricing and on-site sponsorship.

Speaker 2

Next in ticketing where our numbers reflect growing fan demand for live experiences. In Q1 2023, we sold 72,600,000 fee bearing tickets of 21,000,000 tickets or 41% compared to 2022. Nearly 2 thirds of the growth was driven by concert tickets as North America concert ticket sales increased by 35%, while international concert ticket sales increased even more by 65%. With this increased ticket volume, GTV for the quarter was $7,700,000,000 up 60% compared to 2022. At peak sales times during the quarter, Ticketmaster sold 15,000 tickets per minute in North America, with more than 20,000,000 fee bearing tickets sold each month globally.

Speaker 2

And in Q1, over 99.9% of all TM transactions were processed without any issues. While secondary ticketing volume grew at a similar rate, ours continues to be largely a primary ticketing business with secondary ticketing accounting for only a mid teens percent of our overall GTV. With these growing ticket sales, revenue for the quarter was 6 $78,000,000 and AOI was $271,000,000 delivering margin of 40%. It's hard to compare these margins to Q1 of last year given the geographic mix shift and increased cost of ramping our staff back up over the course of last year. But these margins are ahead of our full year 2022 numbers, and we expect margins full year to continue being in the high 30s.

Speaker 2

On the pricing front, average ticket prices on primary tickets rose by 16% compared to Q1 of 2022, driven by fan demand for the best seats, particularly at concerts. Average secondary ticket prices remain close to double that of a primary ticket, continuing to show the extent to which concerts and other live events Remain Price Below Market Value. We also saw revenue from non service fees grow double digits as we further build ancillary revenue streams, including insurance upgrades and other upsells. Lastly, So far this year, we have signed clients accounting for nearly 8,000,000 net new tickets, up 15% compared to this point last year, positioning us for ongoing growth. Finally, in our sponsorship business, top line revenue improved by $54,000,000 or 40 7% to $170,000,000 in Q1.

Speaker 2

Our AOI for this high margin business was $96,000,000 up 37%. Sponsorships growth during the quarter was driven by the reopening of international markets that were closed in Q1 of last year, the increase in high profile artist on sales that attract premium marketing partners and the expansion of our venue network. We had double digit growth in both on-site and online sponsorship with on-site sponsorship representing most of our AOI growth year over year. From a geographic perspective, our international markets delivered 54% growth in the quarter, while North America had 26% growth. Contributing to our sustained growth since last year has been our strategic sponsors that generate over $1,000,000 of revenue in the year.

Speaker 2

Relative to Q1 of last year, our number of strategic sponsors grew by 15%, while the revenue from those partners rose by over 20%. Sponsorship margins were slightly lower than average during the quarter as we had higher variable expenses due to artist activation costs for A List talent presales, with tickets sold for these key sponsor programs 4 times that of last year. A few other points on 2023. We continue to project that CapEx will be approximately $450,000,000 this year, with 2 thirds on revenue generating projects, including new venue builds and renewals, as well as other organic investments to support growth. The remaining 1 third is on maintenance CapEx as we catch up on deferred 2020 2021 maintenance.

Speaker 2

We ended the quarter with $2,400,000,000 of available liquidity between free cash and untapped revolver capacity, giving us ample flexibility to continue investing in growth. We're comfortable with our leverage, particularly given the AOI growth ahead approximately 87% of our debt at a fixed rate with an average cost of debt of roughly 4.7%. The only notable change to our below the line guidance from Q1 is on accretion. Due largely to Assess' impressive growth above previous projections. We estimate that accretion will be approximately 40% higher in 2022 and this should be factored into your EPS estimates.

Speaker 2

With that, let me open the call for questions. Operator?

Operator

Thank you, sir. We will now be conducting a question and answer one moment please while we poll for questions. And the first question comes from the line of David Karnovsky with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 3

Hey, thank you. Michael, Joe, we've seen a couple of bills introduced in Congress to address ticketing practices and contracts. So wondering first how you think some of these items might impact your business assuming they were fully enforced? And then just based on meetings you've had, do you think these bills largely meet the primary concerns of lawmakers as you've come to understand them?

Speaker 1

Yes. Thanks. Yes, we're kind of watching what's going on. And we believe that through all of the noise, most people are ending up in the industry and politics at exactly where we are in the principles of what the Fair Act is. So whether it's all in pricing, cleaning up deceptive practices in the secondary, giving artists more tools, Those seem to be all the common themes coming out in all of these different bills, which we're fully supportive of and have in our own bill, the FAIR Act.

Speaker 1

We know Senator Cartwell and Cruz introduced theirs. We know Neva has got a bill coming. Senator Klobuchar and Koren. These are all in the same vein and the same thematic around helping the artist control their ticket and get them in the hands of the fans and be aware of some of the practices and the secondary and the spec selling deceptive websites, hopefully better protection on bots And we've always supported all in pricing. So this is not LN versus any of these.

Speaker 1

We are aligned to all of these bills. We think all of these bills we've sent continually for a long time. It's better for our business, because it helps us deliver a better on sale and fan experience. So right now, it's the Wild West. We're doing our best, but any bills of these natures that start putting some better regulations and controls around the experience is going to help our overall business.

Speaker 3

Okay. Then was hoping Is there a wider opportunity across your promotional footprint? And then just interested, what drove the decision to kind of build this out internally versus maybe putting that out to bid for an events partner.

Speaker 1

Yes, we look at the segment overall. If you look at what we've been talking about on our Investor Day the last few years, the premium business is a huge opportunity for us. I think I've said many times, this is an industry that has done a great job of being scaled GA, but not done a great job of doing a premium experience for customers. The sports and new arenas and stadiums are doing a great job on that. But as an industry, Live Nation and the music industry has not done that.

Speaker 1

And we think there's a great opportunity overall to launch more products and services that can provide a better premium experience for the customer. So this would just be an extension and a continual strategy towards what we call the premium experience. We've got a company called VIP Nation. We'll do about 1,000 of those events this year. Those are based around the concert and the tour and going to a sound check or early experience or meet and greet.

Speaker 1

We've been the leader in that space and expanding that Ticketmaster's launch, Ticketmaster Travel, looking at ways we can put both the ticket and an airline or hotel together to take advantage of that scale and we've been testing that in the UK with great success. And VIBE is another product where we looked at Paul and we looked at on location and BID and Clint's and others that were doing it. The difference is we have the scale, so we already have been doing it. We have the expertise. So we looked at our Insomniac team and built out VIBE, launched it with the U2 experience, sold out close to $20,000,000 in ticket sales around a high end premium experience.

Speaker 1

So we have the in house expertise and this is another product in our ongoing strategy, whether it's clubs, premium memberships, premium club subscriptions, all the ways we're going to continue to look to say how do we turn the GA into a premium experience product. I know there's also the challenge that some of these other companies have is the expensive part about doing this is the right and we don't have that problem. So when you're chasing the Olympic rights. So you're chasing a business for premium. It's a little harder unless you're in house.

Speaker 1

So I'm sure On Location does fabulous with UFC experiences, similar to us, we don't have to pay rights. These are our rights. So we can do it in house. We don't have to outsource it and split any of that upside with anyone else but our own businesses.

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of Brandon Ross with LightShed Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 4

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. One on your fundamentals and then a follow-up to David's question on the bills in Congress. Actually, I'll start with that one. I think the Clovateur bill very specifically attacks your venue exclusivity.

Speaker 4

Can you kind of just respond to that bill and how important is the venue exclusivity model to you in North America? And then kind of on the fundamental, Last year was obviously a pretty depressed year in terms of concert margins. I know you paperwork margins, Joe, but we'll go with it anyway. Should we see a real bounce back in that and continuing kind of from 2030 beyond into future years. Thanks.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Brandon. First of all, on the exclusivity point, I think first point I should make is congratulations on the birth of your daughter. Glad to hear everybody's doing well.

Speaker 4

Thank you.

Speaker 2

But to the exclusivity point, I always start with these are the venues rights and the venues have been figuring out over time, how do they best certain rights they have. What they have determined is the best way to monetize those rights in the U. S. Is by auctioning them for exclusivity. So, I think it's frankly primarily were there to be any changes in exclusivity, It's the venues that would be hurt the most because they would lose the ability to fully maximize their rights.

Speaker 2

We're very confident with the quality of our systems, ability to handle on sales in a way that no other system can do has been shown both by the clients We've been adding as well as you've seen in the press issues that other systems have with very modest on sales. So we're very confident in our ability to deliver. I think it's uncertain any bill in today's Congress, not just this one, but any bill that doesn't have bipartisan support out of the gate has its challenges. But more fundamentally, I think that you'd see the venues respond to that and probably push back because they would be hurt a lot more than we would. In terms of the performance of the business, I tried to give a lot of details in there.

Speaker 2

I think that, as you know, first of all, we look more at the cash profitability of the business, where that is, how that's operating on a per The last year was a bottom tick in terms of our margins. We expect it to be coming back this year. We don't obsess over margins because for instance, this year we expect to be having a great stadium and arena year as you could tell by the numbers we already gave for Q1. That's inherently going to be a lower margin business than one of our amphitheater customers. We're still going to pursue that business, still great business, but it impacts technically the margin while generating cash profitability.

Speaker 2

So, I think that we're on an upward trajectory. I think 'twenty three is going to be great and every very early sign we have for 'twenty four is continued success.

Speaker 4

Just one quick follow-up to that comment. I think there's concern about lapping the supply side for next year. Do you feel good about the supply side coming out of 'twenty two and 'twenty three? I know you get asked question every year as things grow. But do you feel confident with what you're seeing so far?

Speaker 4

That's

Speaker 1

all. Yes. We feel as you know, yes, we live this in the I think the fall was all about the air pocket and would there be enough shows '23. So hopefully we put that to bed. We don't think this has anything to do with pent up demand or COVID re scheduling.

Speaker 1

That stuff has long been flushed out in 'twenty two. This is all about regular business back to business. And I think We're thrilled that we're sitting here looking at a comparable last year that basically had almost a year and a half combined into a year because of all those rescheduled shows of $20,000,000 To be sitting here today above and beyond last year's numbers, shows the global strength of the business and it also shows the global strength of the business from the amphitheater to the stadium to the club to the festival. We're looking at all territories around the world firing on all cylinders. We're looking at the kind of talent you see on the road right now.

Speaker 1

This isn't just the Rolling Stones, right? That question we always have to fight off. 6 of the top 10 artists were younger artists. You look at Lollapalooza, Coachella with Bad Bunny, Carol G, Rosalina, The Blackpink, the BTS's, Billie Eilish. I mean, there's just a host of great new talent every year coming up, filling the pipe that we didn't know Luke Combs was going to be selling stadiums out this year, 2 years ago.

Speaker 1

We had no idea Bad Bunny was going to be the largest selling artist last year. So we just continue to see the pipe, the supply demand We think for the future is really, really strong. There's more and more artists sitting in the studio right now on TikTok. The creator economy is alive and well, and they all want to be the next bad money. And we've said it before, we're also seeing this encouraging new supply strategy where For many years, it was all about a U.

Speaker 1

S. Or U. K.-based artists that filled the charts and filled the stadiums. And most other talent was domestic. It might have been big in Canada, it might have been big in Korea, but it didn't travel.

Speaker 1

This is the real breakout year where the world and the consumer are truly global. And now you can see artists coming from Latin America and Korea and becoming global superstars. That didn't happen for the last 30 years. It was a very top U. S.

Speaker 1

Or U. K. Controlled industry. So we think that alone gives the next kick to the supply chain for the next 10 years of young talent from it will be from India, South Africa. It's going to be everywhere overnight finding their way to TikTok and Spotify and other places to become these global stars that are selling arenas and stadiums out in their markets.

Operator

Thank you. And the next question comes from the line of Steven Lazycak with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 5

Hey, great. Thank you. Maybe for Michael on underlying concert demand. Setting aside the stadium and arena tours for the moment, Could you maybe talk about how demand for the average or even smaller amphitheater or club show is trending compared to what we saw for the types of shows last year? I There's some concern that maybe the top shows are performing well this year, but it's perhaps coming at the expense of some of the smaller ones.

Speaker 5

So we'd just love to hear your thoughts on

Speaker 2

Yes. Just to give you the feel on that, we don't have a lot of amphitheaters yet, just in the Q1. But if you look at our theaters and clubs, which tend to be pretty strong this point of the year. They're tracking around 8% ahead in terms of average attendance per show. We're doing that with also increased pricing, lower cost structure on a per fan basis.

Speaker 2

So those shows are performing very well for us.

Speaker 1

And just to jump on Joe there, unlike the movie theater kind of model, we're not a hit driven industry, right, where we are truly scaled business. And you're right, we looked at the Beyonce's of the world are always going to do the great numbers. When you're sitting here today looking at even our festivals, the Lollapalooza are the easy ones, but we have over 200 festivals, Bonnaroo's to one day festivals in smaller markets to our U. S. And international businesses, and all of it seems to be doing really, really well.

Speaker 1

So whether it's a middle of the road festival in a smaller market, whether it's a club act, at all levels, there seems to be incredible demand and on a global basis. So we haven't seen just the top stuff selling and they're not coming to the other stuff. The demand seems to be uniform from clubs to stadiums from Pittsburgh to Milan.

Speaker 5

Great. Thanks for that. And then maybe just one on the venues business. You called out in the press release, I think you expect to host 3,000,000 incremental fans at new Live Nation venues this year. I'm curious maybe for Joe, as you look at your ambitions on the venue side, how many incremental fans or shows you think you can add to the flywheel over the next couple of years, maybe just given how the venue pipeline stands today?

Speaker 2

Yes. I think this It would be typical and what we would hope to add in the low millions per year from our own venues with a mix of some new amphitheaters, new arenas at the larger end, while continuing to build out the club and theater portfolio. So it continues to be a meaningful part of it and more robust. As I said earlier, you can scale the stadiums and arenas faster. But over time we've learned we can deliver a very accretive return for our shareholders by operating it and being able to count the beer money and the sponsorship money as call.

Speaker 1

And I think we laid that out in our November Investor Day, probably on a more macro level. We We wanted to remind investors we've been doing this for a long time. We have a large venue portfolio. We don't see that strategy changing. It's not incrementally different than it's been year after year.

Speaker 1

We bolt on and continue to look around the world at opportunist markets where there's a great return and we keep adding a venue, club theater, an arena, if we can find the right market like Austin where it's a big return. But we'll continue that strategy over time and I think we laid out in November cleaner in terms of how many and what numbers we look to subscribe to over time.

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of Jason Bazinet with Citi. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 6

I just had a question about your cash balance. It seems like you guys used to run, I don't know, dollars 500,000,000 or something and It's been 4 times that or something over the last year. Do you just think that in the spirit of being cautious That it just makes sense to have more cash on hand or do you think there's some flexibility to deploy it in one way or another?

Speaker 2

Yes. I think just to make sure you have the cash numbers right, I think those cash numbers included untapped revolver capacity, right. So from that metric, it's probably not quite that extreme. But We continue to see a very strong set of opportunities to continue growing the business. We just talked about the venue business, which we've been in, but we think on a global basis has a lot of great opportunities to continue to build out the portfolio.

Speaker 2

And we think even within our existing portfolio, there's a lot of things that we can do to enhance the fan experiences Michael was talking about. So at the moment, we're Maybe being a little conservative coming out of COVID, but looking to continue to grow the business and we'll continue to reassess it and see what the right options are.

Speaker 6

Can I just ask one follow-up? One of the more interesting things to me looking at your stock prices, it seems so depressed relative to the fundamentals you guys have been putting up for the last year or so. Part of the DOJ related, part of it fears of sort of COVID pent up demand. But I was just surprised you guys didn't sort of take advantage of that seeming disconnect with share repurchases.

Speaker 2

Yes, I think the flip side of share repurchases tactically is one thing. I think we've also seen a lot of companies out there that embark on share repurchases and the market takes that as a signal that they are out of growth ideas. And I think that we have such a robust set of growth ideas that we wouldn't want that to be misunderstood. Secondly, when you invest in growth, you compounded returns over time. You can maybe get an attractive return from the stock if you think there is a dislocation, where you lose out on the accretive compounding impact that you can have by investing in these growth opportunities.

Speaker 2

As I said, I think we'll continue to look at all the options as we move forward. But I think in immediacy of coming out of it, that's been our

Speaker 7

thought process.

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of Stephen Glagoula with TD Cowen. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 8

Thanks for the question, Michael and Joe. Just I have 2 specific questions around the proposed legislation and how that's going to potentially impact your business. So one on the prohibition of ticketing exclusivity with venues. Please provide like, I guess, your color on the competitive position of Ticketmaster in international markets that you operate on an allocation and non exclusive model just to kind of glean insights on how the U. S.

Speaker 8

Could be from that, Like how renewals are trending there and new business there, 1. And then 2, on this Junk Fee Protection Act, I believe there's a provision that the FTC can determine if mandatory ticketing fees are excessive. So just wanted to know how would fee caps impact your service fee revenue. Would that impact more than what the venue collects or what the primary ticketing service

Speaker 1

collects as well? Thank you. I think you need to go listen to Bob Luffet's interview. He will help you. Listen, the venue drives, as Joe said, this is the venue business.

Speaker 1

I know everyone wants to The venue demands most of the service fee and kind of the auction for the ticket. So Again, we think that the venue that's building the $1,000,000,000 arena or the multi $1,000,000,000 stadium in that market, I think he's going to continually be pretty strong and vocal about his rights and returns on what companies he can hire exclusively or not to service this business. So whether it's Microsoft or CRM or Salesforce Ortega Master. I think they're going to look at all their options for their best return for their business. So we look at that from that perspective.

Speaker 1

If we look at Europe, just so we could because it was always thrown out really lightly that international is an allocation in the U. S. Is here. Just kind of for the trend, international is moving more towards an exclusive model than away from it. As new buildings are being built over there building your arena, which really had been underdeveloped.

Speaker 1

It was mostly a soccer business or football. But as the new buildings are getting built, They are looking over here and realizing that this is another revenue stream that they should be leveraging. So I look at international probably moving closer for their venues. Now we do really well over there because we always will do well as an open market with the best technology. We sell more tickets than the competitor.

Speaker 1

So if you're an open allocated market and you're going to allocate to us and others, we're going to do really, really well because we're going to be the one that probably sells the most tickets for you. So you'll end up allocating more to us. But we don't think that model probably ends up here more driven by the venue agenda than the picketing

Speaker 7

agenda.

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of David Katz with Jefferies.

Speaker 9

You covered a lot, but I was hoping you could just talk about the secondary ticketing market, which seems to be an area of growth for new smaller entities, other approaches, technologies, etcetera. And I know you've talked about in the past how what their impact is on the market. What's new with respect to that? What can you do about it to protect yourselves better? And I'd just love an update there, please, if you could.

Speaker 1

I'll jump and then Joe will. I just want to remind, we said earlier, of all the legislative noise we've been swirling around for 6 months. The common theme in all of this legislation that you're seeing come forward is around limiting and putting some handcuffs around the scalper and the business. So we do see a lot of this legislation moving forward is going to help the primary ticket, the content holder, do a better job on that front. And it will be harder for the gulp or the bot, deceptive websites, spec selling, a lot of the practices, thrift selling, etcetera.

Speaker 1

So we do think that overall this market right now legislatively is moving against the secondary business in general, Not going to ban it, not going to cap it, but some of the cleanup legislation does help primary hurts secondary. That's a big move that hasn't happened in the last 10, 15 years.

Speaker 2

Yes. I think the other piece is you have to remember that secondary for sports is very different than secondary in concert. Secondary in sports is often used as a distribution platform where you sell the season ticket to the scalpers, they just aggregate it and they're performing a function for the sports teams of guaranteeing them some upfront funding. That has value to the teams, value to the fans. You don't have that in concerts.

Speaker 2

The concerts, the issue is that they're using illegal and deceptive practices to get tickets with the sole objective of increasing the price and selling them to the fans. So I think what you're seeing is because the artists don't have the same sort of collective central power that a league does today, they can set up an NFL ticket exchange. You need to give the power back to the artists, so it's very clear that they can be the decision maker. And then it becomes the onus of the secondary players to figure out how they're adding value. Like any other business today, You have to survive and adapt and grow because you're adding value to others in your ecosystem.

Speaker 2

That hasn't been what's how the scalpers have done it in music over the past several years and it's finally gotten to the point where you're getting the pushback now from the artists and that's being fully understood by our politicians.

Speaker 9

Thank you. And to say nice quarter would be understating beating by $100,000,000 Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thanks.

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of Ben Swinburne with Morgan Stanley.

Speaker 7

Two questions. Michael, you also mentioned, I think in your prepared remarks that the secondary prices are running about 2x primary. Last year, I think it was last year, sort of that Bruce Springsteen moment about market pricing, expectations that more artists would embrace that. I was wondering if you could just sort of update us today on sort of the trend in market pricing on primary and sort of pricing Back of house, front of house the right way and where you feel the industry is and the businesses today? And then secondly, You guys are always thinking pretty far ahead around technology.

Speaker 7

What are your thoughts on AI as an opportunity for Live Nation, just broadly, it's obviously a huge topic these days. So we'd love to hear what you think.

Speaker 1

Perfect. On pricing, I think we've been saying it for the last few years, the great transparency and sunlight of secondary It's really helped the artist and the management team look at their pricing models. Historically, it was a fairly static pricing, 3 different maybe price points, same price point all across the country. It didn't matter if it was a Friday in New York or Tuesday in Pittsburgh. So The business has gotten really, really sophisticated with our PriceMaster, our different dynamic models that artists can now use.

Speaker 1

So we see that there's still years away between where the artist markets the price and what the market is willing to pay. The artist is one of the few products in the world that's worth more than a minute it's sold, but they do that for their brand and accessibility. And I think that will continue. But I do think we've seen the artists looking at their ticket price and the whole manifest and how do we bring the prices down in the back, bring the prices up in the front, so we can sell out and make sure everyone gets a ticket at an affordable price, let's not let secondary run away with the front row. So we think that we're still dramatically underpriced versus demand, and you see that every day on the secondary.

Speaker 1

And we think that's probably going to live for the next 5 to 10 years as the artist moves closer to market, probably never gets to market. But between here and where they feel comfortable, we think there's years of upside that they'll continue to look at. AI, Joe, you can talk about the TM.

Speaker 2

Yes. Yes, I think on AI, just to be clear, I think It's all upside for us. There's no concern that somehow AI can ever replace the live experience. For us, it's a I consider it an infrastructure tool for both efficiency and effectiveness. So you think about using AI on recommendations, much better marketing, much better individual recommendation in terms of making you aware of shows that you might want to go to.

Speaker 2

Clearly, We're using machine learning now to help inform models on suggesting pricing that we were just talking about. AI is the same thing, the next level of data input through that machine learning process. It will help us automate a lot of tools, the event creation process takes place at every venue being able to use much better data machine learning, whatever what's going on elsewhere in the PM system will make that more efficient. All the chatbots that you have today, those will go to a whole another level of effectiveness working with fans and be at much lower cost than you have today. And then as we're fighting bots using AI to continue in our battles to make sure we know who's a person or try to know who's a person versus who's not.

Speaker 2

So it kind of runs throughout all of our infrastructure. It's a lot of places We're using machine learning today. AI is really that to the next level.

Speaker 7

Thank you, Joe. Very helpful.

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of John Healy with Northcoast Research. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 10

Yes. Thank you for squeezing me in. I just wanted to ask a question on kind of the pace of growth. I mean, when we look at deferred revenue, I think it's almost 30%. You talked about the concert ticket sales at this point up 20%.

Speaker 10

Any help that you could give us just on if you think that type of pace of growth can be sustained this year. I think the message is clear, it's going to be a strong year, but would just love to get a little color and flavor about kind of the speed at which you could grow this year.

Speaker 2

Yes, I think that you generally start the year coming out of the gate fastest when you're led by stadiums and arenas. So that those are the shows that we've long talked about get on put on sale earliest relative to the show date. So you've got great scalability in the stadiums, which are seeing 4x The level of activity, good scalability in your arenas. So that's driving your huge increase in attendance, strong increase in ticket sales at $90,000,000 in your deferred revenue. I think as you get into more of the shows that take place in our buildings across the festivals, amphitheaters to some extent, theaters and clubs.

Speaker 2

You generally have a lower level of scalability. You still have very solid growth, but not the same level as you have with your stadiums and arenas. So I don't think we're ready to try to declare an exact number, but I think we recognize the level you have in Q1 is probably It's going to be the high point of the year.

Speaker 10

Okay. That's great. And then just wanted to add

Speaker 1

And I think sorry, I just want to jump on there for one sec, John. And just What's more important to us is just helping both sides realize what's the future in 'twenty four on. So we went through COVID was down and last year was an extraordinary year. So how does 'twenty three and 'twenty four start to look? And we're very optimistic.

Speaker 1

We look at this year as being a very strong year coming off what people probably thought we couldn't beat last year. And we think 'twenty four and 'twenty four forward, you kind of look at what we historically have delivered. We've been high single industry growth business and a high single digit revenue AOI business year after year for many years. We look at going forward. We think we're back to being a great strong growth business year over year, off this foundation business.

Speaker 1

So we think the industry is back bigger than ever, and we think there's years of industry growth we've shown you when the industry grows, We tend to rise with that tide and capture as much as industry growth. We tend to do a couple of points better. So industry has been growing about 8% or 9% a year. We tend to beat it. We look at this as a long term continual growth story again.

Speaker 10

Great. And then just a big picture question I wanted to ask. I think you called out APAC and Latin America as fueling some growth at the start of the year. Just as we think about those businesses long term, is it safe to say that as they become a bigger piece of the pie, the margin level of the business should rise. Are those I always thought those businesses had potential to be maybe higher margin than the U.

Speaker 10

S. Market, but was just kind of curious how you're thinking about those as they sit today.

Speaker 2

Yes, I don't think we start with thinking about them as margin. We think about them as being massive growth potential markets, probably the least developed of our major markets. So having great growth opportunity to continue to drive more fans and more obviously highly profitable fans. As we establish more venues in those markets, ensure that you can get some attractive margin off the buildings you operate, but I think more than starting with any margin focus, we're looking at just what's the volume of fans and what's

Operator

At this time, we have reached the end of the question and answer session. And I would like to turn the floor back over to Michael Rapinoe for any closing comments.

Speaker 1

Appreciate everyone. Thank you. We'll talk to you in the summer.

Operator

Thank you, everyone. That does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a great day.

Powered by Quartr
Earnings Conference Call
Live Nation Entertainment Q1 2023
00:00 / 00:00