Live Nation Entertainment Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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November 11, 2024

Key Takeaways

  • Ticketmaster outlook: October sales were up 15% year-on-year (concert tickets +23%) and with over 200 stadium/arena shows going on sale in Q4, the company expects a “very strong” Q4 and momentum into 2025.
  • Concert business: Live Nation anticipates continued revenue and AOI growth across arenas, amphitheaters and stadiums next year, with full-year margins expected to land around 2019 levels as marketing spend ramps up and premium seating expands.
  • Sponsorship growth: The number of strategic sponsors rose ~20% in 2024, driving double-digit AOI growth and fuelled by Live Nation’s global expansion into Latin America, India, the Middle East and beyond.
  • 2023 restatement & FX impact: A one-time, non-cash U.S. tax adjustment related to non-consolidated investments led to a minor restatement of 2023 results, and weaker Latin American currencies may shave mid-teens percentage points off Q4 AOI but are not expected to materially affect full-year 2025.
  • CapEx & tech investments: Q3 CapEx guidance rose by ~$50 million to fund a partner-built amphitheater (with $30 million from the partner), 14 venues adding ~8 million incremental fans, and Ticketmaster is plowing tens of millions into pricing tools, bot mitigation, on-sale capacity and digital ticketing.
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Earnings Conference Call
Live Nation Entertainment Q3 2024
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Good afternoon. My name is John, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Live Nation's third quarter 2024 earnings call. I would now like to turn the call over to Ms. Yong. Thank you, Ms. Yong. You may begin your conference.

Amy Yong
Amy Yong
Head of Investor Relations at Live Nation Entertainment

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Live Nation third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Joining us today is our President and CEO, Michael Rapino, and our President and CFO, Joe Berchtold. We would like to remind you that this afternoon's call will contain certain forward-looking statements that are subject to risk and uncertainty that could cause actual results to differ, including statements related to the 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-K, 10-Q, 8-K 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.

Amy Yong
Amy Yong
Head of Investor Relations at Live Nation Entertainment

In accordance with the SEC Regulation G, Live Nation has provided definitions of these measures and a full reconciliation to the most comparable GAAP measures in our earnings release. The release reconciliation can be found under the Financial Information section on Live Nation's website. With that, I'll turn it over to Joe for brief remarks.

Joe Berchtold
Joe Berchtold
CFO at Live Nation Entertainment

Thank you, everyone, for joining our quarterly conference call. I think we'll go right into questions on the release, and as everybody knows, we have our investor presentation coming up Wednesday and then again on Thursday.

Operator

Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting the question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press the star key followed by one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the queue. You may press star two to remove a question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment while we pull for questions. And the first question comes from the line of Brandon Ross with LightShed Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Operator

Hey, thanks for the questions. First, you gave a lot of very positive, forward-looking indicators in the release. I was hoping you could help us think about how that's eventually going to flow through the P&L. And I guess on the Ticketmaster side, it's been a tough year. I assume that outlook on stadiums is going to reverse that trend, but how will that look over Q4, Q1, and next year from a timing perspective? And then on concerts, it was a big margin year. Can that continue next year in addition to the obvious top-line growth that the indicators are showing?

Joe Berchtold
Joe Berchtold
CFO at Live Nation Entertainment

Thanks, Brandon and Joe. I'll start, and then Michael can add. Starting with Ticketmaster and starting with Q4, as we noted for October, first quarter of the month, Ticketmaster sales were up 15% year-on-year. Concerts, they're up 23%. So we're expecting that great stadium and arena pipeline to start to manifest itself in Q4 and deliver a very strong Q4 in Ticketmaster. Next week alone, we have over 200 stadium and arena shows going on sale. So we're, I think, in a period of unprecedented level of activity for Ticketmaster in Q4. And then that'll continue into Q1 and through next year.

Joe Berchtold
Joe Berchtold
CFO at Live Nation Entertainment

We expect next year's Ticketmaster to look more like a 2023, where you've got that great volume of stadium activity that you get with the on sale, but then you also get as it plays off and some of the deferred events that you have in Europe that you recognize as the events play off, so strong Q4, strong next year for Ticketmaster. Concerts, obviously next year, expectations strong for continued AOI growth, having growth in arenas and amphitheaters from our baseline of this year. Added to that, the more like 2023 or beyond in stadiums should be very strong revenue growth, very strong AOI growth. I think it's probably a bit early to know the exact mix of all those venues for margins, but overall, both strong revenue and AOI growth for the concert business.

Joe Berchtold
Joe Berchtold
CFO at Live Nation Entertainment

Okay. And a lot of investors think that Trump is going to be a very good thing for you. I'm sure you've studied it very closely. Just wanted to hear what your thoughts are on how he's going to approach antitrust and the associated remedies. Do you think they will favor structural or behavioral? And then separately, from a timing perspective, when do you think you'll next have an opportunity to get to the table with the DOJ?

Joe Berchtold
Joe Berchtold
CFO at Live Nation Entertainment

Thanks. Yeah, I think it's still very early in the transition process, so we're hesitant to say too much, but absolutely we are hopeful that we'll see a return to the more traditional antitrust approach where the agencies have generally tried to find ways to solve problems they see with targeted remedies that minimize government intervention in the marketplace, and without getting into specifics, at least some parts of the case we believe reflect a much more interventionist philosophy today than you'd expect of a Republican administration. Obviously, the request to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster would be an example of that highly interventionist approach. So we'll obviously be ready to engage as soon as they are. They need to get through the appointments and get things settled on their end, but we'd certainly be hopeful that we could start engaging with them early in next year.

Joe Berchtold
Joe Berchtold
CFO at Live Nation Entertainment

Thank you.

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of David Karnovsky with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.

Operator

Hey, thank you. Just two for me. First, on the revision to 2023 financials, can you walk through what triggered that and what the notable changes are? And I didn't see it in the release, but you have an updated 2023 AOI and free cash flow. And then second, you called out for Q4, possible mid-teens FX impact to AOI due to LatAm. Can you just refresh us on the general mix of LatAm versus other regions in the fourth quarter? And then any early view on how to think about FX in the 2025? Thanks.

Joe Berchtold
Joe Berchtold
CFO at Live Nation Entertainment

Sure. So first, on the revision to the financials, so for context, what we had is we had a non-cash, non-operating tax adjustment that we had to make. This has to do with when we purchased OCESA and a difference between statutory and U.S. GAAP accounting on some non-consolidated investments. So it was just on the U.S. side. We paid the taxes in Mexico. We missed it in the U.S. It was not material to our 2020 or 2023 numbers, but working through with the auditors, we made the decision it made sense to restate those numbers. So one-time non-cash, non-material to those numbers. In terms of the FX impact, we had previously talked about Q4 this year looking strong in Latin America, which it still does. All the operating metrics we've been talking about in terms of both the supply and the demand profile are looking good.

Joe Berchtold
Joe Berchtold
CFO at Live Nation Entertainment

We've also just seen a downturn in the FX on Latin America markets over the past several weeks, and because we had a disproportionate amount of growth in the numbers coming from those markets this fourth quarter, we just wanted to flag that, therefore, that has a disproportionate impact on our AOI and NOI for the quarter. We don't look at it as being material when you step back and you look at the full year 2025 and the magnitude of activity that we're going to have. It's more just a Q4 modeling point for people to be aware of, and we'll see how some of the FX plays out over time, and we'll update you, but I don't think it's a material 2025 issue at this point. It's really just more a 2024, which tends to be our lowest activity.

Joe Berchtold
Joe Berchtold
CFO at Live Nation Entertainment

So when you have your lowest activity quarter and you have where your growth is coming from get impacted by FX, that can just start to swing things around.

Joe Berchtold
Joe Berchtold
CFO at Live Nation Entertainment

Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Stephen Laszczyk with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

Operator

Hey, Guys, thanks for taking the questions. Too, if I could, maybe first for Michael. You called out in sponsorship the number of strategic partners increasing by 20% this year. I'm curious, looking out to 2025, how you would encourage us to think about the sponsorship business next year. Are there any verticals of the business where you see maybe outsized opportunities for execution where you could replicate this performance? And then second for Joe, on the concert segment AOI in Q4, you called out some of the onsales coming in over the next couple of weeks here. I'd be curious if you could help us think about how much marketing spend could be associated with those onsales and maybe any color on just how to think about Q4 concert segment AOI. Thank you.

Michael Rapino
Michael Rapino
CEO at Live Nation Entertainment

Thank you, Stephen. On the concert, on the sponsorship side, again, we'll be giving more guidance this week as we get to our investor day, but sponsorship has continually been our star for the last decade or so, multiple years of double-digit growth. We look at this business still very, very strong, very different than maybe some of the advertising challenges other companies have. We see overall companies spending more money on-site experiential and moving dollars into that segment, and anytime that happens, that's good for our business. We tend to rise with that, so we look at 2025 and onward as continual AOI growth that we've been able to deliver in the past in sponsorship. One of the foundational drivers of that is our globalization, and every time we do more shows around the world, we provide ourselves more opportunity and more sponsors.

Michael Rapino
Michael Rapino
CEO at Live Nation Entertainment

So when you're doing all these Latin American shows, when you're doing shows now in India, Middle East, Singapore, Asia, growing our Australian business, it just provides us more and more inventory to open new borders and new relationships. So as our global pipeline continues to grow, so will our sponsorship, and we'll see continued growth.

Michael Rapino
Michael Rapino
CEO at Live Nation Entertainment

And Stephen, as it relates to concerts in Q4, obviously, Q4 in concerts is a peculiar beast because in some regards, right, the more we're ramping up for a great next year, the more that impacts our AOI. So I think as we're standing here, we'd expect a double-digit increase in our advertising expenditure that we have to write off at the end of the year. We're certainly ramping up activity and personnel to be prepared to handle the tremendous volume of shows that we're doing next year. But I think even with all that, as we're looking at the numbers now, again, as the broad context, we do expect our margins for the full year in the concerts business to land around where they were in 2019.

Michael Rapino
Michael Rapino
CEO at Live Nation Entertainment

I'm not going to worry three or four months from now, plus or minus 10-15 basis points, but I think that in total, we expect it to come in around where we were in 2019.

Michael Rapino
Michael Rapino
CEO at Live Nation Entertainment

Great. Thank you both.

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Cameron Manson-Perrone from Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Operator

Thank you. On the CapEx increase, I was wondering if you could provide some color on what the pipeline right now looks like for new venue opportunities. And then for the new Amp project, anything further on what changed to pull that forward? I'm assuming that was already in the pipeline as of July, and it's more of just a timing consideration, but any color there. And then to follow up on the sponsorship question, Michael, then growing the number of partners that are generating over 100 or, sorry, 1 million, can you talk about, is that new sponsors or is it expanding current or existing relationships? And maybe what's allowing you to execute? If it's growing those relationships, what's allowing you to execute so well there? Thanks.

Joe Berchtold
Joe Berchtold
CFO at Live Nation Entertainment

Quickly on sponsorship. For a few years, we've been saying anytime you can take that regional relationship or that start of that relationship at a large brand, form that relationship, deliver for them, we tend to do good at then getting the next time around with the CMO and talking broader programs. So we continue to grow our current base of sponsors. We tend to have a very good renewal rate, and we tend to be able to upgrade you once we've gotten you into the ecosystem and understand your brand needs. So most of it is coming from current customer base of our 9,000 to 1,000 sponsors and growing our current base with them and then obviously expanding outside markets. On real estate, Joe will give you the updates. We continue to have a great pipeline.

Joe Berchtold
Joe Berchtold
CFO at Live Nation Entertainment

We'll walk you through more details this week in terms of what venues are going to be kind of rolling out into 2025 onward and the CapEx returns on that.

Joe Berchtold
Joe Berchtold
CFO at Live Nation Entertainment

Yeah. And on the specifics of the CapEx here for the quarter, as you know, we often build buildings in partnership with others. So this is a situation where we have a partner we've been talking to for an extended period about doing an amphitheater together. That partner had already put a fair bit of capital into the ground, and it was only recently that we then signed the formal agreement. By signing the formal agreement, which would give us controlling interest in the amphitheater, we then need to move all the CapEx onto our books. So you saw the increase to $50 million of expected CapEx for the year, but you also saw a $30 million increase in the capital coming from other parties. So most of the capital on this project is what a partner has already put into it.

Joe Berchtold
Joe Berchtold
CFO at Live Nation Entertainment

So the net cash that we're putting out is somewhat less than that. In terms of the new venues, as we note in the release, we expect to bring 14 more venues online, either with substantial refurbishment or new build over the next year and change through the end of 2025, accounting for about eight million incremental fans. And as Michael noted, we will get into more detail on sort of the mid-range planning on venues over the next couple of days.

Joe Berchtold
Joe Berchtold
CFO at Live Nation Entertainment

Got it. That's all helpful. Thanks, guys.

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Peter Henderson with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

Operator

Can you provide some color on what initiatives are resonating most with fans and driving up the per caps? And where do you think per caps can go over time? And then just related to that, I mean, how much opportunity remains to implement tiered experiences, and where are you monetizing on super or premium fans the most versus regular or casual fans? Thanks.

Michael Rapino
Michael Rapino
CEO at Live Nation Entertainment

I'll give a quick shot again. We'll get into more detail this week because those are pretty strategic broad questions. On the premium fan or super fan, I know I hear other companies talk about it. We've been selling to the super fan for quite a while. Call that the premium fan that wants a VIP experience at the show. So that's kind of been an ongoing skill set we've had forever. Our job every year is we see that pie still underserviced. We've used percentages in the past. 2%, 4%, 6% of the show is premium. We think it can grow up to 20% and more. So a lot of the refurbishments we're doing at venues is about taking regular seats and turning them into better experiences for premium experiences at night.

Michael Rapino
Michael Rapino
CEO at Live Nation Entertainment

So we think premium experiences is a big underpin to our entire growth forward because it's using the same customer base. But we always sell out of the boxes, sell out of the premium inventory first. We never have a problem selling that. So we think that is a big part of our CapEx and our refurbish as well as our new buildings. When we're building them, we're starting with this mandate that they must have a certain higher percentage of premium seats and lounges and experiences. So those venues start with a much better return. First question. Shoot again the first question.

Michael Rapino
Michael Rapino
CEO at Live Nation Entertainment

Just, where do you think initiatives are sort of resonating most with the fans and driving up per caps? And where do you think per caps can go over time?

Michael Rapino
Michael Rapino
CEO at Live Nation Entertainment

Most of it is. I've said this before: sports, these new venues, the billion-dollar arenas have done a fabulous job. The stadiums, the SoFi stadiums, we've all followed the same playbook. We all probably started in a very traditional food and beverage offering, whether it was the old Forum here in LA versus the new Intuit Dome. It's night and day, and most of it is around having more POS. It's around having different high-end value offerings in your food and beverage bundle. It's about having mocktails, non-alcoholic options, higher-level food versus the traditional food, so that's the ongoing path we see in our amphitheaters, our theaters, our arenas. We've been using this $2 per head growth over the last few years. We think that's something in the future we can continue on, so it's all around upgrading our current customer base.

Michael Rapino
Michael Rapino
CEO at Live Nation Entertainment

Our amps, our venues probably are the lower end of good, great quality F&B for historic measures, so every year, it's about upgrading that amount of POS, offering, upgrading our selection, increasing our premium offering, and all of that combination we think still has lots of runway left.

Michael Rapino
Michael Rapino
CEO at Live Nation Entertainment

Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from the line of David Katz with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

David Katz
David Katz
Managing Director at Jefferies

Evening. Thanks for taking my questions. Number one, the past week or so has brought quite a bit of change. I'm wondering if your thoughts have started to shift or philosophy has started to shift around M&A given sort of the change over the past week? And then I have one quick follow-up, please.

Michael Rapino
Michael Rapino
CEO at Live Nation Entertainment

No, we haven't. Nothing's really changed in the last couple of years the way we've been moving around the world and building our business. We don't have any sizable M&A targets that we would do with or without where the regulation stands in America. We like kind of what we're doing. You see us add an arena in Austin, add an amphitheater in some white space or a 5,000-seat. And similar around the world. We're always kind of looking in these hundred cities out there that want great entertainment. And whether it's an amphitheater or a festival or a promoter, we like bolting those on. And we have a big pipe of those around the world. Nothing's changed over the last two years. I don't think anything changes going forward.

David Katz
David Katz
Managing Director at Jefferies

Okay. Understood. And I just wanted to ask a more general question about the secondary ticketing market, which I recognize is a smaller part and in some sense a strategic portion of kind of what you do. But it seems as though every time we have something like a World Series and ticket prices get high, it just draws a tremendous amount of attention that sometimes seems a bit misplaced toward you as the biggest. Are there any strategies? And maybe this is not the best form to talk about them, but it's just something that comes to mind that we've written about a bit. And I thought I would raise it and see if there's any answer that's appropriate here.

Michael Rapino
Michael Rapino
CEO at Live Nation Entertainment

Yeah. I think it's a much broader statement, but yes, we are always a little amused that sports is kind of a badge of honor, how expensive those tickets go for. But music, which is priced much lower than sports, seems to get more of the emotional reaction. America seems to be a market where secondary is free to run. We hope there's always been this hope between different legislators we get better regulation around secondary. It hasn't really come to life yet around, at minimum, at least BOTS and spec selling and some of the other practices around secondary that we'd like to clean up. Over time seems to be more and more attention around the secondary market, so we hope over time better regulations get put in place to help the consumer.

David Katz
David Katz
Managing Director at Jefferies

Got it.

Operator

The final question comes from the line of Peter Supino with Wolfe Research. Please proceed with your question.

Peter Supino
Peter Supino
Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Wolfe Research

Thanks. Hi, team. A question about Ticketmaster. With all the activism at the DOJ, a question we've heard a lot in the last year has related to the defensibility of Ticketmaster's competitive position. And one of the pillars of that is technology. And so I wondered if you could just comment on the investments that Ticketmaster is making in technology, whether it relates to bots or demand generation or other initiatives that you think are the most important ways Ticketmaster is reinforcing and extending its competitive position technologically? Thanks.

Joe Berchtold
Joe Berchtold
CFO at Live Nation Entertainment

Sure. Yeah. And Peter, as you know, we spend $ tens of millions in capital on Ticketmaster. I think first and foremost, we need to continue to innovate the products that we offer to the enterprise side, to our venues, to promoters, others who use the platform. Past recent years, that's included a lot around pricing technology to help everybody understand the market value of the content they're delivering. It certainly also is on the marketing side, developing great marketing science capabilities to help people market their shows. Big investments over the past couple of years on continuing to enhance our ability to handle that high demand on sale. We think Ticketmaster is the best in the world.

Joe Berchtold
Joe Berchtold
CFO at Live Nation Entertainment

And seen a number of on sales recently where Ticketmaster has been able to deliver a much better experience and sell tickets at a volume that others have been unable to handle. And then obviously also just on the ticket itself, all the things that we've done around digital tickets and, as you said, trying to stop bots. So range of consumer-facing technologies as well. We expect it's ongoing. Ticketmaster is a technology company. So you're going to continue to be developing products on both an enterprise and a marketplace basis.

Operator

At this time, there are no further questions. I'll pass the call back over to the Live Nation Management Team for closing remarks.

Operator

Thank you, everybody. And look forward to talking more about our business this week.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

Executives
Analysts
    • Analyst at Lightshed Partners
    • Peter Supino
      Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Wolfe Research
    • David Katz
      Managing Director at Jefferies
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