Live Nation Entertainment Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
May 2, 2024

There are 10 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is John, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Live Nation's First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. I would now like to turn the call over to Ms. Young.

Operator

Thank you, Ms. Young. You may begin your conference.

Speaker 1

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Live Nation's Q1 2024 earnings conference call. Joining us today is our President and CEO, Michael Rapinoe and our President and CFO, Joe Berchtold. We would like to remind you that this afternoon's call will contain forward looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ, including statements related to the company's anticipated financial performance, business prospects, regulatory and legal matters, 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.

Speaker 1

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 the earnings release. The release reconciliation can be found under the Financial Information section on Live Nation's website. With that, I will now turn it over to our President and CFO, Joe Berchtold.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Amy. We appreciate there's a lot of interest in what's going on with the DOJ. So let me address that upfront. We obviously know about the press reports claiming the DOJ Antitrust Division has decided to file a law suit against Live Nation, potentially seeking a breakup of Live Nation and Ticketmaster. At this point, we're just about to begin discussions with senior division leadership about the issues their staff has been investigating, which is typically in the final phase of an investigation.

Speaker 2

Decisions about whether to sue over what and what relief to seek are ordinarily made at the end of that process. Of course, we know that some competitors and interest groups are urging the DOJ to sue us and sue us to break us up, let me address that directly. As we previously stated, the DOJ's investigation appears to be focused on specific business practices, not the legality of Live Nation Ticketmaster merger or our overall business structure. Very little of the conduct the DOJ has raised with us relates to the combination of ticketing and promotion resulting from the merger. And most of what does was anticipated and addressed by the consent decree allowing the merger to go forward.

Speaker 2

Based on the issues we know about, we don't believe a breakup of Live Nation and Ticketmaster would be a legally permissible remedy. Live Nation and Ticketmaster came together lawfully through a merger that the DOJ reviewed and approved subject to divestitures and other remedies. The DOJ has repeatedly stated in court filings that the merger and settlement were in the public interest. Furthermore, structural relief such as the divestiture is rarely granted. Legally, it's only available where there is a strong connection between the corporate structure and the company's ability to engage in the allegedly unlawful conduct.

Speaker 2

We believe that connection is lacking with regard to the bulk of the issues in this investigation since the conduct under scrutiny falls either within our ticketing segment or within our concert segment and not across those segments. We're looking forward to our upcoming meetings with the division leadership and remain hopeful that we can amicably resolve any remaining disputes. But if not, we're prepared to defend ourselves in court. That's all we're going to say on the DOJ on this call. And operator, can we now open it for questions for me and Michael?

Operator

Yes. Thank you, sir. We will now be conducting the question and answer session. And the first question comes from the line of Brandon Ross with LightJet Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Operator

Hi, thanks for taking the questions. I think you probably hit the biggest investor questions with your statement on regulatory. But I think there's one big question that's remaining in investors' minds and that's how do you see the relative value of Ticketmaster inside Live Nation versus as a separate standalone company?

Speaker 3

Thanks, Brandon. I think we addressed this in our last call. At Live Nation, we run a very decentralized organization and I'm very proud that we've built 3 incredible businesses, sponsorship, concerts and ticketing and we're about to embark on our 4th venture around Venue Nation. So these businesses all run incredible core businesses on their own. Ticketmaster, as you know, was a standalone business for many years.

Speaker 3

We're proud that when we took it over, we were able to bring some leadership to it, upgrade its technology, open up its platform and elevate its consumer and marketplace, much like most enterprise platforms like Airbnb and etcetera. So I've always said these are incredible portfolio of pieces around Live that we own. They are all part of what we think is a great portfolio, but I've also said these are incredible businesses on their own. So I think long term together or separate these would all be very successful We happen to think that we like our portfolio today and plan on keeping it.

Operator

Great. And then you're continuing to express confidence in double digit AOI growth this year. Obviously, you exceeded that in the Q1, but deferred is actually down. Can you just quickly

Speaker 3

Sure. I

Speaker 2

Sure. I think there are sort of 2 questions within that question, Brennan. The first is what's going on with consumer demand and then technically what's going on with the numbers. So just to make sure we hit hard on the consumer demand, we are seeing no weakness. The things that we look at that give us an indication of how the shows are selling, how the fans are spending when they go to the site, all continue to be very strong.

Speaker 2

We alluded to some in the release, but just to hit a few of the highlights. When we look at a number of artists that toured last year and they're touring again this year, so those are the best like for like examples of demand. We're consistently seeing the sell through of the shows are at or above where they were last year and that the overall grosses for the artists are consistently higher. So no issues at all on fan demand relative to last summer. And when you look at our overall arena volume, which is the largest volume at this point early on, despite a tremendous growth in terms of the number of arena shows, which you could be concerned would lead to some cannibalization.

Speaker 2

We're seeing no such cannibalization. We're continuing to see strong sell through as strong as it was last year. And then when we look at on-site spending, theaters and clubs, where we have the bulk of our activity in our venues in Q1, we're seeing strong growth on fan spend. So just to make sure we hit that out of the gate. And then technically what's going on, I think what's going on with deferred revenue and ticket sales is 100% consistent with what we've been saying for the past 6 plus months we expected.

Speaker 2

This isn't going to be a big stadium year. Stadium tickets sell earliest. They're also the highest priced ticket. So they're going to lead historically to a very high deferred revenue number at this point of the year. With a shift to more arenas and more amphitheaters, you're going to see the sales cycle come in a bit later.

Speaker 2

And overall, the story for the year is going to be less of a revenue story, more of a shift in the portion of the fans that are in our venues, higher fan profitability, concert AOI growth through margin expansion. And still confident or still believe in the double digit growth that we've been saying.

Operator

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

Speaker 4

Hey, thanks for the question. We've seen some noise in the press recently around festival demand and that maybe some of the more established events in the U. S. And Europe are seeing challenge in moving tickets.

Operator

Just wanted to see if

Speaker 2

you could dig in

Speaker 4

a bit on what you're observing for live or even the industry?

Speaker 3

Yes, I'll start. We've read some of it also. We haven't seen it in our business. We have over 100 festivals around the world. I think currently ticket sales are up double digits year over year.

Speaker 3

So we're seeing a strong start to our festival portfolio. We also remind you, festivals are huge business around sponsorship similar to venues. Our sponsorship is up over 20% year over year on festivals. So we're seeing a strong, strong start to them. We're a global company, so we do see that having a portfolio helps.

Speaker 3

We've launched some new festivals internationally. We launched about 10 new festivals a year. You're lucky if 50% of them make it the next year. And I think this year we started 10%. We shut down 6%.

Speaker 3

So you're always kind of cutting off the weak performers and restarting some new ideas. I think the only trend we see overall is I think the 3 day massive festival, that's going to appeal to everybody with a great unique headliner, that kind of was the original part of this business that seems to be really hard to deliver year on, year out, whether it's Coachella or Bonnaroo. Those are big missions to deliver and artists are making a lot of money in arenas and stadiums. So it's not as easy to get that special headliner. Where we're seeing great success though is 1 or 2 day festivals that are appealing to a more of a niche and it's maybe 35,000 people and it's exactly right down a certain genre of music or lifestyle and it's maybe a higher end business like Bottle Rock does in Napa.

Speaker 3

We've got a couple of great calling festivals out on the coast or Eddie Vedder's Festival on the water outside of San Diego. So we are seeing probably a shift to more niche 1 and 2 day festivals with higher per heads, higher sponsorship value and less big swings across let's go after a 3 day 100,000 people. There's still though the Coachella's, the Lollapaloo's, the Austin City Limits, they're kind of passage of rights. So they seem to have a life and will live long. But definitely if you're starting a new one, you're probably starting a more niche strategy and trying to make sure it's a better experience versus just putting 75,000 people in a field.

Speaker 3

But to us, big part of our business overall, it's a nice piece in our overall portfolio to drive our sponsorship business. And it's a on a global basis, a nice piece of our overall portfolio.

Speaker 4

And then on your venue strategy, just as you look to deploy capital to locations around the world, can you just kind of criteria where it's best for Live Nation to execute independently versus where we've seen you kind of partner with a 3rd party like an interview group, for instance?

Speaker 3

We do it all. We've been partners with Legends and the Fenway Group in Boston, a bunch of ones in the hopper right now across America on 5,000 feet venues with certain sports owners. Everybody that has a sports arena is looking to build out their retail footprint around it. So we're in partnership with potential partnerships with a bunch of different NBA, NHL or NFL owners who are building out their concourse retail area, and we'll partner with them in capital to help build that out. So we're opportunistic, depending on who the developer is.

Speaker 3

And sometimes if there's a partner that makes sense to partner with like we did with OBG in Austin, we'll do it. But around the world, I would say I was in a venue meeting this morning. We are very, very excited about this division. I called it the 4th leg this morning. The global pipeline of where we think we can take this business that's very unsophisticated outside of America around the AMP arena large theater business.

Speaker 3

The line the lineup of the pipeline is long. We've got a lot that we're going to keep rolling out over the next few years. We can do them 100% our own. Most of the times if the economics are there or if there's a developer, we always will look at that and see if that's a better return on capital also. I would say we are probably the we're the one that everyone wants to partner with.

Speaker 3

So we have great optionality. We are always kind of the first demand partner that a developer is looking to bring us in and be partners with. So we have great opportunities and more opportunities than execution power right now, but we're building that muscle fast.

Speaker 5

Thank you.

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of Steven Lazyck with Goldman Sachs.

Speaker 6

Maybe one on sponsorship for Michael. Revenue was up, I think, 24% year over year in the quarter. It sounds like a lot of that was driven by strengths internationally. Could you maybe just talk a little bit more about what's driving that growth in international? And is the step up that we saw in 1Q something we should expect to see throughout the year?

Speaker 6

Or is the fact that it's more internationally driven? Does that suggest it could be more 1Q, 4Q aided as we move throughout 2024?

Speaker 2

Hey, Stephen, this is Joe. I'll get started and Michael can hop in. A lot of what you're seeing in Q1 is, as you said, it's international. A lot of it is festivals, as Michael was just talking about the high performance of our festival business this year. And in particular, it's what's going on in South America and Asia.

Speaker 2

So one of the things we really like is that we're balancing out getting the southern hemisphere growth that will help our Q1 and Q4 business. So I would expect we'll see a good chunk. We'll see the highest growth rates in sponsorship Q1 and Q4 this year because we're getting real traction building those businesses.

Speaker 6

Got it. And then maybe another one for you, Joe or unless Michael wants to jump in on sponsorship.

Speaker 3

No, I was just I want to remind everyone something like sponsorship or any of these numbers we're talking about, the growth is just we had an incredible, comparable last year. I mean, we had 2 record years of incredible growth. So the fact that we're sitting here again growing the business at these levels, I think it's just a testament and a mic drop to anyone debating how powerful the machine is, how hungry customers are to show up at the show and whether the pipe is full or not. So we're ecstatic to have a 20 plus percent sponsorship year over year after growing bigger numbers than that the last couple. I think the demand from brands is big.

Speaker 3

People, brands, they're struggling to figure out how to reach customers know that being on-site live, touching consumers at festivals and venues and the Spheres and all these great live experiences that are happening. It's a very, very hot space and I think you're going to see this growth continue.

Speaker 6

Got it. And then maybe just one on concert margins for Joe, you called out in the release full year concert segment margin expected to be higher than last year. I think with the magnitude of that dependent on some factors, could you just talk a little bit more about the range of outcomes there? What would dictate coming in, I guess, meaningfully above last year versus maybe more in line?

Speaker 2

Sure. I think probably three factors that we're still going to watch play out over a bit of time. 1 is FX. As we noted for Q1, we on a reported basis were up 7 basis points year on year. At constant currency, we're up 37 basis points.

Speaker 2

So clearly, that can have a material impact on how much we grow. 2nd is just what's the level of Q4 arena activity we have. Q4 is still in the process of being booked. And as you guys all know, the reason I don't love going too deep into margins is because if we do a lot of arenas in Q4, that could bring down our margin while bringing up our AOI, and we'll do that all day long. So there's still some visibility to get into those numbers.

Speaker 2

And then finally, we've talked on the last call about how 'twenty five is already shaping up to be a tremendous stadium year. A lot of the stadiums that they couldn't get access to this year because of the Olympics or Rugby World Cup or any of a variety of reasons, they're already stacking up very strong for a great stadium year next year. The only accounting impact of that is you put those shows on sale in Q4, you incur the marketing expense to launch those shows, particularly for stadiums, and then you have to write off all that marketing expense at the end of Q4. So again, irrelevant over the life cycle of the tour, but from a strict accounting standpoint and impact on margins, the more stadium tours that we put on sale in Q4 globally, the bigger the expense we hit. So we'll work through all of those numbers as we get closer and provide more guidance.

Speaker 2

But right now, those are all big factors that are all really good things to have happened, but aren't yet at a point to declare exactly what the margin expansion is going to be.

Speaker 6

Got it. Thank you, both.

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of Cameron Mancin Parone with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 7

Thanks. I want to follow-up on 2 of the earlier questions on growth and then on the venue business. I guess first on the growth outlook for the year, I think you'd spoken to potentially more muted growth in the first quarter given the venue mix considerations this year, which makes the 20% growth look even healthier. So maybe could you just help frame how we should think about growth this year in light of all that? And then on the higher CapEx outlook from new venue opportunities, Joe, you've talked in the past about generally wanting to prove out CapEx and then ramp it gradually over time.

Speaker 7

What should the higher outlook tell us about the opportunity you see from this incremental spend? Thanks, guys.

Speaker 2

Sure. On the growth, I think Q1 should tell you that we are right to be positive and optimistic about our ability to continue to deliver double digit growth this year. I gave a little bit in the context of Brandon's questions, but as I step back and say, how is our growth going to look at the end of the year, I think it's going to be driven by Concerts AOI, heavily concerts margin. It will second be driven by sponsorship as we're continuing to, in particular build out the international side of that business. And just Ticketmaster because it's losing all those stadium high ticket price shows is going to have lower growth.

Speaker 2

So I expect all of the pieces to continue to grow and all of them to be very happy coming off of what as Michael said were tremendous growth rates over the last couple of years. So to have all three pieces of the business continuing to grow is great. I just think that will be the overall tenor of how it is we look back at this year. And in terms of the venues and the CapEx, I think we should take is that all the buildings that we're opening are performing at or above our expectations, that the volume of opportunities, as Michael said, every developer is coming to us as their first choice. Whether you're a sports team owner and want to replicate what Fenway Group did around their park, whether you're an international player looking to renovate a building or to build something from the ground, the developers are coming to us because they think that we're effective operators and good partners in terms of helping them make the building successful.

Speaker 2

So I think it's just a continued build out of the pipeline and this is still incremental, but continued strong performance and strong pipeline. Got it. Thank you, guys.

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of Peter subpoena with Wolfe Research. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 3

Hi, good afternoon. I wanted to ask first about more about the venue build out project. I'm wondering if in your comments 3 months ago about longer term growth, the idea that the company could compound AOI at a double digit rate for many years to come. If you didn't build any big 15,000, 20000 student arenas outside the United States, could you still achieve that goal? It's just a way to ask whether that capital project and the returns from it are built into your long term outlook.

Speaker 3

It's a question we've heard a lot from clients. And then related to that, I wonder when you talk about returns on capital, maybe as a company or specifically on these venues, how are you types of those returns? Is that an EBITDA number? What is the numerator and denominator?

Speaker 2

Yes. In terms of the venue build out, of course, that's part of our long term plan. I mean, we lay out every year generally at Liberty the 6 or 7 levers and how it is we're going to continue to drive strong AOI growth over time. When we did that last year, venues were the largest component of that. So it's absolutely part of our thesis and part of how it is we're going to get to that continued strong growth rate.

Speaker 2

In terms of the performance, I mean, it's a standard return on invested capital. So we look at it on a cash on cash basis, cash out, cash back to the business.

Speaker 3

Thank you very much.

Operator

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

Speaker 8

I just had 2 questions related to disclosures actually. I know you guys have been building venues for decades, but when you talk about standing up a 4th business with our destination, are you hinting that you might disclose that as a second segment or not? And then my second disclosure question is I noticed in the Q, there was something I guess that FASB came out with in November about expense disclosures. I don't know if the Q says you're still sort of deliberating that, but any sort of color on what that FASB request is and how you're thinking about it would be great.

Speaker 2

In terms of venues of 4th business, at this point, we're not thinking about them as separate segments. We still organizationally have concerts and venues under the same organizational structure. So it'd be premature to think about it in terms of the segments down the road. Who knows? It's just we're trying to get everybody internally also focused on this is an important area to be growing.

Speaker 2

So that's why we use that term loosely. In terms of any FASB, generally what we're doing is anytime there are new accounting regulations, we're going to be studying them till the day that we need to implement them. So I don't think anything here would be any different. We're just going to always use the time we have to make a full assessment of what leeway we have and how we do things and make the selection and prepare whatever revisions we need to be ready.

Speaker 8

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of Benjamin Soff with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 5

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Just wanted to ask about concerts attendance. It looks like there was a bigger step up in North American attendance compared to international attendance this quarter. So could you unpack that a little bit and talk about how you think about growth in each region for the year?

Speaker 5

Thank you.

Speaker 2

Sure. I think that is largely a function or fully a function of the international stadiums we had, particularly Southern Hemisphere in Q1 of last year and just fewer stadiums as we've been talking about. So that meant that the primary growth in Q1 was in North America. Overall, this year, kind of defining the trend of where international is going, which is an increasing share, because a lot of the growth will out of our amphitheaters, I probably would expect disproportionate growth out of North America. Again, I think it's out of character in the sense that if you look at all of the business where we're adding capacity with our venues, where we're adding ticketing clients, where our sponsorship is growing, we've got a heavy structural trend towards international growth and international being the larger portion.

Speaker 2

I think that just from a cyclicality standpoint this year, there may be a bit of aberration in that, but no change in terms of the overall trend.

Speaker 5

Okay. That's helpful. Thank you.

Operator

And our final question comes from the line of David Joyce with Seaport Research Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 9

Thank you. Two questions, please. First, when you look at a metric of country attendance versus the population, the U. S. Over indexes the rest of the world.

Speaker 9

What would be your path to growing that concert attendance per capita going forward? And then secondly, on ticketing, what are the plans from here for upgrading the ticketing platforms around the globe and how much is in CapEx versus OpEx? Thanks.

Speaker 2

So, in terms of driving the fan attendance, we've been talking in North America for past several years about a hyper local focus and that has absolutely been helping us drive our penetration if you want on a per fan basis. That will continue and our expectation is we'll continue to build our fan base in North America. The other thing that's just generally going on is every year you have the same artists who've been touring, back out touring on whatever cycle and we're adding in more artists. We added in K Pop, we added in Latin, now we're adding in Afrobeats. So we're adding in more artists, which also draw more fans and that will continue to help with the penetration.

Speaker 2

As we look at the international markets, it's all a function of how penetrated are they in the major cities where we have a presence. In a lot of markets, we think that there's the opportunity for driving that through additional venues, ties into our international venue strategy that Michael was talking about earlier. In other markets that may be more penetrated like the U. K, you're going to see more of a hyper local strategy, which is why continue to focus on making sure we got a lot of activity going to Manchester, not just London. So every market is a bit different, but certainly focus on how we continue to get more fan growth from the biggest to the largest.

Speaker 2

In terms of ticketing, I think we've talked a lot about the tremendous progress we think that we've made. We think we've got the leading enterprise software system in the world and you continue to develop products for that. A lot of that cost is in CapEx, but it's been a pretty stable investment level over the past couple of years. We expect it to continue as we are delivering new products for both the enterprise customers in the marketplace, but nothing dramatic changed.

Speaker 9

Understood. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. I would now like to turn the floor back over to Michael for any closing comments.

Speaker 3

Thank you, everyone, and we'll look forward to talking to you in the summer.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's

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Key Takeaways

  • Live Nation is in the final phase of a DOJ Antitrust investigation focused on specific business practices, not the merger itself, and believes a breakup would not be a legally permissible remedy.
  • Fan demand remains robust with show sell-through and grosses equal to or exceeding last year, and on-site spending particularly strong at theaters and clubs.
  • Q1 deferred ticket revenue declined as the early-year shift from high-priced stadium shows to arenas/amphitheaters leads to a later sales cycle, aligning with a strategy prioritizing margin expansion over top-line growth.
  • Festival ticket sales rose double digits and sponsorship grew over 20% year-over-year, with a shift towards more niche 1-2 day events offering higher per-head revenue and sponsorship value.
  • The expanding venues division is viewed as the “4th leg” of growth, with a significant global pipeline of new projects and partnerships driven by attractive cash-on-cash returns.
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Earnings Conference Call
Live Nation Entertainment Q1 2024
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