Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. (LYV) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Please note that important disclosures including my personal holdings disclosures and Morgan Stanley disclosures all appear as a handout available in registration area and on the Morgan Stanley public website. And excited to welcome back to the conference, President and CFO of Live Nation, Joe Berchtold. Joe, good to see you.

Thank you. Thanks for having me back.

Yes, absolutely. Thanks for being here.

So one way you've described Live Nation strategy, at least at a very high level to me is you're trying to drive increased supply in a concert industry with unmet latent demand. And I think to me, that's nice simple way of describing the business. Talk about how Live Nation as a company sort of executing on that?

Yes. So first is we started -- everything is global for us, right? One of the great things we have -- there are no barriers to promoting Coldplay in Latin America, taking Harry Styles to Asia, taking Depeche Mode to Europe. We can go to any market. And thanks to digital distribution and social media platforms. Every artist is now globally recognized, has fans the moment the latest album drops, they're listening to it in every country in the world, every small town. So we now have a fan base that's truly everywhere. So our job is to figure out what are the markets that have a lot of fans that need more Beyonce sales. Do they have the infrastructure to deliver that? If not, how do we help put in that infrastructure, which I assume we'll get to. And then we bring that supply to that latent demand. And I think that's been in various forms, how we've grown over the past decade. In the U.S., we've talked about it as a hyperlocal strategy. Because again, it's -- there's as many fans in Des Moines as there are in L.A. or San Francisco, New York. So it's getting to all of the local markets. And internationally, it starts by hitting the biggest markets there. And then once you have some scale in Germany, you go from 3 markets to 10, and you continue that same strategy and then you go to other countries. And big focus now in South America, continued focus in Asia. So it's really because we have this global landscape to play with. I think that is one of the reasons why we have so much confidence in the long runway to keep going.

Yes. It's only March, but you had a very busy year, busier than maybe you were hoping for. One of the things I think is really interesting, I want to spend a few minutes talking about it is came up a lot at Pollstar Live!. I saw some of Irving's comments, which is really around some of the challenges that the industry is facing or the issues the industries are facing. And Live Nation really, I think, is trying to be proactive in addressing those. So I'll give you a chance just to talk about what you think those issues are and some of the proposals that you and the industry have put -- have sort of suggested might remedy these?

Yes. I mean, coming out of the Pollstar conference, we launched the Fair Ticketing initiative. And one of the things that live music and artists lack is they don't have the league, the spokesperson vehicle, the association in the same way that others do. So while you have the NFL who is fighting for its rights and making sure it's rights are understood and followed. The artists don't really have that. So we jumped in and we said, "Hey, we'll spearhead it. We'll launch this because we've talked to a lot of managers, we've talked to others in the industry. And there's a lot of very fundamental misunderstandings about the dynamics and what's going on. So we're delighted, we announced today, people have seen it that over 20 others have signed on to the Fair Ticketing Act, including all the major agencies, CAA, William Morris, UTA over a dozen artist managers, so not just Irving, obviously, but Red Light -- Red Light and Full Stop are -- I think, probably the 2 largest management agencies and 10 others that represent some of the biggest artists in the world who have signed on to say, there's a fundamental misunderstanding that we need to fix because the scalpers have gone too far in trying to get their narrative out and their narrative is directly in contrast to what the artist wants in terms of their ability to manage their relationship with fans. It's really that simple. So if you look at the pieces of it, it's about giving that power back to the artist, making sure they have the right to decide how their tickets are distributed, how their tickets are sold and a lot of common sense measures. We understand the scalpers are going to fight against because it goes to the heart of their ability to unfairly get tickets and get between the artist and the fan and that's simply what we're going to advocate for. We're 100% confident that as light is shined on this industry that it's going to really demonstrate that we've been doing things on behalf of the artists and we're continuing to fight in that vein. And I think ultimately, that wins.

And just to be a little more specific, Joe. So I think in essence, your Live Nation is looking for regulation of the secondary market. Typically, you don't see companies asking for more regulation in their industry. But is that a fair way to describe their ambition?

Well, I think it's more a declaration of artist rights when it is regulation. So if you declare the artist rights, we have the model, right? We have the NFL Ticket exchange. So the model exists out there, the NFL. Because they're the NFL because they have some power, they said, we want to make sure we have a great fan experience. We want to make sure that whatever marketplace you buy tickets on that ticket gets validated by Ticketmaster, by SeatGeek, by whoever the primary ticketing provider is. And they set up -- they set up rules, no spec selling, no front-running on sales, again, some pretty common sense, consumer-friendly rules. They said we want data. We want to know who our fans in the building are. We think our teams should be able to understand who their fan base is. And if the ticket trades fans a few times. Ultimately, they need to know who's in the building, and we want some compensation. There's value in providing a validated ticket and there's some compensation to get shared between either Ticketmaster or SeatGeek in the NFL. So it works great. And we have a model. Again, the problem is, what I spoke to earlier, just in music, you don't naturally have that body, and so the scalpers are picking them apart to 101. So I think it's just -- it went too far and now you have the artist community gathering and saying, we should have the same rights as the NFL. If they have those rights, why don't we. It just doesn't make any sense. So I think you'll be hearing more about these initiatives. I don't think the artists are going away. I think they've now been educated as to what's going on. They're looking for tools again, verify fan and other tools that help them give the tickets to fans and then they're pushing back again some of the attempts out there to pass laws that are very thinly hidden in terms of their focus being getting tickets to the scalpers.

Yes. Joe, it seems to us the stocks have been impacted quite a bit by uncertainty on the regulatory side. And we just talked a lot about your proposals and being proactive. But there's also this sort of DOJ investigation that is sort of opaque to everybody outside of that organization, presumably. Is there anything you can share with us about either the substance or the process around that to help us think about range of outcomes or time line?

Yes. I guess the way I think about it is, I start by -- we still have the rule of law. So ultimately, they need to follow and they need to be able to prove, demonstrate something. So first, I'd start with, we have a settlement. We had -- or 2 settlements. We had a settlement in 2010. We had a settlement in 2019. So we have a binding agreement with the DOJ as it relates to -- as it relates to any perceived deals in the past, much as you have in individual settlements. So there has never been a situation where the DOJ has come and attempted to retrade a settlement. Now they're like every other court system. They settle 90-plus percent of the time rather than go to court. So a, there are legal questions about whether or not they could retrade a settlement; and b, it would have a chilling impact on their ability to ever do settlements again because no company would believe that they won't just retrade it at the whims of some future [indiscernible]. So that's the first barrier that you got to overcome as you got to overcome the fact we've actually had settlements. Two is, it seems to be pick any random data pack you want and it's Ticketmaster's monopoly, therefore, Live Nation Ticketmaster should be broken out. There's no -- if that were your proof in geometry, you would have failed. So you need to first and say, okay, the assertion of Ticketmaster's monopoly, the facts don't bear it out. Market share has declined. And more of the money has consistently gone to the venues as opposed to Ticketmaster. So neither of those things happens with a monopoly. So that gets this proven. And then we somehow -- because Live Nation Ticketmaster together, it creates the monopoly. Again, the facts don't bear that out. Live Nation has, over this period, gone from 40 million fans to 120 million fans. So it's -- so there has been clear utility delivered to fans because there are more shows. And we've increased by billions of dollars, the amount of money we paid to artists. So we've dramatically expanded the marketplace. Again, not hallmarks of a monopoly. So -- and again, if you look at our margins, which a lot of people love to talk about, certainly the margins aren't the hallmark of a monopoly either. So we don't think there are facts that bear up. Now we understand that doesn't mean they're not going to look. And unfortunately, we don't control the process of their looking, the timeline or when they come in loudly or the politicians [indiscernible] would be loud, and then they go away quietly that's not -- we can't control that process or the timing of that process.

Yes. Okay. All right. Last question on the last 6 weeks or 8 weeks. We had the Taylor Swift on sale, which might have been the greatest example of supply and demand in balance. We've had in a long time. And then we had -- you had the Beyonce on sale which extremely have with gone really well. Were there substantive changes you've made and there are learnings that have come out of all this that you think have maybe put the company in an even better position going forward?

So first of all, there have been a lot of successful on sales. I mean, Beyonce one, yes, but Morgan Wall and Garth Brooks, Madonna, a host of others that I'm forgetting that have gone very well. Yes. You still get the publicity around the ones they go out. So I think we've done a lot. If I dial back in -- the Taylor Swift thing is, it was our fault and that we said we could do more than ultimately we could deliver at [ Full Stop ]. So that's on us that when the volume of tickets -- when she increased the number of shows in response to the number of verified fans to help somewhat counterbalance the supply/demand imbalance we said that we could pull off, still doing that in 1 day. And the problem was when we were attacked that morning, we had no time to respond and fix that. So really, the only difference of substance with the Beyonce on sales, we spread it out over more time. And we still had [indiscernible], so we still had other things. But because we had it spread out over a much longer period, we were able to fix that and have a minimal number of shows get impacted because of it. So that's really the only structural change, if you will, between the two on sales.

Okay. All right. Let's shift to the business and the momentum coming into 2023. You guys provided a number of helpful leading indicators on your earnings call, maybe for the broader group here, maybe haven't spent time on it. Talk about what you're seeing in the business and some of these metrics around deferred revenue and [indiscernible] [ GBT ] and how we should think about '23.

Well, '23 is off to just a raging start. I mean, you all and investors even more so I thought we were top ticking in '22 and it was going to be impossible to match and cliff and all of that and simply not the case. Ticket sales are up over 20% for concerts this year. And I think -- I don't remember the exact numbers, January, February, I think we've sold almost twice as many tickets this year as we sold in January and February of last year. So it's not -- it's continuing, and it's continuing broadly as we're getting into the arenas, the amphitheaters for shows this year. Ticketmaster GTV is up 33%, which just shows that on a global basis, not just concerts, all live events continue to be strong. There's a little bit of a mix difference, but it also tells you there continues to be the ability to get some pricing and continue to capture more of the market value. At this point, we've sold more than twice as much in platinum tickets than we sold at this point last year. So the high end is continuing to move very strongly and artists are continuing to look to adopt platinum tickets to capture more of the value. At the same time, artists are continuing to make sure the price the back of the house reasonably to make sure that everybody can afford to get A ticket, not the front row ticket, but many ours, most artists want the fans to be able to get in and see the show at a reasonable cost. So you have both of those things going on in their funding. But the demand is very broad, very deep. Last week Ticketmaster sold over 6 million tickets in the week, which we've done many times before. But what was interesting here is that no single artist accounting for over 150,000 tickets. It wasn't a big on sale week. And that just demonstrates the breadth of the demand. So it's not just the Beyonce's that are selling all of these tickets. We're seeing very broad demand across all marketplaces and across all artist levels continue to be very strong.

I know you guys like to talk about the flywheel, but I do want to -- if you're willing to talk about the segments a bit, some of the key drivers. So in the concert segment and sort of Venue Nation, you guys are obviously excited about revenue per fan and the opportunity there. I think it's growing 20%, 30% over '19 across a lot of North America and U.K. venues. What are you guys doing at the Live Nation level to help support that growth and continue that growth going forward?

Okay. So first, it's continuing to get more fans, right? I want to talk about the segments, but it does start with the more fans to drive all of the segments. More activity always yields more opportunities. So that's a large part of what's behind the venue strategy is, as I alluded to earlier, making sure we have capacity where it may not exist today to allow us to bring supply to that latent demand. So the best example of that is the Austin arena that we built with OVG, which took a market that had great demand, a great vibrant music sound didn't have the right arena. We built it in partnership with the University of Texas and move from putting, I don't know, 12, 15 shows a year to 50 shows a year because you've got the ability to now match that and earn great returns at great -- and those venues drive tremendous sponsorship. Those venues drive are great for our ticketing business. And those venues are excellent at being a vehicle for hospitality to drive the per caps and to give fans the opportunity to spend the money they want to spend to have whatever level of experience they're looking to have.

My sense is that you guys would love to build as many of these as you can identify. What's the process to identify opportunities and operationalize them? And what do the returns look like?

Yes. I mean it's both a local and a central basis. So we operate 45 countries. We've got local people, and within the U.S., we're in 30 markets. So our local people are always tasked with -- they need to understand their market best. That's why we're so decentralized and have so many local folks because sitting in L.A., you're never going to identify or be in touch with the nuances of what is every market need. So we look for those individuals to help surface ideas. And then at the same time, we do have the central team and we work in partnership with others to say, it's the map of what are the 100, 200 biggest cities in the world, what's their -- what do they have today, what don't they have? And so come top down on the major cities to identify where can we put a meaningful arena, a large theater, 5,000 capacity theater in order to really drive additional volume of activity.

Got it. Makes sense. Let's talk Ticketmaster, which had an incredible year last year, $28 million net new business in terms of tickets. I know you don't like talking about margins, but margins were up quite a bit from certainly pre-pandemic levels. You and Michael are very, I think, focused on trying to drive ticket value -- ticket prices to market value, bring more of the money back to the artist. That is a slow process to some extent. But are you optimistic that momentum is picking up there? And do you think something like Bruce Springsteen's decision, which I think was last year was a real inflection point?

Yes. I think that every time an artist comes out and publicly says, I'm a great performer, and I should capture the value of my performance not the scalper, then that's helpful for other artists to be comfortable doing so. I think everything that we talked about earlier around the fair ticketing initiative again that's just -- it's more transparency and a greater understanding of more artists who I know you price that front row at $200 because you want your 16-year-old streaming fan to get the ticket. They don't have a payer. It's going to be $2,000. And the only question is, do you get $200 and the scalper gets 1,800? Or are you getting closer to the $2,000? And they're not going to go up to the $2,000 but they're going to try to move it to a point where they can increase the likelihood that the fan is going to get the ticket and remove some of that arbitrage and stay connected directly with their fans. So all of this intermingles right? So the fair ticketing is just -- it's further education for the industry around what's going on, further education on why they should be fairly capturing the value of what they do. It happens everywhere else. It happens in sports. Nobody complains about it in sports. It happens if you want to [ Aramis ] handbag instead of one in Nordstrom, it costs more money, right? So it's the way things are. And I think we're just in a journey to continue to educate and have people understand that artists ultimately need to make money as well.

You guys have also rolled out variable pricing as a way to try to help this. How is that initiative gone?

Yes. I think variable pricing is probably about the most misunderstood thing out there when I read the press. Social media is just ripe with the volume of people saying, "I can't believe I was 3 minutes in the on sale and the price went from $200 to $600 right in front of my eyes, that's not happening. Variable pricing is just a -- it just says that over the course of the on sale, we're going to continue to look at the supply and demand. We're going to adjust some prices. It doesn't happen during that initial on sale. We use our analytics to help educate before the on sale to help the artist decide what's the right price that they want to charge for their tickets. You then go through the on sale process. And at some point, the days after you step back, you look at it and you say, how do they sell? Do we need to adjust the price of any of the tickets that remain? Again, no different than hotels, airlines, anybody else that has capacity and demand and you're trying to match the 2. It's no more that it's going to move in front of your eyes on a concert ticket than it is with the airline you're going to buy -- airline ticket, you're going to buy to fly home tomorrow. That's not what happened. It's just a set of analytical tools to help understand the value. And we think it's an important tool for artists to have. Again, we're full supporters. They should get as much of that money as they want. It's their life's work that is up on stage, and they deserve to get the benefit from it.

I'd imagine it's probably a minority of artists who are leveraging these market prices and variable pricing today?

I'd say more and more, it's just the varying degrees. They all want to understand what are the tools available to them? How do they use them, which we make available to all of them. And then it's just a matter of, okay, but given my fan base, given where I'm at in my development, what's right for me and my fans. And there's -- and the answer can be across the Board. And we don't think that any artists should be forced to do it one or the other. We're fully supportive of artists making a decision anywhere in that spectrum. We think is their right.

Let's talk about sponsorship, another business that's done really well since particularly compared to '19, just shy of $1 billion of revenue last year. Talk a little bit about what you are offering advertisers and marketers that is really driving, frankly, a totally different trend line than what we're seeing in a lot of the rest of the ad market.

Yes. It's been on fire. I think coming out of COVID, we saw the brands coming back even harder than the fans in terms of their wanting to engage. We talked a lot last year. There were 2 main areas where we saw a huge amount of the growth being driven. The first was in festivals. And I think there's something about the fact that we have this large physical space and sponsors can come and get real activation. So the GoPuff shops and the Liquid Death kiosks, the Dunkin' Donuts sites, you can get real activation by showing up at the festival, being there interacting with a captive audience who's there for the full day. And really, with the brands that have been successful are the ones who say, I'm not here to spot my name on something, how do I actually give some value to the fans throughout this event. The GoPuff being out there and they're running a food delivery service to all the people camping going to festivals. Great. Liquid Death with water on a lot of these festivals that are [indiscernible] hot out. That's great, right? But it's -- but they're actually delivering value, and that's the key. And we are offering these 120 million fans that you can go and touch them and you can deliver real value to them. That's very different than the digital fire and forget or maybe no, but how do I track and how can I really tell? And then the other is on our Ticketmaster platform is we've continued to improve the effectiveness of that platform as brands are looking to reach out and touch fans there, too. It can happen in the checkout process where you have a very focused fan base and anything you can present to them is of high value. And it's also, as we've talked a lot with digital ticketing, that we're now able to start at a much greater scale, connect brands directly with fans in the context of shows. And again, it's all about delivering value. It's all about when Citibank can say, thank you for being a client, here's a free launcher. It's about Hilton saying, you are a diamond, medallion whatever. And here are 2 free tickets to the VIP club. So it's how do they connect and deliver value and create real loyalty and connection with the brands. And just everything is so digital that we're the opposite. [indiscernible] We're the in real life. And so because of that, I think we're attracting a lot of brands that see that as being critical to their portfolio.

Okay. Makes sense. Got about a minute and change left, I want to make sure we hit capital allocation and CapEx. So you guided to $450 million of CapEx this year. Where are you guys prioritizing your capital from an investment point of view and some of the supply constraints that we talked about? And then how do we think about this and sort of your broader thoughts on capital allocation?

Yes. So I guess start with the CapEx question, and I always break it into 2 pieces, which is the maintenance CapEx and the revenue CapEx. And as we said, the maintenance CapEx, we -- as I think most people would understand during 2021, we basically just cut to the bone, the maintenance CapEx because we were in cash conservation. We didn't fully catch up in '22. One is because I kept put on the break through the first part of the year until we saw truly at the level of demand we were going to be able to have and the shows we were going to be able to do. So there's some catch-up in the maintenance side. The revenue side is a function of just what are the -- what's the opportunity set to continue to build out to deliver more fans. And first of all, from a [indiscernible] capital allocation standpoint, I don't see any difference between revenue-generating CapEx and M&A. They're just different vehicles to help drive growth. They have different time horizons, different risk profiles, usually different cost levels. But they're all to the same thing, which is I think there are great growth opportunities out there. And the best way to create shareholder value is to invest, expand capacity and continue that on a global basis. And I think that continues to be our #1 priority.

Great. Great. Joe. It's a really exciting time in the industry and Live Nation. Thanks for being here.

All right. Thank you.

Thanks, everybody.