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

All right. Great. Let's get started with our next session. Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to join us today. My name is Stephen Laszczyk. I'm the lead entertainment analyst for Goldman Sachs. We're excited to welcome back to the Communacopia Plus Technology Conference this year, Joe Berchtold, the President and CFO of Live Nation. Joe, thank you for being with us today.

Well, thanks for having me.

Great. So I wanted to start off high level. Live Nation continues to execute against what is set to be another record year in 2023 across concert attendance, fee-bearing tickets, sponsorship revenue. That said, we're coming off 2 years of tailwinds from a global pandemic reopening, and we're still facing a somewhat uncertain economic environment. So that is a backdrop. I was curious if you could start off by discussing some of the key drivers you've seen in the business so far in 2023, and what are the main opportunities and risks you're top of -- you're keeping top of mind heading into the next year?

Well, it took to your second sentence to say that being said, I do think Goldman just downgraded the risk of a recession to 15% yesterday [indiscernible]. You clearly wrote your questions before that. As you said, '23 is a phenomenal year. I know we'll get into each of the businesses and the stats there coming off of a great '22. We continue to see this as a tremendous global demand business, where it's our job to bring supply to that more and more fully globalized business with tremendous runway for continuing to do that. Not -- we obviously focus on a lot of indicators on how the business is doing to look for any signs of weakness. We look at our own sales, we look at how shows are closing, how the casual fans are buying. We're looking at per caps when they get there, we're looking at secondary market to see what the demand levels are, to see what the pricing levels are. We haven't seen any issues at all. Any signs of any slowness on sales as recently as this week and last week continued to perform very strongly. So we're not seeing any issues. We're continuing to move forward with the expectation that next year will be an even better year. We think we have far more structural tailwinds than headwinds. Again, some of the reports that Goldman publishes in terms of where consumer discretionary is when you look at the breakdown between goods versus services. And the fact that experiences tends to be well still below 2019 levels as a percentage of discretionary spending. I think that gives us a much larger headwind than student loans as we've talked about. It gives us a -- sorry, a much larger tailwind than we have because of any student loan issues or any issues with the economy, which, again, even the latest services report today, right? You can't [ win ] these days. If the economy is looking strong, the market gets mad and if the economy is looking weak, the market gets mad. But we're not seeing any issues at all.

And I say that being said in my second sentence because I feel like there's been this consumer concern or investor concern over the last year or so that the consumer is sensitive to discretionary spending on things like live events. And there's been other pockets of the consumer discretionary industry where we certainly have seen that. We haven't seen it as much in live entertainment. I'm curious if you could just unpack what you've learned over the last 12 to 16 months for us. Has it surprised you? Is it some of this pent-up demand? Or is there something more structural about how you're taking consumers prioritize and spend money?

Yes. I don't think it's been pent-up demand. I don't think there's anything that we're seeing that's not consistent with what we've seen over a long period in the live events industry. Again, I would start by looking very macro. I mean, if you look over the last 30 years, there has been 1 year of reduction. So through 4 or 5 recessionary periods, you've had 1 year that you've had any reduction happened to be the same year that the Ticketmaster merger was completed. So there was a lot of distractions in that 1 year in terms of execution. So I start with that. And then I think that we've got the tailwind that I talked about on a global basis of people prioritizing experiences over goods, which gives us a strong tailwind. You've got a business that in good times, people want to go out and enjoy themselves and go to live events. I think for people that are more challenged economically, it's actually -- it's an affordable luxury, right? You may not be able to afford to take the kids to Disney World for a week, but you can still afford to go to a concert. And there's very broad price points. There's a lot of focus on pricing on the front of the house and average pricing, which is true. But we continue to be equally focused on back of house pricing and making sure that every fan can afford to get into the show. It doesn't mean they can afford to buy the front row, but they can at least afford to get into the building, and that's important to most artists. So I think it is -- it remains an affordable luxury and the confluence of those factors continue to make it very popular. And then add on to that the globalization, which gives us just a larger playing field and the globalization -- we've been seeing the globalization of demand over the past several years. Now I think we're seeing another level, which is globalization of supply. And you're seeing -- you saw the K-pop music over the past several years and how that's grown. You're seeing now Latin music, where Latin music is accounting for a large portion of the top artists this year. So you're seeing more genres come in who are going to have more audiences, which is then just more demand on a structural basis. And again, I don't think any of that is anything pent up because here we are 2 years later, the numbers we'll get into are showing tremendous growth over '22, which is showing tremendous growth over '19. So I don't think you'd have a transitory pent-up that would have this level of ongoing demand.

You mentioned on your second quarter call, you sold 117 million tickets so far this year through July, up 20% relative to this point last year. It sounds like that momentum is carried into the fall?

Yes, 100%. We're at 128 million now. I think we're probably...

128 million.

128 million tickets we've sold for shows this year. It will be in the high 130s maybe hit 140 million this year. So again, you look back, we were at 98 million fans went to our shows in '19 and last year was tremendous growth and this year is even further growth from there. So again -- and it's really global that we're seeing it. We've talked a lot about how in the second half, particularly international has been driving a lot of that growth.

Let's talk a little bit about what could drive that growth beyond '23? And you mentioned that a little bit, that's the supply side of the equation. I think there's some concern after 2, 3 years of some artists going on some pretty notable tours. [indiscernible] the road for a while that you could take a pause, take a break. How are you seeing the supply side of the dynamic shape up into '24 and '25? Should we be expecting some of these artists to take a breather from touring or you mentioned the globalization factor coming in. Is that enough to make up for maybe some of these artists coming off cycle over the next year or 2?

Yes. And we talked at earnings about '24 and how we were seeing the pipeline. What we look at, at this point is for your major venues that tend to book further out, your stadiums, arenas, your amphitheaters. If you look at what either you have confirmed or you have offers in at this point of the year, that accounts for maybe 1/3 of your expected shows and we're up double digits, looking at next year. So we're feeling very strong that we're going to have that supply pipeline. I've heard some other theories that -- well, that's all -- people are in the U.S., now they're going to international, now the U.S. is up double digits as well. It's all looking strong on a global basis that we'll be able to continue to grow. I think next year, we'll probably have -- the growth will be more arena and amphitheater driven, which is what you'd expect after being so stadium driven in the past few years. But that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter in North America, international, stadium versus arena, what matters the most to us is, a, driving the fan volume. And then, b, to the extent we can be doing it at our venues, where we get to count the beer money and get more sponsorship and so on, that's ideal. We'll make more money with those fans. But again, #1 priority is we can continue to grow that fan base every year, which the read so far on the show count would indicate '24 is shaping up very well.

And I want to get into how you monetize that fan relationship, one more higher-level question on the globalization of the music, both on the supply and demand side, there's some clear tailwinds to the globalization. Both in the streaming world, we're seeing it also in the live events sector as well. Can you maybe talk a little bit more about how that plays into your long-term vision for the industry, how you can create demand on the back of tapping into this global supply that will emerge?

Yes. I mean I really think in many regards, that's our business model, right? The global demand exists. The streaming platform, social media platforms, artists are able to build their brands on a truly global basis now. So our job is working with artists to bring that supply to the demand is to make it easy for them to tour not just in their own markets, but in other markets, they're providing the supporting activities around promoting the show to provide economic support and to make that market, if you will, between the supply and the latent demand. So we've had 2 primary vectors of growth. If you want to think about it is, one is taking the historically established artist population and is bringing them to more and more markets because that demand exists. And second is identifying regions of music and bringing that to a global audience that may have been more local historically. So when you think about the genres, we were talking about 10 years ago, we were talking about -- I mean, I mentioned this earlier, we're talking about, okay, how big is country the EDM had it stay, right, where people were obsessed with what's -- EDM is going to take over the world and let's go all in on that. The reality is that all of these genres have an audience, EDM, hip-hop, country, pop, whatever you want to talk about. And now you're seeing more genres emerge. Of which K-pop and Latin are both massive. And so we can bring all of that together, right? And as we talk -- Bad Bunny was our #1 artist in the world last year. This year, we've had Peso Pluma, RBD, KLG, Kali Uchis, right? I mean you've had massive volume. You bring them to the U.S. and by the way, you bring them, you tour them in Latin America. As they globalize, you can bring them to other parts of the world. All of that is a long runway to continue to grow the business. And that's not something we do in a year. We're still predominantly -- not predominantly, majority is North America business for us. So that says if you want to talk about the long-term growth runway of the business, I think clearly, international has a long runway. Because if you buy the thesis that it's global demand, and you look at the numbers and you say the majority in North America, and clearly, the population in North America is the vast minority, where you have a huge unmet demand that you can bring the supply to. And the more that we can do to broaden the supply and support that, then the more business we can have and the more fans we can have going to our shows.

That's helpful. And I certainly want to get into the M&A strategy on international as well a little bit later. But maybe getting back to the point on how you monetize fans once they're in your ecosystem. On site spending per fan has continued to trended up nicely. It's up double-digit amphitheaters again this year. We've seen some pockets, particularly at Theme Parks, where some per cap spending has moderated over the last couple of months. I'm curious if you're seeing that in any part of your footprint. It seems like demand is broadly strong but perhaps not. And then over the long term, really, the question is, how do you get per caps $40 today up to the $50 or $60?

Yes. So I mean per cap is up at our amphitheaters, up at our theaters and clubs, up at our festivals globally. So all of that clearly continuing to show growth. Amphitheaters expect to be up 3-something this year into the 40s, so very solid performance, right? I think a little better than the historical couple of dollars a year that we'd been seeing. I think the difference is our focus when we look at APFs and fans, it's not about how do I get you to buy another beer or how do I get -- how do I charge you another buck for a beer. It's how do I create a hospitality environment that enables you to spend all the money that you want to spend as the segment of customer that you are. So what are the products that I'm creating, some of those products can be very tactical. I mean, we created the shaker cup cocktails that have dramatically increased our liquor sales, because we found that there was a large segment that didn't want to drink beer and get filled up, but they didn't want to go up to a bar and order a cocktail. But if you give them a premade here's a Tequila, Margarita, Watermelon Margarita, I think here's a Vodka drink preset up in a product that makes it very easy for them. Well, then we have a population that we weren't serving very effectively. We've created a great new product. Now we're serving that population. And then more obviously, it's the hospitality. It's the -- whether the VIP clubs, the viewing decks, the rock boxes, the VIP parking, the Valet parking, how do I create a whole range of hospitality options. So when you're there with your -- with another couple and it's a big night out, you want to spend money and have a great experience, you can do that. And we reduced the friction for you to spend the money that you want to spend to have as good of an experience as you can. I think that's what gives you runway because it's continuing to understand your fan base how they want to spend money and make it easy for them. But for sure, if I'm just telling you more popcorn and another beer, then that's going to hit a wall.

Great overview. Maybe shifting a little bit to the concert margins. With your second quarter results, you stated that you expected concert margins to expand this year relative to 2022. There's been a lot of focus on those numbers given the cost inputs and inflation. So I was hoping you can maybe spend a little bit more time talking about what the key underlying puts and takes that concert margins are for this year and perhaps how investors should think about operating leverage in that segment over the next couple of years?

So it's -- I think it boils down to a couple of things. The first is mix. So I alluded to it earlier. When we put a fan through a third-party building, we simply don't make as much as we do when we put them through one of our amphitheaters, one of our festivals because we get all that beer money. We get all that parking money. We get our venue take the service fee. We have our hands in more and those pieces that we're in are much higher margin than just the promotion economics. So that's a piece that mix. The other is the obvious, which is just what's the cost structure of operating the venues that we operate. So what happened to us was no different than what happened with the rest of the world, which is your lower-cost employees got more expensive coming out of COVID. So you had a kick up in that cost structure in late '21, '22, that kind of structurally reset some of those costs. Now those cost pressures are off, so you're not seeing the big jumps anymore. But they don't go backwards. People aren't showing up for less money. So you could have debates if you looked over a 10-year period at how little that cost was going up, you could argue that was just a catch-up as well. But in any case, it is what it is. But so it's what's the cost and therefore, the profitability, the cash generation on those fans going to our venues. So I think what happened was that took a hit, that was no big surprise. At the same time, we had a lot of our growth coming from third-party venues. You can scale them faster and more easily because you have almost unlimited utilization opportunity in third-party venues. So that jumped up. And I think, frankly, there was some confusion over the dynamic between the two. And a level of concern that we've tried to alleviate and say, no, it's not -- we haven't structurally lost all of our margin, the margin is there coming back still attractive when we're operating in our venue, but also don't -- I'm still a believer that margins are an output, not an input. So we're not turning down shows and stadiums that we can make money at and have a nice return just because it's going to hurt our margin. So it's why I try to say enough to give some comfort that margins are going to be better this year than they were last year. It's why I'm not going to let you pin me down because I'm never going to want to look at a situation and say, "Oh, God, a tour we make few million dollars on, but we shouldn't do that. We're going to hurt our margin and then somebody is going to be upset that we didn't hit our margin target. So I understand the issue and the concern, it's on the trajectory to increase if we continue to book a lot of amphitheater shows for the next year, then that will help our margin. But again, that's as much of an output of the fact of the show mix as it is anything else. Obviously, as we grow our APFs that helps as well because of the margin flow through on that money.

Maybe turning to Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster sold 151 million fee-bearing tickets through the second quarter, which was up 22% year-over-year. On the call, you mentioned you're on pace to sell 300 million for the year, which is 7% growth over the 2022 figure. So really 2 questions for you. First, could you walk us through some of the key drivers of the 22% that we've seen so far this year? And then secondly, could you explain why your guidance for ticket sales in the back half of the year is implying to some degree of a deceleration in that figure?

Because I forgot to say over. Should have said over 300 million. That was a mistake on my part. I think I would have alleviated a lot of concern and then didn't have the public platform to add that word until now...

So just to clarify, the guidance should have been...

The guidance should have been over 300 million, not 300 million tickets. If you look at the first half, the growth in ticketing year-to-date has not surprisingly been heavily driven by concerts. If you look at the increased number of concert tickets we've sold as an indicator in the rest of the market, other promoters are continuing to do well as well. Depending on how you want to measure it, probably 80-ish percent of the growth has come from concerts and ticketing this year. So really, the only question mark in where in the over 300 million and what's the level of growth for the year comes down to timing of Q4 on sales. So there's nothing that I've said that should be taken as any commentary on how the market momentum is going, which, again, in hindsight, when I didn't say the word over, I understand, people quickly got some concern. But it's really just going to come down to in the fourth quarter, what are the timing of on sales for shows next year, Q4 this year versus Q1. I just said that a lot of the growth is going to come from amphitheaters and arenas, amphitheaters are really largely Q1 to Q2 on sales. Arenas tend to be more Q1 versus Q4. So we haven't laid out the timing of all of our November, December on sales yet. So it just comes -- again, zero comment on the underlying business. The only question is, even if we have more shows, more fans next year that doesn't necessarily translate into you sell more tickets in Q4 of this year? So we don't know, so not trying to guide to exactness there. And as you know, we don't -- I'm not going to -- we're not going to push any artist to be in Q4 because we want to make sure we have a certain growth target. If the artist wants to be in Q1, that's what makes sense for their tour. That's what we'll do. I don't -- we don't try to manage our business to the quarter like that.

Got it. Maybe on the pricing opportunity, Live Nation has made a lot of progress on the pricing front over the last few years with the adoption of Platinum. That said, you mentioned on your most recent call that the secondary market, the average ticket sale is still for roughly 2x primary. Could you talk a little bit more about how far along we are in the adoption of platinum pricing? And maybe to what extent you think that could continue to be a tailwind over the next few years, perhaps to the same extent that we've seen it over the last few?

Yes. I think at this point, probably 80-plus percent of our tours globally are using some sort of platinum pricing, which simply means we're using analytical tools to help the artists understand what's the value of your best tickets? And how do you want to think about pricing those closer to market? If you look over the past several years, we probably moved over the last -- since 2019, $2 billion from secondary to the artist pocket. So on one hand, we made good progress. On the other hand, secondary market in the U.S. is bigger now than it was in 2019. So you could also -- so we made zero progress. And we still have tremendous ways to go with pricing because of that. So the best tickets are -- have demonstrated a general highly inelastic demand to them. So I think the opportunity now is not so much the awareness and adoption of pricing as a general concept, but continued refinement of it and artists deciding for their brand for what they're trying to accomplish, how much that money do they want to be capturing versus often letting the scalpers pick up.

Is that still a hard pitch to some artists that don't want to adopt platinum pricing? Or has it become more accepted in the industry?

No, it's not a hard pitch. Again, it's every artist is figuring out for their brand, what's the right balance. And again, our conversations are as much about how are you making sure the back of the house is affordable for all your fans as it is figuring out how you're capturing the market value at the front of the house, so that money doesn't go to scalpers. And just how do you progress it? How do you move that along over time? Again, it's one of the reasons why we think we have a long runway because you look at the gap that still exists in secondary, how it's been growing. And the fact that it's going to be an incremental continued to capture that money by the artist.

Let's talk about the other runway in Ticketmaster and that's account wins and market share growth. So far this year, you've added 14 million net new fee-bearing tickets to the platform. That's on top of that 23 million last year, and the 17 million the year prior. What continues to be the driving force behind this? And maybe looking ahead, how much more opportunity is there to go after these incremental net new fee-bearing tickets?

Well, since earnings now at the end of August, it's 16 million net adds. So clearly, the opportunity continues to exist even during summer vacations that we added a few million more tickets. So look, it goes back to what we were talking about first and foremost. This is a global business, and Ticketmaster is now organized and focused on treating it as a truly global business. A large portion of these wins are coming from international markets. A lot of them are coming because Ticketmaster has the best global platform for selling tickets. And if you're a venue first and foremost or if you're a promoter, first and foremost, you want to know that you are going to be able to effectively sell your tickets and you're going to have all the tools to price the tickets, to market the tickets, which makes money for you the venue and helps attract artists that want to play your venue because they know they can get the growth out of it that makes it worthwhile for.

That's helpful. I wanted to touch on the legislative and regulatory experience in the market. Ticketing practices have gotten much greater focus from the legislative side of Washington. You've been active in working with Congress to address some of these concerns of Fair Ticketing Act, you proposed earlier this year, and more recently, your commitments around all-in pricing has been 2 examples of that. Could you update us on the legislative side of the equation right now? What concerns do you feel like you made the most progress on? And what concerns are still outstanding? And how are you planning to address them?

Yes. I think one of the real positives that's come out of the past year with all the various legislative activities and discussions we've had is the level of transparency that we've created in the ticketing industry that hasn't historically existed. We recognize very early going into the Senate meeting last year that our #1 strength was to create transparency, because when you understand the complexity of the industry and how the pieces work, then we have no concern about how we look and what we do. We proudly stand behind the tools we create to help artists understand the value of their tickets. And we believe in the artists right to charge for their art what they want to charge. Just as we support sports teams and others in doing that. So we don't feel like we have anything to hide from in terms of what we do in our support of content and our support of venues. But there was a lot of opaqueness in it. And that led to a lot of critique of us because there were assumptions about roles we play, things that we did that simply aren't true. So as we've created that transparency, I think that's helped shift the dialogue away from how do we stop that Evil Ticketmaster to how do we create some reforms that are going to help the artists that are going to help the fans have a more transparent experience, all-in pricing is a great one. Our Fair Ticketing Act has been very helpful because there hasn't been a congressman, a senator who I have sat down with and walk them through the logic and give me half an hour with any of them, and I can explain the dynamics of the industry and why these different pieces are needed, and they all get it. So how that translates into any actual legislation. I've got no idea in today's world. And I don't expect the next year is going to be very bipartisan getting much done. I'd like to hope that this is down the middle enough, but it's never as easy as you'd like. So I think we feel very good about where we stand with a much greater understanding of the ticketing dynamics and where the real issues are.

Investors have debated this past year, to what extent potential legislative mandates potentially around all-in pricing, the limitations around venue exclusivity or the length of those contracts, perhaps restrictions on ticket resale, the impact that could have on your business, to what extent do you view each of those particular issues as risk to your business model?

I don't view them as risks at all. We operate with all-in pricing around much of the world. The work is just fine. I don't have any major issues. We've long said that secondary is an adjunct business for us. It's not a focus. We're in it because we think serving the fans being able to buy a safe ticket in -- with us is an important part of the service. They can always come to us to find the tickets. It's an important service right now for artists who know that their tickets are always going to be available and that fans will continue to come to the primary location to buy their tickets. But we regularly restrict resale in a number of ways when that's what the artist want. So we're doing those things anyway. Length of exclusive contracts is largely being driven by venues in the competitive environment. No concern about the length of exclusive contracts. So frankly, even exclusivity. Much of the world that we operate in a nonexclusive market, I think we've seen with the experience in California where there was some discussion of banning exclusive contracts, it was the venues and the sports teams that are monetizing those rights that rose up and said, "No, you're taking away some of my value." I own those exclusive rights. If I want to auction them off to the highest bidder, that should be my right, don't get in the middle of it. I'm not being forced to -- I'm not being forced to take the most money possible. I want to take that. So I'm not worried about any of those, what I'll call, discrete business practices impacting us in any material way.

On the regulatory side of the equation, you've acknowledged the DOJ inquiry, which was initially reported by the New York Times last November and more recently by Politico in July. Could you update us on your understanding of where the DOJ process stands today? The nature of their investigation? And anything that could help us think through a range of outcomes or potential time line from here?

Yes. I mean based on what I've heard, it's my opinion that there is nothing that our fundamental business model is not really being questioned or challenged. It's about discrete business practices that you just talked about. We continue to believe that our vertical business model of competing hard and paying the most for concerts and then making our money on secondary and tertiary profit streams is both pro-competitive and pro-consumer. That it delivers the best outcome for all those parties. And I haven't seen any facts that would indicate otherwise. I think that with the focus on working through what are the different business practices, the DOJ is going to take the time they're going to take to make sure they've looked at them all because they don't get another bite of the apple a year later. So they'll take what time they take. We unfortunately aren't in control of that time line. I'd love to get it done tomorrow. It's not up to me because they're going to go through their process, and we simply don't control it.

Got it. Maybe one on sponsorship and then I want to end on capital allocation. The vast majority of your sponsorship business, I think 85% this year has been -- excuse me, over 90% this year has been committed. I'm curious if you'd update us on sort of the strength and momentum of the sponsorship pipeline as we go into the back half of the year?

Yes, I don't have any concerns. We'll finish the year with our sponsorship business up double digits. As we consistently have over the past several years. And with so much now in the bank, the team has obviously turned its focus to now making sure that we're continuing to figure out how do you grow in '24.

Great. And then just under the minute or two, you have remaining on capital allocation, venue investment and international M&A have been two of the top priorities for you. Could you just walk us through how you're thinking about the opportunities on both of those fronts. And then particularly on M&A, I'm curious on international markets. How do you know when you've reached the point where you can switch from inorganic growth to organic growth? And when you successfully complete the land strategy before expanding?

Well, you're absolutely right. As I think about our capital, whether it's growth CapEx or M&A, the 2 main focus areas would be venue expansion and international expansion. And there's obviously a lot of overlap between those two. We've seen a number of cases where the difference between M&A and organic is simply one of opportunity. It's timing. M&A is faster at lower risk and more expensive, CapEx is going to be cheaper, take longer and more uncertain on the outcome. But it depends on if you're going into a market. If you're going into a market, is there a festival, is there a promoter that makes sense that you can acquire that's going to give you that foundation and then you can build off of that foundation. You see some very successful examples. In Germany, it's probably been close to 10 years ago. when we bought the #1 German promoter, and we've built that business, and it's been incredibly successful. We've largely built it organically. We made a few other acquisitions. We've invested in some venues. That's now grow manyfold from what it was then. OCESA, even in the short time since we made that investment, we've talked about, has substantially outperformed. It's been a great business as we've really invested in their Ticketmaster platform, which wasn't on the same version as we had globally and have brought that up as we've helped direct tours down there as they've helped with our Latin strategy, bringing Latin into the U.S. So all of that has really been largely organic coming off of OCESA. At the same time, we continue to make some -- do some M&A down in Latin America. That's going to help us get to the critical mass down there. So it's not a -- there's not going to be a one size fits all. It's going to be situational and opportunistic in terms of what's the best way to continue to build the business.

Got it. Joe, we're unfortunately out of time. We have to leave it there. But thank you for taking the time to join us today and look forward to having you back.

Thank you.