Live Nation Entertainment Inc (LYV) 2014 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon. My name is Carrie and I will be your conference facilitator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Live Nation Entertainment fourth-quarter and full-year 2014 earnings conference call.

Today's conference is being recorded.

All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer period.

Before we begin, Live Nation has asked me to remind you that this afternoon's call will contain certain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ, including statements relating 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, and 8K for a description of risks and uncertainties that could impact the actual results.

Live Nation will also refer to some non-GAAP measures on this call. In accordance with SEC Regulation G, Live Nation has provided a full reconciliation for the most comparable GAAP measures in their earnings release. The release reconciliations and other financial or statistical information to be discussed on this call can be found under the Investor Relations tab on investors.livenationentertainment.com.

It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Michael Rapino, President and Chief Executive Officer of Live Nation Entertainment.

Good afternoon and welcome to our fourth-quarter and full-year 2014 conference call.

Live Nation continues to be the global leader in the live events industry with another record year. In 2014, the Company grew AOI by 10%, revenue by 6%, and free cash flow by 9%. We continue to see the tremendous power of live events, with strong consumer global demand.

Live is truly a unique entertainment form, it cannot be duplicated, it is elevated, not threatened by technology, and is borderless. Fans around the world can now discover, follow, share, and embrace artists, creating a greater demand for live shows.

Technology is also transforming ticketing. Ticket sales are continuing the rapid shift to mobile with 35% growth in 2014 and 18% of total ticket sales, leading to a higher fan engagement conversion and a better purchase flow. We believe the live business will continue to have a strong growth for years to come, as connected fans drive demand, artists are motivated to tour, and mobile technology drives conversion.

Starting with our concert division, in 2014, we built on a record 2013 by growing concerts revenue 5%. We again grew our global market share, as we promoted the majority of 22 of the top 25 global tours. At the same time, we continue to expand our global footprint in the Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan and Indonesia, while also building our portfolio of marquee festival assets with the acquisition of Austin City Limits and Lollapalooza.

Our artist management business AOI grew by 50%, as we attracted more managers to Live Nation, including U2, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears, Alicia Keys. And it drives our concert business, as Live Nation promoted over 700 shows in 2014, more than double that of 2012, with a high percentage of these artists activating TM Plus.

From this expanded concert base, we again grew our advertising business at a double-digit pace to 10% increase in AOI for the year and our highest-margin business at over 70%. And our online business AOI grew even faster at 15%.

This growth was driven by two initiatives: first, we have remained focused on growing our fan network, increasing traffic by 17%, for a total of over 1 billion visitors throughout the year; and, second, we are now monetizing our content, notably our deal with Yahoo to stream a live concert every day, which has driven increased interest by advertisers to our online platform, driving incremental business. Yahoo and Vice are just the beginning of our entry into the media space, driving advertising with high-quality live music-related video offerings that will continue to expand and drive advertising growth.

Our unique ad platform has enabled us to attract new, strategic sponsors such as Pepsi, Hilton, and SAP last year. With these additions, we now have approximately 60 companies that spend over $1 million each year on the Live Nation platform, driving over $200 million in revenue, and an additional 700 companies that also advertise on our platform, generating over $300 million in sales revenue. We believe we can continue to upsell and convert these 700 sponsors as we grow our average deal size.

Ticketmaster continued to build on its global leadership, with the introduction of new products that instantly scale on Ticketmaster's platform and drive revenue. In 2014, these new products helped drive a 7% increase in gross transaction value of primary tickets to $23 billion and a 55% increase in secondary GTV. Our most successful new product launch has been Ticketmaster Plus, with over 1 billion secondary GTV since its launch in the fall of 2013. The number of events activated in 2014 increased 500% to 10,000 events listed on Ticketmaster.

Secondary growth for concerts, in particular, has been very strong, with a 350% year-on-year increase, demonstrating how Ticketmaster can leverage Live Nation concerts as a top customer to immediately establish scale and new products. Despite this strong growth, only 6% of our Ticketmaster events in 2014 were activated with secondary inventory, so we have substantial runway for growth ahead.

At the same time, we have shifted our product focus for event discovery, purchase, and ticket management to mobile. As a result, in the fourth quarter of 2014, for the first time, we had more visitors to our mobile sites than desktop. There remains tremendous growth opportunity for Ticketmaster traffic and conversion. The shift to mobile will more effectively link fans with shows and Ticketmaster's ability to drive mobile app installation, as it continues to be the number-one place to discover and buy tickets.

Our commitment to our venue clients is to provide them with the best service and products in the industry, and this continues to bear out as we achieve the net renewal rate of over 100% for the fifth straight year. In addition to enabling better products as a result of our technology investments, we are also lowering our operating costs. By the end of 2014, we reduced our cost per ticket in North America by almost $0.25 per ticket, ahead of our planned time table.

Demonstrating Ticketmaster's robust business, it had the second biggest sales date in its 30-year history last Friday, selling over 1 million tickets. The top day was 12 years ago, and we expect this year to break that. We are confident that our business model and its scale provides ongoing growth potential during these continued opportunities to consolidate global concert business, we will use that scale to drive fan monetization, advertising, and ticketing. Since 2012, we have grown revenue by 18%, AOI by 20%, and cash flow by 31%. Looking forward, we see this growth as sustainable and repeatable, given the breadth of believers and trends working for us.

With that, I will turn it over to Joe who will take you through additional [provision] details.

Thanks, Michael.

Looking first at our concerts business segment, for the full year, looking at the specific markets in North America, attendance grew by 6% to over 40 million fans, with show counts up 2% and attendance per show up 3%. While the amphitheaters, festivals, and theaters and clubs all attracted more fans in 2014, stadiums were the strongest driver of fan growth, with a record 76 stadium shows led by sellout tours with One Direction, Jay-Z and Beyonce, and Rihanna and Eminem.

Internationally, attendance declined by 14%, which we believe was simply a matter of tour cycles and geographic mix, with nothing to indicate any consumer demand issues. The attendance decline came from arenas and stadiums, which both experienced a substantial drop in show count. Notwithstanding the show count decline, our attendance per show at both arenas and stadiums was up for the year, 1% and 7% respectively. And globally, our festivals continue to be a solid growth driver, up 9% to almost 5 million fans.

Looking at the fourth quarter, our results reflected a significant drop in arena shows and shift of activity to the third quarter that we previously indicated would be happening. If you look at the aggregate numbers, we had 20% of our concerts revenue in Q4 this year versus 24% in each of the past two years, again consistent with our previous projections of a shift in activity to the third quarter due to stadium activity and arena timing. As a result, we had 41% of our concert revenue in the third quarter of 2014, up from 37% or 38% in the past few years.

As we look to 2015, our ticket sales so far this year remain on pace with last year, and we expect a global touring pipeline to be at least as strong as it was in 2014, albeit with a return to a more traditional balance of stadium and arena shows. In particular, we expect our international markets to see a material increase in touring activity.

Turning to our sponsorship and advertising business, our sponsorship and advertising business delivered 5% revenue and 10% AOI growth for the year, closing with a very strong fourth quarter that grew AOI by 24%. As we look to 2015, through the end of January we had double-digit growth and confirmed bookings with our sponsors and advertisers. And as a result, for 2015 we expect to continue delivering AOI growth at historical levels for the business.

For the year, Ticketmaster revenue was up 11%, while AOI was up 9%, and for the fourth quarter, our revenue was up 15% and AOI up 16%. In primary ticketing, Ticketmaster benefited from a further acceleration of concert on-sales into Q4. As a point of comparison, 29% of total concert tickets sold at Ticketmaster in the year were sold in the fourth quarter of 2014, up from the more typical 26% to 27% the past few years.

In secondary ticketing, we saw an acceleration of our GTV growth in the fourth quarter, driven particularly by the NFL, concerts, and in our international markets. As Michael noted, with our cost-savings program, we were able to drive our fourth-quarter costs to achieve an almost $0.25 per ticket cumulative reduction in operating costs for our North America tickets. And through all this, we continued our technology investments for future products, which we expect to be the norm for this business going forward.

Based on ticket sales through the first six weeks of the year in 2015, we expect to have low single-digit growth in primary tickets and ongoing double-digit growth in secondary ticketing. And as a result, we expect to continue the trajectory we've been on, with high single-digit AOI growth in 2015.

In summary, as we look to 2015, we remain confident we will deliver our three-year plan as we've laid out. A few points of note: first, from a phasing standpoint, we expect the third quarter to continue growing in its size as a percent of full-year AOI. On the other hand, we expect the first quarter will return to generating its share of AOI more in line with what we saw in 2011 through 2013, as opposed to the spike we saw in Q1 last year.

Secondly, on FX rates, given our 2015 was obviously set based on 2014 actuals, our revenue and AOI are both about two-thirds US dollars-denominated and a one-third mix of euro, pound, Canadian dollar, and all other currencies, in that order. In 2014, currency fluctuations did not have a major impact on our results, [about 1% of AOI]. Part of the reason we haven't been impacted much is because we hedge our cost exposure against our revenue base. So our exposure is mainly in the value of profits we bring home from overseas, not in our actual cost of goods versus our revenue.

And obviously over the past few months, currency fluctuations have been much more volatile with risk of greater impact in 2015. But at this point, we feel very good about the underlying operating strength of the businesses around the world, and see these FX fluctuations as simply a cyclical point in time and not reflective of anything structural in the Business.

I'll turn the call over to Kathy now to go through more on our financial results.

Thanks, Joe, and good afternoon, everyone.

Let me start by summarizing our key financial highlights for the year. Revenue is up 6% to $6.9 billion, AOI is up 10% to $555 million, and free cash flow is up 9% to $327 million. And in addition, our concerts-related deferred revenue at year end is up 7% to $464 million.

Now let me take you through some more of the details. Revenue for the full year was $6.9 billion, up 6% over last year's $6.5 billion. All of our segments delivered revenue growth for the year, with the largest growth coming from concerts up 5% and ticketing up 11%.

Adjusted operating income in 2014 grew 10% to $555 million, compared to $505 million last year. Concerts AOI was $51 million compared to $60 million in 2013, due to fewer stadium and arena shows internationally.

Sponsorship and advertising's AOI grew 10% to $213 million, from the higher on-line advertising and growth in sponsorships. Ticketing delivered AOI of $326 million, an increase of 9% year over year, due to increased primary and secondary ticket sales. And Artist Nation's AOI was $48 million, a 50% growth from the $32 million in 2013, driven by higher management commissions. Our overall AOI margin was 8%, in line with 2013.

Normalized operating income for the year was $161 million, an improvement of 7% over last year on the same basis, even with the $38 million benefit in 2013 from the gain on disposal of assets. After deducting the non-cash accounting charges in 2014, largely coming from the goodwill write off for our international concerts business, our operating income for the year was $7 million.

We delivered net income on a normalized basis for the year of $22 million, compared to a net loss of $27 million for last year. This normalized net income equates to a positive EPS of $0.09 for 2014. After deducting the non-cash charges net of the non-controlling interests' share, our net loss for 2014 was $91 million and EPS was a loss of $0.49.

For the fourth quarter, revenue was $1.6 billion, down 3% over last year, driven by an 11% drop in concerts revenue, with a shift in activities to the third quarter this year, as Joe noted. The rest of our operating divisions delivered double-digit growth and revenue for the quarter, with the increase in ticketing revenues driven by higher primary and secondary ticketing volumes globally, and the increase in sponsorship and advertising revenue coming from more online advertising deals.

AOI for the quarter was up to $72 million. Concerts AOI was a loss of $67 million, compared to a loss of $40 million in 2013. The fourth quarter was impacted by fewer arena shows internationally, along with the timing of our global touring activity.

Ticketing AOI in the fourth quarter was $94 million, up 16% from last year's $81 million, with the growth in primary and secondary ticket sales in both North America and Europe. Sponsorship and advertising AOI for the fourth quarter was $50 million, up 24% from the prior year, coming from the increased online activity. And Artist Nation AOI was $18 million, up 49% from last year, with higher management commissions.

In the fourth quarter, our normalized operating loss was $41 million, in line with the fourth quarter of last year. And after deducting the non-cash charges, our operating loss was $187 million.

Lastly, our normalized net loss for the quarter was $81 million. After deducting the same non-cash charges net of the non-controlling interests' share, our net loss for the quarter was $186 million.

Moving on to cash flow, for the full year, free cash flow was $327 million, a 9% increase over the $300 million last year. The increase for the year was due to our higher AOI, net of the increase in distributions to non-controlling interests. Our free cash flow as a percentage of AOI was 59% in 2014, in line with our targeted AOI conversion. Free cash flow was $19 million for the fourth quarter, compared to $17 million in 2013.

Cash flow from operations was $269 million for 2014, as compared to $417 million last year. The decrease year over year is primarily due to higher artist advances made toward the end of 2014, as we bought more 2015 tours, supporting our growth in global market share.

As of December 31, we had total cash of $1.4 billion, which includes $534 million in ticketing client cash. Our free cash, which excludes the event-related cash for future shows, was $494 million as compared to $445 million in 2013. And as I noted, our deferred revenue for concerts was $464 million at the end of the year, an increase of 7% over the $434 million last year.

Total capital expenditures for 2014 were in line with our expectations at $134 million, of which $60 million was spent on maintenance items. Revenue-generating capital expenditures totaled $74 million, with higher investments in technology and development of innovative new products, along with an increase in venue-related projects as compared to last year.

Our total debt was $2.1 billion as of December 31, and our weighted average cost of debt, excluding debt discounts and including the debt premium, is 4.3%. Our debt covenant requires a maximum leverage ratio of five times, and we are comfortably in compliance at below four times at December 31st. We are excited that we delivered another record year of operating results, with growth in revenue, AOI, and free cash flow, and we are looking forward to another strong year in 2015.

Thank you for joining us for the call today. We will now open up the call for questions. Operator?

(Operator Instructions)

David Joyce, Evercore ISI.

Thank you, I was wondering if you could provide more color on the Ticketmaster savings. If you're running ahead of schedule would you be at a run rate perhaps by the middle of this year, or is that going to be dependent on the phasing of the ticket sales goes this year?

Hey, David, it is Joe. I think at this point, we're just comfortable saying it is going to be -- we're going to get it out over the course of the year, not going to give you anything specific to the quarters. Obviously, as we get into the higher volume quarters, it makes it a little easier to get to that number, but we're sticking to over the course of the year.

Thanks. And I appreciate the help on sizing and thinking about the FX, but could you talk about what the impact was on the concerts in the fourth quarter?

Well, yes, what I gave you was full the year; it was about 1% of AOI. Almost all of that was fourth-quarter impact, and given most of our revenue was in concerts, you could assume that was a large driver.

But, again, we hedged the input versus the output. So when we commit to an artist to do a tour in Europe, pay him in US dollars, we hedge at that point the dollars against the revenue we get from the European ticket sales. So we're not just exposed against the revenue; most of it is a profit exposure, if you will.

Okay. Great. Thank you very much.

Amy Yong, Macquarie.

Thanks. Two questions. Just first on your guidance, when you talk about how the growth is sustainable and repeatable, is this a 2016 number or a 2015 number/ Can you just help us think about the growth CAGRs and elaborate on the guidance?

And my second question is on acquisitions for festivals, any way to think about the synergies, either top- or bottom-line synergies with Austin City Limits and Lollapalooza?

Thanks, Amy. On the guidance, a few years ago we had given a three-year plan and a target to get to our $600-million goal, and we're obviously in the last year of that three-year plan. We believe we're on track to deliver our goal.

Obviously, there is always inquiries about will you give further guidance beyond 2016 -- or beyond 2015. It's not something that we're going to get in the habit of, but I wanted to give you an overview there that if you look at what we've been able to accomplish over the last three years cumulatively, regardless of exactly what year was up slightly versus the other and you were trying to build a model on 2016, 2017, 2018, our message there is to you getting from our $300 million-ish to $600 million. Was because we built a better business, we're investing in the right levers, and we're monetizing it. And we do some tuck-in acquisitions and every now and then a C3.

So you can repeat history going forward, and we would expect to deliver, if we were sitting here somewhere in the year 2019, and looking back over the last three years, our goal would be to continually deliver that kind of ongoing growth.

And then on the festival question, Amy, I think what we've said is that when we buy a festival, our expectation is, is that it is going to be accretive to our business within the second cycle of festivals after we buy it. Often when we buy a business, because the planning for the next festival is already well under way, there is a limited amount of impact. It will still impact it, but it is a limited amount.

But then, by the cycle after that, we will have our sponsorship team, our ticketing organization, our operations team totally working alongside the acquisition to make sure that we're getting to that accretive level.

Great. Thanks, and congratulations on the year

Thank you.

Vasily Karasyov with Sterne Agee.

Thank you, good afternoon. I was wondering if you could give us a breakdown of the -- of adjusted operating income growth in the sponsorship and advertising segment. What percentage of that is organic, meaning it grew not from acquisitions but what you had prior to the year's start? And how dependent are you on continued acquisitions of festivals, promoters, and so on in order to see this growth rate sustained into the future?

Our $300 million in advertising sponsorship revenue, I don't know, off the top, 90, high percent of that is organic. You have the scale that we already have when we do a bolt-on like C3, which is not in last year's numbers anyway. But when we do a bolt-on or addition, it is adding some incremental tickets and some incremental volume on our quest to continually go from 5,000 shows to 22,000 shows to 30,000 shows. But our high-margin advertising business has been growing at double-digits off its base organic business.

And do you feel like you still have headroom to go, in terms of growth there on organic basis? Does that -- is that not monetizing it fully right now or do you depend on growing attendance?

No, we think we have -- if you do simple math and you say how big is the size of the prize, various reports will tell you that there is $18 billion, $20 billion spent in corporate America on sports and music. They'll break that down and give you somewhere in $1.5 billion to $2 billion is spent in the music space.

If you look at the size of our business and we're generating $300 million out of that $1.5 billion, we know that we don't have to go compete against NBA or sports or mainline advertising just to get a bigger piece of that advertising space that is dedicated to music.

A key function to that is what we have been doing very well over the last many multiple years is just to keep adding incremental ad units, so staying up with the market. So nine years ago it was a sign at an amphitheater, and then we elevated our staff and started selling strategic deals. And then we hired a digital team and started building an ad network. And then last year, we started monetizing our content, and this year we started mobile advertising.

So we think we got a 400-person-plus sales team. We've got an incredible, diverse set of skills there that know how to sell content, know how to sell digital, know how to sell strategic and local, and we think our assets are still undervalued, and we will continue to be able to grow that high-margin business as one of the core drivers of our business, in terms of no capital required, just monetizing the scale.

Very helpful. Thank you.

Martin Pyykkonen with Rosenblatt Securities.

Yes, thanks, a couple of quick things. Joe, you mentioned a few things in terms of outlook for the new year. I was wondering if you could, concerning visibility obviously into festivals you might buy and turn, things that haven't been announced, obviously. Can you project any sort of mix by venue, Q2 and Q3, and Q3 in particular? And to what extent that might vary from 2014, if at all?

And unless I missed it, I don't think there was any specific comments about the EDM segment. Is that something you would expect to be up this year in 2015? And any way you can scope any magnitude, even if it is not an official number? Thanks.

I'll give you a general on the pipe. Every year we always say that we have such scale that will I be sitting here in a year from now here telling you that I had 22,000 23,000 shows? Yes. We have no fear that our global staff - were the best at it. We will continue to get our share of the market and slightly more.

Last year we had an exceptional, in the US only, an exceptional stadium year, had a lot of big stadium tours out last year. We don't see that repeating this year. But we are already seeing a much stronger arenas business this year, because the artists have decided maybe I'm not going to go in stadiums, but I'll do longer -- US states will come to life.

I think you'll also see some artists debate whether with the FX cost and the cost of business if they do a few more shows in America versus traveling overseas.

So we would look at the pipe, it will be consistent from a show count, total ticket number year over year. We see it still being, given again it was a record year this year, which beat a record year the year before, so the benchmark continually gets higher.

But we think we will repeat history. We think we'll have a strong arena market this year. We think festivals in Europe will be stronger this year than last year.

And we think the EDM business, we are continually with Insomniac taking a very disciplined approach to how we will grow Electric Daisy, the main festival in Vegas. We launched one last year in Mexico; we launched one in London. We'll continue to launch a few more of those on a global basis this year.

And we continue to think EDM is a great channel to be in the portfolio and is providing some great advertising sponsorship opportunities. As well as in 2015, it's the first year we'll officially move Insomniac all over to the Ticketmaster platform. As we start to get the double benefit of feeding the ticketing and advertising pipe.

So you would characterize EDM just -- not to put words in your mouth, but the demand is still vibrant as far as the EDM market? There is no concern from your standpoint on that part it doesn't sound like.

No, I would characterize it as I think it is a strong, stable global business. But the reality of EDM is when you're not hitting mainline arenas, stadiums, and festivals, like country, rock and roll, pop, and urban, it is always going to be a small percent of our total business. Because it is more about 10 great festivals of summer that matter versus 4,000 shows that happen across America that matter. So great small niche business, but given it operates outside of the traditional venue platform, it will always be more eventism and smaller to the total business.

If I could just add one quick question on ticketing. Not so much again a number, but as you look at secondary ticketing revenue mix, I'm assuming in your plans you would have that increasing as a percentage of mix, over time. Should we be thinking of that as margin-neutral, or margin-accretive, or margin-negative in terms of mix or secondary ticketing revenue relative to primary ticketing revenue over a multiple quarter, few year time period?

I would think of it as fairly margin-neutral. It is the same overall business concept as primary, which is as you've got some costs of acquiring rights, of selling tickets. You then have service fees around the same 20%ish, and you have got operating and costs against that to put you in the low 20's% AOI rate. There is nothing structurally different between it and primary in terms of the types of margins you should see.

Okay. Thanks.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the Live Nation Entertainment fourth-quarter and full-year 2014 earnings conference call. You may now disconnect.

Thank you.