TKO Group Holdings Inc (TKO) 2016 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Hello, and welcome to the webcast entitled WWE Second-Quarter Earnings.

(Operator Instructions) I will now turn the call over to Michael Weitz, SVP Financial Planning and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Michael.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to WWE's Second-Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. Leading today's discussion are Vince McMahon, our Chairman and CEO; and George Barrios, our Chief Strategy and Financial Officer.

We issued our earnings release earlier this morning, and have posted the release, our earnings presentation, and other supporting materials on our website at ir.corporate.wwe.com.

Today's discussion will include forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements reflect our current views, are based on various assumptions, and are subject to risks and uncertainties disclosed in our SEC filings. Actual results may differ materially, and undue reliance should not be placed on them.

Additionally, the matters we will be discussing today may include non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP information is set forth in our earnings release and presentation, which are available on our website.

As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded, and the replay will be available on our website later today. At this time, it's my privilege to turn the call over to Vince.

Thank you very much. Just a couple of comments and notes on the quarter. We're certainly pleased with the execution of our strategy to optimize our long-term value of our content, our revenue. Sort of proud of those. Increased 32% for a quarterly record of $199 million, which of course is in line with our guidance.

Our network and live event segments had their highest level of quarterly revenue in WWE history. International, by the way, increased approximately 15%, which I thought was considerable. Our network more importantly had a record 1.52 million average paid subscribers over the quarter, which is up 25% higher than the previous year, which is, again, on budget.

SmackDown, we have a brand extension, as we call it, with SmackDown and Raw having different sets of rosters and things of that nature. And we executed that most recently. And Tuesday before last, we had our highest television rating ever on SmackDown since it transitioned from broadcast to cable many, many years ago. And the brand extension thus far is working extremely well. Different sets of story lines and talent, exclusives both Raw and SmackDown and the competitive nature of both. So that's working thus far very, very well.

Also of big note, WWE content had 7.7 billion video views on social and digital platforms in the first half of the year, which is about twice what it was the previous year. So, that I think is a really big metric for us. People are watching us, they're enjoying us whether it's on traditional television, on social media, or on our own network. There's more of a valued experience other than just watching television with all that's going on all at the same time.

And we also, just to change the subject completely, announced recently that our new deal with PPTV in China. And they are taking Raw and SmackDown live in Mandarin, which is a nice way to wake up early Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, as the case may be. So, we're proud of that, and we think there's a lot of growth obviously in that market. Those are some of the highlights.

Thanks, Vince. There are several key topics which I'd like to review today. These include Management discussion on our financial performance, progress of key strategic initiatives, and our business outlook.

For the second quarter, we achieved record quarterly revenue, and our financial results were in line with our guidance. As Vince indicated, our performance to date reflects the effective execution of our strategy to optimize the long-term value of our content. This includes the sustained year-over-year subscriber growth of WWE Network, the transition of SmackDown to a live format every week, and the completion of our first exclusive content agreement in China.

Supporting the successful execution of our strategy, our key operating and brand metric continued to show remarkable growth during the quarter. WWE Network averaged 1.52 million paid subscribers over the quarter, in line with our guidance, and representing a 25% increase from the second quarter last year.

In the quarter, WrestleMania achieved record breaking attendance, ticket sales, viewership, and social media activity.

And our digital engagement metrics continued to grow. Through the first six months of the year, consumption of WWE content more than doubled to nearly 8 billion video views across Facebook, YouTube, and WWE.com. Social media fan engagements, measured across all social platforms, increased 39% to 570 million. These outcomes demonstrate the increasing strength of our brand and our potential to capitalize on these strengths to drive long-term growth.

To review our performance in the quarter, let's turn to page 6 of our presentation, which shows the revenue and OIBDA contributions by business as compared to the prior-year quarter.

As we review these results, you should note the timing of WrestleMania, which occurred during the second quarter of 2016, as compared to the first quarter of 2015. Despite the shift in timing, WrestleMania had a significant impact on subscriber growth in the second quarter of both years. Therefore, we have not attributed any of the year-over-year change in subscription revenue to the timing of WrestleMania.

We believe the timing impacted the event on second quarter 2016 results is best estimated by measuring the direct contribution of the event's ticket sales, merchandise sales, pay-per-view revenue, and production costs. In aggregate, these items increased to second quarter 2016 revenue by $29.4 million, but essentially had no impact on profitability. The pro forma impact of the event's timing on profit is minimal because we don't adjust for the year-over-year change in the subscription revenue.

In contrast to the event's timing impact, however, the value of WrestleMania is significant. And it comes from its ability to drive subscriber acquisition and generate meaningful economics as subscribers are retained over longer periods. As I just indicated, although the timing of WrestleMania did not have a material impact on our overall earnings growth, it did impact the comparability of results for specific business segments. As such, I'll discuss our performance on a pro forma basis, excluding this timing impact.

On a pro forma basis, revenue increased 13% to $170 million with increases from across our businesses, driven by the growth of WWE Network, escalation of our TV rights fees, and strong performance of our live events business. On a pro forma basis, OIBDA declined $5.5 million, reflecting our strategic investment in key areas. Changes in foreign exchange rates did not have a material impact on either revenue or profit for the quarter.

As shown as page 7 of our presentation, network segment revenue increased $7.7 million on a pro forma basis, reflecting growth in subscription revenue to $45.9 million as network's customer base increased 25% to an average of 1.52 million paid subscribers. Network segment pro forma OIBDA declined $5.4 million as the growth in subscription revenue was offset by increased program production costs, including a $5.3 million allocation of certain shared production expenses that are shared between our network and TV segments.

We continue to increase the global distribution of WWE Network as measured on a year-over-year basis, with launches over the trailing 12 months in six countries including Malaysia, Germany, and Japan. The network had 1.56 million total subscribers at quarter end, including 1.13 million paid US subscribers and 381,000 paid international subscribers.

Importantly, with the increased size and maturity of the network subscriber base, average monthly churn declined 20% to 9.9% for the first six months of 2016 from 12.3% for the comparable period in 2015.

WWE Network content continues to drive viewer engagement. We remain on track to add more than 300 hours of original content to the network's featured programming in 2016, and to add more than 1,500 hours of archival content. This would result in an OnDemand library of nearly 6,000 hours at year end 2016; about 4 times the size of the library at the network's launch in February 2014.

Turning to our television operations, pro forma profit from the licensing of television content increased $6 million, and the allocation of shared production costs to our network segment as I described.

As shown on page 9, live event profits increased $1.2 million on a pro forma basis, primarily due to the strong performance of our events in Europe, which has achieved a 17% increase in average attendance to 8,000 fans.

Also during the quarter, the showcase for our developmental talent, NXT, continued to expand its touring schedule, performing 53 events in the US and Europe compared to 33 events in the prior year. Our ability to bring NXT to new audiences is a critical part of our effort to prepare the next generation of talent and deepen engagement with our fans.

Shown on page 10, licensing profits declined $2.5 million based on a 20% decrease in licensing revenue, derived from a lower effective royalty rate for our franchise video game than in the prior year, while lower effective royalty rates derived from an increasing rate structure over the 2015 year as compared to the rate structure in 2016. Importantly, for the full year, we expect the rate for 2016 to be comparable to the average rate for 2015.

Corporate and other expenses increased $7 million to $49.4 million in the quarter, reflecting investments in global branding, data and technology, certain talent initiatives, as well as increased legal expenses.

In terms of WWE's overall performance, changes in other business segments were largely offsetting, and as such, did not have a material impact on our consolidated result. Page 11 of the presentation shows selected elements of our capital structure. As of June 30, 2016, we held $80 million in cash and short-term investments. And we estimate that WWE has approximately $190 million in debt capacity under the Company's revolving credit facility.

Through the first six months of the year, free cash flow declined approximately $30 million, primarily due to the timing of working capital, including the receipts of payments related to our TV rights agreements.

During the quarter, we entered an agreement to acquire a facility which will be financed principally through the assumption of the underlying $23 million mortgage on the property. The facility, which is adjacent to our production operations in Stanford, Connecticut, solved some of our short-term operational constraints, and also affords us the flexibility to meet our long-term space requirements. The transaction is expected to close early in the third quarter of 2016. Looking back over the quarter, our financial operating results continue to reflect our driving innovation, transforming our business model.

For the third quarter, we are projecting average paid subscribers of 1.49 million, plus or minus 2%, representing an approximate year-over-year increase of 27%. The third quarter subscriber forecast represents a sequential decline of 2% from the second quarter of 2016 compared to the 4% decline from the second quarter to the third quarter in 2015.

We also estimate third quarter 2016 adjusted OIBDA of approximately $24 million to $28 million. And this range represents an expected year-over-year increase primarily due to the increased monetization of video content and continued strong performance of our live event business.

Turning to our full-year performance on page 13. As stated previously, that the average paid subscribers to WWE Network increased at a rate in 2016 between 20% and 25%, adjusted OIBDA for the full year could be in the range of approximately $70 million to $85 million. In addition, if the recent overarching subscriber trends continue over the remainder of 2016, average paid subscriber growth would be at the upper end of this range, and 2016 adjusted OIBDA would be between $80 million and $85 million.

As recent historical data may not offer comparable basis for projecting future results, and these results may differ from the range provided, we offer these ranges of potential 2016 full-year subscriber growth income to provide additional insight and perspective rather than as formal guidance.

Our OIBDA results for the first half of 2016 were essentially flat to the comparable period last year. Over the second half of 2016, we anticipate year-over-year adjusted OIBDA growth from continued revenue growth, and more favorable year-over-year comparisons in our fixed cost base. We anticipate such growth will accelerate in the fourth quarter, evidenced by the range of our full-year results and our projected results through the third quarter.

Over the past few years, we've placed increasing strategic emphasis on driving and optimizing the value of our content, developing digital technology platforms, and deepening our global presence. Execution of these initiatives has been very strong, and our results demonstrate the successful transformation of our business model.

That includes this portion of our call, and I'll now turn it back to Michael.

Thank you, George. Bethany, we're ready. Please open the lines for questions.

(Operator Instructions) Evan Wingren, Pacific Crest Partners.

So, if I exclude the $5.3 million gain for TV from the allocation of expenses from the network, it looks like margins declined year over year and incremental margins accelerated. Are there investments in new TV content or something that may be included in that, or what's driving that?

As we said kind of heading into the year that we would be making investments broadly across three areas -- content, data and technology, and our global operations. And those investments cut across a variety of segments, including the TV segment. But for the year, we expect our OIBDA to be up fairly significantly in the TV.

And then on the Q3 guide, what impact, if any, do you have embedded for the Olympics?

In terms of viewership?

In terms of what could potentially -- if people watching the Olympics, it's taking attention away from you guys and that would impact growth during the quarter.

We don't expect any impact. Obviously we have -- there's always high-impact items throughout the year. I think if you're a fan of WWE Network, and a big enough fan that you're subscribing, we don't except any impact.

And then just one more. How about working capital is up about $45 million year on year for the first half. And I know you talked a little bit about that being the timing of television receipts and things like that. But just can you talk about your expectations for the back half in terms of working capital?

We don't guide on the balance sheet items. But to your point, there are some timing elements related to the payment of incentive comp in 2016 versus the accrual that we're doing for payout this year, as well as just some timing elements. And when we're talking a couple of days each way in some of the payments in some of our bigger deals.

Okay, thanks.

Brandon Ross, BTIG.

Bunch of questions on the brand extension. First, if you could give us a little more color on the rationale for doing the brand extension again. Was it ratings with an eye towards to the 2019 licensing deals, or are there any other benefit to anticipate? And if you could help us with how the extension will impact your cost structure, and if that was anticipated in your guidance that you gave before 2016 started.

Sure. And when we have a plethora of talent as result of a [Paul of X] influence on NXT and the performance center, you have the ability -- when you have too many talent, you just can't exploit all of that IP.

So, the option is to take all of that and develop two distinct brands. We have done this before, and we've done it with success until we ran out of talent. In this case, we won't run out of talent because of our performance center. But it allows us to have more pay-per-views, to us more income. It allows us to have more live events. It allows us, because of more personalities, to have more and more licensing opportunities. So it's a really big move on revenue and on the brand in general.

And on the cost structure question, Brandon, we didn't anticipate it back in 2015 when we talked about 2016, but it's obviously anticipated in the guidance I gave for the full year a couple minutes ago.

Great. Thank you.

Eric Katz, Wells Fargo.

Since this is such an important quarter for the network coming out of WrestleMania, I was hoping you could provide a little more color on the trends throughout the quarter. Maybe a ballpark percentage on the retention of free WrestleMania subs, and maybe how subs are trending toward the end of the quarter.

Other than what provided in the materials, we're not going to give any additional data. But I think heading into it, I think if you remember, I had said if the trends we'd seen over the preceding 12 months or so held, we gave the guidance on average for the quarter, which was 1.5. And it was about 1.52, so right in line with our guidance. So I think it kind of goes to show that those trends have held up pretty well. But we're not going to get into providing any more data than that.

All right. Well, maybe a qualitative question on the Q3 sub guide. How should we think about the international subs going forward? The last few quarters, you grew by about 50,000 or sequentially. And you had a boost from new countries and WrestleMania, and then this quarter we have SummerSlam. But no new launches until maybe China, whenever that happens. So should we sort of still think about a 50,000 sequential increase going forward? Is that sort of a normalized type of number for you guys, or should it moderate from here?

We don't give international versus domestic guidance. But I think an important note to keep in mind is once we get into late January of next year, we'll be apples-to-apples international in terms of countries. So our last country to launch was Germany, which was towards the back end of January. And so once we lap that, other than China, it's apples-to-apples. So there's no more launches impacting the growth.

Okay. Well, let me try one last question. I think people typically view the network subscribers coming from pay-per-view events, but there was quite a bit of buzz going into the draft, and obviously ratings jumped. Have you seen any early indications that I guess the storyline, brand extension changes are driving subs?

Look, Eric, as Vince mentioned, SmackDown went live about a week ago, and the brand extension kicked off three days ago. So to start saying have we got trends in place, no; we don't have trends yet. We're excited about it, which is why we did it. Our expectation is that it'll drive even more engagement across all our platforms -- on TV, on digital, on social, on WWE Network. But given that we're three days into this, there aren't any trends that are kind of manifesting themselves.

Okay. All right, thank you.

Laura Martin, Needham Investment Group.

Could we talk about China? Is your deal in China exclusive, and is it -- you're doing live as proposed Raw and SmackDown. And there does seem to be a trend for live at the moment. Are the economics different for live versus what, like the film and then airs later (technical difficulty).

And then also, you said you're up to 1,600 hours in the archives. I'm wondering, for some reason I was thinking that the library was 6 or 7 hours you guys had amassed over the (technical difficulty). Is (technical difficulty) library (technical difficulty) onto the archives for the over-the-top-network, or is the 1,600 hours sort of tapping out most of [the good stuff]? Thanks.

So on the China question, it's our first exclusive deal in China. And specifically, it's an exclusive digital deal with PPTV. They're one of the preeminent digital players in China in providing video. And I think that you're seeing, similar to other parts of the world, that live content has a premium. So it's one of the things that, as Vince mentioned, that we're excited about. It's not only this exclusive deal with PPTV, but that for the first time ever, we're going to be providing both Raw and SmackDown live in the market.

As a reminder -- and I know you and I have talked about this previously -- because of the time of distribution, the edits that were being made to the show, it was about a two to three week delay. So that we can now go live-live in Mandarin with Raw and SmackDown we just think is terrific. And we really found a great collaborator in PPTV.

On the amount of content on the network, I think you may have misheard the numbers. At the end of the year, we should have about 6,000 hours of content available on WWE Network, and when we launched, we had about 1,500. And so that was my reference to growing it by 4 times. So from 1,500 to 6,000.

As you know, we have a 150,000+ hour library that grows everyday as we create new content. We don't feel that all 150,000 hours will make it onto the network, but we're going to keep growing, for our fans, we're going to keep growing that 6,000 hours for quite some time. Probably for most of our lifetime we'll be adding to that, to the network's VOD content.

Daniel Moore, CJS.

Wanted to shift back to the brand extension. Maybe just talk a little bit, what are some of the key metrics that you'll be looking at and analyzing in the coming quarters to measure the success? And given that it was almost simultaneous with the decision to go live, how do you kind of break that apart and analyze the impacts of one or both of those decisions?

It's the metrics that we talked about pretty consistently across all the platforms. So obviously, for when we're talking about traditional TV, we look at the ratings, certainly average ratings. We look at total consumption, Dan. Time spent across the world on that content that sits on the traditional pay TV platform. So we'll continue to measure that and see what the impact of live. And obviously it will be difficult to peel apart live versus the brand extension because they happened at the same time.

And then two, on the digital platforms, similarly it's the engagement metrics -- retweets, shares. It's the time spent on the different platforms.

On the network, in the old days, we would have measured the special events, the pay-per-views transactionally. In a subscription business, it's really are we growing the new additions, are we growing our reactivation or win-back rates, are our turn rates improving? So, across all the platforms, those are the metrics we'll look at.

Very helpful. And I know you've launched -- and I'm not sure exactly how long ago, but a three month gift card. I'm wondering how that's been received. Do you have plans to extend that to longer durations at this point? And one quick follow up there.

Yes, I think generally speaking, payment options are important both domestically and globally. So I think one of the things you'll see from us just over time is adding a variety of payment options. And I put the gift card model in that.

And the reason I say that is because as most people know, the gift cards are used primarily as a payment option; the primary party buying as opposed to really gifts. Changes a little bit in the holiday season. But we view it as just another form of payment, and you'll see us just adding more and more of those over time.

Okay. And I think that covers it all. Thank you.

All right, thanks.

(Operator Instructions) Robert Routh, FBN Securities.

Can you comment a little bit about the recent USC transaction and how you view that as far as the value they got, given the value of the franchises WWE has and how big you guys are. Because a lot of (technical difficulty) that they just didn't make sense. But obviously given that price and given the valuation and given their revenue, that clearly WWE's franchise could be similarly, although different, and maybe the market's missing something there.

And as a follow up to that, is it possible you would ever entertain a (technical difficulty) the right way if somebody was proposing as USC would [approach]?

On the first part, obviously with them not being public, all you have access to is what's in the media. But if that's right, roughly $200 million of EBITDA at $4 billion, so it's 20 times, I think that reflects the value people put on branded live content. So we think that's great.

And as far as a private transaction, look, as you know, we're always willing to listen. And all we care about is doing what's best for our audience, for our shareholders, and for our employees. So if someone's got a great idea, we're open to listening to it.

Perfect. Great. And then just one follow up. Given what you guys are doing with now what's on the live shot on SmackDown and Raw, how do you feel that virtual reality, given it seems that's kind of the technology that would fit very well with what you're doing. I know a while back you did kind of look at it a little bit, but didn't really -- it didn't really go far. But now we're hearing a lot about it within the new Sony and Samsung (technical difficulty) company. Is this something you think you can add to your current programming to create another revenue stream for the Company, or is it something you're not willing to look at or invest in at this point?

Well, as you probably know, we do a lot of 360 video today, which we think is a really interesting way to experience the content. As you mentioned, we've done VR tests. We think AR is interesting as well.

So we -- people who are trying new things in video, whether it's the social platforms or some of the tech platforms, tend to call us because they know how well we do on all the media platforms. So yeah, we'll continue to investigate and we'll continue to test. And over time, the ones that we think are real wins for our fans are the ones that you'll see us adopt. But we will continue to test.

Great. Thank you very much.

(Operator Instructions)

Sounds like there's no more questions at this time. Obviously we're available if investor wants to reach out or analysts want to reach out and contact us, we encourage you to do so. You can contact me, Michael Weitz, or Laura Kiernan. And we thank everybody for attending the call today. Thank you.