Eventim Judged On Results

After previously seeing its stock value squeezed by negative reports from analysts including SES Research and fears that its deal with Live Nation will be worthless if its American partner merges with Ticketmaster, CTS Eventim’s Q1 results look as if they’re restoring market confidence.

“Our share price is no longer driven by gossip,” said Eventim legal and communications chief Rainer Appel. Its stock rose 10 percent on the back of the company making almost double what it made in the first three months of 2008.

The preliminary figures showed revenues were up 47 percent to euro 119 million and earnings before interest and tax were up 95 percent to euro 18.1 million, pushing the share past euro 28 – as high as it’s been in six months.

“Taking into account that on May 15 a dividend of euro 0.61 per share was paid out – a 25 percent increase over last year – leading to the share price falling by the same amount, the overall increase in share price was even more significant,” Appel explained. The right to receive the dividend is part of the value of the share.

“As always happens, once the share price goes up due to such positive news, some shareholders tend to cash in on the profits, and that – together with the fact that the market is still quite unstable – may have led to the recent slight decline,” he said, indicating that the fall back to euro 25.6 per share hasn’t dampened company optimism.

Two months ago, Eventim shares were struggling to hold at euro 20, and – in stark contrast to that damaging SES report – many analysts are now increasing their target price for Eventim stock.

Between Jan. 1 and March 31, the CTS Group sold about 3.2 million tickets via the Internet, a year-on-year increase of about 63 percent. The group’s online portals logged almost 78 million.

It produced revenues of euro 35.9 million, up 49.4 percent on 2008, and an EBIT of euro 10.6 million – 74.2 percent higher than the euro 6.1 million it made last year.

Many of the tickets sold will have been for its own shows, as The Medusa Group of promoters brought in euro 83.9 million in the first three months of the year.

They also earned more than double what they made in the first three months of 2008. The Medusa group is owned by Eventim and includes Dirk Becker, Folkert Koopmans, Marek Lieberberg, Peter Pracht, Peter Rieger and Dieter Semmelmann.

Medusa’s euro 7.5 million EBIT was 135 percent higher than last year’s euro 3.2 million.
During the current business year, Eventim says its efforts will be focused on further developing its online ticketing operations and expanding through acquisitions.
In September, Eventim paid euro 5 million for a 70 percent stake in Lippupiste Oy, the second-biggest ticket company in Finland with annual ticket sales of 3 million-plus, prompting speculation that the next stop could be The Baltics.

The obvious target would appear to be Piletilevi, which is based in Tallinn and has a longstanding partnership with Lippupiste. It’s part of Baltic Ticket Holding, which also owns Bilesuserviss in Latvia and has just opened up in Lithuania.

At the time of the Lippupiste deal, Piletilevi general manager Jaanus Beilmann told Pollstar he’s had no dialogue with the Bremen-based company.

Eventim chief Klaus-Peter Schulenberg is on record as saying he’s looking at the Turkish market, although his interest in Ticket Turk may have been cooled by the bad publicity the Istanbul-based company has attracted by failing to honour its commitments to U.S. rock acts Garbage and Megadeth.