Financials: German Live Giants On Track

It only took CTS Eventim nine months to break the billion-Euro revenue mark in 2019, confirming the live entertainment giant’s preliminary results reported earlier this month.

Group revenue rose year-on-year by 16.5% to €1,074.6 million ($1.2 billion), while normalised EBITDA advanced 26.5 percent to €177 million ($196 million). Normalised EBITDA margin climbed to 16.5%, compared to 15.2% the year before. The Ticketing and Live Entertainment segments both contributed to these growth rates.

Klaus-Peter Schulenberg, CEO of CTS EVENTIM, said his company was on course to achieve the targets for the 2019 financial year: “Thanks not only to a very successful third quarter, we significantly improved our online ticketing volume in the first nine months. The fact that we continue to sell more and more tickets through digital channels has positive and long-term impacts on our margins.”

36.8 million tickets were sold on the CTS EVENTIM webshops in the first nine months of 2019, representing a year-on-year growth of 9.2 percent.

Added Schulenberg: “Our Live Entertainment segment also performed very strongly in the period under review. The establishment of our promoter network, Eventim Live, is opening up additional avenues for us in this field. Our aim is to offer international tour opportunities to artists from all over the world.”

He also referred to CTS Eventim’s acquisition of a minority stake in France’s market leader in ticketing, France Billet, calling it “a major and strategic step forward in the Ticketing segment. In this way, CTS Eventim is extending and reinforcing its market position in a commercially attractive and culturally diversified market.”

CTS Eventim broke the billion-Euro mark for the first time in 2017, albeit after 12 months.

DEAG Deutsche Entertainment Aktiengesellschaft (DEAG) also reported a successful course of business in the first nine months of the financial year 2019. 

In the third quarter, sales rose by 70 percent from €34.8 million to €59.2 million ($65.5 million). EBITDA increased to €4.9 million ($5.4 million) from July to September 2019, up from €0.9 million the previous year. 

Sales for all nine months combined decreased from €152.9 million last year to €123.1 million ($136.3 million) this year, or €130.6 million ($144.6 million) before consolidations. Operating EBITDA for the first nine months was €8.0 million ($8.9 million), compared to an adjusted figure of €5.1 million in the same period of the previous year.

According to DEAG’s earnings statement, earnings were “fully in line with expectations. The EBITDA margin was also within DEAG’s target corridor at 6.5% after nine months and 8.3% in the third quarter.”

DEAG expects to really shine in the second half of the year, and in the fourth quarter in particular, when it already has sold-out events in all divisions confirmed as well as a traditionally strong Christmas business lying ahead.

The company expects the fourth quarter of 2019 to be “one of the strongest quarters in the company’s history,” in particular after including pre-sales for events to be held in 2020, a significant share of which were sold via DEAG’s own ticketing platforms, “leading to record results for MyTicket.de and MyTicket.co.uk in 2019.” 

DEAG is also currently in the final phase of negotiations on acquiring yet another ticketing company, but didn’t reveal more.