Live Nation Posts Strong Q2 Earnings Report, Beating Wall Street And Its Own Expectations

Operating income for the second quarter of 2021 improved more than $450 million, and event-related deferred revenue clocked in at $2.1 billion, up $650 million. Ticketmaster North America provided some cause to celebrate, with June becoming the fourth best month in the company’s history for transacted ticket volume, in addition to adding more than 11 million new fee-bearing tickets year-to-date. Sponsorship commitments for 2022 are alsu up double digits from 2019.

Though the company still incurred losses, they weren’t as deep as expected and were a marked improvement over the year-ago period, which coincided with the first full three months of a virtually complete shutdown of business owing to coronavirus. Operating losses for Q2 2021 were $127.3 million, as compared to $588.1 million in Q2 2020.

Zacks Consensus Estimate reports the figures represent a quarterly loss of $0.90 per share versus an expected loss of $1.35. This compares to a loss of $2.67 per share a year ago. These figures are adjusted for non-recurring items, according to Zacks, which says the report “represents an earnings surprise of 33.33%.” 

Live Nation posted revenues of $575.95 million for the quarter ended June 2021, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 22.58%. This compares to year-ago revenues of $74.08 million. 

Ticketing income clocked in at $43.8 million compared to 2020’s loss of $267.2 million, and sponsorship and advertising posted $5.3 million as opposed to last year’s loss of $11.2 million. 

A particularly bright spot was the report that Ticketmaster scored the fourth-best month in its history in June for ticket volume — 50% more than the next highest month, which was March 2019. In Fact, June saw its U.S. concerts division put the highest number of shows on sale ever during a single month. 

To add to the optimism, Live Nation reports that all lines of its business are “trending up,” with strong growth continuing to be forecast into “2023 and beyond.” 

“Looking forward to 2022 and now also 2023, all our leading indicators continue to point to a roaring era for concerts and other live events,” Live Nation said in its report. “Starting with our concerts division, every major venue type — arenas, amphitheaters, and stadiums — have pipelines indicating double digit growth in show count and ticket sales relative to 2019 levels.”

The company also noted that three of its tentpole festivals — Lollapalooza and Rolling Loud in the U.S. and Latitude in the UK — hosted a combined three-quarters of a million music fans over just the prior two weekends.

Despite recent lags in vaccinations and the return of mask mandates and other COVID safety protocols in some regions in recent weeks, Live Nation President/CEO Michael Rapino expressed optimism that pent-up demand and a responsible fanbase would not flag going forward, noting during an earnings conference call after the report was released that Lollapalooza had a 90% vaccination rate among its attendees last weekend. 

“The momentum for the return to live events has been building every month, with ticket sales and concert attendance pacing faster than expected, underscoring the strength and resiliency of the concert business and live events in general,” Rapino said in a statement. “This progress, combined with our cost discipline, has enabled us to deliver positive adjusted operating income for the quarter, well ahead of where we thought we would for this quarter.”