Live Nation (LYV) 2026年第三季度财报电话会：观演人次突破6000万

Live Nation Entertainment（LYV）在2026年第三季度财报电话会议上强调，观演人次创历史新高、国际市场增长广泛，且Ticketmaster势头更加强劲。管理层同时重申了全年调整后营业利润（AOI）增长预期，但提示了场馆开业前期成本及业务结构效应的影响。

核心要点

• 第三季度演唱会观演人次突破6000万，同比增长近20%。
• 国际市场观演人次增长29%，其中拉丁美洲、欧洲和亚洲的增幅均至少达到15%。
• 体育场演出贡献了全球乐迷增量的一半以上，而9月创下了Live Nation在北美露天剧场业务单月规模的历史新高。
• 得益于更高的门票售出率、更低的演出取消率以及更为强劲的体育场演出场次规模，管理层目前预计全年观演人次将接近1.8亿。
• 今年迄今，Ticketmaster来自新客户的净新增出票量超过2000万张，主要来自国际市场。
• Live Nation重申了全年演唱会业务AOI实现两位数增长的预期，并将Ticketmaster的AOI增长指引上调至高个位数。

关键财务与运营数据

业务与运营表现

演唱会业务增长呈现广泛的地域覆盖特征。北美露天剧场表现亮眼，9月成为该公司历史上露天剧场业务规模最大的单月。国际市场观演人次增长29%，管理层提及的所有主要海外地区均实现了至少15%的增长。

体育场演出占全球乐迷增量的一半以上。在北美，部分增长反映了演出时间的延后安排，因为Live Nation需要统筹围绕世界杯展开的物流工作。管理层同时表示，体育场演出场次最终表现强于最初预期。

Ticketmaster直接受益于演唱会观演人次的增加，后者贡献了其95%的增长。今年迄今，该业务还从新客户处录得超过2000万张净新增门票。第三季度哈里·斯泰尔斯（Harry Styles）、布鲁诺·马尔斯（Bruno Mars）、绿洲乐队（Oasis）和金属乐队（Metallica）等重大巡演的开票预售，为2027年积蓄了增长动能。

Venue Nation预计2026年将在全球接待约7500万名乐迷。管理层表示，自营场馆与第三方场馆对乐迷整体增长的贡献大致相当，不过自营场馆带来的每位乐迷利润和利润率更高。近期在美国新开业的露天剧场、新收购的欧洲大型室内场馆、高端体验项目以及赞助销售均表现良好。

管理层业绩指引

管理层预计全年演唱会观演人次将接近1.8亿。这一上调反映出更高的门票售出率、更低的演出取消率，以及好于年初预期的体育场演出规模。

Live Nation重申了2026年演唱会业务AOI实现两位数增长的预期。Ticketmaster的全年AOI增长指引上调至高个位数区间，主要得益于演唱会需求、新客户拓展以及体育领域的强劲表现，抵消了二级票务市场预期的承压影响。

公司计划在投资者日上详细介绍Venue Nation场馆开业、场馆投资、开业前期成本、资本配置、合作伙伴出资以及预期投资回报等方面的更多细节。

风险及关注点

场馆扩张正在推高2026年的开业前期成本，管理层预计未来几年这些成本将继续攀升。

业务结构同样会影响盈利能力。体育场演出门票价格通常较高，但利润率相对较低；而在Live Nation自营场馆观演的乐迷所产生的利润率，要高于第三方场馆。

截至第三季度，预付广告费用录得两位数增长。管理层表示，针对已开始发售的2027年巡演营销费用，将在年底进行核销，这将对第四季度业绩产生影响。

随着监管执法力度的加强，Ticketmaster此前曾预计二级票务业务将面临压力。但从全年来看，由于体育赛事表现强劲起到了对冲作用，该负面因素并未显现。

分析师问答亮点

分析师密切关注Venue Nation扩张的盈利能力。管理层强调，自营场馆具备更优的单客经济效益，但在评估AOI增长时，必须将体育场演出的结构占比以及不断上升的开业前期成本纳入考量。

针对上调观演人次预期，管理层将这一修正归因于更高的门票售出率、更少的演出取消以及好于预期的体育场演出规模。相较于最初计划，这些因素能带来数百万的乐迷增量。

关于场馆收购交割以及场馆资本支出中合作伙伴出资部分的问题被推迟至即将举行的投资者日解答，届时管理层计划详细说明资金部署、持股比例以及对投资回报的影响。

财报电话会议完整实录

完整财报电话会议逐字稿

管理层陈述

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is John, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Live Nation's Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call.

I would now like to turn the call over to Ms. Yong. Thank you, Ms. Yong. You may begin your conference.

Amy Yong

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Live Nation Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Joining us today is our President and CEO, Michael Rapino; and our President and CFO, Joe Berchtold.

We would like 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 related 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 8-K 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 the SEC Regulation G, Live Nation has provided definitions of these measures and a full reconciliation to the most comparable GAAP measures in our earnings release. The release reconciliation can be found under the Financial Information section on Live Nation's website.

With that, we will now take your questions. Operator?

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from the line of David Karnovsky with JPMorgan.

分析师问答

David Karnovsky

Joe, I wanted to see if you could unpack the Q3 result a bit. It looks like fan count came in even higher than expected. So can you give some color on where you saw that added growth and how it flowed to concerts and ticketing AOI? And can you also just remind us of any preopening expense growth in the quarter?

Joe Berchtold

Thanks, David. Yes, great quarter for concerts with attendance of over $60 million. I think the first time we've had that level of attendance, up almost 20%. Both North America and international doing well. International, in particular, was up 29% in every one of the regions. So Latin America, Europe, Asia, all up at least 15%. So we're seeing consistently strong performance globally. In North America, we had a very good amphitheater, including September being our largest amphitheater month overall.

And then globally, it was a very big stadium quarter. Stadiums drove over half of the global fan growth, up measurably in both North America and internationally. North America, a chunk of that being the timing that we've talked about before, where the stadium timing this year was a bit later than it was in previous years, just given how we had to manage the logistics around the World Cup. So overall, excellent, and that obviously flowed through to the ticketing business. Ticketing business, 95% of their growth was from concerts. So certainly benefited from the great attendance that we had at our shows.

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of Stephen Laszczyk with Goldman Sachs.

Stephen Laszczyk

Joe and Michael, maybe just digging a bit deeper into the growth at Ticketmaster. It's come in a bit better than expectations over the course of this year. I think you're now calling out high single-digit AOI growth for the full year. Just would be curious if you could talk more about the strength you're seeing play out this year, the durability of those trends and then ultimately, how you would expect to close out the year for Ticketmaster.

Joe Berchtold

Sure. I'll get that started. So first of all, better than expected even in terms of the fan growth in our concert business, which we've now guided towards close to $180 million. So that obviously supports the Ticketmaster business. Ticketmaster has also continued to add a number of clients, particularly internationally with over 20 million net new tickets so far this year. So that continues to perform well. We had flagged a year or so ago that we thought that there was likely to be some headwinds on the secondary side as we really continue to increase the enforcement on the concert secondary, which we expected to reduce that business.

And as we noted, we have some offsets with increased performance on the sports side. So we're not seeing that headwind for the year. So with that, we took up our guidance to now expect high single-digit AOI growth for the year. It's been great year-to-date. Q3 was very strong in part because we had a number of substantial on sales for shows next year, Harry Style, Bruno Mars, Oasis, Metallica, all being substantial on sales in the third quarter. So that's already set us up now with some nice momentum heading into next year.

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of Brandon Ross with LightShed Partners.

Brandon Ross

First, I just wanted to get a clarification or follow-up on David's question and wanted to hone in on the impact of Venue Nation specifically on your concert numbers. There's a lot of moving pieces there. You're acquiring venues, preopening in others, but the O&O fans should be more profitable. How should investors think about how that all nets out at this point in time?

Joe Berchtold

Yes. As you said, Venue Nation is having a great year. We expect to have about 75 million fans attend our venues worldwide. So we're seeing solid growth from that, continued solid growth as well from third-party fans as we're looking at roughly 20 million fan growth overall. So I would say pretty comparable contribution to our overall fan growth from the year. from both operated and non-operated fans. Clearly, the operated fans are higher profitability per fan, higher margin per fan.

When you look at the overall numbers, the couple of pieces you need to take into account with your math are one is the stadium fans because those are the highest priced tickets will tend to be a lower margin. And then preopening costs that we've talked about, which is just as we're ramping up the venue side, these early years this year and for the next couple of years, we're also ramping up preopening costs. So that's -- that all just needs to get put into the math. And as we get into next week in our Investor Day, we'll lay out more for you guys, the ramp of what we expect in terms of the venue fans as well as the investment overall, including the preopening costs over the next few years.

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of Cameron Mansson-Perrone with Morgan Stanley.

Cameron Mansson-Perrone

To follow up on Venue Nation, you've acquired a handful of venues this year. Some of those like Milan, I believe, have closed. But could you give us an update on what's closed and what you're expecting in terms of the timing of acquisition closes across some of these markets like Prague, Paris, Santiago, Copenhagen, for example?

Unknown Executive

I think you all know we have an Investor Day next week. we're trying to get today to anything that you want kind of specific around the quarter. But we're going to take you through a great presentation next week and give you much more detail around Venue Nation, what rolls out, AI impact, all the good things you want to know about the next few years on what we're rolling out to build your model. So we'll see you there next week and give you that detail.

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of Ian Moore with Bernstein Research.

Ian Moore

Just to hone in again on kind of the Venue Nation openings this year in the quarter. You've acquired and obviously opened organically a number of venues. I guess of the ones that are joined this year, still ramping, what's kind of been the biggest, I guess, surprise versus your expectations? And what's driving that? Is it more shows, more spend per fan maybe sponsorship?

Joe Berchtold

I think the main thing that we've seen this year, both of our operated and third party is just the strength of the consumer, right? All year, we've been reading in the press about all the concerns about consumer spending, are they going to keep going to shows? Are they going to keep spending at shows? Will shows close? Will they go on sale well? And we are absolutely seeing continued strong consumer demand globally in all these venues. And you look at some of the amphitheaters we opened here in the U.S., had just about a full slate of shows, performed very well. Premium did well, continue to see strength there, the few arenas we've acquired in Europe, all of them doing well. sponsorship sales on the B2B side continuing to do well. So I wouldn't call out any one of them as being particular, but I would just note the continued strong dynamics on all of the venues.

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of Kutgun Maral with Evercore ISI.

Kutgun Maral

I had a follow-up on concerts where you had a really strong quarter. If I look at the first 9 months of the year, concerts AOI is up about 4%. So your outlook for double-digit growth implies that the fourth quarter loss narrows by at least $30 million or so versus last year, and I imagine it will narrow meaningfully more than that. I guess with fans now approaching $180 million for the year, that implies about 12% fan growth in Q4. Can you help unpack the main drivers of the implied AOI improvement a bit more for the next quarter?

Joe Berchtold

Yes. I think we've said a number of things over the course of the year. I think we got into a pretty good detail over the first couple of quarters explaining what was going on with the results for each of those quarters and how we saw the full year playing out. I think we've been consistent that we expected to see AOI growth for the full year in concerts hitting double digits. And we reiterated that today. So no change in that overall expectation. I laid out earlier some of the puts and takes that we have. Very strong overall fan growth, strong in both venues we operate as well as third-party venues. The margin and per fan economics can get impacted what type of venue it is sometimes, but I think we've given you the pieces there. And then we've also given you the preopening costs.

The last piece that I would note as being an impact is the marketing expense that gets written off for prepaid advertising at the end of the year. We noted here that through the third quarter, that was up double digits. So you can assume the very good news that our fourth quarter gets impacted by prepaid advertising for tours that are on sale and performing well next year. So that's the best problem in the world to have.

Operator

And our final question comes from the line of Steven Cahall with Wells Fargo.

Steven Cahall

So just wanted to understand the upgrade to fan count growth, I think it's about 3% above what you'd guided to before. Is that upside from your expectation that you're all seeing in the second half? Or is it more that as you've gotten visibility into the year, you're more comfortable upgrading that? Just trying to understand how the business is performing versus your expectation as we roll into next year and if you feel like you have incremental momentum? And then just a housekeeping one, how do we think about the partner share of venue CapEx flowing through the cash flow statement in 2026?

Joe Berchtold

So on the upgrade to the expected attendance, I think it's number one thing as the shows are just consistently doing well. So our sell-through rate is higher this year than it was last year. Our cancellation rate is lower. At the start of the year, we probably would have been planning for those to be in line. So for those to outperform at our business, that can account for millions of incremental fans. I think we've ended up stronger on our stadium volume than we thought early in the year, given what we had to manage through with the World Cup here in the U.S., those would be your 2 largest factors that would have driven the increase.

In terms of how we're managing all of the economics, why don't we save that one for Investor Day, so we can go through in more detail and make sure we're answering all the questions on how the capital is being deployed and what pieces of it are ours versus partners. And what the implications that has for IRRs and rates that we're seeing every year.

Operator

Thank you. And that concludes the question-and-answer session, and that also concludes today's teleconference. We thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time.