Live Nation (LYV) 2026年第三季法說會：入場人次突破6,000萬

Live Nation Entertainment (LYV) 在其 2026 年第三季財報電話會議上強調，入場人次創下歷史新高、國際市場廣泛成長，且 Ticketmaster 動能更加強勁。管理階層亦重申全年 AOI（調整後營業利益）成長預期，同時指出場館開業前籌備成本與業務組合變化的影響。

重點摘要

• 第三季演唱會入場人次突破 6,000 萬，年增近 20%。
• 國際市場入場人次成長 29%，其中拉丁美洲、歐洲與亞洲各區成長均至少達 15%。
• 體育場級演出貢獻了全球觀眾成長量的一半以上，而 9 月則是 Live Nation 北美露天劇場歷來規模最大的一個月。
• 在售票率提高、取消率降低及體育場場次規模強勁的支撐下，管理階層目前預期全年入場人次將接近 1.8 億。
• Ticketmaster 年初至今來自新客戶的淨新增門票超過 2,000 萬張，主要來自國際市場。
• Live Nation 重申全年演唱會業務 AOI 將達雙位數成長，並將 Ticketmaster 的 AOI 成長展望上調至高個位數。

關鍵財務與營運數據

業務與營運表現

演唱會業務在各個區域均呈現廣泛成長。北美露天劇場表現亮眼，9 月成為該公司歷來露天劇場規模最大的一個月。國際市場入場人次成長 29%，管理階層所提及的各個主要國際區域均實現至少 15% 的成長。

體育場級演出占全球觀眾成長量的一半以上。在北美，部分成長反映了活動時程延後，主因 Live Nation 需配合世界盃足球賽進行相關後勤調度。管理階層亦表示，體育場場次規模最終表現優於最初預期。

Ticketmaster 直接受惠於演唱會入場人次的增加，這占了其成長動能的 95%。該業務年初至今亦從客戶端淨新增了超過 2,000 萬張門票。第三季哈利·史泰爾斯 (Harry Style)、火星人布魯諾 (Bruno Mars)、綠洲合唱團 (Oasis) 和金屬製品合唱團 (Metallica) 的重量級開賣活動，為 2027 年注入了成長動能。

Venue Nation 預計於 2026 年在全球接待約 7,500 萬名觀眾。管理階層表示，自營場館與第三方場館對整體觀眾成長的貢獻大致相當，儘管自營場館在每位觀眾帶來的獲利與利潤率上表現更高。近期在美國新開幕的露天劇場、收購的歐洲大型室內場館、尊榮體驗方案以及贊助銷售等均表現良好。

管理階層財測指引

管理階層預期全年演唱會入場人次將接近 1.8 億。此增幅反映出較年初預期更高的售票率、更低的取消率，以及更強勁的體育場場次規模。

Live Nation 重申 2026 年演唱會業務 AOI 將實現雙位數成長的預期。Ticketmaster 全年 AOI 成長展望上調至高個位數區間，主要受到演唱會需求強勁、新客戶增加以及體育賽事表現亮眼的支撐，這些因素抵消了二手票券業務面臨的預期壓力。

該公司計劃在投資人日 (Investor Day) 上，針對 Venue Nation 新場館開幕、場館投資、前期籌備成本、資本配置、合作夥伴注資以及預期回報率等細節提供更深入的說明。

風險與關注領域

場館擴建推高了 2026 年的開業前籌備成本，管理階層預期這些成本在未來幾年將持續攀升。

業務組合亦會影響獲利能力。體育場級賽事與演出通常票價較高但利潤率較低，而在 Live Nation 自營場館觀看的觀眾所帶來的利潤率，則高於第三方場館。

截至第三季，預付廣告費用年增達雙位數。管理階層表示，針對已開賣 2027 年巡演所進行的行銷費用年底沖銷，將會對第四季業績產生影響。

隨著執法力度加大，Ticketmaster 先前預期二手票券業務將面臨壓力。然而，由於體育賽事表現更為強勁提供緩衝，這項不利因素在全年並未顯現。

分析師問答重點

分析師高度關注 Venue Nation 擴建計畫的獲利能力。管理階層強調，自營場館具備更好的單客經濟效益，但在評估 AOI 成長時，必須將體育場業務占比以及不斷增加的開業前籌備成本納入考量。

針對上調入場人次展望，管理階層將調整歸因於售票率提高、取消場次減少，以及體育場場次規模優於預期。相較於最初計畫，這些因素可帶來數百萬名新增觀眾。

關於場館收購交易完成時間，以及場館資本支出中由合作夥伴注資部分的提問，均留待即將舉行的投資人日解答；管理階層計劃屆時更詳細地說明資金配置、持股比例及回報影響。

完整財報電話會議逐字稿

完整財報電話會議逐字稿

管理層陳述

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.

分析師問答

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.