The Liberty SiriusXM Group (NASDAQ:LSXMK) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Derek Schiller: Thanks, Greg. Yes, to the first point, obviously, carriage disputes are sort of commonplace, unfortunately, and we don’t like the fact that this carriage dispute is going on, we’re not a party to it, and we’re hoping that Comcast and Bally’s get together. To Greg’s point, we’re obviously monitoring the whole bankruptcy proceedings and doing our part to protect our rights. At this point in time, Diamond and Bally’s is fulfilling their terms with us, including full payment. But if the rights come back to us, we are very optimistic. Because, as Greg noted, we have a very large territory, one of the largest in sports. There’s huge demand on the team, and we believe there’s more optimism than pessimism with the future of Braves’ television rights in that marketplace.

Barton Crockett: That’s great. If I could just follow up. I mean, the precedent at some of the other baseball teams has been if they lose their RSN carriage that they’re having to move to a lower revenue model where perhaps they get broader exposure on broadcast, but less revenue. It sounds like you don’t think that, that’s what the Braves would face if they came to it. Am I hearing you correctly?

Derek Schiller: Yes, I think you are hearing me correctly, partly because the other situations that we’ve seen around in particular, baseball, the marketplaces are just vastly different. And their situations, I don’t think are necessarily analogous to us. We have about six states that are in our territory and about 35 million people in that territory. So one way to look at this is, to the extent that we can unlock the opportunity to offer the Braves content to a wider stretch of that territory to more of those 35 million people, we think that the revenue should follow. And we’ve been modeling that and feel like we’re in a good position should those rights come back to us. But again, at this point in time, we’re still operating under the terms of the Bally’s agreement, and they are as well. So we’ll continue that to the extent that, that stays the case.

Barton Crockett: Okay. Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Bryan Kraft with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.

Bryan Kraft: Hi. Good morning. I had one for Greg on Sirius and F1 for Stefano, if he’s back or for Greg. Greg, sorry to ask this question again this quarter, but a lot of people want to know, I know you stated that the Sirius transaction is on track to close in early 3Q. But can you just walk us through the sequence of steps to close. And just comment on whether it might, closing might get pulled into early June. Seems like it could from someone on the outside looking in. And then on F1, I was just wondering if you could talk about what you’re seeing in terms of race promotion, contract renewals, as far as step ups on renewals and escalators within the contracts. I think pre-COVID race promotion didn’t seem like much of a growth opportunity, but with growth and demand over the past few years and improving promoters economics, wondering if you think that race promotion’s now more of a growth opportunity over the medium to long-term even outside of Vegas, which is kind of its own thing.

And then separately, can you talk about what you’ve seen with Las Vegas ticket sales, since they went on sale late March? Thank you.

Gregory Maffei: Well, I’m going to let Renee walk you through the regulatory steps that we anticipate and then Stefano, I think you’re back on. So after we’ll let you talk about race promotion.

Stefano Domenicali: Yes. Thanks Greg. Yes.

Renee Wilm: So with regard to the SIRI closing, we’re making very good progress with the SEC as well as on the SEC front and we are still on target I think as we mentioned earlier this year that we’d be looking to close sometime during the summer.

Gregory Maffei: Stefano, do you want to touch on race promotion?

Stefano Domenicali: Yes. I would say following to what I was trying to say before, I don’t know where it was cut, but for information, the race promotion before COVID, everyone was worried about the fact in terms of revenue stream this could have been a very frontline. And actually, the fact that we have a lot of demand, of course, is pushing up also the possibility of having or maximizing in the best way that we can at the racing promotion fees. Connected, of course, that this is, of course, a relevant point, but has to be connected to our strategic development in different markets. So everything is progressing very, very well. And I would say, in the next couple of years, I’m expecting to see and we are expecting to announce also some new venues that could be very attractive to grow the business of Formula One.

Gregory Maffei: So if I could just add to that to Stefano’s point. I think for a long time, it was perceived that the growth in promotion would come from incremental races. And we obviously went from 18 something up to this 24 level, which is where we do not anticipate growing any more races. But as I think we talked about at the Investor Day back in November, it actually creates a great incentive scarcity to be able to play promoters off against each other and not to try and take advantage of them. But just given the amount of demand we have, both among fans to attend and among promoters to host an event, we’ve been able to find attractive pricing and good uplift, and we continue to find new venues and new locations, which find it very attractive given the amount of demand we have and given the opportunities they’ve seen others pursue.

So, so far, so good on promotion, and I do think it continues tremendous growth area. And we’ll go back to Renee and let you touch on Vegas tickets.

Renee Wilm: Sure. Thanks, Greg. So we were very happy with the results of our presale with our partner, American Express. But overall, we are seeing a trend towards ticket purchases closer to the event particularly in the U.S. And I would say even more so in Vegas, which is known as the last-minute market. That being said, we are working very hard on our product ladder this year. We have looked to really differentiate those products creating about 10,000 new GA tickets available, which will be very much, I think, appealing to that last-minute market. We have now three different zones at tiered pricing. We will have the T-Mobile Sphere Zone continuing to focus on the news and entertainment as well as the racing phenomenon on the Sphere Zone.

We have a new entry-level price point in Flamingo, which will have a viewing structure for fans to watch the racing on Cobalt. And then a third new product offering, which is going to be announced very soon, which will focus on viewing in the heart of the DRS zone along Cobalt Straight. This is allowing us to continue to really reach out to those individual consumers and the new F1 fans who want to come and watch really on track, the incredible races we had as well as enjoying the unique Vegas-style entertainment that we’ll continue to offer throughout the tracks.

Bryan Kraft: Thank you, Renee. And if I could just follow up on your comments on the SIRI closing. You mentioned very good progress with the SEC. I mean, my understanding is that you had SEC approval already for the proxy, but you have to update basically for the March quarter numbers. So I was just curious as to like what’s the timing for updating the filing? And it seemed like that would be sort of a rubber stamp approval from the SEC since they already approved it. And then so you should be able to get to a shareholder vote probably within the next 30 days. I was just looking for a little more color if there’s anything that you can share.

Renee Wilm: Sure. Well, I think we’ll be ready to file within the next few weeks now that we’ve gotten through our quarterly audits. And then I would never say the SEC is going to rubber stamp anything, but we have at least cleared our financial and legal comments, which is great progress. It’s hard to say exactly when we’ll be ready to close, but I do think we’re looking at end of Q2 or early Q3 once we get everything in order for the shareholder meeting.

Bryan Kraft: Okay, got it. Thank you so much.

Operator: Our next question comes from David Joyce with Seaport Research Partners. Please proceed with your question.

David Joyce: Thank you. And thinking about the other factors outside of the pre-team share EBIT calculation, are there any other significant expenses that are either straight line or variable? And sort of related to that, with Quint, just wondering how we would be accounting for that with the Quint F1 related revenue? Is that going to be within Formula One, and therefore, in pre-team share EBIT? And then there’re other events are going to be outside of that. Just wanted to verify that there would be that split of Quint activities that way?

Gregory Maffei: Brian, do you want to take this?

Brian Wendling: Yes. So I’ll start with the Quint piece first. Yes. So revenue that Formula One generates from Quint related to those ticket sales do flow through the team payment calculation. So those are included just like they’ve been beforehand. And then on your first question.

Gregory Maffei: Sorry, just to add there, but you’re correct, David, that non-FI related events like Kentucky Derby and all those flow through F1, but not the F1 team. That’s correct. Sorry.

Brian Wendling: And then on your question about straight-line expenses, team payments is really the largest expense that is straight lined. Other things are more along when they’re incurred. So think about hospitality when the event actually happens, same with freight, those types of things. Obviously, there’s a bunch of fixed expenses related to payroll and the like that are relatively smooth throughout the year, but team payments would be the largest example of a per race kind of amortization.