Warner Music Group Corp. (NASDAQ:WMG) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So — and we have some new music coming from Zach Bryan and Dan and Shay, Sia, David Guetta, Charlie Puth, Robin Schulz, et cetera. So there’s a lot of activity. The team is firing on all cylinders. And I’m just glad that we have reaccelerated and that we continue.

Stephen Laszczyk: Great. And maybe just a longer-term question on the publishing business. You’re seeing some great momentum on that side of the house. I was wondering if you can maybe talk a little bit more about the diversification and services strategy that you’re pushing through in that business? And to what degree we maybe could expect similar outperformance on the publishing side over the course of ’24?

Robert Kyncl: Yes. I mean it’s hard for me to guide for ’24, just to sort of be in line with Eric on that. But what I can say is that Guy and Carianne have done a tremendous job over the past 4 years with Warner Chappell and run a very efficient and effective machine. They’ve diversified our services. They mine the catalog incredibly well. And we have 1 million — more than 1 million songs that we’re focusing on monetizing. And that takes some machine to do. And they’re incredible operators and their results are really speaking for themselves. So obviously, I work with them very closely to set this up for the future and make sure that we continue, but I’m not prepared to guide on that into ’24 as of today. But overall, I just want to close by saying I’m very grateful to the whole company to our teams, Hassel in the last quarter and in the current quarter, and it’s great to see music speaking for itself and delivering the results. Thank you.

Operator: I’d like to hand the call back over to Robert Kyncl for closing remarks.

Robert Kyncl: So I want to thank you all for taking the time out of your day to dial in to our call for all of your thoughtful questions for challenging us on things. And again, I’m very appreciative to the entire team at Warner Music Group, and I look forward to our next earnings call with you. Have a great morning.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.