Wrestling Observer Live with Bryan Alvarez and Mike Sempervive is back with tons to talk about including WWE making money hand over fist, AEW ratings and whether anyone in particular is to blame, Smackdown tonight, Roman vs. Lesnar plans, and tons more. A fun show as always so check it out~!
Tag: financials
November 2, 2020 Observer Newsletter: WWE Q3 financials, more
ince McMahon expressed a sense of optimism with his two most recent hires, President and Chief Revenue Officer Nick Khan and Chief Financial Officer Kristina Salen, when opening an earnings call on 10/29 talking about the most complex time in the company’s history.
The entire media landscape is filled with uncertainty. The biggest challenge is the changing role of television and the move to streaming content. While McMahon pushed the idea that more people than ever before are watching WWE, actual product popularity is still based on getting people interested in the product, whether that be from a big show perspective or regular viewing perspective.
Television ratings are down. In a sense, they are down less than many sports that returned to play of late, and more than others. They are down more than television in general. There are more ways to watch the content than ever before, but WWE’s revenue is more based on television, in decline both in priorities to the large conglomerates and in viewing.
August 3, 2020 Observer Newsletter: WWE has most profitable quarter ever
For a number of reasons, as it turns out, the pandemic was the greatest thing for WWE’s business as they posted the most profitable quarter in their history.
It’s not that they overcome the pain of the pandemic. They outright benefitted from it, with more consumer product sales, higher network numbers and the real difference maker, far lower costs to produce television.
Profits quadrupled in the quarter, blowing away all estimates, due to saving $51.6 million in media costs. The vast majority of those savings was the lower cost of producing television the way they do it now in the Performance Center, no longer running live, and taping multiple shows on successive days as opposed to live Monday, Wednesday and Friday in different parts of the country with far more wrestlers, production people and costs.
For one, taping two weeks had a time for each show, and taping shows on successive days, saved travel costs greatly.
August 11, 2003 Observer Newsletter: WWE revenue breakdown, Australia tour mishaps
New filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission give an even more detailed look at World Wrestling Entertainment business than the recent investors conference.
Among the notes are the importance to the overall revenue as well as profitability of the different revenue streams over the past year, as well as with the restructuring after stock buybacks from Viacom and General Electric (NBC).
The McMahon family currently owns 54,780,207 shares of stock, which represents 80% ownership. The other major stockholder is Gladwyne Partners, LLC, a financial group headed by Michael B. Solomon, which owns 2,582,773 shares, or 4%. The remaining 16% of the company is owned by the various trading stockholders.
The WWE annual stockholders meeting takes place on 9/19 in Stamford, CT at the Westin Hotel. Among the items on the agenda is management bonuses. According to information sent to stockholders, as far as base salary, Vince McMahon earned $1,085,000 (he also earned another $855,500 as a wrestler and will get $8,764,833 in stock dividends this coming year; the previous year those numbers were $1 million in salary and $929,965 as talent), and is listed to earn the same base salary this coming year.
February 10, 2020 Observer Newsletter: Major WWE corporate shakeups, more
The WWE had one major change and hints of a second one when it comes to business, which led to a major drop in the stock price.
WWE announced suddenly on 1/31 that co-Presidents George Barrios and Michelle Wilson were no longer with the company. No replacements were announced, and no substantive reason was given past there was a disagreement regarding the future direction of the company.
Barrios in particular had been the face of the company to the major stock analysts, who saw his departure as leading to major uncertainty. The departure also included notification that the financial numbers for the fourth quarter would be at the low end of projections.
“As you know, the board and I recently announced a management transition,” said McMahon. “This decision did not reflect a change in our strategy. It was made after careful consideration. We remain highly focused on growing the value of our content, furthering international expansion, and engaging fans across all platforms.”
November 4, 2019 Observer Newsletter: WWE financials, Crown Jewel, more
We’ll have a more detailed look next week, but the WWE financial numbers, while beating profit estimates, indicated far more core business declines.
Still, it was more a combination of uncertainty regarding what were expected to be lucrative new contracts in the U.K., India and Middle East as that were talked about more when it came to the huge stock decline after the numbers came out.
WWE stock fell $10,40 per share to $56.04, leaving the company with a market value of $4.408 billion.
The key area of concern to me would be the WWE Network and really all business metrics that involve actual consumer spending.
For the third quarter, the WWE grossed $186,383,000 in revenue and turned a $5,862,000 profit. During the same period last year the company grossed $188,391,000 and turned a $33,691,000 profit. The gross was down even though all the television deals were up. Wall Street was not expecting any profit, but was expecting $192 million in revenue.