Venu Holding Corporation

Welcome to Venue Holding Corporation third quarter 2024 earnings call and update. This afternoon, the company also known as Venue issued a press release that provided an overview of its third quarter 2024 results, which follows the filing of its quarterly report on form 10Q for the period ending September 30, 2024. Today's conference call is being recorded and will be available online along with our earnings press release covering our financial results at venue.live in accordance with venue's retention policies. All participants on this call will be in a listen-only mode. The call will be followed by a question and answer session. At this time, I would now like to turn the conference over to Heather Atkinson, the company's Chief Financial Officer. Heather, please go ahead.

Thank you, Sarah, and thank you all for joining Venue's September 30, 2024 third quarter earnings call and update. On the call today, we have our founder, chairman, and CEO, J.W. Roth, as well as our president, Will Hodgson. Following the Safe Harbor statement, J.W. will provide an overview of our business, and Will is going to provide an update on the current expansion plans for Venue. And finally, I'll provide a summary of the quarterly financial results. Following that, we'll open up the call for questions. We'd like to remind everyone that various remarks about future expectations, plans, and prospects constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of safe harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Then you caution that these forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those indicated, including risks described in the company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2024, and other filings with SEC, all of which can be reviewed on the company's website at venue.live, spelled V-E-N-U dot L-I-V-E, or on the SEC's website at SEC.gov. Any forward-looking statements made on this conference call speak only as of today's date, Monday, December 23, 2024, and Venue does not intend to update any of these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that would occur after today's date, except as may be required by federal securities laws. With that, I'd like to turn over the call to our founder, chairman, and CEO, J.W. Ross.

Heather, thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today. For those of you that may be learning about Venue for the first time, let me take a few minutes and tell you our story. and what we have accomplished over the past few years. Venue is a leading developer of luxury entertainment venues dedicated to transforming how fans experience live music and hospitality. From state-of-the-art amphitheaters and intimate music halls, our spaces are thoughtfully designed to put fan experience front and center with unparalleled entertainment and exceptional service. We are known for our disruptive approach to live entertainment. We have created unique, elevated amenities like luxury fire pit suites, and premium custom-built owners clubs. Our luxury outdoor amphitheaters range from 8,000 to 20,000 seats, and our entertainment campuses feature legendary restaurants, premium-sized, mid-sized event centers, and live music halls. Our goal is to create unforgettable experience for all of our fans. In our third quarter, Venue brought luxury entertainment to life. We successfully executed our business plan and most notably opened our gates to 8,000 capacity, $70 million development known as the Ford Amphitheater here in Colorado Springs. The amphitheater adopted the name Ford Amphitheater after Colorado Ford dealers purchased the primary naming rights for 10 years for $13 million. which was one of the largest amphitheater sponsorships in history. The amphitheater is booked and operated in partnership with AEG Presents Rocky Mountains. We started hosting acts about a third of the way through our typical season, starting in August, with a sold-out three-day grand opening weekend by Grammy Award winner Ryan Tedder and his globally recognized band, One Republic. We ended the season in September, having hosted 17 incredible shows featuring internationally renowned performers like Steve Miller Band, Robert Plant, Alison Krauss, and Walker Hayes. We ended the season welcoming over 96,000 fans from over 5,500 zip codes from all 50 states and was recently nominated for Polestar Magazine's 2024 New Concert Venue of the Year, which recognizes venues that have made significant impacts in the live entertainment industry through exceptional design, operation, and audience experience. We believe 2025 is going to roar, and we are actively booking an exciting lineup with six shows already announced for the upcoming season. We are also set to unveil our highly anticipated $35 million dining and entertainment collection here in Colorado Springs in the spring of 2025. We're strategically developing the building to sit alongside the very eastern perimeter of the Ford Amphitheater. We designed this to be able to be used year-round and with many different experience options, restaurants, bars, owners clubs, and a vibrant social and private event space, all with floor-to-ceiling windows to showcase the unparalleled views of the Rocky Mountains. Outside of the Ford Amphitheater, We have 11 markets operating and or in various stages of development. Colorado Springs, Colorado and Gainesville, Georgia are operating. And we are in the construction phase in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, the Tulsa market, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, El Paso, Texas, and our largest in our collection so far announced in McKinney, Texas, the Dallas-Fort Worth market. Further, there are five additional markets in the pre-construction stage. setting the stage for continued growth. We believe that these initial markets are projected to add over $2 billion in real estate assets to our balance sheet and will bring our seating capacity and inventory to an anticipated 150,000 seats. When they are fully developed, the complexes in the collection will host up to 60 shows a year, which calculates gross saleable seating at approximately 10 million tickets per year. With an expected average gross sale price of $150, Venue's annual gross receipts could be in excess of $1.5 billion per year. In the past few months, we also made notable announcements. In the spring and early summer, we proudly announced two new public-private partnerships, one in McKinney, Texas, and the other in El Paso, Texas. These collaborations join our existing partnerships in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, making three significant private partnerships for venues. These strategic alliances play a vital role in our site selection and expansion efforts, and we are honored to work alongside these great communities. This October, we announced Kaiser Permanente's exclusive partnership at Ford Amphitheater in Colorado Springs, and we held an official ground ceremony in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Of course, in August, then you open the Ford Amphitheater in Colorado Springs. In November, we rebranded our mid-sized music hall here in Colorado Springs after a new naming rights sponsorship was announced with Phil Long Ford Dealerships, one of Colorado's largest auto dealerships. Also in November, as mentioned previously, our Ford Amphitheater was nominated for Polestar's 2024 New Concert Venue of the Year. In December, we announced our strategic partnership with Dallas Cowboy three-time Super Bowl champion and founder of Eight Elite Live Larger, Troy Aikman. Our partnership with Troy Aikman makes Eight Beer the powerhouse partner for all of our Texas and Oklahoma venues, along with making Troy the namesake of our membership-based owners clubs, in both Texas and Oklahoma. We are branding these exclusive suites the Aikman Club. Finally, I am honored to have accepted a seat on AIT's Advisory Board of Directors. In addition to these exciting developments, we are very fortunate that just a few weeks ago in December, we announced two additional employees. The first, our new president, Will Hodgson, who we will hear from shortly. and our powerhouse chief marketing officer, Terry Leibler. And finally, in December, we believe in giving back to the communities that support us, so we announced our official nonprofit organization, Venue Arts and Culture Foundation, dedicated to nurturing talent, creating shared experiences that will unite communities together and championing our initiatives. Now with that, I will turn it over to Will Hodgson, our president, Please go ahead, Will.