Liberty Media Corporation

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Liberty Media Corporation 2021 Q3 earnings call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question and answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press star 1 on your telephone. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded November 4th I would now like to turn the conference over to Courtney Chun, Chief Portfolio Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. Before we begin, we'd like to remind everyone that this call includes certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual events or results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those mentioned in Liberty Media's most recent forms, 10-K and 10-Q. or Liberty Media Acquisitions Form S-1 registration statement filed with the SEC. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this call, and Liberty Media and Liberty Media Acquisition expressly disclaim any obligation or undertaking to disseminate any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statement contained herein to reflect any change in Liberty Media or Liberty Media Acquisition Corporation's expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions, or circumstances on which any such statement is based. On today's call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures for Liberty Media and SiriusXM, including adjusted OIDDA and adjusted EBITDA. The required definitions and reconciliations for Liberty Media and SiriusXM Schedules 1 and 2 can be found at the end of the earnings press release issued today, which is available on Liberty Media's website. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Greg Maffei, Liberty's President and CEO.

Thank you, Courtney, and good morning to all of you. Today, speaking on the call, we will also have Formula One's President and CEO, Stefano Domenicale, and Liberty's Chief Accounting and Principal Financial Officer, Brian Wendling. This quarter, no surprise, we're going to start with the Braves. World champions for the first time since 1995. As Hank Aaron said, in playing ball and in life, a person occasionally gets the opportunity to do something great. When the time comes, only two things matter, being prepared to seize the moment and be having the courage to take your best swing. Clearly the Braves did that, and I want to thank Ted Turner for reminding us of that quote. So congrats to our tremendous players for their performance, to Braves lifer Sniff, for whom all the players have such well-deserved admiration, to Alex Anthopoulos with his excellent midseason trades, and to the rest of our top-quality Braves management team, Terry, Mike, and Derek, and to all of Braves country, most of all. This was an excellent team effort, particularly in game six in Houston, starting with Soler's ginormous 500-ish three-run homer in the third that cleared the train tracks, and Max Freed pitching lights out despite getting spiked in the first inning. It was an amazing comeback since the All-Star break when we were 44 and 45, and the team wisely invested in talent at that trade deadline, which helped turn the season around and also generated a great financial performance. As I said, the financial performance of the team was as impressive as the on-field performance. The season-to-date baseball revenue per home game is up 11% compared to 2019, and retail per caps are up 33% versus 2019. The Braves ended the season number two in Major League Baseball and regular attendance at 2.3 million. This is close to our historical average of 2.4, despite only reaching 100% capacity in May. With our on-field success, we've already sold thousands of new season ticket plans for the 2022 season. The battery was booming throughout the playoffs, and we estimate crowds were well in excess of 100,000 for each of our World Series games. Very exciting. So let me turn now to Liberty SiriusXM. This morning, we also had some good news, going over 80% at SiriusXM through a tax-free exchange, and we now expect it to be an ATB. Accordingly, all future distributions from Surrey will be tax-free. We did continue our share repurchases, repurchasing $98 million across the As and the Ks from August through September, excuse me, through October. The discount remains, and we repurchased at a look-through price on Surrey of just over $4.00. we continue to take advantage of that discount. We also sold our entire IHAR stake at an average price of $25.31 per share for after-tax proceeds $175 million, the majority of which we sold after quarter end in October. This was well-timed, and we sold the stock for a 40% pre-tax gain. This investment was intended to take an option in adjacent business, but we like the hand we have at Siri and now have additional cash to fuel incremental buybacks. Looking at Siri itself, strong results for the quarter, $616,000 in self-paying net ads, the highest quarterly figure ever recorded. We attained our full year guidance in nine months. We also reported for the quarter the highest revenue in EBITDA ever. We have a continued focus on growing engagement outside the vehicle. Perhaps you saw our very entertaining SiriusXM house ad campaign, and we have been driving impressive growth on the advertising platform with revenue up 31%. We are back to producing live content and experiences with our small stage series, and we hosted Dave Matthews, Brandi Carlile, Coldplay, and John Mulaney. Further on content, we completed an investment in a content agreement with Audio Up, which will create new original scripted podcasts for the Siri platforms. Turning briefly to Live Nation, I noted reports later today, so I really can't comment on the results other than to say demand has endured and is now being met with supply, and we are pleased with the equity performance up 43% year to date. Turning to Formula One Group, a thrilling season continues. The lead for the Drivers' Championship has gone back and forth between Max and Lewis. Among the rest of the drivers, there is tight competition across the grid. And in the Constructors' Championship, Mercedes and Red Bull are fighting for first with McLaren and Ferrari in a tight battle for third. Fans are attending and tuning in. We have never seen such a crowd in Austin, for example, which set an F1 attendance record over the race weekend. Of the 400,000 people that showed up in Austin, almost 70% were attending their first Grand Prix. Usually, this figure is more like in the mid-30s. As Stefano will discuss in a moment, recently released results of F1 fan survey and our demographic is skewing younger, something fewer sports can claim. We are already looking towards 2022 and have announced a 23 race calendar. We are excited to have our second race in the U.S. and welcome the Miami GP in May. Demand is high. 275,000 people pre-registered to purchase tickets as compared to a planned capacity of around 80,000. 1,800 people have placed a $5,000 deposit for luxury hospitality. Paddock Club and Suites sold out the available inventory the first day. We've also sold through the available grandstand tickets in the first day. Turning briefly to LMAC, we continue to review opportunities. We believe the changes in the SPAC market will ultimately be to Liberty's benefit. And with that, I'd like to turn it over to Brian for more on our financial results.