Cts Eventim Ag Adr

Good evening to everybody, and good morning to our participants from the United States. Welcome to CDS Eventim's earnings call for the first quarter of 2026. Thank you very much for joining, and I sincerely hope that you can understand me well. I'm Roland Wilms, as mentioned, Chief Financial Officer of CDS Eventim, and I'm delighted to take you through our first quarter results today. On my side is Marco Heckermann, our Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Development and Strategy. Hello, everyone. Before we dive into the details, please allow me a brief word on the structure of the call. As usual, today we will focus exclusively on our Q1 2026 financial results and performance. I will walk you through the headline numbers, segment results, and certain P&L drivers. And at the end of the presentation, we will be happy to open the floor for your questions. Let me start with the headline KPIs for Q1 2026. In summary, we keep on growing. Group revenue came in at Euro 630 million, up 23% versus Q1 2025. This reflects a robust start into the year. Adjusted EBITDA grew by 18.5% to Euro 119 million. And our EBIT grew by 23.7%, benefiting from the operational leverage of our platform. On retail ticket volume, we recorded 39 million tickets broadly on prior year level. The slight decline reflects an effect on our business, and I will dive into this later in more detail. GTV grew by 3.3% on a last 12-month basis, reflecting continued platform scale. And EPS for the quarter stood at Euro 0.66, up 0.18 versus Q1 2025. Again, a positive development. The first quarter of 2026 demonstrates that we are continuing our course of profitable growth. And the start of 2026 is worth mentioning, was within our expectations. The next slide shows the historical Q1 trend with consistent and compounding growth over the past years. As already mentioned, group revenue grew by 23% to €630 million this quarter, a steady per quarter growth since 2023. Also, adjusted EBITDA grew from 100 to 190 million, representing, as mentioned before, a growth by 18.5%. Again, there is a steady and robust growth trajectory since 2023. In Q1 2026, the adjusted EBITDA margin comes out at 19.4%, compared to 21% in Q1 2025. Please note that this does not represent a structural deterioration of our margin. but is solely a weighted mix effect of the two segments. Live entertainment accounts for a larger share of the group's revenue compared to the previous year, and live entertainment margins are structurally lower than ticketing. On EBIT, the outperformance in Q1, 2026, where this prior year is also notable, this operational achievement reflects the quality of our earning space. Let's have a closer look into our ticketing business. In Q1 2026, the ticketing business continued its growth trajectory, delivering revenue above prior year. As reported in our last earnings call, we had a structural change in one of our partner business contracts, becoming a partnership based on retail ticket allotment. This was our contract with Stage Entertainment. Taking this effect into consideration, ticketing came out on a like-for-like basis in Q1 2026 at about plus 6%. Adjusted EBITDA in Q1 2026 was slightly above prior year. The adjusted EBITDA margin roughly on previous level. Both EBITDA and EBITDA margin are in line with our internal expectations. As we started with our operational excellence program, Q1 was about building capabilities and talent, which we consider an important first step. Although this temporarily leads to higher costs now, this will be compensated by future efficiency gains. Like-for-like EBITDA in Q1 2026 has outgrown the reported EBITDA performance of just plus 1% and develops in line with the above-mentioned like-for-like revenue growth. To sum up, ticketing remains our high-quality earning stream, and Q1 reaffirms its resilience. Reacher ticket volume. On retail ticket volumes, Q1 2026 delivered 39 million tickets compared to 40 million tickets in Q1 2025. A modest decline. This is mainly attributed to the structural change in our partner business in Q1 2026 as explained before. Two-thirds of the ticket volume are generated outside Germany. A significant milestone reflecting the successful internationalization of our platform and reflecting our mode in Europe. Putting everything together, the volume softness in Q1 2026 is due to the explained one-time effect and not a demand signal and especially not the result of increased competition. Turning to our live entertainment segment. Live Entertainment delivered a strong performance in the first quarter. Strong, but within the expected range. Revenues went up to €404 million compared to €292 million last year. An increase of well over 30% and surpassing prior years as shown in the chart. Adjusted EBITDA came out strong too. Euro 29 million compared to Euro 12 million in Q1 2025. The margin expanded to 7.2%. This improvement in our live entertainment business reflects two factors. First, a strong portfolio of shows in Germany and the United States. And second, a growing contribution from our venue business to be detailed on the next slide. Let's now dive into our venue business as an integral part of our flywheel strategy. Venue management maintains an important and high-quality earnings stream. With revenues at Euro 40 million and an adjusted EBITDA of Euro 18 million, Margins creep structurally stable and are very much comparable to the margins we generate in our ticketing segment. Worth mentioning in this context is the following. After hosting the Olympic ice hockey tournament in February with about 400,000 visitors, the Unipol Dome in Milan opened for music concerts in May this year. The Milan Arena contributes therefore already to the operational results and is a meaningful addition to our high margin venue portfolio. Last but not least, let me walk you through the P&L bridge for Q1 2026. In addition to the adjusted EBITDA of €119 million, which I have already explained in detail, we were able to report a positive financial result of approximately Euro 9 million. The change of around 13 million compared to the previous year is primarily attributable to favorable exchange rates effects. Taking all this together, the EU APS amounts to Euro 0.66, showing an increase of Euro 0.18 per share versus last year. Again, this reflects the combination of both operational momentum and an improved financial result. To sum up and what to take away from today's call are the three following things. First quarter of 2026 is in line with our expectations and we remain positive for the remainder of the year. We have seen solid organic growth on group level, live entertainment, and ticketing on a like-for-like basis. And thirdly, the operational excellence program has started and marks the key for 2030 ambitions. That concludes our remarks for Q1 2026. I hope this has been insightful for you.

many thanks for attention operator let's jump into the q a please open the line now thank you very much and with pleasure the questions are already coming the first one is from edward vivian rothschild and co please over to you um hi william hi marco thanks for taking my questions um i have two if that's all right um so first

I just want to come back to something I asked for your results. So two of the most common pushbacks we tend to hear from investors on this stock are one, AI disintermediation risk, and two, intensifying competition from your main US competitor in Europe. So could you maybe walk us through how you're positioned on both of those and how you'd want investors to think about them? And then my second question was just on mobile ticketing. It's been discussed in the past as a pretty attractive margin leaver for the ticketing business, but maybe you could give us an update on where the strategy and rollout sit today. Thanks.