Conference Transcript - LYV 2026-09-09

Joe Berchtold, CFO

You don't have to go that far, but given that this case involves some fairly novel interpretations of antitrust law, then it might be one that could be a reasonable candidate.

Speaker 2

Last question, Joe, just on capital allocation and potentially returns. You mentioned great underlying growth in the business. It seems like the commitment in capital towards Venue Nation is starting to plateau. Could you maybe just talk a little bit about the balance sheet, where you're comfortable with leverage, and if there is excess capital, perhaps opportunities to either continue to invest or return.

Joe Berchtold, CFO

I think in the next handful of years, there's plenty of opportunities to continue to invest. And we also have the uncertainty associated with the trial. So I don't think we're going to rush to do anything that's going to reduce our flexibility at a time that we have a lot of opportunities to deploy the capital. Comfortable with our debt leverage, we've created, with some of your colleagues, a pretty novel instrument on venue financing that allows us to pool our venue assets at a bit higher leverage and with a lower rate because of the pooling of those assets. So I think the way I think about our balance sheet in my mind is a little bit bifurcated as we sort of have this synthetic venue structure and then a typical capital structure with the rest of the business. So I think our leverage may fluctuate a bit is if we grow our venue business, you may actually get a bit higher leverage. But because a lot of it is in that separate vehicle, you have to kind of go a level down, I think, now, looking at our leverage and not just do it at a top level. But I think I feel very comfortable with our liquidity and our ability to keep investing.

Speaker 2

That's great, Joe. We'll have to leave it there. Thank you for your time and thoughts today.