WWE Annual Stockholder's Meeting 2011
Posted by David Damage on Saturday, April 30, 2011
Under: Interviews
WWE
held their annual stockholder's meeting in Stamford.
Highlights from the company's presentation: WWE introduced all of the
executives that were present for the meeting, including Vince McMahon,
Stephanie McMahon, Kevin Dunn, Basil Devito, Triple H , George Barrios
and Michelle Wilson, among others. Triple H was introduced as the
"Senior Advisor to the Chairman's Office"
WWE's Chief Marketing Officer, Michelle Wilson, explained the company's vision for the "New WWE."
Wilson
said that the company's management team got together towards the end of
the year to look at ways to challenge themselves and find new
opportunities. The changes are about fixing and growing their core
business. They also wanted to find new business opportunities to grow
WWE into being more than a "wrestling organization".
She noted
they company will be known as WWE going forward. She said they will
never take their eye off the ball of wrestling but they position
themselves as KFC or Apple, branding themselves beyond their core
product while also building the company in new ways.
Michelle
explained they were going to develop a new talent development process
and they were re-focusing on developing talent with Triple H going
forward.
Wilson discussed the debut of WWE's Tough Enough, saying
it's bringing 3 million viewers to the company outside of their core
product and they are going to continue to create new programming outside
of their normal base.
Wilson discussed their licensees, noting
Mattel (toys), THQ (videogames) and they will continue to innovate on
those levels. Wilson noted their new partners, including K-Mart, who are
investing in their television product, live events and advertising
within their own stores. M&M Mars has returned as a sponsor as well.
Wilson
said they are looking for new opportunities. "Content will remain
king." They will be using traditional means as well as new content
providers, noting Netflix, Google and Amazon looking for content. She
noted they will continue to seek out new ways to provide WWE programming
going forward.
The WWE Network was brought up next. She said
that the WWE Network was a natural evolution and they hope to launch in
12-18 months, "whether it be a traditional format or an alternative
format, as I just mentioned."
Wilson said they want opportunities
to use their core competencies, in production, licensing and marketing.
Wilson said they could go out and identify other companies who's
intellectual properties aren't being "leveraged and maximized" as much
as they could be. She said they could put them through the WWE model,
bringing more revenue to WWE.
Wilson also mentioned acquisitions
in the content front. She noted it could provide growth here in the
United States and internationally.
Wilson closed out with an
announcement that they are excited to announce that the preliminary buys
for Wrestlemania are up 30% domestically and they are "confident" they
will break the one million buys mark.
After the board handled
some internal business, Vince McMahon was introduced. McMahon joked that
they had rotten tomatoes in the back in case any stockholder wanted to
take aim at him for the dividend change and promised to stay at the end
to accommodate any upset holders.
McMahon said the reason for the
change was that they have a better way in returning shareholders'
values than just paying a dividend. He said they have a better way that
would be explained in terms of acquisitions and investing in themselves.
George
Barrios, the CFO of WWE, took over and explained that the new dividend
will pay stockholders .12 cents a quarter. Barrios said he wanted to
explain why the change was made. He said that the rationale was that
they wanted to size it to the company's cash flow. He said the new
dividend gives them the flexibility to invest in their future. He said
that they want to make sure that the company can always support its own
solvency in the long-term after the recent economic upheaval everyone
has gone through. They want to make sure the company is always liquid.
He noted they need to continue to invest and grow the company's core
business. He said that they need to support their internal projects,
such as digitizing their library, which is almost completed. He said
they want to come up with ways to leverage the scale of their company,
whether its live event, home video or new ways of creating content. He
said they all this will allow them to return capital to shareholders.
Vince asked Barrios to take questions on the changes.
It
was noted that Wall Street is worried about WWE's guidance going
forward and asked for a prediction going forward. They declined to
discuss future earning projections and said everyone in involved in a
very low period. Barrios noted that there is a land grab for content
with all the new platforms going on and right now, they are in a great
place as a content owner that has a lot of content and 100% ownership of
that content.
A stockholder asked about changed in the Board
over the last year. Barrios said that the company always has changes to
do the best it can and others make personal decisions. Barrios declined
to comment on others' decision.
A stockholder asked about the
company's balance sheet. Barrios said that the sheet is good and they
have no debt right now. He went for awhile about the company's
financials.
A stockholder praised them for cutting the dividend given the environment in the world today.
It
was noted the company paid $36 million in taxes last year and asked why
they still feel the need to be a public company since they could easily
buy out the minor shareholders. Barrios quoted Vince and said that The
Board thinks about its capitol structure a lot. Vince however likes the
halo effect and the discipline that being a public company brings to the
company and that it brings good management to the company. He said that
Vince also likes being involved in the capitol and equity markets.
A stockholder suggested studying "ancient versions of wrestling such as Japanese and Greco-Roman" styles to improve the company.
A
stockholder asked about the new business model for WWE. Barrios said
Michelle Wilson would discuss it in detail but they want to grow the
company.
The WWE Studios division was brought up. The stockholder
asked whether the company was sticking to budget to prevent them from
losing money as they had on some of the older projects. They are trying
to spend a net $5 million on each project. Barrios said that as they've
moved their Studios model from a license model where they partner with
others and recorded WWE revenue after the partners made their money, now
they everything comes on their books as a self-distributed model. They
will tend to have a loss on release because the remaining revenue comes
later (DVD, etc.) so the financials will be tough to read as they
continue to convert to the new model. They are managing the Studio to
deliver them more than they spent on the projects.
Barrios was
asked if there was any talk of spinning off some of the lesser sections
of the company. Barrios said they want to grow for the long term. You
will invest in some areas and not invest in others at time. They want to
do what they can to grow the business.
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