All right, I think we're gonna get started. Yes. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Morgan Stanley's TMT conference. I'm Ben Swinburne. Quick disclosure. For important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley Research Disclosure website at morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales rep. I'm really excited to welcome, help kick us off here, day one, slot one, President and COO of TKO Holdings, Mark Shapiro. Mark, thanks for being here. Always. Good to see you, Ben. Last few days, I didn't know if I was gonna walk in and get Sean or not. Soon to come. Soon to come. Soon to come. Last week you reported your fourth quarter results. You provided 2026 guidance to the market. Yeah. Maybe just to level set, you know, the audience here, talk about the outlook for this year and kind of the strategic priorities for the company as you look ahead. Look, I think that we are, barring everything else, we're a high-quality execution story, as we talked about on the earnings call, with really multiple avenues and levers of outperformance. I think, you know, it starts with media rights. 'Cause our first couple years being public here was what's gonna happen with WWE renewal? What's gonna happen with UFC renewals? Are you gonna split it up? How many platforms? I mean, I would tell you that was probably the most popular question of any interview we did. You know, we came out of the shoot, and we've done an aggregate of $15 billion of media deals across all of our properties over the next five to seven years. It's strong visibility, recurring, contractual, and easy to model when you have that as driving the entire ship. You've got our partnerships, right? Which we've recently said we had a guide out there, or I should say a target really, that was $1 billion by 2030, and now we've raised that to $1.2 billion. Again, mostly contractual, recurring, high visibility, high margin. On the live event side, despite what's going on in the world, and I'm sure we'll talk about that, you know, we're seeing just big pickup for our events, right? The experience economy is alive, and kicking, and we have elasticity on pricing, especially at the WWE, which has been a good story for us. We've announced a real target for our financial incentive packages, which are fees that are paid to us from local governments and municipalities to bring our show to town. Sometimes hard cash, sometimes value in kind, sometimes just subsidies. We've put a target out there of about $380 million-$420 million by 2030. At the same time, keep in mind on a run rate right now, we're at $240 million. Yeah. Take away some of the one-timers, we're at $240. $240 to $380 is going to be a good story for us. I think you flip over to some of the smaller businesses that certainly round out the wheel, and sort of our platform strategy, but, you know, aren't as high margin. You've got On Location, where Milan, you know, I was there for the better part of the Olympics. Just a sensational story, I think, for sports overall, for culture, for the world, a nice peaceful time for a couple of weeks, which is the way it's supposed to be. Milan was a big winner. L.A. 28, you know, I had a meeting with Casey Wasserman last week. They've got $7 million pre-sale signups for the Olympics. Not tickets that have been bought, just folks saying, "Put me in line to buy tickets." That's triple what we had for Paris. Wow. That's going to be a really strong story. IMG, of course, is in the media rights business. There's nothing bigger, more popular, more in demand than sports rights, and that's their business. That's very strong and robust. Then, of course, on the new growth side, we're going to build boxing into a version of what the UFC is, and get out the corruption, get out the confusion, and make sure the best fighters are fighting the best fighters and being paid as they should to fight the best fighters. Then, you know, outside of that, we've got the White House event. I think in totality, in summary, you've got a story here three ways. You've got high quality execution. We're laser focused on that. You've got new events, new growth, new initiatives like boxing, and we'll talk about that. Of course, you've got our capital return program, which we're really proud of because we're way ahead of schedule on that, and we've been very clear with our investor base that returning cash to shareholders is a priority. That's a great setup. We'll talk about all those businesses. One thing I wanted to ask you about, Mark, I think you bought the UFC what? Maybe a decade ago, something like that on the Endeavor side. WWE couple years ago. We've watched you guys run these businesses, and even relative to the forecast, I think that you guys laid out, WWE is ahead of plan. Question is there like a sort of a reusable playbook in the Endeavor TKO management team, and that maybe allows you guys to do this across multiple Premium Live Event assets as you think about allocating capital and deploying the management team in the future? Yeah, that's a very insightful question. I would say, first of all, it starts with having best-in-class operators. You know, I started my career at ESPN, so I've been kinda knee-deep and steeped in sports for decades now, I hate to admit. We have a good feel, a good grasp with best-in-class operators, and we really spare no expense in getting them on our team. Mm. Those that aren't performing are quickly off the team. We're running, you know, a mile a minute here. These are properties that are year-round across the board, right? UFC is year-round, WWE is year-round, PBR is year-round, and then IMG is selling sports rights year-round. On Location has an event year-round. I mean, there's no Christmas holiday when it comes to TKO. We need best-in-class operators that are strong, insightful, intelligent killers, if you will, and really just workaholics. I hate to say it, but we do promote work-life balance. Of course. Yeah. That's hard to do. Everyone who knows you knows that. Yeah. That's how you get to 40% margins, by the way. Is you work really hard. I would say what we look for is we do look for properties that are year-round. It starts there. Strong, high quality IP that we can leverage, that's scalable, that's global. We look for businesses that give us a lot of operating leverage. Very, very important. You add all that up, and it's just a rinse and repeat cycle. That's how we play it out. Those are hard to find, right? You know, they're not. You know, some of these bigger leagues, some of the majors that we compete with, Major League Baseball and the NBA and NFL, they're not for sale. Teams are for sale, but not leagues. If you can identify one of them and you see the upside of kind of putting it into our machine, you pounce. Yeah. All right. Last big picture question. The number one focus in the space has been the Warner Bros. Discovery process now for some time. It appears to be at least coming to an end from an agreement perspective with Paramount announcing and discussing their acquisition this morning. From a TKO point of view, obviously, you have a new relationship with Paramount in a number of markets, but how would you... When you look at this combination, assuming it goes through, what does it mean, if anything, for your business? Super upside, frankly. By the way, I would have listed several pros had Netflix in the winter here. As you said, it has not yet closed. I very much enjoyed their conversation this morning because what did it tell you more than anything else? They're going to take HBO, and they're going to take Peacock Plus, and they're going to merge them into one strong competitive platform. That's only good for us. That's where it starts for me. When I look at the whole WBD portfolio, there are two brands that are steeped in sports tradition and have been appointment. Mm-hmm ... for many sports fans, and that's TNT, CBS as well, but TNT and HBO. Sure ...especially in the boxing space. Yeah. Now their portfolio of sports is second to none. I mean, I would say that it rivals ESPN, if not is better than ESPN. They got strong brands, they've got strong reach, strong engagement, a big sub base. CBS still as a, you know, a bellwether, a megaphone to grow sports, and grow audience, and that will help us certainly, starting with UFC, but potentially soon to be boxing. They know how to work with great IP. We have great relationship with them. We came out of the gate very, very strong. Seven million viewers for our first event. This Saturday will be the first time that we have CBS simulcasting a couple of hours of our UFC fight, which will bode well for new signups in terms of subscribers for Paramount+. We're really, really excited. David Berson runs CBS Sports. He came from ESPN. I worked with him quite closely for many years. Like, he gets it. He knows how to build sports, he knows how to promote sports. They clearly have shown they know how to market sports with those commercials they were running around the clock, tying in, right, the movie movie clips and scenes along with the UFC. We're in a great position. Our, our house just got bigger. Let's talk more about the UFC, and let's start with the CBS, Paramount relationship. When the deal was announced, there was some discussion. Yeah ... you know, clearly Paramount+ benefits from UFC content, and if it's exclusive, it really benefits. You guys benefit on the CBS side from all the reach. Now that you're into it, sort of how do we think about that balance between maximizing reach on CBS, which with what I'm sure Paramount's goals are, which is to grow Paramount+? Look, they're paying us a hefty rights fee, so they're going to do what's best for their platform. To their credit, they do it in concert with us. Open conversations, not weekly meetings, daily meetings across each of the business verticals, and I mean content, but then also we're both out there selling ads- Mm-hmm ... and experiential and activation and social, we're marketing together. We have to work hand in glove, I think David sets the tone at the top, that's how they're working across the board. Like, they got the message, they've made us a major priority, we're always going to be a priority just by the sheer fact of how much they're paying to have UFC on the platform. They've been a super collaborator, terrific communicator. It's not any kind of attitude or not invented here or you don't understand our business. Like, UFC is new to them, so they're, you know, they're learning. Combat sports are largely new to them. They're learning, they're asking questions, we're finding the best ways to work together. As I mentioned, our first event was huge for them for signups, I believe also strong for retention. On top of that, keep in mind, whatever was reported in terms of their new subs is not even close to what they ultimately had in terms of new subscribers, because you had UFC fans signing up for Paramount+ weeks in advance from that fight. It wasn't just about that night. Mm. I think we're bringing new eyeballs to their platform. They mentioned that their programming has been sort of symbiotic with UFC fans. They're finding a lot of UFC fans watching Landman, driving viewership there and vice versa. I think we've really tapped into something, and it's only going to grow when you add HBO content, premium content like that onto the platform, and then you add all the other sports from TNT and TBS. I mean, really across the year from the Masters to NCAA Final Four and reunifying that, and of course, the NFL, we're sitting in a really enviable position. Is the White House event on CBS or Paramount Plus or TBD? TBD on that. I know Dana had mentioned he thought CBS might might have a role to play there. Look, I think from a news perspective, CBS should be there, right? This is a news event. This is a cultural event. This is going to be something, right? Right there on the South Lawn. We're still putting our fight card together, but the president is and has always been a huge UFC fan, and we're excited to be part of the 250th America celebration. You wanna touch on sort of the financial piece of that event since we're on that topic? We talked about that on our earnings call, you know, where we're sitting today is we'll roughly spend $60 million on the event. That is inclusive of the fees we pay to the fighters. We're not done there yet because the card's not done. I see that $60 probably inching forward. We expect today to capture 30, roughly half of the $60, in inventory packages that we're selling to corporate sponsors. We're, you know, we're doing that in full communication, obviously, with the White House. If we inch above the $60, the revenue will come up commensurately. We should be in a good position. By the way, whatever we lose, $30 million at this point on the event, are we really losing? Right. I mean, other properties would kill to have the opportunity we're going to have. We're grateful to the President for wanting to do this, and putting us front and center in the birthday celebration, if you will. This is going to be enormous in terms of attention, in terms of earned media, in terms of our fans being happy. The fight card is gonna be off the charts exceptional. Fight to fight, not leading up to the championship fight. Each fight will be all-star caliber. I would just say from a sampling perspective, given the promotion, and press and the attention we're going to get, the publicity, you're going to have so many viewers, content viewers, entertainment viewers, sports viewers that are just surfing and tuning in to see what this spectacle is all about. We are going to fully capitalize on the stage that is the White House, but we're not going to capitalize on America. We will not profit from this event no matter what. We will not be making money on this event or exploiting the birthday of our country in any way, shape, or form. It's going to be a massive celebration. Mark, earlier you mentioned, site fees, which I think you're now describing as financial incentive packages. Thank you. Yeah. Financial incentive packages. Right. FIPs created by my CFO, Andrew Schleimer, sitting right over there. Trademark. you know, this has been an area that, like, I mean, I think 5, 10 years ago didn't even really exist. I mean, there were some sports that were able to benefit. F1 was great. Yeah. F1 still is great. They sort of led the way. Can you talk a little bit what's happening among the customer base here, which I think are municipalities, venue operators, private-public partnerships? Like, why all of a sudden is this, maybe not all of a sudden, but you know, a rapidly growing multi-hundred million dollar opportunity that, you know, years ago was not even a thing? Look. What's happening in the business structurally? Yeah. I just think overall, right, I'm just a big believer in the experience economy, right? That events win out. Your time is... They're fighting for your time, right? Marketers are fighting for your time. Content's fighting for your time. Discretionary time around the weekends. It's just folks are looking for something to do, especially in this K-shaped economy, where you have, you know, those that are struggling with affordability, looking for something to do to occupy time, to share time, to share experiences, largely driven by youth that share content socially, that live and die by FOMO, and they wanna be a part of it. They wanna be mixed. They wanna feel it up and close. You know? The number one question that I got after spending a lot of time at the Olympics was, "Were you at the gold medal game?" The men's gold medal game, right? Like, you wanna be there. It's something special, it's something unique, it's often dynamic, and you just can't replace it. It's not just sports. Sports leads the way, but music, food festivals, fashion shows, book fairs. I mean, you could go on and on. People, we're social animals, right? We want those community, those communal events, and we are profiting and prospering from that and serving it, you know, in a fully enriched way. Yeah. I don't think that's going away anytime soon, right? For the by and large, it's a good bang for your buck. We're excited to be front and center. We're constantly looking, to your point earlier, for those properties that would fit right into our platform strategy of supersizing content experiences for the consumer, all walks of life, right? You're not necessarily going to be able to get a ticket to the White House event, but you can certainly see the UFC, you know, in any city weekend after weekend, or the WWE several times a week. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe the last question. I wanna tie the UFC to your margin guidance. You gave margin guidance for 2026 last week. One of the big focus areas, as you know, has been fighter pay, and sort of how much you guys think you'll be investing back into particularly talent with all these big media rights step-ups. Maybe now that you're into 2026, and you're starting to look at the year and you've got a budget, can you talk a little bit about how you thought about investing in fighter talent, et cetera, with the margin expansion? Yeah. I would start picking up a little bit before you left off on the Financial Incentive Packages, right? Given all this demand for these events and every city/country. Yeah ... wants events that are gonna bring massive audiences, they're willing to pay. Pay doesn't just mean cash, you know, write me the biggest check. You know, we make a decision on where we're going to go based on, yes, what the Financial Incentive Package might be, and it might be no cash, it might be value in kind. We also are trying to serve our thirsty fans that wanna taste, that wanna touch our properties. Really important to us because it's not just about the check. We have to grow the brand. We have to expand our audience. As it relates to fighter pay or superstar pay on the WWE side, you know, our margins last year were on adjusted EBITDA, you know, 33.5%. We've announced at the midpoint of our guidance, we're going to be, you know, roughly 39.6%, so 40%. That margin is inclusive of increase in fighter, and superstar pay. We take that very seriously. Right out of the gate after our CBS Paramount deal, Dana White doubled the performance bonuses for fighters, and we're talking 8-figure. One by one, we'll be looking at this, and we are focused on really all the ingredients that make our events as great as they are, and that starts with fighters and superstars. Whatever increases we have, and we will add increases, they are inclusive of the margin guidance we have targeted. Let's talk about WWE. Moving from Peacock to ESPN on the premium live events front in the U.S., how is that relationship evolving? What does ESPN do for WWE? Maybe you can fold in, Mark, their new unlimited tier and how you think that might impact- Yeah ... if at all, WWE's reach and popularity. It definitely impacts us. I will tell you this. Just think of it this way. When the WWE first went to Peacock, the same questions were asked. Are you worried about it disappearing? Are you worried about their subs? Their sub base was a lot less than it is today. Are you worried you'll get lost? Are you worried people have a hard time finding you? Are you worried they'll take up the sub price too high so the cost of entry will be prohibitive? Peacock ended up being a total success long term, and we play the long game for WWE, and that's what we're doing here with ESPN. It's kinda like starting over. You know, I'll remind you, when we took the UFC to ESPN+, ESPN+ was in 3 million homes. That's it. By the time we were done, it was in 25 million homes, and we were proud to play a part in that growth. It's the same thing here. ESPN Unlimited is a phenomenal package. It really is. It's, it's worth every penny, if you're, if you're a sports fan. If you're watching ESPN, you are some level of a sports fan, if not a diehard sports fan. We've, we've got some work to do here. Look, things will immediately get better once they strike their deal with Comcast, YouTube, and Dish, specifically those three, that allows viewers to authenticate. I'm at home, I have DirecTV, as an example, and because I have DiIRECTV, I authenticate on ESPN Unlimited. It's a very easy process, and it costs me zero, bupkis to get ESPN Unlimited. If you don't have ESPN or excuse me, DIRECTV or you have Comcast and ESPN hasn't closed out their deal yet, well, then you have to pay $29.99. That is, I believe, somewhat prohibitive, especially in today's economy and the struggles that certainly middle income and low income earners are having with affordability. They have to get those deals done. Until they do, that will affect our audience. I believe they're going to get them done. Jimmy Pitaro has promised us they're on the heels of getting them done. When they do, ESPN Unlimited will be the same appointment viewership destination that it is today on the mothership. We're excited about that ultimately getting done. I should tell you this, very important here, Ben. We had a massive event in Chicago this weekend, Elimination Chamber, one of our big premium live events, PLEs as we call it. We saw a significant increase in audience from the first event we did last year with ESPN, which was WrestlePalooza. They're already making strides. Are they where Netflix was last year? Not yet. Are they where Peacock was after all those years? Not yet. Inching closer, and I was optimistic. I am optimistic, and I was super encouraged by the numbers that Nick Khan was sending me by the hour this past weekend. Nice. you mentioned- Nick Khan, of course, is the President. Yes ... WWE. You mentioned partnership revenues before and your long-term ambitions. When you bought WWE, that was not a big business for them, and you ramped that quickly. What's the opportunity still ahead for that property? How do you think about going to market combined versus sort of selling standalone inventory? I would say, first off, unless it's a new category for the WWE, meaning UFC already has the category and WWE doesn't, then we might just go in with WWE or Professional Bull Riders. If it's a category where it's not taken yet, we always go in with the triple. Always. It's no different really than my days at ESPN. If you wanna buy SportsCenter, which everyone wants to buy, you have to buy outdoor programming on Saturday mornings. Fishing. Because otherwise we'd have a tough time selling, fishing and hunting. That package, you know, serves as leverage, and proved to be a successful equation and model. That's really what we do here. We go in with a boatload of value for a certain advertiser or marketer that ties to all three properties, that keeps them going year-round with disparate and endemic audiences, and hopefully run the table in a way that creates value for our partner, and at the same time helps our growth on the partnerships front from a dollar perspective. Once again, straddles the fence of growing the brand, marketing. Some of these deals, I mean, they are chock-full of marketing opportunities in aisles or grocery stores or institutional inventory or just simple marketing materials that many of these brands send out to their consumers on a daily basis digitally and socially. We wanna be tied to that. We need to grow our audience, and we still need more sampling across each of our sports. Some of our sports, of course, are nascent sports, so that's really important to us. I think on this front, you know, there's still more categories we can sell, and we're also benefiting from the fact that some of these deals are lapsing, and we're renewing them for higher prices, but also that gives us an opportunity to bring in one of the other properties. If it's a UFC category that they've had for years, but the deal is up, in the renewal, we'll bring WWE into it. Some fit, some don't. To your point, there's a great deal of upside on the WWE and the PBR front, and we have put out a target, as I said, that will by 2030, this will be a $1.2 billion bucket for us. High margin. Yep. Yep. Okay. I wanna make sure we touch on a couple other things before we run out of time. On Location, part of the Endeavor portfolio brought into TKO last year. Can you talk a little bit... I don't know if you have the numbers yet, but Milan's performance versus plan, and anything you learned now that you've had Paris, Milan, going into L.A. on the Olympic front, just to make sure you maximize that opportunity as well. With 7 minutes and 45 seconds, I could never tell you all that we've learned. Both Paris and Milan have been massive learning lessons leading up to what will be, what I believe, the greatest Olympics of a generation, and certainly in my lifetime. It's going to be just extraordinary. I'll remind you, this will be the last event, barring all rules and laws are obliged, that the president touches before he leaves office. This will very much be President Trump's Olympics, and he's been a phenomenal partner, if you will. We are leading up to it. Tons of learnings. Milan was, I would say, a little behind plan, not much, but a little behind plan, and that literally was driven only by the fact that unfortunately, the consumer couldn't be sure there were even going to be hockey games. I mean, we're talking about an arena that wasn't finished, what, 48, 72 hours beforehand. If you walked around the arena, like I did, you're in hallways where they don't even have carpeting in yet. I mean, they literally did what they needed to do to pass inspection, and then they put on glorious games. I'm just grateful they got it done, and that the water was running. We're selling suites, and 72 hours beforehand, there was no plumbing. This was tough. There was a lot of bad press on that and bad press on facilities not being ready ultimately is a sales prevention for selling tickets. By the way, once they finished, the news got out that basically everything was done, except for the gondolas that never did finish in terms of fans getting up the mountain to enjoy the event in a premium experience way, experiential way, our ticket sales went through the roof. I mean, those last few days were insane in terms of the packages we were selling. We almost got to our target. We were just off. Nonetheless, we will hit our guidance, which was $130 million of adjusted EBITDA between the two, Milan and the Los Angeles games. We're on target for that and excited about being able to focus on that once we finish the World Cup. Right. Right. Anything you wanna highlight on the World Cup other than the plumbing being ready to go? One of the learnings, I'll give you the biggest learning, is really tough to do international events. I mean, we'll do them here and there, but by and large, we would like On Location to stick with U.S. soil events. Mm-hmm. The World Cup is showing that we're ahead of plan. The demand has been insane, and they haven't even really started marketing it in a big way. We expect to stick and hit our guidance, which is $75 million of adjusted EBITDA on the World Cup. Okay. Let's talk boxing. This is, sort of, I guess, the next project for the company to sort of build something kinda from scratch with partners. What's the thesis here for putting capital work behind boxing? Look, I'm proud of this one, Ben, because after we finished the Paramount deal and the ESPN deal for WWE, we had a lot of questions from our investors. You've got great momentum, and now you're gonna execute. Like, where's the growth, you know, beyond that, right? It's never enough. That's how we all have to operate. What have you done for me lately? Right. Now we have something specifically to point to. Boxing is a massive opportunity. It's not like we have to go out and buy it. I mean, certainly we have to sign up fighters, and we have to pay fighters. This is ripe with opportunity. For years, confusion in the marketplace, fights that cost too much money from a pay-per-view perspective, knee-deep in corruption. Number one doesn't fight number two, champion doesn't fight number one ranked. Like, I'm surprised it's gone on for this long. Too many promoters, backroom deals. We are cleaning that up, and we are going to create a real league here where we can market the personalities. We can create the next Sugar Ray Leonard. Nobody better to do it than Dana White and Nick Khan, who know boxing backwards and forward and grew up fight fans before there was ever a WWE or a UFC. Of course, Lawrence Epstein, the president of UFC, plays a big role in there as well. We are ready for battle. We're signing some big stars, as evidenced by recently signing up Conor Benn to a big super fight, and we hope to get him exclusively in the Zuffa league, which is Zuffa Boxing, that's the name of the league. We'll cut media deals, and we'll cut partnership deals, and we'll get them into our financial incentive packages, and we'll have consumer products and licensing, and we'll take the show outside of the U.S. Even in the first year, we'll likely go to the U.K. for two fights. We're coming out gangbusters, guns a-blazing. This is a huge opportunity. If we can just build boxing in the next five years, 5-10 years, excuse me, into half of what the UFC is or WWE, you know, we're a growth story that you wanna jump into. Got it. Okay. Maybe in the time we have left, Mark, you guys announced buyback plans for the year. You have a ton of cash flow. You've got leverage, a leverage framework. Maybe you could just talk a little bit about how the company balances returning capital, de-levering the business, investing organically when you think about your capital allocation priorities. We're very comfortable with our leverage position, certainly can expand that, you know, depending on timing and desire. What I would say is just look at what we've done. I mean, it's all about putting your money where your mouth is. We launched a dividend in, what, Q1 of last year. We doubled it in Q3. Yeah. There's more work to do there. I would be excited to see us move the ball further on that front in the next 12 months. Not committing to anything, but would like to see it progress in that fashion. On the same token, we announced our intention to launch a share repurchase to the tune of $2 billion over the next three to four years in October 2024. We commenced that at the end of last year, leading into our earnings and got to approximately the first billion and then came right back on our earnings and announced we're moving on the second billion. We are committed. I mean, there's no other way to say it. We're not drunken sailors. We're not gonna go acquire and buy things for the sake of buying them. We're ruthless when it comes to costs and expenses and our margins. We want to be one of the best run businesses that an investor could ever find. We're gonna stick on that track. We have room and we expect to move on the $2 billion, if you will, that share repurchase fast. We will stay committed to this, whether it's share repurchases or dividends. We will stay committed to that over the next few years. Where does M&A fit or not fit in, Mark, into the capital allocation framework that you guys have? You talked a little bit about that last week. Look, there's a reason why we put a comment on M&A right at the top of Ari's prepared comments on our earnings call. We get this question often. We want to be prudent. We want to be responsible. We have a history at Endeavor of just buying a lot of stuff that I think made the story, the narrative, the model confusing to investors, and that's not going to happen here. We will always explore, we will always evaluate, but we will be prudent. If there's something that we can be opportunistic about, we will do such a thing. Right now i t's execute, high-quality execution, focus on the operations. It is boxing, new growth, and it is capital return. Great. Well, we are out of time. Mark, thanks so much for coming. Great to see you. Thank you so much and thanks to you.