Investors Chat: Instacart IPO

In this podcast, Motley Fool analyst Jason Moser and host Deidre Woollard discuss:

• How Instacart makes its money
• What it means to be a grocery technology company
• Whether a strong Instacart IPO would be a good sign for the market

Deirdre and Motley Fool analyst Alicia Alfiere break down how Live Nation profits from blockbuster tours.

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. To get started investing, check out our quick-start guide to investing in stocks. A full transcript follows the video.

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This video was recorded on Aug. 28, 2023

Deidre Woollard: Is Instacart the IPO (initial public offering) the market has been waiting for? Motley Fool Money starts now. Welcome to Motley Fool Money. I'm Deidre Woollard here with Jason Moser, and today, we're going to dive into Instacart's IPO. Hey Jason, how are you doing?

Jason Moser: Hey Deidre, just fine. How about you?

Deidre Woollard: I'm good. My first question for you is, are you an Instacart guy?

Jason Moser: I have to admit I am not. It's not that I am against Instacart or anything. I guess I am still just very much an in-person grocery shopper and old habits die hard. I could see myself jumping into that Instacart world at some point, though. It sure looks really convenient.

Deidre Woollard: That's interesting because in their S1 they said 12% of grocery shopping took place online last year. That's lower than other categories. Maybe there are a lot of people out there like you who are just not interested in doing this. Do you think that's true?

Jason Moser: Well, probably to an extent. We've said it before, changing consumer behavior is really difficult. This could be something that appeals and probably does to an extent. I look at my kids, for example, in sort of the mobile and convenience tools that they use and this might be something that would more easily integrated into their daily lives as they get older, raised with this being the norm. This is absolutely not the norm for most of us. We just didn't grow up this way, and you get stuck in your behaviors. One thing I've always said, Amazon really changed our value system, so to speak. What I mean by that is convenience is far more of a priority than it used to be because we have a choice. Now it's not all about just the lowest prices, it's also about convenience. We value our time differently, and so you'll be willing to pay for certain conveniences.

I think that grocery shopping isn't the most exciting thing in the world. It can be a time suck, and if you're like me, I tend to go to the grocery store every day or every other day. I don't stock up our kitchen with a week's worth of food, and that's just because I'm never really fully certain on what I'm going to make for dinner, and then I also just am not really a big fan of waste and I don't want that food sitting in there for long periods of time. But I think that this is a convenience that I think would resonate with consumers. But when you look in this S1, management even noted this. They said in the S1, this transformation will play out over decades. I think that is encouraging to see, that they are looking at it from that perspective, acknowledging the fact that listen, at 12%, sure there's going to be some growth opportunity there. But maybe this isn't necessarily the same as something like your electronics or whatever else that you might buy from Amazon just for convenience's sake.

Deidre Woollard: I think the other thing is that people are just more comfortable these days doing things virtually. We grew up shopping in the grocery store, but people today, they grew up seeing things online and expecting them, so I think that's part of it. The other part of it I think is that people are just now more comfortable with having a stranger do stuff for them. [laughs] This is another of the double-sided marketplaces. According to the S1, you've got about 7.7 million people, and they're ordering deliveries. You've got about 600,000 of the shoppers going to the stores and doing the picking. It seems a little bit to me like a DoorDash. I guess there's some controversy over which is the better gig, but is this an issue of how they manage both sides of this marketplace going forward?

Jason Moser: Yeah, the delivery side when it comes to food, delivery is a bit of a greater leap of faith. This isn't just pizzas we're talking about. In many cases, a lot of people like to go there and just choose from the quality of the produce or whatever it may be. I don't know that this is a job where people enter this line of work thinking this is what they want to do for the rest of their lives. This is probably a job for most that is more of a means to an end. Loyalty is probably not a strength unless they're paying for that loyalty. It sounds like it's going in the opposite direction. It sounds like Instacart trying to whittle down that cost structure a little bit. And so that's understandable. If you're an employee, you have two choices, and neither job is really what you love to do. If it's just a means to an end, you're typically going to go to the higher-paying job. It does boil down, unfortunately in many cases, just to dollars and cents. I think if you look at a company like this, there's not a high barrier to learning. I think it's probably a job where you can jump in there and learn it pretty quickly. Even if employee turnover is high, I don't think there are necessarily prohibitive costs that come with that turnover. Integrating new employees into that network and integrating new shoppers and others was probably fairly easy. I liken it maybe to the Uber drivers or whatnot. It's something where you're going to see some of that employee turnover, and that's just the nature of the gig.

Deidre Woollard: Maybe, I don't know because the way I'm thinking about it is, it's so easy to get it wrong. There's been all these memes with getting asked by an Instacart person for substitution for bananas and they came up with peppers or something like that. There is a little bit more, I think, of an art to it, maybe than DoorDash.

Jason Moser: I think that makes a lot of sense. There's some judgment that comes into play here, and there's going to be some people who are probably a little bit more thoughtful about what they're putting into these baskets for the shoppers. I absolutely can see that it is a job that does still require some thought and consideration because again, you're talking about groceries, and you're not ordering a pizza. Typically coming with a basket of 20, 30, or 40 different items, you want what you want, and if it's a consistently bad experience, if you're getting that order and it's not really the stuff that you want, well, then maybe you say, well, there's a reason why I didn't do this online grocery shopping thing, and that's why, and I'm just going to go back to doing it in person. Then, really, you may not ever get that consumer back. They may not ever really fully trust that process, and so that can be lost business.

Deidre Woollard: Yeah, absolutely. One of the other things I think is interesting about the S1 is that yes, the delivery part is a big part of the business, but another huge part of it is the ad platform. It's like 30% of the revenue and we've seen the importance of the ads. We've seen it with the streamers like Netflix or Disney+ but also with Amazon and Walmart, especially Walmart. Instacart has this big opportunity, and they've got that captive audience. They've got the grocery brands, they say they've got over 5,500 brands. This is an important part of the business, but it's super cyclical. We've seen that recently with other companies getting hurt by that cyclicality. How does that factor into how you think about Instacart?

Jason Moser: Well, I think it's a natural fit. I would be disappointed if they weren't pursuing the advertising opportunity because it feels like a very natural fit for a business like this, particularly when you think about how many brands they have on that platform and the brand relationships they have with companies like Campbell's and Nestle and Pepsi and whatnot. To me, they can even quantify it. In the S1, they know that on average their ads deliver more than a 15% incremental sales lift. In some cases, they say even twice that for brand partners like Campbell's and Pepsi and whatnot. To me, I think of a company and go back to Uber because I think this is very similar in that regard. Uber with a burgeoning ad business, I think it's a very natural fit for that platform as they become more things than just a company that gets you from point A to point B. I think the key for Instacart in regard to that cyclicality ultimately is just making the business not so fully dependent on it, and I think we're seeing signs again that they are trying to do more than just grocery delivery in advertising, which is encouraging.

Deidre Woollard: Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned Pepsi, part of the story here. They're in line. They want to purchase 175 million of the Series A preferred stock. Clearly, they believe in the business.

Jason Moser: Yeah, they are a brand partner, and that means they likely have some anecdotal evidence of the value of the platform and taking an ownership stake in the business could certainly help in a number of ways for them to learn more about their customers, what customers want, product placement, product needs and whatnot. It sounds like maybe they're taking advantage of a little bit of their institutional knowledge of this business, and that makes a lot of sense.

Deidre Woollard: Yeah, it feels like a positive sign to me. The interesting thing here is this company is going public. They're a little older, they're profitable. They may or may not stay that way, but I think they have some advantages over some of the other IPOs recently. I'm thinking about trying to compare them to DoorDash in that journey.

Jason Moser: Yeah. In regard to profitability, it is one of those things. It's nice to see that they are going public without having to convince us of that path to profitability. I think that could be a big catalyst for a company like this, particularly in a difficult time right now, I mean we've learned a lot over the last several years with many of these businesses going public. They probably really shouldn't have gone public, or at least at the time, need a little bit more time to mature. It does look like in this case, Instacart is in a position where the business is well-established and they've painted a very good picture of the potential market opportunity. Now it's just a matter of execution and capital allocation.

Deidre Woollard: Yeah, definitely. Well, I was thinking about this this weekend, looking through the S1 and thinking about whatever happened to Peapod, because I was in Watertown, Massachusetts. In the late '90s, Peapod, one of the earliest online start-ups, they made it through that delivery craze of the early aughts when everything was being delivered, and then none of those businesses survived. Peapod survived, but Instacart came along and took over. So is there anything that Instacart can learn from Peapod?

Jason Moser: The first thing that came to mind here, because Peapod at its time was extremely revolutionary. But it was dealing with an environment that wasn't really as favorable to the tech demands that really a business like this requires. I think they really started out with a great idea. It was maybe a little bit ahead of its time, just based on the big tech capabilities that existed. It makes me think of these businesses that were older businesses that were built on more antiquated technology versus these Cloud-first businesses that were built on Cloud technology and are, therefore, a bit more nimble and able to iterate and grow more quickly. I think that's probably some of that here, at least with Instacart. But yeah, again, it's a company that's taken advantage of technology to ultimately become more than just a delivery company. They're using this platform ultimately to become what they consider a grocery technology company. So it's beyond just delivery; it's beyond just advertising. It's really helping brands figure out what their customers want. It's helping grocery stores in regard to analytics and whatnot. Potential opportunities there are really all over the place thanks to the tech capability today.

Deidre Woollard: Yeah, I noticed that at the start of the S1, they had the grocery technology company, and I'm not sure, but then [laughs] as they went through it, I was like, yeah, I guess so because it really is. With Peapod, the problem was that they couldn't bring on the partners. They couldn't scale as fast as they wanted to. Instacart, the reason they were able to grow so fast is because they had the infrastructure so they could do that.

Jason Moser: If you think about Peapod, the one thing I remember about Peapod is the big trucks.

Deidre Woollard: Yes.

Jason Moser: We're just in a different place now, where the actual getting things from point A to point B, so to speak, you're not reliant on just these big trucks. We've got a much larger force of transportation out there that they can leverage, which I think makes a lot of sense.

Deidre Woollard: Our expectations are that we get things a lot faster.

Jason Moser: Yes, they are. [laughs]

Deidre Woollard: We'll keep speeding up. Well, IPOs are tricky, there so exciting, but I'm still a little risk averse. I like to watch from the sidelines. I want to see what's happening with the company. With Instacart, the growth is good but may be slowing, and we talked a little bit about shopper attrition and that two-sided marketplace thing. Is there anything that you're watching for or you want to see within the first year?

Jason Moser: Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned the growth aspect. Clearly, they've benefited from the past three years. But as most businesses, that was a lot of growth that was pulled forward and that's now starting to normalize a little bit. When you look at some of the data, there may be orders, for example, for the six months ended last year to the six months ended this year, essentially flat, gross transaction volume, just up 4%. You got to figure inflation probably played some kind of a role in that as well. It does seem like things are slowing down here. I, like you, would rather sit on the sidelines and watch this thing for a little while. I don't feel a need to jump into IPOs, generally speaking, because we know that the enthusiasm is high and particularly now, the market is really just hungry for a good IPO. I think this is a business that has a lot of potential and so I certainly understand all of the enthusiasm behind it. Still a challenging time, and I think you look at this business and while it's a relatively proven concept and we know that management is taking that longer-term view, as what they've said in the S1, I'd like to follow leadership and see that they're sticking to those guns, so to speak.

To see that they are continuing to take that long-term view and make decisions that are in line with that long-term view. You could see a world where at some point or another, maybe the business is witnessing some challenges or the stock price is witnessing some challenges. Then you start to wonder, are they going to change their decision-making and do some short-term focused things in order to accommodate for that voting machine nature of the market in the near term? So seeing management stick to that long-term playbook, I think it'd be one thing. Then I think also just an interesting part of the business is the membership side of the business. You got the Instacart plus product. I think that's a good metric to keep an eye on. Because as we know with companies like Uber and others, these members really do account for more of the spending for businesses like these that can be immensely profitable, particularly over time. It would be nice to see them continue to grow that membership base as time goes on.

Deidre Woollard: Yeah, I'm thinking a lot about the membership bases that are in companies like Uber and Uber Eats. Because it's still nascent, but it seems like there might be real potential. I think that the thing to watch there is we're not going to have multiple memberships to things the same way we might have multiple streamers. We're probably going to pick one. If I'm a consumer, I'm probably not going to have multiple of these.

Jason Moser: I think that's exactly right. It's either going to be Instacart or it's going to be something else and ultimately that's one of the advantages that Instacart has. They've been able to scale so quickly and having that big of a network, it's going to give them a better chance at delivering on what they say they're going to deliver on. That I think ultimately is what people want, is they want to know that they're going to be getting what they ordered and they want to get it in a timely fashion and it just can't be too expensive. [laughs]

Deidre Woollard: Well, you mentioned that the market really wants to see a good IPO. I saw a figure over the weekend from equities and quoted in the New York Times, at least 1,400 private tech companies worth a billion. The unicorns, they're all just waiting on the sideline for the right moment to go public. We've seen the kind of IPO, awesome. We've seen the better IPO, not so awesome. We've got the arm IPO coming up too. Is this the moment? Is this when the floodgates open? What do you think?

Jason Moser: I tend to think not. I think the market, while clearly the appetite for good IPOs is there,

Jason Moser: We have also learned a lot over these past few years and there's a lot of junk that went out there. You look at things like SPACS and how many companies were able to go public just via the SPAC structure for example, a lot of companies that really shouldn't have gone public at that point. We do know that with private valuations, they oftentimes aren't as efficient perhaps as the public valuations and so while I think this is a good sign, I look at those 1,400 or so companies with those billion-dollar-plus valuations and I think there's probably still a lot of junk in those as well, so be careful.

Deidre Woollard: Totally, I agree. Well, thank you for your time today, Jason.

Jason Moser: Thank you.

Deidre Woollard: It was the summer of Taylor Swift, but what does that mean for Live Nation? I sat down with Alicia Alfiere to walk through the ins and outs of the company that concertgoers may hate, but investors might love. I'm excited to talk to you because this has been the summer of live music, and especially Taylor Swift and Beyonce. My goodness, The Eras Tour -- it's not a concert, it's like a phenomenon. It's lifting whole city economies. It gets news coverage when Taylor comes to town. This has been crazy. It's been good news for Live Nation, which we're going to talk about today. It's sort of the company that I think everyone loves to hate, but it's good for them on one level. But it's drawn some attention to the fact that Live Nation and Ticketmaster -- they own us. So what's the background here? Swifties are a little upset sometimes because they can't get tickets. What's going on?

Alicia Alfiere: Let's recap what happened. So, back in November, Ticketmaster canceled the public ticket sale for Taylor Swift's Eras tour. Again, lots of demand here. I think there was even a small earthquake [laughter] in Seattle. What happened here is that fans were seeing long wait times and other technical issues trying to buy tickets for the pre-sale of the tour. It looks like to me the biggest culprit here was supply and demand. Taylor Swift is pretty famous, which is what my eight-year-old nephew told me while we were singing along to one of her songs on Tuesday, and the thing is, he's not wrong. When you have someone or something that resonates with a lot of people, you have a ton of demand for that thing. In this case, the demand was incredible, so 3.5 million fans signed up for the presale, and only 1.5 million actually got a code to enter the sale while the rest were on a waiting list. Usually, only 40% of people who get a code will actually show up to buy a ticket, but for Taylor Swift fans with a code, without a code, everybody logged in to buy tickets, and Live Nation also reported a lot of bot attacks. These factors caused delays and other tech issues. During the presale, Ticketmaster sold more than 2 million tickets in a single day, which was a record. But fans were understandably frustrated, especially when they hopped on over to the secondary or resale ticket market and found tickets for, in some cases, thousands of dollars. This drove many fans to air their frustrations on Twitter and to lawmakers, which put Live Nation on the radar for several people in Congress.

Deidre Woollard: That's really interesting, too. Let's talk about Congress. So, one of the complaints has been the extra fees. It's not even a Live Nation issue or ticketing issue. We see extra fees in Airbnb and everything else. But Congress is looking at this. What's going on here?

Alicia Alfiere: Yes. The act, I love the name of this act. It's the Boss Swift Act, for Taylor Swift is the Swift part, and Bruce Springsteen, of course, is the boss. This aims for transparency in ticket pricing with an all-in ticket price that's inclusive of fees and taxes. This is important because, according to the Government Accountability Office, they found back in 2018 that extra fees were about 27% of the overall price. That could be a pretty big surprise after you hit the purchase button for tickets. The legislation also seeks to provide consumers with information on refunds for tickets, as well as the number of tickets being sold and whether these tickets are new or resold. I think transparency is usually a good thing and here it seems like it's an improvement on the consumer experience or the user experience. I don't really see this as a negative for Live Nation, but transparency is not the same thing as affordability. I think part of the issue here was Live Nation started using what they call a dynamic pricing model. Which is, they did this as an effort to help get artists more money from the ticket sales. Ticket buying isn't the only place where we have this dynamic pricing. You talked about Airbnb; that's definitely one of the companies that use this; also Uber surge pricing. The model is high demand, higher prices, and like economic principles of supply and demand, you're going to get, as people want more of this thing, the prices are going to go up. The only difference is you have this model that allows them to quickly inform and adjust the prices.

Deidre Woollard: Well, and with Taylor Swift tickets, there's no substitution. You can't get a [laughs] lesser version of Taylor Swift, so there's really nowhere to go.

Alicia Alfiere: Exactly.

Deidre Woollard: Well, and the other part of this is not just the fees, that's the one side that the government is looking at. The other side of this is whether or not Live Nation with Ticketmaster is a monopoly, and if so, is it going to be broken up? Because part of the problem is here you have Ticketmaster, they're selling the tickets, and then you've got Live Nation. They're promoting and they're operating venues. If you're an investor in Live Nation, it seems like a really great business now, but is this a big concern?

Alicia Alfiere: It's a fair question. I think it depends on your thesis and who you are as an investor. Live Nation is a top dog in a lot of the business that surrounds concerts. It's estimated that they're the largest live entertainment company, the largest producer of live music concerts, and the largest live entertainment ticketing sales company. That's a lot of largest and we [laughs] haven't even talked about the venues yet. If your thesis hinges on Live Nation being the biggest across many aspects of the concert space, I think it's easy to be afraid of the threat of the government potentially coming to split up the company. But I would say, don't get too ahead of yourself here. First, it's an awful big if that we're talking about. A lot of things have to happen before we get to that point. Also, remember, this is hardly the only company that's been called monopolistic and faces threats of being broken up, and I think maybe the most important, if your fears are realized and the government splits up a company that you own, would that actually be a bad thing? The answer is, as Jim Gillies would say, it depends.

Alicia Alfiere: If you're a fan of Joel Greenblatt's, you can be a stock market genius, then you know that special situations like divestitures or perhaps even breaking up a company could be an opportunity for investors and for the companies because it could potentially allow the business segments to be freed up to become the best versions of [LAUGHTER] their income potentially. But every situation is different and it really depends.

Deidre Woollard: Yes. There are a lot of things that could happen. You could have two separate companies with a spin-off. You could have someone else taking over; the government would probably get involved there too, but there are a lot of options that could happen there.

Alicia Alfiere: Again, it also depends on who you are as an investor, if you're not a fan of Live Nation or companies that have really cornered the market. You might not be interested in holding a stock like this and that's totally OK. It's your own individual journey.

Deidre Woollard: Yeah, and I think one of the things that I find surprising about Live Nation, I studied real estate. This is one of those stealth real estate companies, like McDonald's is this stealth real estate company. I love these. According to their last 10K, they own 172 venues in the US, 99 venues internationally. If you're an investor, do you think of this as a real estate company to some extent?

Alicia Alfiere: They do have a pretty big footprint in the venue space and some of these venues are pretty well-known too like the Fillmore in San Francisco or the House of Blues venues. For me, what's important here is this feeds into the idea of being everything, concerts and ticketing, the promotion, and the owning of venues, and this creates a powerful flywheel effect for the business. This means that the success in one area of your business helps to fuel other areas. So more shows means more tickets sold, means more fans at shows, and more things being bought at the shows and Live Nation likely makes more per-fan at the venues that they own themselves, so it's all part of that flywheel equation.

Deidre Woollard: Yeah. The flywheel for me is fascinating because you're right, it's not just tickets. There's sponsorships, there's advertising which is bigger and bigger. They've also got some sneaky ancillary ways to make money beyond tickets. There's a FastLane past, like with Disney, where it gets you in, gets you in faster. Maybe you get other add-ons. There are meet-and-greets and little fan add-ons. There are all sorts of things that you can make money, especially when you've got something like Taylor Swift or Beyonce or anybody with a big fan base. It gives them a little more money and gives Live Nation itself, like, maybe a lot more money. So do you factor that in, too?

Alicia Alfiere: Yeah. This is another part of the flywheel, this ancillary spend, and it's so easy to focus on the ticketing aspect of Live Nation and forget all about the opportunity when fans are actually at the concert. There are a few ways to make money here, like you talked about. You can sell concertgoers premium experiences and other up-sells. You could also sell advertisers access to those fans' attention right there, a captive audience. But the growth here in these ancillary revenues really depends on the growth in concerts and events. Again, it's part of the flywheel, but it's one that requires balance because there isn't unlimited potential here. You wouldn't want to go to a concert where ads are ultimately detracting from your experience, like if there were commercials in between songs, that would be terrible, that would not be good.

Deidre Woollard: Yes.

Alicia Alfiere: Everything in balance. But it is definitely an interesting way for them to make money.

Deidre Woollard: Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's talk a little bit about the CEO, Michael Rapino. He's a promoter. He's definitely a promoter guy. He would like to be paid for it. He had a $139 million pay package that was voted down by shareholders, partly because it didn't quite have the alignment with long-term performance. That was a non-binding vote. His pay is at the discretion of the shareholders, but he is one of the most highly paid CEOs. He's doing a great job, but he's getting paid a lot.

Alicia Alfiere: Yes he is, and I think this is like a secret advertisement for looking at a proxy statement and also voting if you are a shareholder. During the proxy elections, it is your way of telling the company how you feel about specific issues. While the vote is non-binding, it's possible that the company will take notice of this. Sometimes you don't even need a majority. Sometimes if you just have enough voters saying that they don't approve of this, it could kind of embarrass the company into redesigning a compensation package and by the way, the ratio of Rapino's compensation to that of his median employee was over 5,000 to 1 -- big number. Yeah. But we should also note here, and I think you had mentioned it, that Rapino was the CEO throughout the company, struggled during the pandemic and he did take a pay cut during COVID so he has done a good job. But I think the question here is really, can executive compensation impact your thesis? Can it break your thesis? I think it's possible something egregious is happening in compensation or with the company's governance. I think in general, when you're analyzing the company, it's a good idea to look at what executive comp is based on. Charlie Munger says, "Show me the incentives, and I'll show you the outcome." According to Live Nation's proxy, 63% of Rapino's 2022 salary was based on performance and one of the factors here is adjusted operating income. Always whenever something's suggested, it means it excludes items, and some of those items are important. The things that this excludes, it excludes stock-based comp, depreciation, amortization, and other items. 63% isn't bad, and this adjusted operating income isn't bad, but it's not the most impressive way to incentivize an executive performance either. I think as investors, we like to see a lot of management's compensation tied to performance that drives the business.

Deidre Woollard: I think when someone's getting paid a lot, too, you always have to ask yourself, would it be the same company without that person in charge?

Alicia Alfiere: Yeah, absolutely.

Deidre Woollard: I am not sure it would be the same company without him in charge so I don't love the high price here, but I do think he's worth it to some extent.

Alicia Alfiere: Yeah. Again, he did see the company through that storm of COVID. That is massive.

Deidre Woollard: Well, let's talk about that storm of COVID because for a time we all thought, well, we're just going to go see concerts in the metaverse. This is, we're just going to put on our Oculus Quest or whatever, VisionPro or whatever is coming next. We're going to want to do that, but that didn't happen. Instead, everybody has rushed out and seen everybody this summer. It's not just the headliners. Everybody's gotten into festivals, everybody's seeing everyone, live music is back so much, and Rapino, in the earnings call, he said he doesn't see it slowing down till 2024. I don't see it slowing down either based anecdotally on what I'm seeing from people in my life. But given that maybe we might see a recession, who knows at this point, maybe a little baby recession. How should we think about consumer behavior?

Alicia Alfiere: Yeah. Well, I would say with any investments, there are always risks and a decrease in consumer spending, or a potential recession could potentially impact people's ability to afford those tickets. We have seen a shift in consumer spending away from the things that we bought during the pandemic, and toward experiences, and concerts are definitely an experience. But again, there is the risk that belt-tightening will impact someone's ability to afford going to a concert. There could also be a concern that with all of the revenge experience spending that's happening after COVID, that consumers can burn themselves out and not as many people will be interested in concerts in a year or two. So far it doesn't appear to be the case, so Live Nation says it has a strong pipeline of artists shows for the next year, and that confirmed future shows are up relative to the same point last year. Also, Statista, which provides market data and statistics, is forecasting a 5% compounded annual growth rate through 2027 for revenues for global music events. We do think we're going to continue to have concerts and also don't forget, it's a truly unique experience. It's one of those things. There are very few things that you have to be there for the event to really get the true experience. It's live sports and live music, so we think there's always going to be a special glow to concerts.

Deidre Woollard: Yeah. I think that's right. The good news is this is not Taylor Swift's retirement. And she's going international, and international is a big part of Live Nation. Seems like positive tailwinds here.

Alicia Alfiere: Yeah. Absolutely.

Deidre Woollard: Thanks for your time today, Alicia.

Alicia Alfiere: Thanks for your time.

Deidre Woollard: As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. I'm Deidre Woollard. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.

John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Alicia Alfiere has positions in Live Nation Entertainment, Netflix, and Walt Disney. Deidre Woollard has positions in Amazon.com, Walmart, and Walt Disney. Jason Moser has positions in Amazon.com and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon.com, DoorDash, Netflix, Uber Technologies, Walmart, and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool recommends Live Nation Entertainment and Nestlé. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.