WWE’s Latest Financials

News

WWE has announced its latest financial figures, which you can read about in an official press release here.

The Associated Press, Reuters, TheStreet.com and more financial outlets have covered the numbers, and the WWE stock closed today at $17.00.

On WWE’s quarterly conference call, which you can listen to here, Chief Financial Officer Michael Sileck and Chief Executive Officer Linda McMahon gave a presentation and answered questions. Nothing was said and/or asked about Paul Heyman’s “dismissal,” but ECW was brought up. They said the contract with Sci Fi goes until December 2007, and that the smaller-venued ECW house shows weren’t helping the build the brand, which is why ECW has been paired with Smackdown on the road (with the hopes of separating ECW again, but in bigger venues, down the road). When asked why the three brands aren’t being run as three separate “companies” (own budget, different management, and so on, rather than having so much crossover of talent, etc.), the question wasn’t directly answered, but Linda said the brands were initially split to create separate rosters for touring, and that the split has resulted in more new stars being created, licensing growth, and that the crossovers make storylines more interesting and instill greater sense of competition between the brands.

Other highlights:

– The loss of cable advertising revenue that WWE received when on Spike TV, along with new investments and the fact that last year WWE received a large legal settlement were reasons given for the quarter’s drop in net income.

– The home video division was 22% with 1.2 million DVD units sold in the quarter, seeing success particularly from the Hulk Hogan DVD as well as online sales. The See No Evil DVD shipped to retailers this week.

– Average non-ECW live event attendence (US-only) is 5,200 — and this was the seventh-straight quarter in which WWE saw growth in attendence. They are looking at foreign markets to see how many times they can go to a particular city without burning out the fans.

– WWE 24/7 has signed with Cablevision, and Time Warner Cable is the next big cable MSO they are going after.

– An investor asked about MMA (in particular UFC and IFL), Linda talked about their meeting with PRIDE and how they are interested in this form of entertainment.

Matthew Michaels is editor emeritus of Pulse Wrestling, and has been since the site launched.