Notes from WWE’s 2021 Fiscal 4th Quarter & Fiscal Year Report

WWE held an investor’s meeting on Thursday discussing the results from their fiscal 2021 fourth quarter and year reports.

In regards to revenues, WWE generated $310.3 million in net revenues for the fiscal quarter and $1.095 billion in net revenues for the fiscal year. This was up 30% compared last year’s fiscal fourth quarter and up 12% compared to last year’s fiscal year. In regards to the net revenues for the fiscal year, the company announced that this was the highest ever in company history.

WWE generated a net income of $63.9 million for the fiscal quarter, which was up 469.8% compared to last year’s fiscal fourth quarter net income of $13.6 million.

WWE generated an operating income of $83.6 million for the fiscal quarter and $259 million for the fiscal year. This was up 131% compared to last year’s fiscal quarter and up 24% compared to last year’s fiscal year.

In regards to other financial areas, WWE’s event revenues for the fiscal quarter was 20.1 million and up compared to the 0.7 million for last year’s fiscal quarter, consumer revenue was up 21% for the fiscal quarter, and adjusted OIBDA was up 14% and hit a new all-time company record of $327.1 million for the fiscal year.

Around 3.5 million paid Peacock subscribers were stated to have watched WWE Network programming on the service since this past March. For some comparisons, the company stated that they had around 1.1 million total subscribers for their WWE Network in the United States at the start of their deal with NBC’s Peacock.

During the meeting, WWE President Nick Khan stated that viewership numbers for several notable WWE pay-per-view events on Peacock in 2021 rose compared to those same events in 2020 and 2019 on the WWE Network. Khan stated that Money in the Bank 2021 viewership was 20% higher compared to last year’s event. SummerSlam 2021 was 30% higher, Extreme Rules 2021 was 20% higher, and Survivor Series 2021 was almost 25% higher compared to those same events in 2019 on the WWE Network.

Khan also stated that the company currently has over a dozen scripted and unscripted projects that have been sold based on WWE IPs that will be announced soon for both domestic and international markets.

Khan praised the company’s new trading card and NFT partnerships and stated that a new announcement to be made soon regarding a WWE-based NFT marketplace. Khan also revealed that WWE branded lottery tickets will be rolling out in multiple States later this year.

Khan stated that billions of dollars for live rights of sports programming have been spent by companies to bring top tier sports to their streaming services. Khan hinted that WWE is currently looking at signing potential partnership deals with Netflix or Apple+ in the future to provide first-run live WWE programming for those services.

In regards to the idea of a WWE-based Metaverse in the future, WWE Chief Brand Officer Stephanie McMahon stated that the company is currently exploring that idea. McMahon stated “We are absolutely exploring the Metaverse as an opportunity for WWE, especially as the theory unfolds that that’s really where more and more people are going to go to connect and socialize. WWE is a community-based business and is all about our fans coming together and sharing this experience. We think there are huge opportunities to expand upon that in the Metaverse itself. In terms of our approach, we’re doing our due diligence. We’re meeting with various partners and learning as much we can. We don’t want to be hasty in this space. That being said, we certainly don’t want to be behind, we always like to be slightly ahead of the curve. It is something we are actively involved in and investigating and looking into.”

Following WWE’s investor meeting and fiscal report release, WWE’s stocks declined from $49.80 per share to $47.81 per share during after-hours trading.

Sources: PWInsider.com 1 & 2, Fightful.com 1 & 2