Liberty Interactive Corp, Liberty Media Corp and Liberty Broadband Corp at UBS Global Media and Communications Conference

Dec 06, 2016 AM EST
FWONA - Liberty Media Corp
Liberty Interactive Corp, Liberty Media Corp and Liberty Broadband Corp at UBS Global Media and Communications Conference
Dec 06, 2016 / 07:30PM GMT 

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Corporate Participants
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   *  Mark Carleton
      Liberty Media Corporation - CFO

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Presentation
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Unidentified Participant   [1]
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 Very pleased to have with us here Mark Carleton, Chief Financial Officer of -- I don't even know how many companies.

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [2]
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 A few. A few. A few of the Liberty companies.

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Questions and Answers
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Unidentified Participant   [1]
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 So, I'm going to start with the first question and Eric and I are going to go back and forth and we're going to work it through. But I wanted to start at a high level. Where are you spending the most time? Where are the greatest opportunities to create value sort of near-term and long-term from your perspective?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [2]
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 Well, certainly we're spending a lot of time these days trying to work the discounts on a lot of our tracking stocks which we find troubling but in our view there's a lot of value there in terms of harvesting those discounts and getting those tracking stocks a little more closely in line with the underlying assets beneath them. So, we're certainly focused on that.

 More recently we started looking at transactions that are bigger. We've talked about that a little bit and with what we've done at Charter and what we've done at Formula 1, there are definitely bigger transactions. And some of what we've faced was really a lot of competition and tougher deals at the $500 million to $1 billion check kind of a level. And more flexibility and more creativity at the $2 billion, $3 billion, $4 billion, $5 billion kind of a check level. That's where we've been spending our time. Some new things like Formula 1 and some obviously with our existing investees.

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Unidentified Participant   [3]
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 So, I guess, Mark, John and Greg over the years have talked about having -- how much cash do they have versus how much opportunity exists in the marketplace? So, when you look out there now, what's the current state of Liberty in terms of your ability to deploy fire power into the M&A market versus the opportunity set you see out there to change the asset mix of the company?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [4]
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 I think from a liquidity standpoint, it may not be what it was five years ago or ten years ago. But it's certainly pretty sufficient. We've had to get a little more creative, margining and leveraging some of our equity positions and doing some stuff with partners. You know we did that with Charter and brought some folks in side by side with us and certainly we talked about some placements of equity as part of a secondary with Formula 1. But we've got enough liquidity to do what we need to do. We have to work a little harder to get at it than perhaps once we did but we certainly have it and the stocks trading well certainly helps that.

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Unidentified Participant   [5]
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 There's a lot of excitement over potential tax reform in the United States and I'd say I've learned more about taxes from Liberty than from anybody else, everybody else combined, whether I wanted to or not. It was necessary to do. How do you think given tax is such a huge part of the plan for the organization, about potential impacts from tax reform in the United States?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [6]
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 Certainly we're paying close attention to it. Obviously tax has been a key component of all of our investing strategies for years. It's a place where I think we've really been able to have a differentiator over just capital in some of these areas. I think in general our view is it's likely to be favorable.

 Now, some of our future deductions may not be worth as much. Some of our future taxable items may be a little bit less of an issue. But I think generally as we're evaluating, it's overall a little bit positive. We're a disciplined capital analysis kind of company and we look at after-tax returns. So, to the extent that changes the return profile, that may change how we structure some of our transactions. It may change what we bid on or what we don't, but I think in general it would be positive for us.

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Unidentified Participant   [7]
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 So, one last one maybe on broader capital structure. When you look across all the assets in the Liberty family, you guys are always pretty strict and disciplined around leveraged targets, where you want assets to be. What sort of -- maybe you could give us some sense of which assets are in a delivering mode, which ones have room to actually put some more leverage to deploy capital on them? How do you think about the current state of leverage in the Liberty family?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [8]
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 I think obviously if the tax laws change relative to leverage then we'll certainly have to assess that and we will but we try to manage each of the companies through a relatively optimal leverage situation and I think you look at QVC and we've given a target that we're aiming towards that we're slightly above now but we're still comfortable with that target where that is.

 The other companies, I think we're in pretty good shape. We've got room certainly at SIRIUS, the guys at Live Nation have room. Formula 1 is probably one at least initially. Once that gets closed and we look at that capital structure you might say that may be a little bit high from an optimal operating standpoint but not uncomfortably high. But we move those targets around and we move those goals around based on opportunities and based on what the after-tax cost of that capital structure is.

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Unidentified Participant   [9]
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 I'm going to do a few on Liberty Media and then I'll turn it back over to Eric on QVC. As I said, we'll kind of go back and forth. I'll do a few here. I think Liberty Media, at a high level, you talked about frustration with the discounts. Any other comments you want to make about how you feel since the split, the way things have played out consistently as we thought. Any prospects for hard spins or any other solutions in minimizing the discounts?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [10]
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 Certainly there's the splits and some of the trackers that we've done have been pretty effective. In general it forces the marketplace to value some of these companies individually. It allows us to finance them more optimally individually. And we'll evaluate whether hard splits and certainly as our tax guys would say, we have no plans or intentions to do any of those right now but certainly as those opportunities present itself, we'll look at them.

 If we want to use an equity as a currency, the other issue with that is most of you have learned about active trader businesses with our spins. We like to keep a good collection of active trader businesses around to give us the maximum flexibility and how to do that. So, we're building that stable up again. But we certainly evaluate it. And while we don't plan any now, I certainly wouldn't be surprised if there were more in the future.

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Unidentified Participant   [11]
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 So, Formula 1, what got you interested in Formula 1?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [12]
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 Well, Formula 1 is a very interesting asset. There are very few global brands that you can own. You can't own the Olympics. You can't own FIFA. It is a global brand. It is a business that we thought had some opportunities in it and had some appeal. I think when we started looking at it we probably believed that it was initially more of an American opportunity as we looked at it more, we saw more global opportunity and a little more time in the U.S. but it was a typical Liberty Media transaction. Iconic, unique asset that we were able to put together a very effective structure to buy it.

 It has a relatively efficient tax structure in place in it and so all those things were attractive. Plus, talking Chase Carey into coming and working on it. We've known Chase for years. When we controlled DirecTV he was the CEO there and he is an incredible CEO and an incredible mind. I think a lot those things were a bit of a perfect storm for us. We like it.

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Unidentified Participant   [13]
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 And when you think about how the deal was structured, who besides Liberty retains economic interest? The original owner is CVC but the teams also had some stakes, correct?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [14]
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 The teams have a nominal stake. I think some of what's been reported about the discussion with the teams are more ongoing. There were a number of investors with CVC, Waddell & Reed, the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund and we're set now to be issuing equity to all those entities. And one of the things we're trying to do is to assist them in a secondary offering and perhaps place some of that equity in some other places with some longer-term holders, assuming some of the old owners want liquidity. And some of those may be with the teams or maybe with other investors but certainly the intent would be to help those partners of ours find good long-term homes for that equity with someone that has kind of that same long-term mindset as we do.

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Unidentified Participant   [15]
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 One of the questions around the timing to close or what's expected, what steps remain?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [16]
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 There's a process going on. We're still comfortable with the first quarter. Nothing has come up that has caused us to have any real concerns about it. I know there was a lot of noise in the press but again nothing's come up that's particularly concerned us. We're set to issue the stock to those entities so it's not as if there's a funding issue or some problem with actually being able to close it. It's structured. It's scheduled. And we're still confident about the first quarter.

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Unidentified Participant   [17]
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 You've highlighted this already but just for this audience, potential revenue upside opportunities for F1, what's easy, will it take a little bit longer? Any hurdles to adding more races?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [18]
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 Certainly with each individual race you've got an issue with the track and logistics and the schedule. I don't know how many of you have seen one of those races but it's six, seven, eight 747s converging on a locale, serious logistics in getting these races done. So, you've got that kind of just general issue of where the races are going to be and where they're going to be but we think there's opportunities and we think there are promoters and locations where we think races should be.

 The reality is this business is run really well. This is a big, well run business. Bernie and his team have done a really good job and we're hopeful in some of the areas, perhaps some digital stuff, perhaps some sponsorship stuff, that we can help it and grow it and ultimately over the longer-term perhaps have some American presence in it, maybe some American drivers over the longer-term. I wouldn't say a significant amount of low-hanging fruit given that this business was well run but we think there's real upside here.

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Unidentified Participant   [19]
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 So, last question from me before I bounce it back to Eric. I'm just curious about sports in the United States and how the teams and the sports leagues eventually get all the economics. The teams get a lot of the economics. How do you think this shakes out with F1? Why are you guys so confident you're not going to have a similar problem over a long period of time?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [20]
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 Well, we also own the Atlanta Braves and we've had an announcement, we just got the SVA done there. We think that's a very friendly ownership based kind of situation. So, a lot of these owners and team kind of organization situations have gone not so bad. Here we're having discussions and we think it's important to make sure we're fully engaged with the teams.

 The goal here is to make the pie bigger. It is not to have a bigger fight between the teams and the ownership. It's to work together to make the goal, to make the pie bigger. Those teams have goals and objectives of what they're trying to accomplish. And we think working together more closely going forward we can grow the whole business. That's the hope.

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Unidentified Participant   [21]
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 Maybe I'll jump in on the QVC group, maybe we can talk about that a little bit. It's been a volatile year for QVC. I think we've done more calls with investors in the last four months than a couple years before that. But maybe talk at a high level, where are we with the QVC group now in terms of its evolution as a business platform and then maybe we can dive into some of the more granular issues?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [22]
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 Well, I think it's been an incredible business for a really long time and it was one of the more embarrassing moments in my career in 1986 when I told John Malone I think this was one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard, that nobody was going to buy stuff on television, especially this cubic zirconium crap. John, who sometimes doesn't remember whose idea a deal was from two weeks ago, remembers that in 1986 I made this boneheaded statement and reminds us about it often.

 The business has been a great business. It continues to be a business that has really high margins, throws off really high cash flow. Obviously things in retail have been tough. We had an investment in Barnes & Noble and I'm talking to Len Riggio and another board member over there, Bill Dillard, two guys that are icons in American retail. They both say we've never seen a retail environment like this in their history.

 But I think Mike and his team have great data. I think the good news is our customer is still there. Our customer is financial stable. Our customer is still shopping. Our customer, she's still buying. And I think the things that Mike and the team have pointed out about their plans over the next several months I think hold true. I think they've got a good hold on it and they're working on it and I think it's the right plan. It's not going to get fixed tomorrow or the next day or the next week but I think they're on track to get things straightened out.

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Unidentified Participant   [23]
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 Do we think -- and I think to dovetail with what Mike has said publically that we went through this period with summer where there was the Olympics, it was the election, it was a lot of noise to your point in the broader retail environment. Do we see that as being a relatively transitory period? Because I think one of the big questions we get from investors, has anything really changed with this business for the long-term? Your answer before implies probably not. It's the same customer, the same cohort. I want to understand sort of transitory versus the long-term secular?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [24]
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 We just don't think the data and if you've been in the back room at QVC, they're analyzing sales by minute. If the sales person says this and sales pop up, we tell them to say it again. A huge amount of data and a huge amount of customer analysis and we're just not seeing that there's an Amazon effect here or that -- she's not buying anymore and she's not interested in this anymore. We're just not seeing any of that. Obviously if we were, that may concern us in a different way. But I think some of this has been product mix. And some of it has been balance and some promotion. A little bit of credit. And all of those things in balance in a tough environment have made it tough.

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Unidentified Participant   [25]
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 In the last year QVC did make that acquisition of Zulily. Maybe talk a little bit about how Zulily got on QVC's radar screen, what QVC saw in the asset and then how is that going over the first year?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [26]
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 I think first off it's going great and while we've been able to take some of the synergies from QVC, the size and the scale and the focus and the metrics into Zulily, we're taking a lot of bright, fresh young people and their ideas from Zulily up to Q and we've had people move from Zulily to QVC in senior positions and senior operating positions and really introduced a kind of a next generation of names and opportunity to get that Zulily shopper that is certainly far more mobile, far more diverse, and far more daily active searching in that to start at least sampling and consider the QVC mix. So, I would say that has been a very, very pleasant surprise and the Zu guys have been great. And the energy and the excitement that comes from that kind of place with all those young kids in there and everything has really been good.

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Unidentified Participant   [27]
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 Maybe one more from me, but before that, if you do have any questions in the audience, feel free to use the Crowd Mics app to send the questions up here and I'll work them into the conversation off the iPad. Implied earlier, QVC is probably a little bit above what you've talked about as where you want it to be from a leverage standpoint yet you're still in the process of deleveraging from the Zulily transaction. How do you think going forward for QVC about leverage versus the ability to return capital to shareholders, especially since the underperformance has stopped so far this year?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [28]
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 We have programs, we have buyback programs in place and we certainly monitor what we think is the optimum level of leverage and we've spoken to those targets to all of you guys. But I think the buyback programs that we've had in place, we're certainly not today talking about what our buybacks were in the third quarter and that will come out when we release in the fourth quarter, that will come out when we release our results. But we have a program in place and I think we understand where this company is and where it's going. So, our history of maintaining what we think is thoughtful, prudent, effective leverage to drive the highest equity returns and sustain systematic buybacks, John Malone likes those models and they've worked pretty well for us over the years.

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Unidentified Participant   [29]
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 So, speaking of those models, SIRIUS XM, I was curious how you think about how you think about value creation opportunity at SIRIUS. Not to put too fine a point on it, but obviously you've had a fantastic run since the asset was acquired. Nobody expects a repeat of that. But is it in a different phase of growth? Is there a level of maturity that changes how you think about it as an asset? Or do you still think about SIRIUS as a growth company from here?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [30]
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 I think we still look at it as a growth company. The third quarter numbers, as I recall, revenue was up almost 10%, EBITDA up double digit. Our conversion rates continued through the third quarter to be consistent with what they were before. And what we're seeing now in the used car market and with what we're doing on the connected car standpoint and some of our technology innovations that we'll see over time, we think this thing has great growth potential.

 Again, a prudent amount of leverage and then the appropriate assessment of what to do with the free cash flow that comes out of it. I think we announced or authorized another couple billion dollars of buyback, another couple hundred dollar dividend and we think that's great for shareholders and we think it still gives us the flexibility for any strategic transactions that we may want to do, to be able to do them.

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Unidentified Participant   [31]
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 I'm trying to understand, to sustain this market leadership over time, how aggressively it has to embrace digital. You mentioned used cars as something that's been worked on for a while, connected car, relatively new. Obviously a long way to go. How do you think about that need to invest in digital to sustain the market position?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [32]
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 I think one of the benefits we've had is a great platform, a platform of being in the car, in the dashboard, simple to use, integrated, and very high quality content. That combination of a really good platform and really good content has worked really well. We think that will continue. Now, as Apple Play and these other devices get into the car, they'll have some increased seamlessness and ubiquity in there. I think we'll still have a content differentiation in there.

 But we're investing technologically the new product, 360L, that has a lot more interactivity in it that we'll start seeing, not too long. I'm not sure exactly which model year yet. But pretty soon. It's got a significant amount of more interactivity, customization and the like that someone can use in the car.

 We still have the real estate. Our contracts with the car companies go out well into the '20s. We're integrated in the whole connected car process very closely. With the OEMs and we've got a streaming service that operates out of the car. We continue to look at how to deploy that and what part of our kind of quiver of arrows that is. But the platform is very good and very powerful and robust and the content that we have over it is good. It's good. We like it.

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Unidentified Participant   [33]
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 From Liberty's perspective, I'm not sure if you have more details you're willing to offer at this point on the connected car, but I'm just curious what you see the challenges and opportunities there. It's obviously something that's evolving over a period of time.

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [34]
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 Well, I think as we've heard in a lot of areas, people eventually want to be able to do everything they do everywhere they go. And that's a little bit harder with texting and watching a video while you're driving a car but being able to do that and get all the information out of the car and the value that provides.

 There's a lot of business models that really aren't defined yet. But I think we feel confident that our position in that connected car value cycle and the products and services that come out of that, whether they go to car dealers or insurance companies or where, we think it's going to be a very powerful revenue stream that comes out of that car and we think we're well positioned for it.

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Unidentified Participant   [35]
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 I'm curious why, understanding that -- not asking you to speak on behalf of the SIRI board, but just from a Liberty perspective, comfort level with SIRI beginning to issue a dividend, about 1% yield. Why do you think they began to do that? And is the plan to grow that consistently?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [36]
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 I think it was a first step. One, it was a relatively small amount of money and we maintain the flexibility with the buyback, that if there are significant acquisitions we can modify the buyback number if we needed to do that. And we thought it probably exposed us to a slightly different group of investors that perhaps have a little bit more of a dividend slant. So, it's a start. I can't say that we're going to increase that to 2% or 3% or 5% or what have you but it's a start and we'll see how it goes and we'll evaluate as we get into the '17 capital plan and how the buybacks are working.

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Unidentified Participant   [37]
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 As long as you mentioned acquisitions, how do you think Pandora would fit strategically with SIRI?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [38]
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 Pandora's an interesting company. We certainly don't talk about rumors or rumblings of processes that may or may not be happening. I can tell you we've spent a lot of time and the SIRIUS folks have spent more time than we have looking at streaming businesses. Most all of them, whether it's Spotify or Title or Slacker or Deezer, and looking at all of these different components, including Pandora, and we think there are plusses to a lot of these assets.

 As Greg said before, we think the pure streaming model has got some challenges in it. Obviously Pandora's kind of advertising model in addition with the streaming and the ticketing is certainly an interesting angle but to the extent that we're doing something with them that will come out when it does. But I can assure you we're looking at everything and if there are accretive, sensible transactions to do I think the SIRIUS XM management team and the board are open to do them.

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Unidentified Participant   [39]
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 This is my last question then we're going back to Eric. On SIRI, when you're talking about reducing discounts to NAV, I would think this one certainly stands out in terms of size. Why is that discount so big? Help us out here. Why do you think it is?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [40]
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 I was going to ask you, darn it.

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Unidentified Participant   [41]
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 I think what's interesting versus all of your other tracking stocks is the fact that the Liberty business obviously is the majority holder. So, from that standpoint, the discount makes a lot less sense than it has in prior tracking stocks. For 50% you would normally say that's just a normal liquidity in theory, legal risk, even though in practicality with Liberty that's never come into play. It would be more understandable. In this case it's a little bit more of a mystery.

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [42]
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 I think we've analyzed it a lot ad at some point that discount will shrink either just through the natural course of events or through some people either synthetically or directly buying one and selling another and we've certainly pondered that from time to time. I'm not saying we're going to take any action on that right now but we do pay attention to it and I think at some point in time we think that discount is going to narrow one way or another.

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Unidentified Participant   [43]
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 It's a little bit tricky because as a majority shareholder in theory you could look at yourself as a premium to the others but it's the same class of stocks. You get some dynamics in there where probably a lack of comfort of trying to --

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [44]
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 You could look at a little tracking stock discount, maybe a little liquidity discount, maybe a little potential for a premium. We already have control so you could debate why you would need a control premium. But you can understand a few percent. But where this is running at 15%, 16% now seems a bit absurd to us.

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Unidentified Participant   [45]
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 Maybe just one that's come in from the audience in a couple different ways, more in Doug's area, but maybe it goes to this. What's Liberty Media's view longer-term about how they want to be positioned in the music industry? I was taken aback, not being a music analyst or media analyst, but Greg spent certainly a lot of time at the analyst day laying out his view of the music industry at the analyst day a couple weeks ago. I think with stakes in SIRIUS and Live Nation, how do you think about the holistic approach to the music industry broadly? That was a question that came in, in a couple of different ways.

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [46]
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 Well, I think we like the space and not unlike Formula 1, both SIRIUS and Live Nation are very unique assets. Not a lot of comps for what either of them do. But both of them in a really good position with really great platforms. At Live Nation you've got both the concert promotion platform which is global and is far more robust and dynamic than any other out there. You've got the Ticketmaster platform with that and you've got the car platform with SIRI obviously.

 We're seeing more and more opportunities between these companies and they are doing more things together, whether it's SIRIUS sponsoring a music festival that is one of our Live Nation music festivals, we're doing some joint development. So, we see more and more happening there. Ultimately, as both of those companies I think get into that next stool, that next leg which is video and for Live Nation maybe that's Live Live and for SIRIUS it's shoulder programming, it's in studio programming, it's specific events as well.

 Certainly those paths cross more. We like that they're doing things more together and getting along better. So, we think that's a great opportunity. We like it. And we think Formula 1 is consistent with that as well. It's an event. A music festival is an event. A concert is an event. We think there's lots of commonalities in sponsorship and development and cross promotion between all three of those.

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Unidentified Participant   [47]
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 Fair enough. Maybe one more from me and then I'll throw it back to Doug. Obviously Liberty Expedia is now stand alone commerce hub, but let's talk about Liberty Ventures. What is the main message investors should take away about where Liberty Ventures is right now, where are the priorities and focus for Liberty Ventures?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [48]
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 I think there we're just trying to maximize the value of the assets that we have. And separate them and expose them as we do. Obviously the big broadband piece is a big component of that. You guys haven't talked much about broadband here but obviously we really like that asset and Charter is doing great. I got to see Tom a little bit in here earlier. We really like the position that's in.

 So, we have a number of assets there. Some of them we've separated, we've spun strategically because we think that drives the most value, forces the most valuations. Others we haven't yet. But I would expect us to do our Liberty stuff to those over time.

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Unidentified Participant   [49]
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 Yeah, let's keep going on broadband. If all went as expected, what would Charter accomplish the next few years? How do you think about that investment?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [50]
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 Well, I think we love it. Tom and his team is really well aligned to grow that asset value. One of the things we've always done at Liberty is we don't run these businesses, we try to make sure they're well run. We try to align management's comp to drive that shareholder value. And give that group an ability to create wealth if they're creating wealth for the rest of the shareholders of which we're typically a big one. That's a great setup at Charter and what Tom and those guys are set up to do. We think they're really well positioned. The platform they have and the ability, the optionality they have in wireless with the MVNO and some of the other deep in the network options, we like it. We think it's in a great position.

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Unidentified Participant   [51]
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 I was there for the analyst day, John Malone said that he thought people would do wireless. Greg said no, not necessarily, only if there's an option to do it but it wasn't necessary. Mark, you want to be the tie breaker?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [52]
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 I would say the MVNO component of it is a great option. Right? We're going to be able to see that. But what Tom has deep into his network is already a significant amount of wireless activity. Big wireless company already. Not commercial mobile phone wireless but carrying a lot of wireless data and a lot of wireless phone data through the Wi-Fi network. And obviously to the extent that we're looking at more deeply integrated and deployed wireless networks, these guys, Comcast, Charter, Cox, all of them are going to be a bigger part of that.

 I like the position they have right now. I think ultimately mobile, true mobile is going to be a component -- an arrow in their quiver. For Tom does that need to happen soon? One year, two years? I don't think it does. I think he's in a great position and I think the data business and the platform he has is really powerful and has a huge amount of growth available in it. But I think ultimately we're going to get to that place where wireless is going to be integrated with that. Just not sure when.

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Unidentified Participant   [53]
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 So, now AT&T is doing Time Warner. You've got a history with John of creating an absolute ton of value, having content distribution together and leveraged among entities. So, where is your thought in this day and age about the leverage between content and distribution all under one house? Is there vertical synergies that are -- I'm thinking about, even though it's obviously within your immediate purview, as Chief Financial Officer, obviously Discovery's out there, there's things over at Starz, how do you think about that?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [54]
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 Well, I think over the years as we put these things together, we've separated them. We separated the content and the cable back in '99 with the AT&T sale, the TCI sale to AT&T. But content without appropriate distribution is limited. And distribution without appropriate content is limited. We can debate in the AT&T-Time Warner transaction who benefits more? Does AT&T benefit more because they can add more value to their distribution? Does Time Warner benefit more because they get massive 150 email mobile phone distribution for their content? I think the answer is both.

 The benefit I see where Tom is right now, he's not anywhere near the point of needing that. Will he need it two, three, four, five years from now? Maybe. It certainly doesn't look to us like he needs any of that now. But we pay close attention to it. I talked about it at SIRIUS with the platform they have in the car and their position in the dashboard, talked about it with Live Nation and the Ticketmaster and the concert promotion platform that they have. We think that balance and making sure that you have a powerful enough platform to more effectively drive your content is very important.

 So, we see them linked and I think we would -- we certainly look at transactions going both ways. If we can help drive our content by getting better distribution, we'll do that. If we can help drive our distribution by getting better content, we'll do that as well.

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Unidentified Participant   [55]
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 I want to hit one or two on the Braves. Eric, I'm not sure if you have any more you want to do. On the Braves, obviously a long-term TV rights deal, I'm just curious, is there any way to pull that forward? Could you sell the future rights to a third-party that might be willing to buy far out in the future? Is there some way to -- is there any triggers to exit that deal early?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [56]
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 No triggers to exit, per se. We do have some accelerators and a couple of contractual provisions a few years out on some component of the games, 50 or 60 of the games, I don't recall the exact number, where there's a few things we can do. But in general we've got a contract to 2027. That being said, I know the guys at FOX very well. We actually sold them all of those regional sports networks years ago.

 We have a lot of discussion with the FOX Sports guys and we're certainly looking, always we're looking at options and evaluating what's happening with the other RSNs and what's happening with other team right economics and we're a bit on the other side of it at Charter with what we now have with Time Warner Cable on the Dodgers' side of it. So, we believe there's opportunity in TV rights. It's a bit further off than we would like but we think there's opportunity there.

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Unidentified Participant   [57]
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 Are there catalysts for that stock that you would highlight?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [58]
------------------------------
 Certainly I think the new stadium is going to be a big boon for us and history shows 15%, 20%, 25% revenue increases. The new stadium is beautiful. You guys can go online and look at it. It's on track. It's on budget. It's on timing. Hopefully there's wood we can knock on, especially relative to some of the problems that the Falcons have had down there in their stadium. But we think that will help. We think the mixed use project being integrated and built into and at the same time as the stadium has got some significant upside in it that we're not convinced is recognized in the equity quite yet.

 And lastly, the business of baseball itself, what Bob Bowman and the guys at MLBAM have created in terms of value and the business of baseball is good. Attendance is good, new buildings are good, and merchandising. We have the new Under Armour agreement on uniforms that I think brings in a great new dynamic cutting edge partner. So, baseball overall is good, pretty good. I would say obviously the team and what's happened with team values and I was heavily involved in getting this deal done with the Braves 10.5 years ago, this team has way more upside and value potential than we thought it did when we did that deal. We like it.

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Unidentified Participant   [59]
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 Great. Maybe just one last one as we've got a minute left. To the extent to which we're hearing a year from now, what do you think are those big priorities that nobody wants to check the boxes on as we go out of '16 into '17? What's the top agenda items inside broader Liberty Media?

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [60]
------------------------------
 I think narrowing the discounts, getting the Formula 1 transaction in and going and getting Chase fully ingrained and going in there and seeing where that goes and the continued development of the business. QVC and Zulily together, Live Nation continuing the great years they're having. SIRIUS getting some of this next-generation technology out there, understanding the business models and the connected car, driving those, signing up more of the used car folks, and a great car sales year in '17 would be very nice. 17 million, 18 million cars in the U.S. would be okay by us.

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Unidentified Participant   [61]
------------------------------
 Fair enough. Please join Doug and I in thanking Mark for being part of the UBS Media Communication Conference.

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 Mark Carleton,  Liberty Media Corporation - CFO   [62]
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 Thank you.




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