Why TKO Group Holdings Stock Crushed the Market Today

TKO Group Holdings (TKO 6.78%)the specialty entertainment company that owns both World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), raised its hand in victory on Thursday. Its shares rose nearly 7% on the day, thanks to a strong second-quarter earnings report. With that performance he put bad S&P 500 the index, which increased by a relatively slight 2.3%.

Set a new quarterly revenue record

That morning, before the market opened, TKO revealed that it earned just over $851 million for the period, setting a new quarterly record. That was nearly triple the 2023 second-quarter result of $305 million. GAAP net income also rose much more to nearly $151 million ($0.72 per share), compared with a year ago’s profit of just under 82 million dollars.

According to data compiled by Yahoo! Financials On average, analysts tracking TKO stock were modeling just $771 million in revenue. On the other hand, they were anticipating a higher figure of $0.87 per share.

Of the two components of TKO, WWE is the biggest in terms of revenue. For the period, the wrestling unit brought in nearly $457 million, with the bulk of that revenue — nearly $261 million — coming from media rights and content. Live events were also a strong source of revenue, bringing in just over $144 million during the period. This structure was matched by UFC, the no. 1 and 2 also being media/content rights and live events. In total, the UFC’s earnings totaled $394 million and counting.

Elevated guidelines

On the back of that quarter’s performance, TKO raised certain elements of its full-year guidance. It now believes it will post revenue of $2.67 billion to nearly $2.75 billion and post non-GAAP (adjusted) earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of 1.22 to 1, 24 billion dollars. It did not provide a forecast for net income.