Hollywood Media discusses Broadway.com (quotes from the 4Q04 conf call)

Hollywood Media (ticker: HOLL) CEO Mitch Rubenstein discussed his company's theater tickets business on his 4Q04 earnings conference call. Hollywood's theater ticketing business has two channels: (1) a consumer unit that offers online sales at Broadway.com and telephone sales at 1-800-Broadway, and (2) a group sales unit. The growth driver is the consumer unit; its sales were up 78% year over year for January plus February. Here are Mr Rubenstein's comments:

Our Broadway ticketing segment contributed $20.1 million in the fourth quarter 2004, up 27.6 percent... We believe our redesigned Broadway.com site launched in early November of 2004 is the main reason for the strong growth.

Despite moving into what has historically been a slow quarter, Broadway tickets in the first quarter 2005 are substantially higher than in the same period a year ago and are tracking close to those in the fourth quarter of 2004. For the first two months of the first quarter, January and February 2005, ticket purchases by consumers in our Broadway ticketing business are up approximately 32 percent overall, driven by an approximate 78 percent increase in ticket purchases on Broadway.com and 1-800-Broadway, a 280 percent increase in hotel package purchases and approximately 100 percent increase in gift certificate purchases. As we previously mentioned, hotel sales provide a higher margin contribution.

If this pace continues, we believe that it's very possible we will have over $80 million in sales for our Broadway ticketing business in 2005... Also, we are on track for the launch of the new London theater ticketing web site...

(Quotes are from the CCBN StreetEvents transcript.)

HOLL chart below.

Full disclosure: at the time of writing I'm long HOLL.