Elvis Presley Enterprises history

RCA Records, now a unit of Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG), acquired rights to his recordings before 1973.

1977: Elvis Presley dies at Graceland.

A for-profit company, Elvis Presley Enterprises, Inc. (EPE), was set up in 1981 to manage the assets of the estate.

Graceland--at least the main floor--was opened to public tours on June 7, 1982.

In November 1983, the estate and a pair of Kansas City investors acquired an adjacent strip mall of souvenir shops for $2.5 million.

1991: Graceland is added to National Register of Historic Places.

A widowed aunt, Delta Biggs, was the last of Elvis's relatives to live at Graceland; she died in 1993.

A restaurant and nightclub, Elvis Presley's Memphis, opened on historic Beale Street in 1997.

Priscilla Presley handed the trust over to Lisa Marie in 1998.

Fifty employees were laid off at Graceland in the lull in tourism that followed the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

Lisa Marie was 37 in 2004 when she sold her father’s image to Sillerman.

Still, since CKX peaked in 2005, its stock has dropped over 83% in value.

First, an Associated Press financial article that appeared in my local newspaper on January 9, 2010, the day after Elvis’s 75th birthday, predicted that CKX “could double or triple its stock price over the next couple of years.” Second, the price was right.

View a 2013 EPE Update