News Six Flags Financials

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Phoggy

Apr 26, 2016
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Six Flags released their First Quarter earnings report and reported record revenue. Revenue increased 36% over last year and Adjusted EBITDA jumped 39%. Their stock price increased 4.5% today as a result. Good time to be in the theme park industry it seems. Will be interesting to see CF and Seaworld's reports next week.

http://investors.sixflags.com/news-and-events/press-releases/2016/04-27-2016-120327759
 
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This serves to highlight the risks of building overseas parks. Now you become at risk to the economies of all the foreign countries you end up building in.

That said, once up and running, the foreign investments can serve as a buffer to economic decline in other countries as well, so I guess it's a bit of a mixed bag.

finance.yahoo.com

Six Flags Plunges to Five-Year Low on Warning Over China Parks

(Bloomberg) -- Six Flags Entertainment Corp. fell as much as 19%, the stock’s worst loss ever, after warning that troubles with its planned China theme parks will hurt revenue -- and could lead to all of the projects being canceled.The stock tumbled as low as $35.28 in New York trading Friday...
finance.yahoo.com
 
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rswashdc said:
Six Flags is very profitable in their financials. This is a write down at worst. Only impact is on their stock price and not on their fundamentals.
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I wouldn't be so quick to brush off this news.

SIX is in trouble on two fronts.

First, their attendance is down which they are noting as the major contributor to their earnings miss:

North America parks experienced lower attendance in [Q4] vs. the same period in 2018 due to softer than expected season pass and membership sales, primarily during the holiday sales periods," the company says"

To make it worse, this comes in a quarter when at least one competitor is reporting a significant attendance growth

And then, to top it all off, they are reporting their troubles with China.

One bad report doesn't indicate that their fundamentals are collapsing, but they certainly aren't moving in the right direction in this quarter.
 
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I actually haven't noticed any increase in pricing, though? That articles says, "Second, the company has moved too high into "luxury" pricing by increasing admissions fees", but SFA is still dirt cheap. At least for season passes. Maybe they raised single tickets? I'm not sure. If anything they are priced too low to make a profit. It seems like they should be increasing ticket and season pass prices. I mean, I don't want to pay more, but I also don't want them to shut parks down.
 
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Crunchewy said:
I actually haven't noticed any increase in pricing, though? That articles says, "Second, the company has moved too high into "luxury" pricing by increasing admissions fees", but SFA is still dirt cheap. At least for season passes. Maybe they raised single tickets? I'm not sure. If anything they are priced too low to make a profit. It seems like they should be increasing ticket and season pass prices. I mean, I don't want to pay more, but I also don't want them to shut parks down.
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Single day ticket deals are much higher in price. Memberships and passes have been pushed a lot instead.
 
ˁ˚ᴥ˚ˀ said:
Single day ticket deals are much higher in price. Memberships and passes have been pushed a lot instead.
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Having membership prices at similar prices to daily rates typically demonstrates that the product itself doesn't have much repeat value. When you have to practically give away memberships and season passes in the hope for repeat visits, that doesn't speak well for the business, and shows that revenue has to be generated transactionally instead of through strong customer relationships.

Compare that to Cedar Fair, SEAS, or Disney where they are charging multiples of their typical daily price for season passes, so you can see that visitors value coming numerous times and will pay for that.
 
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rswashdc said:
Having membership prices at similar prices to daily rates typically demonstrates that the product itself doesn't have much repeat value. When you have to practically give away memberships and season passes in the hope for repeat visits, that doesn't speak well for the business, and shows that revenue has to be generated transactionally instead of through strong customer relationships.

Compare that to Cedar Fair, SEAS, or Disney where they are charging multiples of their typical daily price for season passes, so you can see that visitors value coming numerous times and will pay for that.
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Obligatory not an economist, but i would think that the membership model is used to get visitors on monthly payment. Similar to a gym membership, i would wager that six is trying to get you in on the low monthly payment so that 1: they get a stable revenue throughout the year and 2: monthly memberships for indefinite terms tend to be sustained, leading to more revenue in the long term.

Also, on the multiples of daily prices...i think you’re forgetting fun cards and low tier memberships. Esp in florida, tickets go for close to retail unless you fit a select group of folks that have access to military discount or passmember friend discount tickets, meanwhile last year bgt had $50 fun cards in late spring good through dec. This year they have $100 fun cards for bgt and the water park.
 
I think comparing theme park membership to gym membership is a mistake from the word go.

Gym membership pricing is based entirely on the goal of getting a large number of members but having as few as possible actually use the facility.

Theme park membership works exactly the opposite.

I mean, of course parks make money just by having the members; but they make vastly more money when the members visit the park and spend money on high margin items like food.
 
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ˁ˚ᴥ˚ˀ said:
Obligatory not an economist, but i would think that the membership model is used to get visitors on monthly payment. Similar to a gym membership, i would wager that six is trying to get you in on the low monthly payment so that 1: they get a stable revenue throughout the year and 2: monthly memberships for indefinite terms tend to be sustained, leading to more revenue in the long term.

Also, on the multiples of daily prices...i think you’re forgetting fun cards and low tier memberships. Esp in florida, tickets go for close to retail unless you fit a select group of folks that have access to military discount or passmember friend discount tickets, meanwhile last year bgt had $50 fun cards in late spring good through dec. This year they have $100 fun cards for bgt and the water park.
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A lot of theme parks don't have passes where you can just continue to pay month to month. Unless I'm mistaken SEAS is the only major change that just has your pass stay active until you cancel. Every other park I can think of you are paying for a year and then you have to make the choice to renew it.
 
Jahrules said:
I think comparing theme park membership to gym membership is a mistake from the word go.

Gym membership pricing is based entirely on the goal of getting a large number of members but having as few as possible actually use the facility.

Theme park membership works exactly the opposite.

I mean, of course parks make money just by having the members; but they make vastly more money when the members visit the park and spend money on high margin items like food.
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This is just better for parks. Gyms have to hope many dont go, parks have the added advantage of profiting regardless. My point still stands.


BGWnut said:
A lot of theme parks don't have passes where you can just continue to pay month to month. Unless I'm mistaken SEAS is the only major change that just has your pass stay active until you cancel. Every other park I can think of you are paying for a year and then you have to make the choice to renew it.
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Six does this as well as uni afaik.
 
ˁ˚ᴥ˚ˀ said:
Also, on the multiples of daily prices...i think you’re forgetting fun cards and low tier memberships. Esp in florida, tickets go for close to retail unless you fit a select group of folks that have access to military discount or passmember friend discount tickets, meanwhile last year bgt had $50 fun cards in late spring good through dec. This year they have $100 fun cards for bgt and the water park.
Click to expand...

Six Flags often charges less for memberships and season passes than daily tickets, and even when they don't charge less it's only a few dollars more. That basically means they try to gouge single day attendees as much as possible (transactional) and subsidize memberships to get people to come repeatably to the park.

Busch Gardens charges 2-4x a single day ticket for memberships, meaning members are committed to coming regularly in their initial purchase. Busch Gardens single day ticket, which is barely higher than Six Flags, doesn't come across as gouging as the park is a higher end experience. Fun cards are more marketed at 2-3 day ticket buyers to get them to make a return trip or two, vice a single multi-day visit.
 
ˁ˚ᴥ˚ˀ said:
This is just better for parks. Gyms have to hope many dont go, parks have the added advantage of profiting regardless. My point still stands.



Six does this as well as uni afaik.
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You are correct about six flags, it appears they started their own membership last year from what I can gather. Universal however I can't find anything about them extending beyond the 12 months you sign up for.
 
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