Posted: Dec 06, 2006 - 6:39 PM GMT Edited: Dec 06, 2006 - 6:41 PM GMT
Quote:
Skier Visits: Page 13 were down from 2005 in the east:
Killington: 795K
Sunday River: 473K
Mt. Snow: 430K
Sugarloaf: 311K
Attitash: 187K
Page 21 shows a loss for the year of about 66meg, compared with 73meg for the previous year.
Wow. That is amazing. If they were going to sell a resort, it appears from these numbers that Attitash would be the one to go....Sugarloaf had more than half as many more people as Attitash....that is amazing.
I wonder how much the Attitash numbers will appear to go up with the tax free passes they sold this year. Apparently a lot of people realized they could buy the All For One passes cheaper from them and took advantage of it. I know I did along with a number of friends. Might be a good way to inflate the numbers before selling the place.
it appears from these numbers that Attitash would be the one to go....
As long as the ASC Annual Report contains this statement:
each of the resorts has historically produced similar margins and attracts the same class of customer. Based on the similarities of the operations at each of the resorts, the Company has concluded that the resorts satisfy the aggregation criteria set forth in SFAS No. 131, “Disclosures About Segments of an Enterprise and Related Information.”
Speculation about resorts being sold is, indeed, purely speculation. Attitash might have one of the higher profit margins; considering it has a shorter season, less infrastructure, etc. it wouldn't surprise me. By reporting in aggregate, only those who signed that 10K know for sure.
Assuming there's even a hint of truth in the "similar margins" statement, then the blueberry patch would in fact represent the resort with the greatest growth potential, financially speaking.
The only thing you can safely speculate from those numbers is that the sales & marketing personnel at Attitash must've been very uncomfortable at the end of season staff meetings.
Overall the annual report says the same thing as last year; ASC makes a boatload of money from skiing operations...but the bilge pumps aren't keeping up with the debt incurred when the ship was built.
The other thing to consider, if ASC was going to sell off an area, is who'd be buying the place. In all reality, it wouldn't be a small time family doing it, but a BIG corporation, and they'd be looking for a bigger cash flow situation in all likelyhood. ASC would also be looking for a situation where they could find a buyer who would overpay them as much as possible for what fairmarket value would be for a particular area(see what the Redsox just did witht he signing of J.D. drew for a perfect example of over paying based on fairmarket value as an example ) That being considered, Attitash and its likely "small" price tag might very well actually make it one of the last areas that ASC would sell off quite simply because it wouldn't really have any impact on their debt load. On the flip side though, I bet that if a company like Intrawest came to ASC and said here's 200 million for Killington or Steamboat or The Canyons, you'd have 1 less ASC resort to ski/ride at in a heartbeat!
Intrawest no longer exists....last year skier visits in Vermont were down 6%, kmart was down 18%, Mt Snow was down 15%...do the math. That means some resorts were up. ASC announced several months ago that they are selling Steamboat.