Cedar Fair Q1 2025 Earnings Report

Cedar Fair EPS Results

• Actual EPS: -$2.20
• Consensus EPS: -$2.29
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.09
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Cedar Fair Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $202.06 million
• Expected Revenue: $235.51 million
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$33.45 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +98.90%

Cedar Fair Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2025
• Date: 5/8/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, May 8, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 10:00AM ET

Cedar Fair (NYSE:FUN) owns and operates amusement and water parks, as well as complementary resort facilities. Its amusement parks include Cedar Point located on Lake Erie between Cleveland and Toledo in Sandusky, Ohio; Knott's Berry Farm near Los Angeles, California; Canada's Wonderland near Toronto, Ontario; Kings Island near Cincinnati, Ohio; Carowinds in Charlotte, North Carolina; Kings Dominion situated near Richmond, Virginia; California's Great America located in Santa Clara, California; Dorney Park in Pennsylvania; Worlds of Fun located in Kansas City, Missouri; Valleyfair situated near Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota; Michigan's Adventure situated near Muskegon, Michigan; Schlitterbahn Waterpark & Resort New Braunfels in New Braunfels, Texas; and Schlitterbahn Waterpark Galveston in Galveston, Texas. The company also owns and operates the Castaway Bay Indoor Waterpark Resort, Hotel Breakers, Cedar Point's Express Hotel, and Sawmill Creek Resort. Cedar Fair, L.P. was founded in 1983 and is based in Sandusky, Ohio.

Cedar Fair Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Presentation

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Abby, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Six Flags Entertainment Corporation First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer remarks, there and Thank you.

[Operator]

And I would now like to turn the conference over to Six Flags management. Go ahead, please.

[Michael Russell, Corporate Director of Investor Relations at Six Flags Entertainment]

Thanks, Abby, and good morning, everyone. My name is Michael Russell, Corporate Director of Investor Relations for Six Flags. Welcome to today's earnings call to review our twenty twenty five first quarter financial results for Six Flags Entertainment Corporation. Earlier this morning, we distributed via wire service our earnings press release, a copy of which is also available under the News tab of our Investor Relations website at investors.sixflags.com. Before we begin, I need to remind you that comments made during this call will include forward looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws.

[Michael Russell, Corporate Director of Investor Relations at Six Flags Entertainment]

These statements may involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those described in such statements. For a more detailed discussion of these risks, you may refer to the company's filings with the SEC. In compliance with the SEC's Regulation FD, this webcast is being made available to the media and the general public as well as analysts and investors. Because the webcast is open to all constituents and prior notification has been widely and unselectively disseminated, all content on this call will be considered fully disclosed. On the call with me this morning are Six Flags' Chief Executive Officer, Richard Zimmerman and Chief Financial Officer, Brian Witherow.

[Michael Russell, Corporate Director of Investor Relations at Six Flags Entertainment]

With that, I'll turn the call over to Richard.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

Thank you, Michael. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. I would like to start by sharing my perspective on where we are as we ramp up operations at all 42 of our parks in our first full year as the new Six Flags. We are making meaningful progress in tapping the full potential of the merger.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

We are seeing stronger market response to our exciting new slate of rides and attractions, improving guest satisfaction ratings and executing on our plans to deliver significant cost savings. I'm very pleased with the pace of the integration work, and I want to thank our teams for their tireless efforts on all fronts over the past several months. As we noted in our earnings release this morning, our results show the operating loss that is typical for a seasonal business that has very few parks in operation during the first quarter of the calendar year. While the operating loss in the quarter was greater than the combined loss of the legacy companies in 2024. It was only slightly greater than what we expected in our operating plan and was consistent with the level of off season investment necessary to prepare our parks to open.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

Despite the weather and other macro level challenges we have faced to begin the year, we remain confident in our outlook for the business and especially in our 2025 operating plan. Our plan was built around a strategy to minimize lower value operating days, particularly in the first and fourth quarters, maximize the number of operating days in the second and third quarters and make upfront investments that will enhance the guest experience and drive demand and revenue generation as we head towards the heart of the 2025 operating season. Our confidence is backed by the solid results we generated in April despite recent weather issues. The positive momentum we are seeing in long lead indicators such as season pass sales and school and youth group bookings and the excitement being generated in our markets by the compelling slate of new rides and attractions we are introducing this year. While overall April results fell short of expectations due to the recent bout of cold and wet weather, we are nonetheless encouraged with the improving trends we saw, particularly on good weather weekends earlier in the month of April.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

We are also pleased with the April trends in season pass sales, positive momentum that is encouraging as we head into the peak sales months of May and June, which combined are expected to represent close to 40% of the full year sales cycle. And as more parks began to reopen last week, bookings at our resort properties trended higher, up more than 10% versus the comparable week last year, another positive indicator consumers remain engaged as we get closer to daily operations and the peak summer season. Most importantly, we saw no detectable change in guest behaviors in April despite broader market concerns. When the weather was good, we were encouraged by the strong demand we saw. Our guests continued to demonstrate a willingness to spend on goods and experiences they value, reinforcing our view that high quality, close to home entertainment options like ours are highly resilient even in choppy macroeconomic environment.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

We believe this positions us well to achieve our 2025 performance goals. While the economic landscape remains unclear, we continue to focus on what we can control, executing our merger integration plan, optimizing our cost structure and enhancing the guest experience to drive demand. We remain firmly on track to achieve the $120,000,000 in merger cost synergies by the end of the year, six months earlier than originally contemplated at the announcement of the merger. As Brian will outline in a moment and in keeping with our operating plan, we now expect current year operating cost and expenses to be more than 3% lower than combined 2024 actuals for both legacy companies. As part of our cost reduction plan, we are engaged in a corporate restructuring process designed to flatten our organizational structure, streamline decision making and drive cost efficiencies.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

As an example, earlier this month, we eliminated multiple senior executive leadership positions at the corporate level and consolidated functional ownership under a few key leaders. These changes and others we have underway will create new opportunities for the next generation of leadership within the company, support the cultivation of talent across the organization and meaningfully reduce cost. Once this initiative is completed, we will have reduced our full time headcount by more than 10%. Our system wide reorg effort, along with additional cost saving initiatives we've identified post merger, are designed to reset the company's cost base and deliver an incremental $60,000,000 of cost savings above and beyond our original synergy target by the end of twenty twenty six. Before I turn the call over to Brian to review our results in more detail, let me take a moment to address the evolving tariff situation.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

While recent developments in U. S. Trade policy have created marketplace uncertainties, based upon the tariffs as currently outlined, we believe our exposure is relatively limited. The fact that labor represents more than 50% of our operating cost structure inherently minimizes the potential impact of any new tariffs. On the non labor portion of our cost structure, we believe we are well positioned to substantially absorb or offset any impact without significantly affecting our cost structure or margin outlook.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

Naturally, our teams are already actively working with suppliers and sourcing partners, pursuing mitigation strategies to offset these impacts through material substitutions, alternative sourcing and, where appropriate, pricing adjustments to protect our margins. We will continue to update the market as additional clarity becomes available. With that, I'll turn the call over to Brian for a review of our financials. After his remarks, I'll return with some closing thoughts. Brian?

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Thank you, Richard, and good morning. I'll begin by providing some additional color on our first quarter and April results before providing an update on select balance sheet items. First, it's important to remember that the first quarter is not indicative of full year performance. We would normally expect the quarter to represent roughly 7% of full year attendance and revenues, and we incurred considerable costs during the first few months of the year related to preparing our parks to open. The small number of operating days and the higher fixed nature of our early season cost structure limits our upside and makes even small variances performance look more meaningful than when it really reflects in terms of full year performance.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Based on actual first quarter results, this year's first quarter performance tracks closer to approximately 5.5% of full year attendance and closer to approximately 6% of full year revenues based on our current full year outlook. As we noted in our earnings release this morning, first quarter results were impacted by operating calendar shifts including strategic changes that were made to key park events such as Boysenberry Festival at Knott's Berry Farm, which shifted into the second quarter this year. While coming into the year, we had planned to have approximately five fewer combined operating days in the first quarter compared to last year, we ended the quarter with fourteen fewer days, the result of managing our park operating calendars tightly in response to inclement weather and other cost savings objectives. The fewer operating days combined with the shift of the Knott's Berry Farm Boysenberry Festival to the second quarter were the biggest drivers of first quarter year over year attendance and revenue declines. Timing variances that we expect to reverse in the second and third quarters as we expand our operating calendars, particularly at our parks where the opportunities for attendance growth are the greatest.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Looking at April demand trends, which even out some of the early season calendar shifts, attendance over the past five weeks was up a little more than 1% compared to the prior year. This was despite the Midwest being plagued by heavy rain and cooler than normal temperatures over the last two weeks of the month, a strong indication that demand for our parks remains strong when not disrupted by weather. We estimate the impact of weather on April attendance was approximately 175,000 visits. Normalizing for the weather difference, April attendance would have been up approximately 8% on a year over year basis. Meanwhile, guest spending trends during the first quarter were also affected by the operating calendar changes.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

This led to a mix shift to lower priced tickets in the absence of higher demand events like the Boysenberry Festival, which also shifted higher in park spending visits into the second quarter. As expected, April per capita trends improved from the first quarter consistent with the shift in our operating calendars and higher attendance levels. Based on trends to date and the strategic initiatives we have planned for the season, we expect per capita spending to continue to increase as we get deeper into the season and attendance levels move higher and length of guest stays increase. Coming out of the first quarter, we were pleased to see momentum in the sale of season passes and membership strengthen. The recent robust performance despite the weather disruptions at the April narrowed the sales gap to prior year to approximately 2% in terms of units sold and 3% in terms of total sales.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Shortfalls that our team is focused on closing as we head into the critical May sales window. Based on our current program strategies, we expect the average price of a season pass at our legacy Cedar Fair parks to be up 3% to 4% over the balance of the sales cycle, while the average price at our legacy 6 Flags parks is projected to be essentially flat to prior year, the result of changes to the product structure and a mix shift in pass types sold. While disappointed to see attendance over the last two weeks of April impacted by weather after building such strong momentum earlier in the month, it's important to note that April only represents roughly 20% of expected second quarter attendance and revenues, meaning there is ample time over the balance of the quarter to build upon the positive demand trends we generated earlier in the month. Based on current park operating calendars, are expecting to pick up an incremental thirty seven operating days in May and June, bringing our projected total second quarter operating days to twenty twenty eight, up thirty six days from the second quarter last year. This should bode well in expanding our opportunities to drive higher levels of attendance and revenues in the quarter.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Shifting to the cost side of

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

the business for a moment. From a cost perspective, our teams delivered results largely in line with expectations during the first quarter. While there were some anticipated cost timing differences that should reverse over the next two quarters, we expect where we kept controllable variable costs in check without disrupting the guest experience. In the quarter, we incurred $15,000,000 of non recurring merger related integration costs and another $5,000,000 of adjusted EBITDA add backs for costs such as severance and commercial liability settlements. First quarter operating expenses were largely consistent with expectations.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

The somewhat higher level of spending was driven by two primary factors. First, a pull forward of pre opening maintenance work to ensure our parks were prepared and our rides were licensed and ready to open on day one. And second, an increase in early season advertising, a strategic decision to support season pass sales and drive higher demand. These decisions resulted in an estimated expense timing difference in the quarter of approximately $10,000,000 which we would expect to reverse over the balance of the year. While remaining nimble in our approach, we are committed to making decisions like these that set us up for a much stronger performance as demand builds into the key second and third quarters, which by themselves are expected to represent 95% or more of a full year adjusted EBITDA.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

At the same time, as Richard noted, we expect the steps we are taking to optimize our cost structure will reduce full year operating costs and expenses by more than 3% this year, inclusive of our second year of merger related synergies. This aggressive cost savings effort is intended to provide some downside protection against any potential weakening in consumer demand this summer. The targeted cost reductions do not contemplate any potential outsized impacts related to tariffs, which we expect to be minimal based on the available information at this time. As we noted in this morning's earnings release, we are maintaining our full year 2025 adjusted EBITDA guidance of $1,080,000,000 to 1,120,000,000.00 Our confidence in our ability to deliver another strong performance this year is underscored by the resilience of our business model, as demonstrated in the past by the rapid recovery from macro events, including the Great Recession of 'eight, 'nine and the COVID disruption. As a close to home, less expensive and less complicated choice for entertainment, our parks have historically performed well throughout various cycles as families always find a way to make time for fun.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

We believe those same staycation attributes are even more relevant today and combined with an outstanding 2025 capital program position us well as we head into the peak summer season. Now turning to the company's balance sheet for a moment. We ended the quarter with ample liquidity, including $62,000,000 of cash on hand and $179,000,000 of available capacity under our revolving credit facility. Of the company's 5,300,000,000 of gross debt at the end of the first quarter, which included $626,000,000 in borrowings on our revolving credit facility, approximately 70% is fixed through long term notes. And outside of $200,000,000 in senior notes that mature in July of this year, we have no significant maturities before 2027.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

We are monitoring the credit markets and evaluating options to address our July notes, the possibility of using projected balance sheet liquidity to fund payoff. Regarding our CapEx programs, during the first quarter, we spent $140,000,000 on capital expenditures, which is consistent with our previously disclosed expectation to spend $475,000,000 to $500,000,000 for the full year in 2025. As we have previously said, our plan is to invest a similar amount in 2026. Beyond our CapEx plans, we are in a strong position to use excess free cash flow to pay down debt as quickly and efficiently as possible. With that, I'd like to turn the call back over to Richard.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

Thanks, Brian. As we look towards the rest of the year, I'd like to take a few minutes to expand on our strategic road map and how we're positioning Six Flags to deliver sustainable growth in 2025 and beyond. First and foremost, as I mentioned earlier, we've made significant progress on our merger integration and synergy realization plans. From a systems perspective, our IT integration is on track. Guest data across all parks will be migrated to our in house ticketing platform by year end, providing a seamless experience for all park pass holders and enabling a more unified approach to pricing, promotion and CRM.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

Integration of the full technology stack remains a multiyear initiative, although we're pleased with the groundwork that has already been laid to advance that effort. Our ongoing portfolio optimization efforts are another key of our strategy to strengthen the business and realize the full potential of the merger. I'm pleased to say that these efforts are well underway as evidenced by the recent announcement of our plans to close our Maryland parks after the 2025 season. The decision to sunset Six Flags America and Hurricane Harbor at the end of this season was a difficult but necessary one, a decision that aligns with our broader priorities to simplify our operations, reduce portfolio risk and focus resources on high margin, high growth parks. Proceeds from the divestiture of noncore assets such as this will support debt reduction, and the transactions are expected to be cash flow accretive, reduce our leverage ratio and modestly improve EBITDA margins.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

It's premature to provide a specific timetable for the sale process, but it's reasonable to say it could take twelve to eighteen months or more to complete. Along with other asset sale efforts, including excess land adjacent to Kings Dominion near Richmond, Virginia, we will work diligently with our real estate advisers execute these transactions as efficiently as possible while maximizing value. As it relates to future divestiture of assets, we don't have any plans to close any additional parks at this time. We will continue to evaluate all options and consider other potential transactions to enhance shareholder value. In the meantime, we are excited at the prospect of operating all 42 of our parks for the 2025 season.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

We have also made great progress building out our capital plans for the next few years with our capital strategy remaining disciplined and tightly aligned with our growth priorities. As Brian mentioned earlier, we still expect to invest approximately $1,000,000,000 on capital projects for the 2025 and 2026 seasons. Should macroeconomic conditions meaningfully change, we will have several levers at our disposal to reduce our use of cash. Most meaningfully is our ability to quickly adjust the scope of our CapEx program. Approximately 30% of our annual CapEx budget is allocated to infrastructure projects that are more discretionary, have shorter lead times and can often be delayed until later periods.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

Along with our ability to adjust our operating cost structure up and down to match demand levels, this affords us the flexibility to rationalize our use of cash should market conditions change materially from plan. We will continue to be disciplined and nimble in deploying capital. Despite broader concerns around the economy, we remain focused on executing our strategic road map, driving top line growth, capturing synergies and resetting our cost structure, optimizing our portfolio of assets and improving capital efficiency, which positions Six Flags well to deliver quality earnings growth, substantial free cash flow growth and enhanced value for our shareholders. We are excited to share more details of our long term strategy at our upcoming Investor Day, where we will outline our growth objectives through 2028, the pathway to a 40% margin and a clear line of sight for unlocking more shareholder value. In closing, I want to thank our associates for their commitment to delivering an exceptional guest experience.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

To the investment community, we appreciate your continued support and confidence and look forward to keeping you updated on our progress as we pursue our long range targets. Abbey, that concludes our opening remarks. Please open the line for questions.

[Operator]

Thank you. And we will now begin the question and answer please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one a second time. If you are called upon to ask your question and are listening via speakerphone on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. To be able to take as many questions as possible, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up.

[Operator]

You may rejoin the queue if you have additional questions. And our first question comes from the line of James Hardiman with Citigroup. Your line is open.

[Sean Wagner, AVP at Citigroup]

Hi. This is Sean Wagner on for James Hardiman. I believe the thirty six additional operating days works out to about 2% growth in operating days in the second quarter. How do you expect attendance and sales growth in that quarter to compare to that number?

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

Let Sean, it's Richard. I'll let Brian take the number aspect of it. What I will say, I'll reiterate what we said in our guidance. We, from the beginning, have believed that second and third quarters are where the opportunity were as we look at the combined Park portfolio. So all of our emphasis is we believe those are higher margin days.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

We believe those are going to be highly accretive. And we see really strong demand heading into those second quarter and third quarter days. Brian?

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Yes, Sean. We don't have specific quarterly guidance. I'm going to couch my comments carefully here. As Richard mentioned, the focus coming into 2025 was about optimizing the operating calendar and taking out lower value days in the first and fourth quarter or maybe you characterize it slightly different and say days that have a lower ceiling and maybe a lower floor at the same time because of the variability of weather. Adding back days in the second and third quarter will be higher value days that we believe not only represent the ability for higher margin days but also higher attendance days.

[Sean Wagner, AVP at Citigroup]

Okay. And I guess is there any quantification you can give us on the Easter and or Boysenberry Festival shifts? And now that Easter is behind us and most of the boysenberry festivals has occurred, do you expect to make all of that up in 2Q or did poor weather kind of hold any of that back?

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Well, weather has been as we noted a factor in April. We said weather and led by the Midwest. It wasn't exclusive to the Midwest, but Midwest was the most impacted. We lost as we noted on the call in our prepared remarks, about 175,000 visits over that last half of or the second the last two weeks, I'm sorry, of April. Boysenberry is still ongoing.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

The event isn't over. It runs through May at the May at Nass. And so Boise and will have sort of lapped by the time we get to the end of the second quarter. We do believe as we were just talking about the opportunities to add those days in May and June are going to be greater or have greater upside than what was potentially lost in April because of the weather. Now May and June could also face weather issues.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

That's the uncertainty of an outdoor entertainment business. But we're excited about the potential that May and June represent with those incremental operating days.

[Sean Wagner, AVP at Citigroup]

Okay. And just to clarify, is there any quantification you can give us on, I guess, the attendance impact that the Easter or the Boysenberry Festival shifts had?

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Boysen would have been the most pronounced and Boysenberry now again the event is not over, so I don't want to give an uninformed number on Boysen. I think we'll be in a better position to tell you exactly what shifted after the Boysenberry event has fully wrapped.

[Sean Wagner, AVP at Citigroup]

Okay. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

And our next question comes from the line of Steve Wieczynski with Stifel. Your line is open.

[Steve Wieczynski, Managing Director at Stifel Financial Corp]

Hey, guys. Good morning.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

Good morning, Steve.

[Steve Wieczynski, Managing Director at Stifel Financial Corp]

Are you guys? Hope you guys are doing well. So Brian, just want to clarify something. I think you mentioned pretty sure you mentioned in your prepared remarks that you're expecting the first quarter attendance to represent I think you said about 5.5 for the full year and then first quarter revenues to be about 6% for the full year. And that's different than what I think was in your release.

[Steve Wieczynski, Managing Director at Stifel Financial Corp]

I think your release says it should be about 7% for both. I assume that's more historical versus anything else. And just want to clarify that I heard you right there because I think there's a lot of folks and investors out there that are kind of a little bit panicked about what was in the release.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Yes, Steve. The 7% would be more of a historical or what we would normally expect coming into a year given some of the headwinds around timing of operating calendars and other factors. The pace that we're on right now, you heard correctly, on attendance we're currently tracking where first quarter would represent 5.5% of full year attendance based on our outlook over the balance of the year and revenue is closer to 6%, which is inside of what would be a normal course or historical pacing for the first quarter. The most I think the key thing to take away is that the first quarter is not a material quarter by any stretch. It's a very important quarter from a setting up the stage for getting the parks ready to open.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

But in terms of the trend lines, as we said, it's somewhat of an inconsequential or not indicative quarter when it comes to what full year potential looks like.

[Steve Wieczynski, Managing Director at Stifel Financial Corp]

Okay. Got you. Thanks for that, Brian. Then second question probably for you Richard, but want to ask about the decision to close the 6 Flags Park in Maryland. But, look, guess the thesis is essentially shut the park down, that land there.

[Steve Wieczynski, Managing Director at Stifel Financial Corp]

I'm from Maryland. That land has to be worth a decent amount of money, and then you'll be able to keep the majority of those folks essentially at your Kings Dominion Park, is relatively close in the grand scheme of things. So I guess the question is, as we kind of look across your portfolio, I know you said you're not actively looking to shut other assets down. But to me, it would seem like there are you know, other opportunities to do the same type of thing across, you know, across the portfolio. And so while you're maybe not shopping something today, is that the right way to think about it?

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

I think, Steve, let me answer it this way, Steve. I think it's a it's a it's a good question. As I think about that particular land parcel, we think back to the transaction that that we did at Legacy Cedar back in 2022 with the land underneath our Santa Clara Park. There are times where you have unique opportunities, and it's truly is unique. And I put the land in in Maryland underneath our DC Park and the land at Richmond underneath the excess land at Richmond.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

Both have huge potential to generate values that's far in excess of what we think we can produce in terms of results going forward. So when we look at the ability to redeploy capital, we try to be good stewards of the capital that's invested in this company. I think we've got an obligation to to spot these types of opportunities and act quickly on them. So we're gonna we're gonna move as quickly as possible while maximizing value, as I said in my prepared remarks. We do have now, you know, parks all across North America.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

So, you know, there there's lots of opportunities for people to buy tickets to our parks in every region, including the DC area, the Baltimore area, and down through, you know, Raleigh and Richmond as well. But when we think about the the rest of the portfolio, we'll continue to evaluate where there are other opportunities. We don't see as as much an opportunity on on the the underlying land at this point under the rest of the portfolio, but there may be an opportunity, as we said, to maximize value as we think about some of our smaller locations.

[Steve Wieczynski, Managing Director at Stifel Financial Corp]

Okay. Got you. Thanks for the guys. Really appreciate

[Steve Wieczynski, Managing Director at Stifel Financial Corp]

it.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Thanks, Steve.

[Operator]

And

[Operator]

our next question comes from the line of Arpine Kucharian with UBS. Your line is open.

[Arpine Kocharian, Executive Director at UBS Group]

Thank you so much for taking my question. So Brian, Richard, I entirely hear you on the Easter shift and events kind of moving out of Q1 into Q2. But then we have sort of April that's tracking a bit softer than what would have been implied by kind of that Easter shift. And I understand you talked about sort of weather impact. I guess my question is, what gives you confidence to keep the guidance here?

[Arpine Kocharian, Executive Director at UBS Group]

It sounded like you haven't really seen much impact from kind of the weakening consumer in your business. Is there anything else you're watching closely? But I guess the key question is what are those early signs that you're seeing that gives you the confidence to keep the guidance unchanged here? And then I have a quick follow-up.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

Thank you. Let me jump in here and say that we do remain confident in our ability to hit our full year numbers. What we watch are both long lead indicators, and we've talked at length today about season pass sales, but also what we're seeing as we look at the information that becomes available as we open up parks, how they're performing. You know, we opened up Cedar Point last Saturday. And then 47 degrees and a driving rain that was almost sideways, we had almost 18,000 people in the park because they were there to ride the reopened Top Thrill two, and they were there to experience the beyond their own opening day at Cedar Point, which is a long held tradition.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

So that type of demand, when we see that and a level of demand in less than ideal weather, gives us real confidence that we look at things. I know when we also watch, and I know there's a lot of concern about the health of the consumer. Yeah. When we look at how our consumer is performing, let me give you a little little backdrop of one thing that we watch. When we look specifically at the ecommerce channel and what we sell through our ecommerce channel since on a year to date basis since January 1, we're up 1% unit volume, and we're up mid single digits on price if you average out everything that we sell through that channel.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

So we continue to see a willingness of the consumer to to recognize value and dip into it. And then lastly, the other thing that I'm really excited about, we've talked at length about our approach to food and beverage and the ability to generate more transactions, grow revenues within our food and beverage segment. We've renovated 11 restaurants across the portfolio, converting them into what we call our crew serve model. It's a model that improves service capacity, allows us to increase menu variety and the ability to drive a higher check average, improve staffing flexibility. The results have been outstanding and encouraging.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

Per capita spending is up year over year at all 11 locations. The average transaction value across the 11 locations is up almost 10%. Five of the locations have increased transaction accounts by more than 50%, and four of them have doubled the transactions. So it's not just pricing. It's also the ability to get people to buy up the menu because we have higher quality items that they'll choose, but it's also the ability to drive that revenue in a very efficient way.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

And when we look at it, that's part of the formula here where we're going to continue to drive that in park spending. So that combined with our approach to cost management, and I'll reinforce that what Brian and I both said in our prepared remarks, we anticipate that operating costs and expenses will be down 3% or more in this calendar year. So yes, tough first quarter, not indicative of full year performance, but the ability to drive top line revenue growth, really be cost efficient and take cost out of the system, which is one of the rationales behind the deal, the ability to continue to optimize portfolio. So all those things give us confidence that we can achieve the '25 operating plan, but also, more importantly, set up a really successful '26 and beyond. And we'll have more for everybody on that topic when we get together for our Investor Day on May 20.

[Arpine Kocharian, Executive Director at UBS Group]

Looking forward to that, and thank you. That's super helpful. Just a quick follow-up, Richard, if if I may. In terms of your asset sales, is it possible at all to put in perspective kind of what your expectations are in terms proceeds for the combined land sale and the Maryland sale? I guess I'm trying to understand what's the extent of deleveraging we could expect from those to the extent you can answer, understanding there could be some sensitivity around how much you can say.

[Arpine Kocharian, Executive Director at UBS Group]

So I appreciate anything I could get.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

Yeah. I'll Brian weigh in as well, but we'll have a lot more to say in terms of our deleveraging target and how we see the both the proceeds from this and any other potential action between now and 2,028. We'll have more to say on that on May 20. But we're looking to to unlock significant proceeds, particularly from the land sales. And then, you know, were we to approach anything else, it'd have to be something that would would generate significant impact.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

But it's really about also reducing the complexity of our business model and making sure that the capital we're putting back in the business goes towards those high potential, high revenue growth opportunity sites. Brian?

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Yes, Arpine. We're not going to put a specific price on those two locations. But if you were to go out and look at market a range of market price per acre, you can see a gross proceeds number that could easily get north of a couple of hundred million dollars.

[Arpine Kocharian, Executive Director at UBS Group]

Thank you very much.

[Operator]

And our next question comes from the line of Thomas Yeh with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

[Thomas Yeh, Executive Director - Equity Research at Morgan Stanley]

Thanks so much. I wanted to ask about progress on unifying your season pass selling strategy. I think you've been implementing a more consistent pricing on the legacy Six Flags footprint than was historically used. So any more color you can provide on how you've seen behavior shift on the Six Flags side, maybe both in terms of the blended pricing to date and the pace of adoption you expect and how much you think that contributed to the gains that you saw in the last, like, four or five week period?

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

Listen. What we Thomas, good morning. It's Richard. What we saw over the last four or five week period indeed was indicative of where we think we could go. We strongly believe in a consistent approach to the market, so the market understands they can can they can make their own decisions on on value that we provide and see that the value gets greater.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

We there's a tremendous opportunity in June and July, given the membership aspect of the the Six Flags program, and we've got that's sort of the installment at some of the pieces. We really do need to get back to what what I what I laid out in my prepared remarks, is getting everybody on the same ticketing system. We harmonize the programs at a high level. We did not wanna give up on this season, and we rolled out the all park passport, which lets you visit any of our parks in the portfolio. So a lot more work to do, but it's really gonna be a lot easier.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

And we're gonna be a lot more efficient and effective when everybody's on the same ticketing system, when all the data is feeding into our data warehouse, and the CRM folks that are that are on our team can go in and mine the value out of the our guest and and and the relationship we have with them and focus on driving more visits and getting more out of every visit from those seeking path holders. Brian, anything you want to add?

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Yes. Would just say, Thomas, we knew coming into '25, given all the efforts that Richard just talked about in terms of ticket harmonization, but also program harmonization that it was going to be a little bit bumpy as we reset the season pass and membership programs on both sides of the portfolio. A little bit later start to the year with a later Easter and maybe deferring some of the opening days a little bit deeper into the season would put us a little bit timing wise behind where we were last year. But very encouraged by the sales trends, up mid single digits in terms of unit sales over the last five weeks of April. And I think it's also important to note that there's multiple bites at this apple, right?

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

It's not just the sale of 2025 passes, which May and June, as Richard noted, very meaningful part of the full sales cycle. But we will before we know, we'll be quickly into late summer and selling twenty twenty six passes and we feel we'll be in a much better place in terms of the consumers' understanding of what the program looks like. We'll be deeper into that exercise of harmonizing the ticketing platform. So we're focused right now. The teams are highly focused on the May window, but there's a lot of prep work going on with plans for the '26 launch later this summer.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

And so there's multiple opportunities to really drive the season pass program in the right direction.

[Thomas Yeh, Executive Director - Equity Research at Morgan Stanley]

Got it. That's helpful. And then maybe just a quick follow-up, going off of Steve's initial question on the full year attendance implied guidance. I think 5.5% for 1Q puts you at around a 2% growth rate for the year. This might be using too much precision on a small number at this point, but you anticipate there's room for attendance to still grow above historical trends, which I think is what you guided to last quarter?

[Thomas Yeh, Executive Director - Equity Research at Morgan Stanley]

Or did the slightly lower than expected 1Q in April take you down

[Thomas Yeh, Executive Director - Equity Research at Morgan Stanley]

a little bit on that? So much.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Tom.

[Thomas Yeh, Executive Director - Equity Research at Morgan Stanley]

Go

[Thomas Yeh, Executive Director - Equity Research at Morgan Stanley]

ahead, Rob. Go ahead.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Was just going to say, I think you hit it on the head, Thomas, right? There's a degree of precision that depending on whether you use 5.5% or you use 5.7% or 5.3% can skew things dramatically. We said that the tracking it's tracking right now where first quarter would represent closer to approximately 5.5%. But is there upside to that absolute math? Certainly.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

We think there's a lot of opportunity in June as evidenced by the expanded operating calendar. We think there's great opportunity in July given the weather comps that we have from last year. So I think depending on how those things play out over the balance of the year and what you put into your model, you can get to a number that's above the 2% for the full year.

[Thomas Yeh, Executive Director - Equity Research at Morgan Stanley]

Thank you.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Thanks, Thomas.

[Operator]

And our next question comes from the line of Ben Chaikin with Mizuho. Your line is open.

[Ben Chaiken, Analyst at Mizuho Securities]

Good afternoon. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess, first on cost, I feel like there's a pretty significant update that we've kind of just glossed over. You're saying 3% or more lower on cost.

[Ben Chaiken, Analyst at Mizuho Securities]

Just maybe a couple of clarifications here. Number one, is that all do you define that as all cash costs, so just like the delta between revenue and EBITDA? Point number two is is the down 3% plus, is that a tool kind of like number that we should expect in the p and l, or do we then need to gross that up for inflation? So meaning, like, our cost our reported cost is gonna be down 3% plus or or or up at when you take into consideration? And then point number three, what changed versus your your previous previous goal, which I think was $70,000,000 in the year, which I don't think would have gotten you to down 3% plus?

[Ben Chaiken, Analyst at Mizuho Securities]

And then a few follow ups. Thanks.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

So Ben, let me jump in here first. Yes. So what we're saying is when I say down 3% operating cost and expenses, I would exclude cost of goods sold. So that's a separate calculation, separate look at things. This is operating expenses and SG and A combined.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

So we'll be down 3% per our forecast. We did say that, you know, we hit our 120,000,000 We hit $50,000,000 of cost synergy savings last year, and this year, we'll hit all 70,000,000 That's how we complete the 120,000,000 So we're comfortable we got the decisions in place. We're executing on the reorg. We understand the need to actually expand margins. That is one of the reasons we did this deal.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

That's tapping the potential of the merger. So as we look forward, we're continuing to hunt for a little bit more. But I'll also emphasize that the $60,000,000 I referenced in my remarks sits on top of that 120,000,000 and that's both the impact in 2026 of decisions we're making this year, but also other things that we can't get to until we harmonize the tech stack. So there's we're plotting out the integration and mining the fruits of the integration over the next twelve to twenty four months. We're pleased we got to 50% more than the cost synergies and savings we originally promised, and we continue to look to be as efficient as possible.

[Ben Chaiken, Analyst at Mizuho Securities]

Understood. Maybe just a follow-up there for a second in case I missed it. So I totally hear you on on the, cost ex COGS. But is that a is that a net of inflation number? Or then will we have later in inflation on on top of that?

[Ben Chaiken, Analyst at Mizuho Securities]

I'm just trying to put modeling perspective, think about what our expectations should be.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Yes, Ben, it's Brian. That number is all in inflation inclusive. The only thing I would call out, and I think you alluded to this in how you asked the question, that would be excluding any integration or other adjusted EBITDA add backs like severance. As we go through this reorg effort, there'll be a chunk of severance over the second half of the year related to that. So really looking at your sort of recurring normal course operating costs and expenses inclusive of SG and A in that target.

[Ben Chaiken, Analyst at Mizuho Securities]

Understood. And then what are the $60,000,000 and then totally appreciate the incremental 60,000,000 that are coming in out in 2026, which is I think a new data point. Can we maybe dive in about what encompasses those $60,000,000 And is that also a net of inflation number as well?

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

We'll have more to say in a couple of weeks as we look at the profile of our 2028 target. But I would say, as I said, some of that is the residual impact, the remaining impact of decisions we're making in real time as we go through reorganizing our company. Some are things that we can't get to until next year. We're still building out the operating plan, but we think that that level of savings takes a big chunk out of the inflation impact in next year. So Brian?

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Yes. And I would say right now that target, Ben, may be slightly different. That's a gross synergy or cost savings target for 2026. We'll be doing a lot more work as we get into later in the year into 2025 and building out the 2026 plan where inflation and some of those other things that may offset. But that's our gross incremental synergy piece that sits above and beyond the original 120,000,000 that we had announced with the merger.

[Ben Chaiken, Analyst at Mizuho Securities]

Got it. And just to lob in a very quick third one. In an ideal world regarding the land sales in Maryland, would you get certain entitlements on that land in Maryland prior to selling, you know, for example, you know, data in order to maximize value? Are you trying to do that currently? It may be a better way of asking it.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

We're working closely with the jurisdictions in Richmond and also in DC to make sure that the process yields a benefit for the company, but certainly a benefit for the community. Entitlements are always part of that process. We have found both jurisdictions extremely engaged and looking to help in the process. So I think those conversations will be productive. There's always a tug of war.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

There's always some tension in the timeline between getting entitlements and what ultimately the property becomes when you redevelop a property and the proceeds you get. So we'll look for the intersection that that maximizes value, but that also delivers at an efficient time frame. And and very, very pleased with the cooperation and the discussions so far with the local jurisdictions.

[Ben Chaiken, Analyst at Mizuho Securities]

Thank you. Appreciate it.

[Operator]

And our next question comes from the line of Matthew Boss with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

[Matthew Boss, Equity Research Analyst at JPMorgan Chase]

Great. Thanks. So Richard, maybe in light of the near term economic uncertainty that you cited, how are you thinking about balancing price versus volume near term? And then at Six Flags, on the recapture opportunity from attendance, just how best to think about the annual cadence of attendance recapture if we think about maybe the linearity of recapturing the lost attendance relative to investments or initiatives that you have in place multiyear?

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

Matt, I would say, as we think about the opportunity to drive market penetration, we think it's one of the key reasons to the key opportunities that the the combined company has, the new Six Flags has. As we think about that, I think there are underpenetrated markets across the portfolio that reside from either side of the the companies that came either side of the legacy companies. So what we have seen in the past is you get good traction in year one, you get more traction in year two, and there's a build. So we're gonna talk about, you know, what we see over the next few years beyond '25 and early twenty six as we get to May 20. So I don't wanna I don't wanna foreshadow those comments too much because we've got a robust presentation for everybody, and we're to go through it.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

But as we think about the opportunity, it's considerable. You've heard us say that, you know, in the underpenetrated parks, if we if we get those underpenetrated parks up to the what we would say are the guide rail levels, There's there's 10,000,000 in the near term. There's significantly more than that in the longer term. So as we think about 02/1928, there is a there's a there's a look at how we drive demand with with our capital plans, which are coming together nicely. I'm really excited about the reactions we've seen in all of the parks that have opened, and we've seen some tremendous reaction to the coasters that we're opening and that we're about to open.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

So I think there is a real affinity for in each of the markets, and there are as a core of customers that really wanna come back year after year. Our job in the the is to execute really well, provide a great guest experience, and get them to come back year after year. Brian, anything you wanna add?

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

I'd just say, Matt, at a high level, the '25 business plan is certainly built and focused around driving demand, as Richard said, tapping into the opportunities that are in front of us. But at the same time, we remain confident in our ability to improve guest spending. That opportunity will increase as we get deeper into the season. As you referenced sort of the cadence of attendance and you've heard us talk about keeping our parks comfortably crowded. It's important as that extends length of stay, which increases spending on things like food and beverage and drives more demand for premium experience.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

So while not meaning maybe not material increases in the first quarter and in April, seeing per capita continuing to trend in the right direction is extremely encouraging, particularly as we think about some of the initiatives that we have in place. And Richard hit on it a little bit earlier the in answering one of the questions about some of the early momentum we're seeing in the channel like food and beverage with the initiatives of renovating and adding food locations. So I think it's a combination of both volume and per capita and pricing will follow, right? We'll continue to use dynamic pricing and BI tools that we've always used. But one thing that we should note is we're putting a floor on pricing.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

While dynamic pricing cuts both ways, we're not looking to we've said this before and we'll continue to say we're not discounters. We're looking to maintain pricing discipline. That's a little bit educated by our past experience that shows even in challenging economic times demand becomes highly inelastic, meaning that there's no amount of discounting to preserve drive preserve attendance or drive the consumer to behave any differently than they're going to. So we'll lean into pricing more than we'll take pricing down.

[Matthew Boss, Equity Research Analyst at JPMorgan Chase]

Great. And then maybe just a follow-up Brian on the cost side. Could you just walk through the puts and takes to consider as it relates to maybe this year's reset of the base relative to the underlying operating cost growth to consider as we think about relative to the low to mid single digit growth historically?

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Yes. So I mean, I think coming into this year, as Richard said in previous remarks, it's a continuation of the effort that began last year after the merger closed. Challenging for us to make significant changes in the middle of the season. So we were there was a lot of planning and a lot of work that was going on at that point in time, but we had to wait on a lot of those changes until after the season wrapped, which for some of our parks was early November and other parks it wasn't until early January. So the exercise to reset the cost base is across the board.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

It involves, as we've said, a review and a reset of the org structure. It involves leaning in on other non headcount related cost savings, whether that be in the harmonization of our IT stack or driving better terms with our vendor partners and suppliers. So there's it's across the spectrum quite frankly, Matt. I would say early on it skews a little bit more heavily, the opportunity skews a little bit more heavily on the headcount side of things and then starts to pivot a little bit more towards the non headcount. As Richard said, there are some things that are contractually tied up for a little longer than you'd like.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

And so you get to them maybe later in 2025 or they're part of the 2026 algorithm for cost savings. In terms of the headwinds, there's always inflation and so we're dealing with that. But we noted it to Ben's question, we've accounted for that in our target of 3% or more cost reduction.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

I really Matt, let me jump in here. We said that this would be the great reset when we put these companies together. In 2025, we proved to be that. When we talk about rearchitecting our business, it's not just rearchitecting the org structure. We've gone in and applied a lot of science, benchmarking different sites against each other.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

We've gone in and read and taken the time to redo our decision making processes. So this was a holistic look at our organization, not just the structure, but how we make decisions. And I'm really pleased at where we're coming out and how we've clarified within the organization, and we'll clarify, you know, how we be as effective as possible while being as efficient as possible. And we're really driving this business through through the use of KPIs and embedding the data and analytics around those KPIs and all the decisions we're making.

[Matthew Boss, Equity Research Analyst at JPMorgan Chase]

Great color. Best of

[Matthew Boss, Equity Research Analyst at JPMorgan Chase]

luck.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Thanks, Pat.

[Operator]

And our next question comes from the line of Michael Swartz with Truist Securities. Your line is open.

[Michael Swartz, Director - Equity Research at Truist Securities]

Hey, guys. Good morning. Maybe just with all the macro and consumer uncertainty out there, maybe if we just take a step back and go back to prior periods of consumer weakness, Where do we typically start to see some of the cracks in the foundation as it pertains to your business?

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

Good question, Mike. It's Richard. When I think back to 02/1929, we saw it going into 'eight, 'nine. Season Pass sales were significantly lower. We saw group bookings not just eroding, but we actually had groups calling us up and canceling.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

And when we looked at our resort bookings, you know, they just weren't they they dropped off considerably heading into season. We're not seeing any of that. As I said, you know, let's work backwards here. We've seen we've seen a 10% increase in opening weekend of Cedar Point and bookings for that weekend. So people are booking later, but they're booking.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

We've seen an increase in our small group booking channel, which is our fifth our groups that are 15 to a hundred. You know, that's showing strength. Youth and student groups are showing a lot of strength, so we're not seeing it there. We are seeing companies being cautious, but we're also seeing companies saying, may not book my spring outing. What do you got available in the fall?

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

So they're they're they're looking a little bit longer. But with with season pass, you know, north of fifty, fifty five to 60% of our attendance, we really watch that channel most closely. And and, again, what what we saw and I'll go back to what I said about our ecommerce channel. Just looking at everything we saw in our ecommerce, volume up 1%, pricing up mid single digits, it means that we don't see the erosion of the consumer that maybe some other businesses are seeing. That's not to say that it's it's not there in other sectors, but our consumers and our markets are reacting the way we would expect them to as we head into late spring.

[Michael Swartz, Director - Equity Research at Truist Securities]

Okay. Great. That's super helpful. And then maybe one last question on the first quarter. And I know there's a lot of noise in the quarter given the timing of Easter and some of the calendar shifts.

[Michael Swartz, Director - Equity Research at Truist Securities]

But when I look at the legacy Six Flags business, it looks like the rate of EBITDA decline was up nearly triple what it was last year. Maybe just help us unpack what why that was?

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Yes, Mike. So I think as you look at the two sides of the portfolio, certainly with the six side of our portfolio, the Six Flags parks, more of those opening up earlier. We've invested and it's a big chunk of the timing difference I mentioned on the cost side. I'd say more of it is happening from the cost side as we brought forward a lot of off season, whether you want to call it maintenance or pre opening costs. We brought a lot of those from a timing perspective earlier in the year here in 2025.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

And so that's a bigger part of the equation on our Six Flags side of the portfolio. On the Cedar side, a little bit more of the headwind is related to the shift in Knott's Berry Farm, but that's really the only part that we have on that side of the portfolio that has any significant or meaningful first quarter operations. On the SiC side, we did see a little bit of headwind on some of the calendar issues, but not as demonstrative as maybe what we saw with Knott's Berry Farm's Boysenberry Festival.

[Ben Chaiken, Analyst at Mizuho Securities]

Okay. Super helpful. Thank you.

[Operator]

And our next question comes from the line of Ian Zaffino with Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

[Ian Zaffino, Managing Director at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

Hi, great. Thank you very much. I know that you talk about F and But have you seen any type of shifts on the F B side? Like are people still is the update on more discretionary F and B, if you call it that, maybe like alcohol or something along those lines?

[Ian Zaffino, Managing Director at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

Is there any type of softness or anything along those lines there? Or is it pretty much as robust there as it is kind of in the other F and B offerings?

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

Ian, it's Richard. You broke up a little bit. I think you asked about the various pieces of F and B. I would say we've seen strength in our meal category. We've seen real strength in beverages.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

We've still seen great strength in adult beverages. So it really has been across the board. Know, weekend by weekend, I would tell you that if it's a rainy weekend, you don't get as money much snack selling. So snacks go down a little because length of stay is probably not the same. But we've seen on on normal, you know, same day weather to same day weather, sunny weather, strength across all the things that we track.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

And we still got I mentioned the 11 locations that we we've already opened. We still got a couple more we're gonna open in May. And I will tell you here, you know, at our at our local Charlotte Park, we're putting in an adult swim up beverage bar that is just everybody has been asking me about. So we see the desire of our consumers to really come and enjoy the food and beverage segment, which really seemed to resonate as a guest satisfier. We like it as a revenue growth potential, but it also is something people talk about and then one of the reasons they keep coming back.

[Ian Zaffino, Managing Director at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

Okay. And then maybe to broaden the question. Just geographically, can you maybe tell us how businesses kind of geographically some of the competitors have commented on like West Coast softness. Have you seen any of that at all? Or is it pretty much broad basis geographically stable?

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

I

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

would say Brian can weigh in here. But I would say what we've seen, and Brian referenced it, is because we had a couple of inclement weather weekends, rainy weekends, Midwest and East Coast, that sort of colored it. But no, when we've had good weather, we've seen what we would expect to see throughout all the regions. So but again, it's a limited sample size at this point. We're only 15% of our operating days in.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

So it's a little hard to get a read on the whole portfolio when the whole portfolio is not up and operating. That'll be in early June when everybody's seven days a week. So that's when we'll have real meaningful look at the different regions. But I will say, historically, what we've seen, the Midwest has been rock solid the last four years. That's continued to perform really well.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

The coast have a little more impact from weather, particularly on the East Coast. But what we like about and we'll talk about on May 20, the geographic diversity means we don't have more than 30% of our attendance or revenues in any particular region. That well diversified model was one of the keys to doing the merger and why we feel really good about really good about that diversification. Although, it does take an adjustment for for Brian and I. Anytime you look at the weather map, we've got parks everywhere.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

So if there's weather anywhere, it's gonna be near us.

[Ian Zaffino, Managing Director at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

Alright. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

And

[Operator]

we appreciate your patience. We have five questions left in queue, and we would like to take them all. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Woronka with Deutsche Bank.

[Chris Woronka, Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

I was hoping they talk a little bit about guest mix at Six Flags. I know you guys you did the chaperone policy, when you closed the deal last summer. I know there was a little bit of near term disruption with that. But but looking forward, and I understand your commentary about pricing on Six Flags legacy passes maybe being flat. Do you think you can get to where you want on mix this year, or is that more of a multiyear project?

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

As I think about the guest mix, one of the things I'll go back to is how we think about capital. And we've always said, and we'll reiterate as we talk about this business, we think there's a rotation of in any market of thrill rides, family product and water product. You see that in our mix this year. We've got water park renovations and expansions at LA and Dallas. You see coasters in several parks.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

You see here at Charlotte and a couple other markets, family product going in. I think what we've seen, Chris, is the broad profile of what we would expect to see as we broaden our mix. So the markets are reacting. Chaparral and policy has been helpful in the key markets across all of our company, and we use that extensively. But I do think when you when you offer things that appeal to different segments, you'll start to broaden your base over time.

[Chris Woronka, Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Okay. Thanks. Thanks, Richard. And a quick follow-up just related to that. So, you know, also kind of a CapEx question, which is, I know you said about 30% of your your CapEx might be infrastructure.

[Chris Woronka, Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

I don't think that, you know, relates to any of the maintenance stuff you were working on at Six Flags with respect to lighting and the little things that had kind of gone undone over the years. Are you satisfied that as you head into peak season at the legacy Six Flags parks that you've got all the little things that need to be fixed? Are they kind of in place by now?

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

Yeah. I'll let Brian weigh in. We continue to look at things that we can do to improve the guest experience. We prioritize those things that I think the guests give us much value at. Listen.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

As a a guy who ran a park, I will tell you I walked the site that I was responsible for the first year, and ten years later, I still hadn't gotten everything. So the list is always long. We see things that sometimes our customers don't, but they're important to us. So we're going to continue to make improvements year by year and make sure that we're giving priority to those things the guests value most, which is why we're so focused on food and beverage because we get a lot of credit for that. There's high perceived value, and it really drives our demand.

[Chris Woronka, Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Okay. Hey. Thanks. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

[Operator]

And our next question comes from the line of Lizzie Dove with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

[Lizzie Dove, Vice President Equity Research at Goldman Sachs]

Hi, there. Thanks for taking the question. I know there's a lot of moving pieces, but just to kind of round everything out with the kind of calendar shifts you mentioned in 2Q and 3Q and kind of timing of cost shifting and attendant shifting. Any help in how to think about the kind of cadence of EBITDA for the year? I think the midpoint would imply the next three quarters grow around call it 15%.

[Lizzie Dove, Vice President Equity Research at Goldman Sachs]

But I'm curious if that's more weighted second quarter, third quarter, fourth quarter based on just some of the operating calendar shifts that you mentioned.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Yes, Lindsay, it's Brian. I mean as we said, the biggest opportunity and the focus coming into this year was second and third quarters. I think third quarter is pretty obvious to everyone as it's the lion's share of the operating calendar. But second quarter represents some great opportunity, particularly May and June, given the expanded number of days in those months. As we said on the call, those two quarters together have the potential to be 95% or more of full year EBITDA.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

And so again, a lot of the timing is often influenced by macro factors like weather. And we've always been very confident then when weather can be a little choppy early in the year, you still have plenty of runway to make it up. So it gets difficult to be precise in an imprecise world like that. But I think the second and third quarters do provide the opportunity to be a significant part of the growth story for 2025.

[Lizzie Dove, Vice President Equity Research at Goldman Sachs]

Got it. And then Brian, I think you said upfront that you're expanding your operating calendars and this particularly at some parks where you see the opportunities attendance growth at the greatest. I'm curious like which are those parks where you see the biggest opportunity or kind of turnaround story or uplift story from here that you would consider to be call it your most core parks?

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Yes. So as Richard mentioned, there's a number of parks in the portfolio that from a penetration rate sit lower than some of the better performing parks. There are some and so we'll focus on those. I think it's also important to call out that the planned operating calendar changes, the additions we're making, those are always there's always a little bit of degree of variability to that, meaning that when weather is a little unfavorable, we're going to manage that day maybe out of the system from a cost management perspective. And when we see strong demand, particularly this is more of a comment that you would see us make changes maybe late August and into the fall, when we see strong demand, we're not afraid to add days in and ride that demand.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

So I think if you look at the operating calendar, you're going to see some very obvious things. We're adding some days back in June at Six Flags over Texas as an example. And we think that that makes a lot of sense in that market. But there are a number of other markets in the system that we see a lot of opportunity for. Carowinds is a fast growing market.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

We're continuing to look to find ways to add days in the fall where we can tap into strong momentum.

[Lizzie Dove, Vice President Equity Research at Goldman Sachs]

Great. Thank you.

[Operator]

And our next question comes from the line of Brandt Montour with Barclays. Your line is open.

[Brandt Montour, Director, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays Corporate & Investment Bank]

Good morning, everybody. Thanks for taking my question. So just on the pass sales, digging in a layer deeper, you gave the overall pass revenue pace, you gave the pricing between the legacy the two legacy systems. I was wondering if

[Brandt Montour, Director, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays Corporate & Investment Bank]

you could maybe talk about it on

[Brandt Montour, Director, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays Corporate & Investment Bank]

a volume or unit basis. Just sort of when we think about the different pricing and I understand there's different strategies, but just to give us a sense on sort of momentum on the different programs.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Yes. I think in terms of maybe I'll try and answer it this way. In terms of the outlook, we're trying to drive higher volumes on both sides of the combined portfolio. Consistent with the attendance trends coming into this year, where on our legacy Cedar side of the portfolio, attendance was back to near pre pandemic levels. The season pass base is somewhat reflective of that.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

On the sick side of our portfolio, attendance is still well off of pre pandemic levels. And because season pass and membership is such a big part of our overall attendance, you can assume that the pass basis is down as well to pre pandemic level. So the volume opportunity much like for attendance is higher on our at our six parks, but we're not satisfied and going to settle for the volume numbers that we have on the Cedar Side as well. So we're going to lean into both. If I was trying to separate between the two, I'd say the opportunity for volume is higher on the six side right now than the Cedar side of the portfolio.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

The pricing, we can be a little bit more aggressive as we noted in our prepared remarks on the Cedar side because of that.

[Brandt Montour, Director, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays Corporate & Investment Bank]

Okay. That's helpful. And then just a bigger picture question on the full year guidance, obviously reaffirming EBITDA. And you called out macro in the release and you've got some other moving pieces, right, sounding a little bit better on OpEx and obviously 1Q was a bit tough versus plan. But when I take a step back and think about all the comments you guys gave today about demand momentum and what you're seeing in terms of top line KPIs, it doesn't seem like you're implying any change to your plan for top line for the year, but please let me know if I'm sort of walking myself off a cliff here.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

No. I I would say, listen, we are encouraged by a number of things we've seen, the KPIs that we look at. We came in thinking that there was meaningful top line growth to go get. We still believe that, so we're chasing that hard. We're also trying to be as responsible as as possible on the cost side and make sure that we as we've talked at length on this call, get to the meaningful cost savings that'll that'll that combination of driving the top line and meaningful cost reduction should drive a healthy increase in margin.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

But I've commented throughout this call on various channels. We see things that are encouraging, but I'm looking forward to getting all 42 of our parks open so we can get a real read on where everything is.

[Brandt Montour, Director, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays Corporate & Investment Bank]

Thanks everyone.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Thanks, Frank.

[Operator]

And

[Operator]

our final question comes from the line of David Katz with Jefferies. Your line is open. And David, I'm not sure if you are on mute.

[David Katz, Managing Director at Jefferies]

Sorry about that. Thanks for taking my questions. I appreciate you staying on just a little bit longer. Just very quick detail. Number one, there was some discussion about a couple of hundred million in deals.

[David Katz, Managing Director at Jefferies]

And I think what we heard is American hurricane was 100 plus, but there's a couple hundred. Could we just unpack that a little bit? Are we are we you know, what else is in that couple of hundred? Are you ready to talk about that at this point? Or are we saving that for Ohio?

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

No. I'll let Brian clarify. But the comments about the real estate value of the land in Richmond and the land in D. C. Could be $200,000,000 or more, I think, is what we said.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Correct. Yes. We're not putting a price on anything separate at this point, David. And we're still working through the process with our real estate advisers and going to try, as Richard said, maximize those values. We were just trying to put a neighborhood.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

If you look at market prices out there on a per acre basis, you can get the math that's north of 200 for those two combined locations that we've talked about to this point.

[David Katz, Managing Director at Jefferies]

Understood. And then just my second question is I hope you would just give us a little insight on the technology side of things. And I know, Richard, you've talked about analytics being kind of a decision driver. How much of that is technology driven? And what inning would you feel like you are at in terms of kind of pushing that part of the company going forward?

[David Katz, Managing Director at Jefferies]

I know that it was a legacy six issue.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

I would say this. I think in terms of what we desire to have, I think we're in the middle innings of building a lot of that out. Dashboards are coming online virtually every week on different KPIs. We found a way to migrate data over so we can have the information we need, but we need to go back to the underlying tech stack and get everybody on on the same system, whether that's the same, you know, POS system. We found ways, and as you would expect us to, to get the data pulled out, little more cumbersome, little more clunky.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

I would say we we know what where we wanna go. We're we're in the early innings of the tech stack integration, but we're making progress fast.

[David Katz, Managing Director at Jefferies]

Okay. We'll take it. Thanks very much, and appreciate being included.

[Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment]

Thanks, David. Thanks, David.

[Operator]

And that will conclude our question and answer session. I will now turn the conference back over to Mr. Richard Zimmerman for closing remarks.

[Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment]

Thanks for joining us on today's call. Brian, Michael and I look forward to seeing you many of you on Investor Day. We're excited to share our perspective on the growth potential of a larger and more formative Six Flags as well as our plan for monetizing the growth for the benefit of our shareholders and other constituents across North America and beyond. We will be sure to keep you updated on our progress along the way. Michael?

[Michael Russell, Corporate Director of Investor Relations at Six Flags Entertainment]

Thanks, Richard. Please feel free to contact our IR department at (419) 627-2233. And our next earnings call will be in August after the release of our twenty twenty five second quarter results. Abby, that concludes our call today. Thank you, everyone.

[Operator]

Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, again,

[Operator]

this concludes today's call, and

[Operator]

we thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Analysts

• Michael Russell, Corporate Director of Investor Relations at Six Flags Entertainment
• Richard Zimmerman, President, CEO & Director at Six Flags Entertainment
• Brian Witherow, CFO at Six Flags Entertainment
• Sean Wagner, AVP at Citigroup
• Steve Wieczynski, Managing Director at Stifel Financial Corp
• Arpine Kocharian, Executive Director at UBS Group
• Thomas Yeh, Executive Director - Equity Research at Morgan Stanley
• Ben Chaiken, Analyst at Mizuho Securities
• Matthew Boss, Equity Research Analyst at JPMorgan Chase
• Michael Swartz, Director - Equity Research at Truist Securities
• Ian Zaffino, Managing Director at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.
• Chris Woronka, Analyst at Deutsche Bank
• Lizzie Dove, Vice President Equity Research at Goldman Sachs
• Brandt Montour, Director, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays Corporate & Investment Bank
• David Katz, Managing Director at Jefferies