JackGlass wrote:They made the right move by rejecting this horrible offer.
Just looking at the comments on social media, everyone seemed to hate this idea. Six Flags has built up a bad reputation, as being cheap and stingy when it comes to investing and taking care of their parks. Cedar Fair has built up a great reputation.
If Six Flags took over Cedar Fair, the quality of those parks would almost certainly decline. If Cedar Fair took over Six Flags, the quality of the Six Flags parks, would almost certainly increase.
Six Flags needs to invest in the parks they have and clean up their image before they try taking over companies like Cedar Fair and Sea World Entertainment.
Everyone is missing the point. Part of the offer was to keep CF board members on running the company. So it would basically transform SF into a CF run company not the other way around since CF would have control over the company.
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The offer was $20 below what would make it appealing to shareholders and compensate them for huge benefits of MLP structure. 18% premium on stock price was ridiculous and just 12% above target price. Also, most of the deal being in SF stock is not appealing. SF stock is down huge in the last year. Not enticing to be offered SF stock. Having CF in exec positions doesn't cover for the low ball offer. Also, SF is struggling to have organic growth, CF is not only producing it, but has a bunch of new assets coming or just purchased that have massive upside potential. Schlitterbahn results are great already. The outdoor sports complex event bookings in year 2 what was projected for year 4 or 5 according to CF. Saw Mill Creek was the second biggest booker for the Outdoor sports complex after CP properties when bought. CF can expand that more and have the indoor sports complex coming which means more revenue off theme park season. The Carowinds hotel is opening in November and Wonderland hotel in early 2021. CF has no need to sell or merge and stated they aren't for sale. They however had to hear out any offer as a fiduciary responsibility to share holders, they could be sued otherwise. They couldn't turn down a great offer, say if it were $100 share or something without bringing it to shareholders to a vote, if a really big premium was offered.
The actually offer is being questioned by a few analysts b/c of the low per share price. There is some speculation SF might have another below expectation quarter coming again perpetuating the lack of organic growth narrative on Wall Street. This offer was a display they are trying to do something. There is also the notion that they are having trouble finding a CEO they want, hence let CF's management take over. The entire thing is odd b/c SF in many ways, ie...SF is pushing memberships as their new grand model the last 2 years. CF is wholly against memberships and in their analyst day presentation spent time explaining why they are against a membership structure. They think it hurts pricing power. So, SF in theory wanted a management team against the core of their new model started 2 years ago. A management team pushing the destination park, hotel/resort model for years and their 2 additions this year were in that area. This is an area SF is not really into beyond Darien Lakes(operating lease park). Great Adventure is the place a hotel could work. GAdv has no close by lodging and they have a lot of land. Other big parks like SFMM have plenty of nearby lodging and the park hasn't a bunch of extra suitable land/spots like GAdv
I think Great Adventure was originally supposed to build cabins, similar to Light House Point. This was part of the original plan for Great Adventure (Pre Six Flags)
Something like that would be awesome. Especially with all the wooded land that Great Adventure has.
Q3 earnings report at market close Tuesday 10/22, Conf call wednesday morning.
Prediction: SF misses outright or under performs ie...revenue up YoY, but the internals disappoint and the lack of abilityto demonstrate organic growth continues. The announced results and the call the next day usually doesn't forecast well, usually bodes to a "pre announced miss", as SF normally announcing pre market the day of the conf call. Q2 they put out mediocre results in a 11pm press release before morning conf call. Btw, Q3 2018 was a miss.
Revenue: 621M increase 1M Net Income: 200M decrease 5M EBIDTA: 307M increase 507K Attendance: 14M increase 400K Total per cap: 42.44 decrease 0.58 Admit per cap: 25.17 decrease In park spend: 17.27 increase 0.11 Deferred Revenue 198M increase 5M/2% Sponsorships International: 26M decrease 26% or 11M
9months numbers are also down but to get the full picture might have to wait till full year to see how if some of the numbers are made up by the difference in how membership revenue is claimed. After the 1st 12months memberships revenue is claimed per month, which means Q4 may be bigger than past years as the big membership push which started in 2018 starts to get possibly a significant number beyond 12 months.
Six Flags needs to learn from Cedar Fair. The rides draw people in, the experience keeps them coming back.
Anderson keeps trying to make the point "We are financially disciplined" There's a difference between being financially disciplined and being so cheap that it hurts your business.
9% of revenue on Capital expenditures is low. Only 15% of that is used for in park infrastructure??? That is terrible.
JackGlass wrote:Six Flags needs to learn from Cedar Fair. The rides draw people in, the experience keeps them coming back.
Anderson keeps trying to make the point "We are financially disciplined" There's a difference between being financially disciplined and being so cheap that it hurts your business.
9% of revenue on Capital expenditures is low. Only 15% of that is used for in park infrastructure??? That is terrible.
They need an Industry professional
Can't wait for the conf call, It's going to be just like the last few. JRA saying we have records but the increases are nothing,,,revenue increase 1M, EBIDTA increase 507K, these are paltry increases and net income was down 5M, as well as per caps.
The organic growth argument with analyst will be on again...
"The increase in attendance was primarily driven by the higher Active Pass Base growth in the parks the company began operating on June 1, 2018, and the new park in Rockford, Illinois."
So they are basically saying legacy parks as a whole are stagnant and increases are really coming from the added operating lease parks. That's where the 400K attendance increase came from. The lack of organic growth is why analysts have been all over SF for the last 18months. SF refuses to do in depth break out to show how much the new parks added to prove the legacy parks are growing. The fact is as a whole the growth is either non existent or so low to be negligible hence they don't break it out like Cedar Fair did in their Labor Day Q3 preview report and their investor presentation
Conf call was a JRA special. Defensive making the same excuses which Wall Street hasn't bought. Stock went from down 5% pre call to down 11% post call. JRA had bees up his bonnet and at what point told an analyst I can't believe you asked that? JRA is usually pretty surly but he was at a new level. Just like on CNBC interview he's calling the M&A talk in his prepared openings statement with Cedar Fair pure rumor..."stuff reported by some people." He's acting completely dismissive there was any offer though nobody blatantly asked yes or no did you make an offer.
Cedar Fair and SEAS stocks down about 2% in sympathy with SF down 11%. Wall Street sees SF pretty mediocre numbers despite good weather in most of the country in Q3 and thus may be expecting similar from others, yet to report
CoasterRiderSC wrote:Could the CF merger/takeover have really been just a speculation and not really something SF was attempting?
I think SF floated something, it got leaked and Cedar Fair shot it down quickly. SF instead of acting spurned should be finding away to convince Wall Street as they still aren't buying what SF &JRA selling on the earnings. They keep saying we reporting record revenue and WS is not impressed by a 1M revenue increase YoY Q3. Every time they have reported the last 4 quarters they have been hit by 5% to 12% the next day, the stock recovers some as people buy on the drop and collect some dividends and then it sells off on underwhelming earnings again. Stock down from $63 to $45 from Q1(feb) thru Q3(today), SEAS and Cedar Fair are up in the same time frame.
After a series of negative news such as pressure on the capital chain, layoffs, arrears of wages, and project shutdowns, Shanshui Cultural Park's companies have suffered equity freezes.
According to investigation, the equity freeze was triggered by a contract dispute.
Based on Shanshui Cultural Park's capital chain status and debt disputes, the freezing of its company's equity is likely to indicate that companies that have defaulted on their debts have started to claim through legal channels," an industry source who declined to be named told the Beijing Business Daily reporter. In fact, Shanshui Cultural Park is currently facing a number of claim lawsuits, mainly involving the suppliers and builders of the Shanshui Six Flags theme park.
Many people in the industry believe that the Six Flags project, which has made Shanshui Cultural Park proud, has also become the biggest drag on its business performance.
Beijing Commercial Daily also learned exclusively from the partner of Zhejiang Shanshui Six Flags, Shanghai Jigao Amusement Equipment Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shanghai Jigao"). Then signed a contract for the purchase and installation of amusement equipment. However, within the time agreed in the contract, [b]Shanshui Liuqi did not pay more than 1 million yuan for settlement, and Shanghai Jigao did not receive payment after repeated inquiries for more than half a year.[/b] Therefore, the company sent to Zhejiang in mid-September this year. Shanshui Six Banners issued a "Reminder Letter" and brought it to court. In November, the Haiyan County Court officially opened the case and accepted the case.
The financial problems in Shanshui Cultural Park are likely to cause losses to a large number of subcontracting cooperative enterprises and engineering companies. According to data, there are more than 200 related lawsuits in Shanshui Cultural Park. The content of the judgment involves construction disputes and sales contracts. Disputes, disputes over loan contracts, disputes over labor disputes, etc.
Delays &/or cancellation of the China parks will not be good. SF has not been producing organic growth domestically. The foreign license deals were seen as easy money with no Capex. Analysts had been factoring in these parks to the forward projections. Expect a slight downward earnings projections for 2020 b/c the parks thought to be opening in 2020 are pretty surely not & the others likely delayed, some were already pushed back to 2021. In the last conf call SF was talking about the delays being partial regulatory on one site & the other site designed for multi parks was to spread out the openings to not overwhelm with dry park, water [ark, adventure park opening all in close succession. These delays may however have been more about finances, as the finances of the developer didn't turn bad since October. Contractors has not been being paid at all or in full for about a year or more.
JackGlass wrote:Has Michael Spanos revealed anything about his strategy for Six Flags? Or will that be announced during the Q4 conference call?
Nothing announced. Q4 conf call will be very interesting & should be around Feb 12th. No real movement on the stock. Don't know if the news hasn't filtered widely or people really reacting b/c of vacations & light trading volume during Xmas & New Years weeks. SF reported decreased foreign revenue from projections in Q3 b/c of Dubai cancellation & China delays. Riverside further problems are going to be another hit & make analysts skeptical possibly of the foreign deals producing the EBIDTA SF has projected & it occurring in a timely manner. Vietnam & Dubai parks cancelled & now this. The last thing SF needs with being under scrutiny about their lack of domestic park organic growth
Last edited by Sven18 on January 1st, 2020, 1:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Here's another article regarding the collapsing Chinese deals.
These deals were a great idea in theory. but so far not a single one has come to fruition. I really hope Spanos focuses on organic growth at the parks Six Flags actually owns, because these overseas licensing deals seem like a wild goose chase.
JackGlass wrote:These deals were a great idea in theory. but so far not a single one has come to fruition. I really hope Spanos focuses on organic growth at the parks Six Flags actually owns, because these overseas licensing deals seem like a wild goose chase.
I really don't see any short term change in their 5 pillars of growth they outline, which are mostly based on non organic things. SF essentially made it seem the new CEO was to continue/complete the current plan. The organic revenue growth plans are essentially conversion of pass holders to members with a higher price point & getting member/pass holders to buy season dining. The other major component of domestic growth is operating leases(non organic). The first significant data on members will come in the 2019 annual, the 1st full year of financial with the membership push. The concern for SF is did they get all the easily converters essentially, which won't be really known till 2020 annual. SF could end up soon in the same spot they were in before, where they maxed out on cheap passes, they may soon plateau on membership. The dining pass have a lot of room to run potentially. There is no other real identified new major domestic growth initiative they have set forth. SF don't have the hotel/resort, sports complex, etc...of Cedar Fair & Halloween. HITP is already almost everywhere. How much more can you really get out of Frightfest?
This SEC filing is an interesting read. H Partners is shaking up the Board of Directors. It will be interesting to see if a new strategy is announced on the Q4 2019 call or the Q1 2020 call.
SIX FLAGS CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT FILED CONCERNING CHINA PARKS:
NEW YORK, Feb. 12, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, prominent investor rights law firm Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP ("BLB&G") filed a class action lawsuit for violations of the federal securities laws in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas against Six Flags Entertainment Corporation ("Six Flags" or the "Company") and certain of the Company's current and former senior executives (collectively, "Defendants"), on behalf of investors in Six Flags common stock between April 25, 2018 and January 9, 2020, inclusive (the "Class Period").
BLB&G filed this action on behalf of its client, the Electrical Workers Pension Fund, Local 103, I.B.E.W., and the case is captioned Electrical Workers Pension Fund, Local 103, I.B.E.W. v. Six Flags Entertainment Corporation, No. 3:20-cv-00346 (N.D. Tex.). The complaint is based on an extensive proprietary investigation and a careful evaluation of the merits of this case. A copy of the complaint is available on BLB&G's website by clicking here.
Six Flags' Alleged Fraud
Six Flags is the world's largest regional theme park operator. The claims alleged in this case arise from Defendants' misrepresentations and omissions relating to the Company's prospects of developing Six Flags-branded parks in China through licensing agreements with Chinese real estate developer, Riverside Investment Group Co. Ltd. ("Riverside"), and the financial problems at Riverside.
The complaint alleges that, throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Company's business, operations, and growth prospects related to its agreements with Riverside to develop parks in China. As development of those parks began to face delays, Defendants misled investors by downplaying the problems as "short-term" and "not material in the context of the long-term opportunity." Defendants also assured investors that Riverside was "work[ing] through" the macroeconomic issues in China and that Riverside was in "great shape" financially. In truth, Riverside was in severe financial distress and did not have the resources to timely complete its projects with Six Flags. As a result of Defendants' misrepresentations, shares of Six Flags' common stock traded at artificially inflated prices throughout the Class Period.
The truth emerged through a series of disclosures, beginning on February 14, 2019, when Six Flags announced a negative $15 million revenue adjustment for the fourth quarter of 2018 due to delays in the expected opening dates of some of its China parks, which the Company falsely blamed on macroeconomic issues in China.
Then, on October 23, 2019, Six Flags again postponed the timing of its park openings in China, stating "it's unrealistic to think it's going to be exactly as we've outlined."
Finally, on January 10, 2020, the Company disclosed that the development of its Six Flags-branded parks in China continued to encounter challenges and had not progressed as expected, placing the future of its China parks in jeopardy. The Company also revealed that Riverside continued to face significant financial challenges, which caused Riverside to default on its payment obligations to Six Flags. As a result of these disclosures, the price of Six Flags common stock declined precipitously. Six Flags Allegedly Misled Investors About China Parks Problems
Total per cap 42.37 decrease 0.21.........Q4 decrease
Admit per cap 24.86 decrease 0.44 ........Q4 decrease 0.48
In park per cap 17.51increase 0.23........Q4 increase 0.45
Attendance 32.8M increase 788K …........Q4 6.1M decrease 202K/3%.... blame on Mexico (austerity decreased school trips,weather, nearby park accident) & SFMM(weather,fires, delay in West Coast Racer opening
Capex 140M
Active Pass Base(Members + Passes) 7.7M decrease of 230K/3%
Members 2.6M increase /18%
63% attendance from active pass base Dividend cut to $0.25 from $0,83 decrease 69%
90% of the 788K attendance increase in 2019 was from the lease parks(total attendance 2.8M increase 8% Legacy parks attendance was up just 65K
-----Revenue(increase 1M), attendance, guest per caps in base/legacy parks was essentially flat in 2019. EBIDTA for legacy parks decreases 15M The flat to poor legacy performance is something the numbers had alluded to for 2018 & 2019 but JRA would not directly answer & would get illusive or defensive about. This confirms the worse held secret for 18 months SF has been incapable of organic growth & the reason the stock has been hammered with major falls after each earnings report of them not admitting the obvious. lack of organic growth has been what Wall Street has been harping on for 18 months
-----lease parks 2019: revenue of 95M increase 11%, ADJ EBIDTA 13M(net of 16M lease cost) increase 28%
----New CEO is a straight shooter promising transparency & is showing that by telling the truth on legacy parks & that the little growth that is occurring is from the new lease parks. The new parks have lower per caps, price points, margins so pushing down numbers
---2020 Guidance something SF has never done(more transparency) ADJ EBIDTA 435 - 465M decrease from 2019 -527M & 2018 - 554M Net Income 175 -197M ....2019 179M & 2019 276M
---New CEO sounds like he's determined to make changes, acknowledged underperformance the industry peers, top to bottom review in progress, focus on base business domestically, Full Plan Coming at May28th investor day
Six flags stock has now reached the lowest value since 2012...$27.95 share as of 2/25 market close. SF has gone down another 15%+ since the earnings report. Though every theme park chain has been hit by virus fears that people may lessen attendance, SF has been hit more & has the most tenuous balance sheet of the competitors. SEAS & Cedar Fair all reported oganic growth, good Q4's & full 2019 results & SF didn't.
Update SF stock continues to tumble as of 11:15Am now down another 8%+ to $25,50
Stock is really taking a beating. At this point, I don't think things are bad enough for a bankruptcy. Assuming the Coronavirus doesn't become pandemic in the U.S., I'd expect some big investor will eventually see this decline as an opportunity. Maybe you'll get a merger, maybe someone will see value in breaking up the company, maybe you'll get some retired rich dude who's been secretly harboring a fantasy of running his own theme park since he was a kid. Maybe Eric Cartman will buy the park:
Since 2010, I can't identify a point in time when there was more potential for change in how Six Flags operates their business. As it pertains to Great America, this could be good or bad. I'm looking forward to seeing how this all plays out.
UnclePennybags wrote:Stock is really taking a beating. At this point, I don't think things are bad enough for a bankruptcy. Assuming the Coronavirus doesn't become pandemic in the U.S., I'd expect some big investor will eventually see this decline as an opportunity. Maybe you'll get a merger, maybe someone will see value in breaking up the company, maybe you'll get some retired rich dude who's been secretly harboring a fantasy of running his own theme park since he was a kid. Maybe Eric Cartman will buy the park:
Six Flags is a good takeover target. The EV of the company is 4.4B(purchase value metric in a takeover), P/E is 12 trailing & 15 forward. EV/EBIDTA is 3.7 indicating bargain value. SF EV was 6B in the fall.
Last edited by Sven18 on February 28th, 2020, 5:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
So I just listened to the full conference call, and I can honestly say, that it actually gave me a lot of hope that Spanos will actually make changes to the business structure and how they operate things. A couple of key points I got out of the call.
1) His repeated mention of needing to grown the single day admissions. This is hugely important to organic growth and increasing the active pass base. You can't grow the active pass base without getting single day admissions....converting those single day admissions to passes is how you grown the active pass base. He also talked about making sure that single day admissions are getting "bang for their buck."
2) Memberships are working and they want to grow the membership base (which they did by 16% last year), but they have no plans to do away with the season passes. But he did say there is a need to simplify the pass/membership structures. (There's currently 6 right now, which is too many in my opinion.
3) He talked about in park maintenance and the need to invest in the right parks at the right time with the right investments. While he did say for sure that CAPEX would increase, the numbers given was that they paid out almost DOUBLE the amount of dividend dollars to investors than total spent on CAPEX. I think we will see him move away from the "something new in every park every year" thing. I got the impression from the call that knows that that doesn't work...even though he didn't directly say it.
4) 90% of the company's increased attendance came from the 6 acquired parks. This makes sense since those parks saw attendnace increases due to season passes now being able to be used at those parks. What was staggering was that they only saw an increase of 65,000 TOTAL guests across the remaining 20 legacy parks. That's a horrible number, considering the additional operating days at a lot of their parks.
5) He also talked about technology. Does this finally mean mobile ordering is coming? They did update the app and say it's now available at select parks..but he talked about technology and time is feedback they get from the surverys, but he didn't dive deeply into what that means.
Obviously, investor day on May 28th can't come soon enough. That's when the full plan will be laid out. He also heavily talked about LONG TERM planning, which is important as well. Obviously, a lot of what changes won't be overnight. Any changes to the membership/pass structure likely won't be til the Flash Sales in September.
I do expect some changes in pricing to one day tickets or an increase in the "promos, deals" etc to increase single day admissions. There's a lot of good in what Spanos said and it represents quite a change from JRA which is good too. It sounds like he came in (as an outsider) and reviewed all the stuff and said "yeah this isn't working."
Only time will tell how successful he is at making these changes and stuff, decreasing the dividend helps free up extra money that they hopefully will put to CAPEX and other things.
H Partners just bought another 1.5 million shares and increased their stake to 8.27%. As part of the standstill agreement that resulted in the Board shakeup, they agreed not to acquire more than 14.9% of the common stock until the standstill agreement expires in 2021. Another independent director will be added to the Board soon and an existing director will be forced to resign.
staticshadows wrote:H Partners just bought another 1.5 million shares and increased their stake to 8.27%. As part of the standstill agreement that resulted in the Board shakeup, they agreed not to acquire more than 14.9% of the common stock until the standstill agreement expires in 2021. Another independent director will be added to the Board soon and an existing director will be forced to resign.
Right now they are hopefully dollar cost averaging b/c
There was some other "insider buying" last week, a bunch of SEC filings. H Partners are in deep now, they spend $44M last week at avg price of $29.37 & now have total of 7M shares. They bought $27.5M worth about 768,300 shares in January at $35.88 avg price. They are down big b/c they now have 7M shares. This is going to be a long haul for H partners considering all the shares they bought previously at higher prices before the 2020 purchases.
Last week Spanos bought 16075 shares $31.27 he now has 70456 shares
