Six Flags posts $1.6 billion loss for 2025

Since they didn't post the comparison for the full year 2024, here's what I could find in the filings:

• Net revenue: $2.70 billion. ~-13%
• Attendance: 41.6 million. ~-12%
• Per cap: $61.31. ~1%
• Net loss: $206.66 million.
• Adjusted EBITA: $879 million. ~-10%
• Operating days: 4,369

If I read Zimmerman's employment agreement right, he walked away with $3.85 million for his trouble.

Matt Ouimet looks smarter every day. Why his Board didn't listen to him is beyond me. Hubris, I guess.

Summary and then transcript of earnings call.

https://www.fool.com/earnin...ranscript/

Reilly said he visited a lot of the parks in the chain. Talked with park leadership teams and frontline workers and conducted guest focus groups. Has received 300 suggestions from park employees to create efficiencies and automate workflows. Seems like he wants more local power/input. When looking at investments, need to ask: Does it enhance the guest experience in a way that drives profitable demand, reduces costs or strengthens free cash flow. Noted that canceling winter events at 4 parks didn't work well and said they will look at them on park by park basis rather than with broad brush.

Curious to know what didn’t go well with cancelling Winterfest/Holiday in the park.

they should have known how much they made/lost on those events last year. So by cancelling they would not make what they did last year (ok that’s a hit) or fail to lose what they lost last year (that’s good), so that should not be a surprise, with the only wild card being the impact on Season Passes. So did a lot of folks not renew because of winter events? And if so, isn’t that showing up in the 2026 pass data which they are claiming is good for ‘26?

or was the pushback so vocal that they’ve identified a market need, and now they just need to see how to squeeze profit out of it? How is that different from where they were at the end of 2024, when we scrutinized the hell out of those events trying to identify the profitability.

what am I missing? Or did they just yank the events not knowing internally whether they actually made money or not (which it seems like maybe they did???) how did they not know that already?

I have to say it seems really great they landed Reilly and kept Witherow. They just have decades of SF wrongs to fix quickly, and a few neglected CF parks.

His comments about Mexico, and the problems being park by park, and not systematic are the first great things I have heard since Matt left.

Fixing the app, getting food even more better and undercontrol and listening to local parks where the investment should go, should really start helping them with the perception front.

I haven’t dug into what exactly they are pinning the “$1.5 billion non-cash impairment charge on goodwill and other intangibles.” Trump? Weather? Overvalued SF assets?

I think if he can get the fundamentals under control, sell some extraneous properties, and smartly cap ex things, he can stabilize the ship, way better then Zimmerman.

The announcements for Great Adventure and OverTexas alone suggest they are listening where it counts, and they generally put very good people in charge of the regions and marketing.

as Matt summarized “ Qualified, Credible, and Authentic” and knows to listen to each park, and his teams there, instead of knowing better.

From Withrow on winter events (read into it what you will):

As was expected and as we discussed last quarter, a significant portion of the decline in operating days reflects our decision not to operate winter holiday events at four parks, a decision that was made earlier in the year. In hindsight, that decision did not optimize profits at every park the way we needed it to.

Those events can be meaningful demand drivers; removing them created a self-inflicted headwind in terms of both attendance and operating leverage. We are taking that learning directly into our planning for 2026, and we will rethink the winter holiday strategy with a tighter, returns-driven approach market by market rather than applying a broad brush. And while weather created variability in the quarter with 15 park closure days versus three last year, the more significant impact on demand was our decision to eliminate the winter holiday events, which created an attendance headwind of approximately 425,000 visits.

I'm trying to figure out if he is saying "people who used to come for a day in December did not add an extra day in July to make up for it" (which is not surprising) or "we sold fewer passes because we didn't have this thing" (which might be).

It sounds like he is saying the former, but I'm not sure it would have taken a rocket surgeon to guess that would happen.

Also…

Brian Witherow, CFO: We aim to exceed our weighted average cost of capital in investments and prioritize paying down debt until net leverage is below 4 times on a sustained level.

Those events can be meaningful demand drivers; removing them created a self-inflicted headwind in terms of both attendance and operating leverage. We are taking that learning directly into our planning for 2026, and we will rethink the winter holiday strategy with a tighter, returns-driven approach market by market rather than applying a broad brush.

How does a multi-billion-dollar corporation NOT know if these events make money? How is this difficult?!

I think more like someone whose name begins with Z, thought the spend was not worth the extra profit, but in reality cause of limited rides, just putting up lights, and some live E, the returns are bigger then it appears, also the knock on attendance, and prob pass sales in a quarter where they need it was misunderstood.

I can only imagine the kind of ROI Knotts Merry Farm pulls, or Dollywoods, obviously SoCal fixes alot of weather problems, but it shouldn’t be rocket science.

There is another gentleman who equally is to share blame for the 2025 season results with Zimmerman and his name is Selim Bassoul. Zimmerman was "the face" we all knew but Bassoul not only orchestrated this merger fiasco but also destroyed the Ouimet strategy that simply could have been rolled out to the legacy SIX parks.

Enough about the past though....

A new COO is desperately needed. Someone who is creative and open-minded to the world today and the future. Someone who understands the value of special event development, really punching up holidays, cultural/food/music/sports events, special appearances, ride anniversary celebrations, and more. Someone who understands that cutting, cutting, cutting has NEVER worked to dig oneself out of a hole.

Lastly, I think many of us who've spent decades in the parks know that taking an older attraction, refreshing it with special effects, paint, music, lighting, ride vehicles, etc. can be just as much of a draw as building from scratch and at a fraction of the cost. People are BEGGING to ride the Racer at KI backwards again. JUST DO IT! The old Arrow mine train rides have ride vehicles designed for body sizes from the 1960's/70's and need new trains but it has always been policy to NOT reinvest in attractions with new track, trains, etc. WHY? Now is the time to focus on low-investment, high-return on guest satisfaction ideas and hopefully John is on to that.

Reilly closed his remarks (before opening it up for questions) with:

Our experience with several winter holiday events this past year provided valuable lessons. We will approach seasonal programming with market-specific rigor, clear ROI thresholds, and test-and-scale methodology. It applies equally to capital investment. Safety and ride reliability are nonnegotiable. Beyond that, discretionary investments will prioritize projects that attract incremental visitors, improve throughput, enhance guest value, and generate measurable returns.

And some of the highest ROI opportunities are operational improvements—reducing downtime, eliminating inefficiencies, and standardizing systems that allow our teams to perform at their best. Taken together, these actions are designed to accelerate attendance recovery, deepen guest engagement, and restore durable earnings power. Let me wrap up with these closing thoughts. Our near-term priorities are clear: Improving profitability, strengthening the balance sheet, concentrating our time and resources on the assets and initiatives that generate the highest returns. Six Flags Entertainment Corporation is a company with unique assets and significant earnings potential.

Together, our teams are working to further our progress on elevating the guest experience, realizing the benefits of our incomparable scale to improve efficiency and margin, correcting missteps in marketing and operations, and continuing to create financial flexibility through deleveraging and disciplined capital allocation. We will be transparent about where we are. We will move decisively on what we can fix. And we will earn credibility and your trust the way it should be earned—through execution and results. The opportunity in front of us is meaningful, I am energized by what I have seen across the parks, I am confident in our path forward, and excited about what we can deliver together.

It is interesting to note that they did not issue any guidance for 2026 in terms of financial performance.

SF is living on borrowed time they have limited time to turn this around. I sincerely hope that the new management pivots away from the mistakes of the past.

I wrote an essay in one of my leadership classes fall semester 2024, and I remember citing how there is so many inconsistencies throughout the (at the time freshly merged) chain. I'm glad it looks like they're going through and making the needed changes to streamline operations. I wonder if this would allow them to cross train associates in certain departments (think park services, F&B, or Merch) between parks (think SFMM/KBF, CGA/SFDK, Dorney/SFGADv). In theory, this would allow for some greater flexibility if needed.

I also wonder if this means some rides might get their SOPs standardized. In theory, why shouldn't all the B&M Batman clones have the same SOP? Or why shouldn't all the Scramblers (provided they are from the same manufacturer) have the same SOP? Just a thought there.

Part of me thinks they just didn't have the cash on hand to operate Winterfest at parks it may not be a slam dunk profit. Gotta spend money to make money and that's SF's main challenge right now.

Alexander James:

so many inconsistencies

I think the messaging is that consistency isn't always the answer, as markets and situations vary from park to park. Standing on high and telling everyone how to do stuff neglects the context at each site. Sure, you can all use the same technology or whatever, but one-size management doesn't work. And that's why eliminating leadership positions at the park level was so dumb.

Im wondering if much like Doge, and its catastrophes, we will see some quiet rehires. Reilly really hit that each park was unique and that he is visiting all of them.

Im just glad we only got roughly a year of Zimmerman and Bossul at peak power, compared to 7 years of Burke, and 5 of Shapiro.

The company is involved in a vicious downward cycle.

Giving away the gate, especially with meal plans leads to less revenue which leads to cost cutting which leads to a inferior guest experience which leads to less pass and ticket sales, etc.

The only way to reverse the cycle is to eliminate the cost cutting and actually spend more to get the people back, but that requires losses for a while. Which they don’t have the cash to sustain that

Raising prices too quickly will not work so the first factor in the equation cannot be changed easily

As far as the holiday events, it may just be the short cost-cutting mentality of the company that caused them to cut the events. Everything is about the immediate cost savings. That’s why they close parks early and don’t consider the long-term effects that chasing off customers on any given day produces.

About six years ago, they used to count their season pass revenue over the first five visits so anything after that was considered zero revenue. If that’s still the case, then in their shortsighted minds, they were viewing all those season passholder visits at the holiday events as zero revenue visits. Which absolutely isn’t true because the revenue should be spread over all the visits that one person makes, but that makes the accounting too complicated

So it may just well be that eliminating the season passes reduced their season pass sales. But in their short, thinking minds, they only cared about the immediate cost savings of not having the holiday event, and not the long-term effects on chasing off customers eliminating their events. Especially after they sold season passes with the assumption that these events would happen.

these events also tend to be the best time of year to get a different market of people to the park. Most of these parks only have attractions for thrill riders and little children. But the holiday events offered live entertainment and Christmas atmosphere that someone could enjoy without riding a single ride. So the elimination of these events chased off all those people.

I don’t know if great leadership can even solve this mess