Six Flags revenue down 2% for quarter over last year

They said they are going to have a flat attendance this year from last year. It sounds great considering how wonderful of a year they had last year. Lol

This is devastating for Six Flags. Everyone was waiting for the 3rd quarter results as a guide to how effectively Shapiro could turn the company around. Basically he fell flat on his face. 3rd quarter net profit of $0.61 vs Wall Street's expected $1.28 per share. They missed the goal by more than 50%! As a result, Moody's just dropped Six Flags' bonds further down in the junk category.

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUKN0934977020071109?rpc=44

Stock prices have fallen to $2.20 per share - a ten year low. Things continue to get even more bleak for Six Flags financially.*** This post was edited by sws 11/9/2007 5:32:05 PM ***

Not surprising. Imo, the parking prices have driven people away.

http://www.screamscape.com/html/six_flags_new_england.html

"The basic gist was that Six Flags and Dan Synder managed to get a local law on the books preventing outside locations from providing cheaper alternative parking, a move he tried once before outside his football stadium. Well, the people have spoken it seems that the Mayor who worked with Six Flags to champion that cause has been voted out of office by a political campaign centered against that parking ordinance. As for the law itself, the city council voted unanimously to toss it out back in September along with a series of public apologizes to the local residents and businesses."

Now that's also what I call bad publicity. Also, again imo, they have priced the food so high, that they drove away part of their core base. I know Snyder is proud of his Johnny Rockets chain, but the prices on the menu (at least at SFMM) are not reasonable (and it doesn't even look like a traditional JR - picnic seating only). For their intended target family demo, it becomes a very expensive outing to attend a SF park. Especially when every franchise food vendor in the park can be found minutes away from the front gate for half the cost.

While the market in general is tanking at the moment, look at SIX free fall! Down 15% today to 2.20 at the moment. Ironically enough, after taking a bath all week, FUN is the only thing I watch that's actually up today. Even Disney is taking a hit today, and they really kicked ass this year.

^^

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Per capita guest spending increased $0.04 during the quarter to $37.13 as guests spent 3% more in-park, primarily on food and beverages, parking, and games, while per capita spending on admissions was down slightly, reflecting an increased mix of season pass and promotional offer attendance.

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Doesn't sound like food is the problem.

Food is not a problem? Per cap continues to rise because they keep increasing prices. That will only last so long and what sort of reaction are guests leaving with?

Don't forget the survey increases too. They increased their guest satisfaction from where? Horrible to Bad? Poor to Fair? Funny how they left little tid bit out.

Why is it always bad weather when attendance is down? Could it be a bad guest experience from the last season, over priced food, gross food, over "corporatized" park environment, awful ride reliability or unacceptable cleanliness? I'm guessing those could all have a HUGE impact on attendance. But, you never see companies saying that. They always blame things "out of their control."

By the same token, if food prices were to high, they would be seeing revenue down. I believe the weather line. If you look at what they say:

Attendance was up June, August, September, October. When the story broke about the Kentucky Kingdom accident they took a big PR hit and then the rain in Texas during July didn't help. They saw a big drop in attendance during July.

I'll give them the bad weather in Texas excuse, but Georgia? Wasn't there a drought there this summer? Or is the argument that there were drought restrictions that affected operations? Were there?

At first glance, I thought the 18% drop in price was a bit extreme. After all, the revenue was "only" down 2 percent for the quarter. But again, when your stock price is so low to start with, a drop of 5 or 10 cents shows up as several percent. Do you think Six Flags set themselves up for this with their glowing press releases? All season long, we've been hearing about record levels of guest satisfaction, and all indications were that per cap AND attendance were notably higher.

To be so far off the Wall Street estimate indicates something is majorly wrong. Either someone in the company is totally oblivious to what's really going on, or they knowingly gave out incorrect information to make things sound better than they were. Unfortunately, based on the info they were fed, the analysts figured they were going to make twice the profit they actually did. And now Six Flags is taking another major hit because of it.

Historically, it's been SFOT that's had the bad problem with flooding and there was definitely a bad case of too much rain in Texas this year. But someone refresh my memory, what happened in Georgia?

How could three parks affect the bottom line that badly?If they were to say that it rained a lot, I know that wasn't the case at America or Great Adventure. In fact, it was quite the opposite, and maybe that kept people away.

I still remember on our trip to Great Adventure in July that the back of everyone's t-shirts were quite wet--men and women--because it was so humid and hot and Gadv. has a lot of shade.

I think they need to start looking at other issues like food prices, which are outrageous. You should able to eat more than once at a themepark without a hole being burned in your wallet, and right now that's not a reality at Six Flags (I'm talking to you too Cedar Fair).

I don't think the $15 parking charge is killing anyone (not that it feels good unless you already have a season pass and it's not an issue), when a lot of other parks are charging $10 or Seasame Place is charging $13! (There was an article in the travel section of The Baltimore Sun).

The removal of rides (which may or may not have been behaving badly in the past) can't be helping the situation either. True, some parks are getting new attractions, but SFNE is really taking a bad hit this year with one ride replacing five.

I agree that the Kentucky Kingdom incident did them no favors. In fact, I think there might have been a spillover effect to the somewhat nearby King's Island, which we were at for the next two days (we were never at SFKK). *** This post was edited by Intamin Fan 11/9/2007 7:54:13 PM ***
*** This post was edited by Intamin Fan 11/10/2007 1:02:27 AM ***

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Jeff said
While the market in general is tanking at the moment, look at SIX free fall! Down 15% today to 2.20 at the moment. Ironically enough, after taking a bath all week, FUN is the only thing I watch that's actually up today. Even Disney is taking a hit today, and they really kicked ass this year

.... because today's numbers are indicitave of the YTD ROI. Too bad you didn't sell at 29.25 like I did.... 8 dollars ago. look at the 3day, 5day, month, quarter, half, YTD, or any other chart you can find and you will see FUN is a terrible stock to own any way you spin it.

funny that you point out a small bounce after the stock just dropped 7% the last two days. oh and by the way the S&P 400 is up 7% YTD, even given the recent market turmoil, and FUN is down a cool 22%. Sounds like a good investment to me!

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edits:getting the quote to work. Too bad there isn't a button for that, or a way to do it that makes sense or is in any way similar to any other forum I've ever been to. is it really that hard to use quote "user" ???
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well alright that was the single most frustrating post ive ever made, thanks a lot coasterbuzz. why does this site suck so hard?

^You can delete all the "post edited by" tags...
I oddly enough only ate ONE thing at my first Six Flags visit (SFNE a couple weeks ago) and found it to be not too bad. It was an entire plate of fried dough for only $4.50, which while somewhat steep, wasn't bad for what I got. Granted I didn't "actually" eat anything, but I guess I was expecting worse. I saw some of the other prices of real food which kept me from spending my money there and getting something somewhere else.

Again about my first experience at a SF park, it wasn't the worst but the ride oops seem very pre-occupied with stuff other then their jobs, or just not good. Mind Eraser I found not to be to bad on the head, but HORRIBLE after the girl literally CHARGED my restraint to close it and it left my stomach in pain for days. (honestly I got that ALL DAY, and SF was the only park I've EVER experienced such horrible restraint checks that slam them into your legs/crotch/stomach, HORRIBLE!! A simple lift to see if it is locked, or a light push is FINE!) That left a bad taste in my mouth, along with the employees PAID to stand up on a high place or pedestal to watch over lines, who just stand on the second step or end up talking to other employees and miss groups of people line jumping, and when you say something they act annoyed or "I didn't see it happen". These are problems I HAVE experienced at other places in light moderation but seem to have all been at SF multiple times... Just thought I'd share that.

well alright that was the single most frustrating post ive ever made, thanks a lot coasterbuzz. why does this site suck so hard?

Just do what I did in order to quote you: copy, paste, and italicize the font.

Member since 8/19/2002, and yet hangs around the site that "sucks so hard" anyway.

Most of my FUN was bought when the units were trading around $19 almost ten years ago. I'm not interested in selling at this point just because it's down. I don't see the gloom and doom or imminent failure.

I have to say that I'm still surprised that Six Flags hasn't had a better year. I'll give them the bad publicity angle, but some of that they brought on themselves, as with the very public spectacle about whether or not they'd sell Magic Mountain. That certainly doesn't instill confidence in anyone.

moosh, you aren't really quoting me, just italicizing my text.
the real way to do it is to use the quote tag correctly and have a quote button. Also where is the link to all the bbcode and html tags you can use? How do you expect people to use all the functions of this board? Maybe you're not running phpBB 2.0, but you could still link to a list of things you can do when replying like this.
You can get phpBBhere. You know you could at least have a preview button if you're not going to have anything else so my post doens't get totally changed every time I try to fix it.

Jeff, while I enjoy the personal attack I would like to point out that it's a logical fallacy commonly referred to as Ad hominem. Anyway, it sounds like you bought FUN just around 10 years ago. Since I'm not about to try to insert a picture here I'll link you to a chart that shows FUN's performance vs. the SPY and MDY. The results may shock you. comparison chart

I still find humour in the fact that no one can see the similarities between Cedar Fair and Six Flags.

I hear complaints but I don't see anyone making a website of their own. Enjoy what you have here as it is better than not having a site to share your ideas about coasters...*** This post was edited by raser 11/10/2007 8:47:15 PM ***

I'm aware of the recent performance of FUN. If you're done implying I'm a moron, you do realize that the distribution paid over those ten years doesn't go away, right? I don't have a ton invested, it has been worth my time.

There is no similarity between Six Flags and Cedar Fair because Cedar Fair has been profitable for decades. Six Flags has not.

And when you're done knowing it all, let me know how many forum apps you've written, and the salary you command as a programmer.

Did anyone notice how Shapiro spun that number around about the number of people for Wiggle's World. At SFNE, he said that it gave more than 1 million people rides. I thought that was funny considering how many rides that area has compared to another Wiggle's World like SFGAm. SFNE has 9 rides while SFGAm only has 6. Most of Cedar Point kids rides get about 150,000 a year. Mutliply that by 9, and they are also doing more than a million. And these rides at Cedar Point aren't new rides either. That's a good way to spin the numbers around. In other words, he's acting like it's a big deal.