Snyder continues to court Six Flags shareholders, may sue to stop further property sales

So, does this mean that with him threatening to sue, does it mean that the Astroworld may find a way to stay open? Or is that a done deal?

Jeff, Tekno, Moosh, Gonch somebody lol help me understand how Synder can sue to keep SF from selling off anymore parks. Isn't this what Synder himself wanted to do if he got control of the company was sell off the parks that wasn't bringing in the cash. So how can he get mad and threaten to sue because SF is doing it themselves. I am at an loss when it comes to business, stocks and things like that, so I'm not understanding this.

EriCC, reread the article. AstroWorld's closure is a done deal. It says that Snyder threatens to sue if the company tries to sell of any more parks.

You have to love the typo "Six Fields". Somewhere there's a proofreader who forgot the morning coffee. Either that, or there is no proofreader.

westcoaster man,

Snyder's just using it as an excuse to try and hold things up, and make Burke et al look bad. It doesn't matter what he intends to do the company, he's just trying to cause a stink. It's politics.

Yeah, I'm sure he'd rather be in control when a sale is made. As a major shareholder, he can press for an injunction to block the sale, but I suppose from there he has to prove why it's bad for shareholders. That's my guess, I'm obviously not a corporate lawyer.

Most of what he's doing is posturing and hot air at this point. I still think he's a blow-hard and his team would be a lateral move, not an improvement.

He could increase his offer, right?
He could offer some superior strategy, right?

He's been outmaneuvered, outfoxed and outrun by a witless board of out-of-touch Ivy League boardroom banker types. Whoops.

Those who can't do, sue.

-'Playa

So if I'm reading this right, Snyder is saying to the shareholders that even though the stock price is currently $7.31, they'd be better off accepting his offer of $6.50 a share so he can take over the company and run things his way.

Just who thinks who is stupid here?

This whole thing, it's an absolute fiasco on the part of everyone involved, including the SFI board.

No one here is thinking about the guests or the employees for that matter. It's completely absurd, SFI is taking part in a third grade chicken fight.

It's an absolute circus. Period.

It's called Business and in Business a lot of companys look at one thing... the Bottom Line aka Profits. They saw an issue with parking which would cost a lot of money to fix. They can't afford said costs due to current financial position. So they took plan "b". Close the park and sell the land to make said bad financial position less of an issue.

Snyder is saying that because he knows his offer is low and probably has no desire to increase it. I doubt the majority of the shareholders are stupid enough to fall for that.

I wonder if the move to sell Astroworld was for the sole purpose of pumping up the value immediately. The recent increase in value seems somewhat driven by the company's decision to unload the park and decrease debt- is it really a move to knock Synder out of the picture?

As much as I think it's a bummer that they're closing that park, it does sound from the locals like a good idea financially. But with that said, you can't just go selling everything you have because you need income to service debt, and you can't generate income if you sell everything you have!

I'm personally still wondering what the heck they're going to do with the SFNO property... I can't see a company as finacially hard up as SFI is right now doing anything but taking the insurance hit and closing it down...

Given everything happening right now...this is anything but respectable business.
*** This post was edited by brscoast 9/19/2005 2:15:50 PM ***

Exactly. Sell off enough assets and eventually you'll be left with nothing to generate income. I can see this being a good short-term move but if you consider how much money a properly-run Astroworld could make the company in 10 or 20 years, it might not be a good long-term solution. Again, it makes me wonder if this is a move designed to move the value of stock upwards for the next few months and nothing more.

"...consider how much money a properly-run Astroworld could make..."

Exactly. It's that 'properly-run' part that SFI is having problems with. :)

Problem is what if some of that debt is now due.... you got to pay it back or get forced into bankruptcy court. Take a look at the airline industry and see how many major players are in Chapter 11. Six Flags is probably trying not to end up there. Again as I have said before to fix the Astroworld issues and get that 10-20 years of return proably would have taken more debt than Six Flags could not take on at this time. So what they decided to do was sell it and pay off some of the debt to help them be able to invest in other projects for current parks. It is sad that Houston is losing their park but with the situation there it kind of forced Six Flags's hand as to what to do. If they start closing parks that do not have reasons like Astroworld's then maybe we should panic but as of right now I think they did right by closing Astroworld.

Six Flags doesn't have a cash flow problem at the moment. They're not missing any scheduled payments on their debt.

clearly they do....they have a debt in the first place...