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Could these be the final days of Six Flags?


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The one true thing about the stock market, is that no one really knows what is going to happen (with the exception of insiders and maybe Warren Buffet ).

 

It is possible to make a heck of a lot of money by doing what they call "Shorting" a stock, which basically means as the stock goes down, you can get rich.....

 

I would consider that position for Six, but I am not going to. There are plenty of other more appealing stocks that have great upward potential, with not as much risk as SIX.

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^^If I wasn't as clear before, let me state it again...Six Flags parks have a bad IMAGE. We all know people (Especially GP) don't base their opinion on facts or evidence or proof. Joe Sixpack base their opinions on hear-say, word-of-mouth, and he-say she-say. That's fantastic that there hasn't been any significant incidents in the park for a long time, but I'm not making the arguement that the park is unsafe. I AM however making an educated guess that if people don't feel safe taking their families to a park they won't. I acually think that the four Six Flags park I've been to so far are as safe as any other company. But I can't think for everyone else, and chances are, "everyone else" isn't going to research when the last shooting or fight occured at whatever park. If they hear negative things about a place, that's what they base their opinion on.

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Much like most of you, I can see this coming from a mile away,

high debt and low stocks is a recipe for disaster.

And "just because they are six flags" is not going to save them.

They need a plan, and they need one fast.

 

Does anyone know if this will affect the lawsuit against Kentucky Kingdom?

 

- Basil "They're screwed" Weatherby

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^^If I wasn't as clear before, let me state it again...Six Flags parks have a bad IMAGE. We all know people (Especially GP) don't base their opinion on facts or evidence or proof. Joe Sixpack base their opinions on hear-say, word-of-mouth, and he-say she-say. That's fantastic that there hasn't been any significant incidents in the park for a long time, but I'm not making the arguement that the park is unsafe. I AM however making an educated guess that if people don't feel safe taking their families to a park they won't. I acually think that the four Six Flags park I've been to so far are as safe as any other company. But I can't think for everyone else, and chances are, "everyone else" isn't going to research when the last shooting or fight occured at whatever park. If they hear negative things about a place, that's what they base their opinion on.

 

In the case of Six Flags America, a lot of people do feel that place is unsafe and I put 95% of the blame on that on the local Washington-Baltimore media.

 

For example when Two Face got stuck this is what WRC-TV NBC 4 said on live TV about this incident....

 

"..oh my this is very bad, people could be killed if a loose screw pops off !!. .." Hearing something like that, no wonder people were scared to ride that coaster.

 

To be fair to Six Flags, it was the same thing with the old Adventure World and even Wild World before that. Anyone familiar with local Washington TV should know who Gordon Peterson is. For years he has been called the "dean" of Washington DC TV news. Back in the 80s a young child was killed at Wild World as a result of a drowning in the then-brand new wave pool, at the time Peterson was the anchor for channel 9's Eyewtiness News. How did channel 9 report this? "......as a result of this death, maybe it would be a good idea to shut down Wild World, it just doesn't seem safe to me !!". Of course when many people heard this on channel 9 and they way they trust Gordon Peterson ( better than their own doctors !! ) , no wonder so many people over the years avoided that park east of DC.

 

of course whenever there is crime in the aera of SFA, often the local TV bring up SFA and sometimes even implied the crime had taken place IN SFA.

 

Funny thing is that of all the times I have been to SFA, never had a problem there feeling unsafe but sadly because of all of this bad press that SFA gets, no matter how many seasons they go through without crime, it really doesn't matter since those "news" people like Gordon Peterson, Jim Vance, Maureen Bunyan, Leon Harris, and even the great sports guy Geroge Michael and the others, if these people tell the thousands of viewers that the park is unsafe or at least make it seem that it is unsafe, then the viewers would trust say Leon Harris ( WJLA-TV ) over anything Six Flags would say.

 

Not fair but thats the way it is..at least in and around DC anyway.

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Looked at the quote a few minutes ago and the stock price was $0.40

Reverse stock split wont help that very much...not that its the end right now, they do have time to bring that up but the fact that its under 50 cents right now makes it that much more interesting.

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Does anyone know if this will affect the lawsuit against Kentucky Kingdom?

 

- Basil "They're screwed" Weatherby

 

 

If they were to file a bankruptcy, the lawsuit would just be thrown in with any other creditor. If it was Chapter 11 I would guess they would somehow be paid through the reorganization, in Chapter 7 all the money from selling off the parks would be dispersed among the creditors including that family.

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  • 2 weeks later...

C'mon people. maybe SF should ask the Gov't for a bail-out. What's another company, right? They could say: Six Flags has x-number of employees that bring X-number of dollars into our economy, not to mention the local businesses that benefit from proximity to our parks.

Bail us out like AIG and the banks. The American people won't mind, right?

 

(rant off)

 

have a nice day.

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I wouldn't actually worry about this. The financials side of SF is in the hands of the CFO. There are more than likely plenty of options available to him/her that will keep the company operating for years to come.

 

As fans/customers of the parks, all we can do is enjoy what we have right now in the moment, and spread word of mouth about the positive changes we experience within the park.

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I wouldn't actually worry about this. The financials side of SF is in the hands of the CFO. There are more than likely plenty of options available to him/her that will keep the company operating for years to come.

 

Option 1: Tap into revolving credit (which is where they get their budgets from).

Option 2: Sell parks.

Option 3: Chapter 11.

 

If they couldnt afford to pay dividens for years and theyre in huge amounts of debt its not like they have $300mil sitting around. Then again if theres one thing SF has been good at its putting off the inevitable.

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I wouldn't actually worry about this. The financials side of SF is in the hands of the CFO. There are more than likely plenty of options available to him/her that will keep the company operating for years to come.

 

Option 1: Tap into revolving credit (which is where they get their budgets from).

Option 2: Sell parks.

Option 3: Chapter 11.

 

If they couldnt afford to pay dividens for years and theyre in huge amounts of debt its not like they have $300mil sitting around. Then again if theres one thing SF has been good at its putting off the inevitable.

 

I always look to Euro Disney as an example of how a park can manage huge debt for long periods of time and still stay operational.

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Wow, Six Flags' prices are now $0.4 US, down 10.23%.

 

Scary!

 

wow. Reccessions are probably the best, although most risky times, to invest in stock if you can. Im not sure if Six Flags would be your best option, but since the stock is relatively low, you could get a lot of stock for not that much money.

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On the one hand, it's easy to tell Six Flags to sell parks, but who's going to buy? Another company already in debt? Or a company (which is just about any company these days) who has trouble receiving financing and credit from a bank? Just because you have something to sell, doesn't mean there's automatically a buyer.

 

On the other hand, a few years ago K-Mart declared bankruptcy. Within 2 years I believe, not only did they manage to stay in business, they bought Sears.

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I wouldn't actually worry about this. The financials side of SF is in the hands of the CFO. There are more than likely plenty of options available to him/her that will keep the company operating for years to come.

 

Option 1: Tap into revolving credit (which is where they get their budgets from).

Option 2: Sell parks.

Option 3: Chapter 11.

 

If they couldnt afford to pay dividens for years and theyre in huge amounts of debt its not like they have $300mil sitting around. Then again if theres one thing SF has been good at its putting off the inevitable.

 

I always look to Euro Disney as an example of how a park can manage huge debt for long periods of time and still stay operational.

 

The problems:

 

-Credit market is atrocious. State governments are begging for money from the government. Imagine being a company saddled with enormous debt and no clear method as to how to pay it off.

 

-Euro Disney found someone to throw in capital to keep the show running in the middle east. Given the state of the economy at the present moment, its a bit unlikely that foreign capital is gonna come flying in for Six Flags.

 

-Someone mentioned how its a great buyer's market in real estate. It is! The problem for Six Flags then is that the land their parks are on is worth less too. That means their assets aren't worth as much, which means they can't get as much out of them when relying on them to get credit, of which there is precious little for them to get.

 

Reality check: Six Flags, at its peak, had 47 properties making money for it. It now has 26. The chain has been cut in half, but the debt wasn't because the value of the assets they sold, in general, was nowhere near what they had paid for them or had invested in them. The original executive team ran out of the company with millions of dollars in the bank and the stockholders and park goers have gotten brutally shafted. It should be no surprise then that the company was built on the work of real estate investors looking for a quick buck given how things have turned out.

 

In short, you can expect bankruptcy. And as others have said, it is indeed possible to go through a restructuring and come out alive. However, it is not possible for the Six Flags you see in existence today to come out the Six Flags that survives a Chapter 11. If they enter bankruptcy, and make no mistake, they will enter bankruptcy, they will need to eliminate assets as part of the restructuring. Their assets are amusement parks, and the ones that are sold will be sold to anyone, including people who have no interest in running an amusement park. I would honestly tell you that if you have interest in visiting Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom or Discovery Kingdom in 2009 to probably put off booking that airfare until the last possible moment.

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