Six Flags [FUN] Corporate Discussion Thread

[Nrthwnd]

On 3/24/2024 at 9:04 AM, bert425 said:

I'm assuming signage will go up explaining the Home planet of the Guardians in the Queue Line

 

Probably.

 

[teacherkim]

So apparently the merger will be finalized by July 1st. Interested to see what sort of announcements/changes (if any) we get after that.

[coasternut]

I had to edit my response to this. I just read the press release and it's happening July 1, and the combined company will be official July 2. That's next week. I'm amazed it's going to happen...

[bert425]

On 4/8/2024 at 5:09 PM, Nrthwnd said:

Probably.

 

Jeffery posted pictures of a new central "pole" arriving for the ride.   

So I guess they are replacing that painted green planet - OR (and more likely) they are raising it higher above the ride, so it looks like you are flying around the planet when the jets go up).

[thepoint4life23]

1 hour ago, coasternut said:

I had to edit my response to this. I just read the press release and it's happening July 1, and the combined company will be official July 2. That's next week. I'm amazed it's going to happen...

Still two weeks for it to get blocked. 

I am just interested to see what happens with my stock prices if this happens.

[prozach626]

12 hours ago, coasternut said:

I'm amazed it's going to happen...

Not me. It's 2024. This is a way to streamline profits, and nothing more. It's all going to blend into one characterless soup of consolidated debt and product duplication without competition. Maybe eventually a company like Herschend will grow bigger and emerge as the new hero, if they don't get purchased first.

My families' interests and priorities sway more and more from theme parks every year, which leaves me over here shrugging my shoulders and saying, "Well, I guess this is the end..." (or at least a little closer to it)

[mikeykaise]

15 hours ago, prozach626 said:

Not me. It's 2024. This is a way to streamline profits, and nothing more. It's all going to blend into one characterless soup of consolidated debt and product duplication without competition. Maybe eventually a company like Herschend will grow bigger and emerge as the new hero, if they don't get purchased first.

My families' interests and priorities sway more and more from theme parks every year, which leaves me over here shrugging my shoulders and saying, "Well, I guess this is the end..." (or at least a little closer to it)

pretty much and the prices will skyrocket now.

[Doppel Looping]

So...

I'm no fan of paying more for things than I have to, Or big monopolistic companies that can throw their weight around, often resulting in the higher prices.

But considering both companies came out of some pandemic years with lots of debt only to be hit with rising interest rates and borrowing costs through the roof and staffing shortages.... I would like them to stay healthy and open for business. I would like for them to be able to invest in new rides and properly look after the ones they have.

I am grateful to live within an easy drive of Behemoth and Leviathan.

Not sure if season pass holders will be able to go to all parks on the same pass now but that would be a nice bonus on top of just having them continue to operate.

[prozach626]

You're settling for the potential to pay more and get less out of gratitude toward a massive corporation. The objective is to make more money, not primarily to make the product better. If the product gets better, it's only a means to an end, and always short lived in the corporate entertainment industry. The people shaking hands on this couldn't care less about quest experience as long as revenues are high. Most of them don't really give a fuck, down to new innovative roller coaster designs to the paint on the queue rails.

If company research indicated they could actually earn more money the more miserable the guest experience, they would adopt the strategy of keeping the guests as miserable as they could, for as long as they could. Shit. When did I start talking about the 21st century medical industrial complex?

Two companies had separate creative visions and growth strategies. This was already diluted by financial greed, as per usual. It's natural and unavoidable, but at least you had two similar, but different products to choose from. Now, for those who liked Coke, but disliked Pepsi, and those who liked Pepsi, but disliked Coke, they're stuck with Coca-Pepsi. Meaning, now in order to enjoy what you already like, you have to have more of what  you don't like. My glass half full...

I deeply hope that Cedar Fair can elevate the experience offered by Six Flags, but I'm not optimistic. My expectation is that the more juvenile cheap copy/paste themeing and neglected details of Six Flags will spill over to Cedar Fair.

[bostonlva]

Mr.Six is apparently being brought back from the dead

[teacherkim]

On 6/20/2024 at 8:23 PM, prozach626 said:

You're settling for the potential to pay more and get less out of gratitude toward a massive corporation. The objective is to make more money, not primarily to make the product better. If the product gets better, it's only a means to an end, and always short lived in the corporate entertainment industry. The people shaking hands on this couldn't care less about quest experience as long as revenues are high. Most of them don't really give a fuck, down to new innovative roller coaster designs to the paint on the queue rails.

If company research indicated they could actually earn more money the more miserable the guest experience, they would adopt the strategy of keeping the guests as miserable as they could, for as long as they could. Shit. When did I start talking about the 21st century medical industrial complex?

Two companies had separate creative visions and growth strategies. This was already diluted by financial greed, as per usual. It's natural and unavoidable, but at least you had two similar, but different products to choose from. Now, for those who liked Coke, but disliked Pepsi, and those who liked Pepsi, but disliked Coke, they're stuck with Coca-Pepsi. Meaning, now in order to enjoy what you already like, you have to have more of what  you don't like. My glass half full...

I deeply hope that Cedar Fair can elevate the experience offered by Six Flags, but I'm not optimistic. My expectation is that the more juvenile cheap copy/paste themeing and neglected details of Six Flags will spill over to Cedar Fair.

To quote Billy Joel "you may be wrong for all I know but you may be right"................while I realize everyone is going to speculate and have an opinion; I'm going to do my best to just give it a fair chance and wait and see how it works out. I'm not sure we will fully realize the impact until at least a few years have gone by. I also think just lumping one chain bad and one chain good is a bit of an oversimplification. Both chains have their pros/cons and both chains have their stand out parks and their regional nobodies. I do hope they offer some sort of all encompassing pass.

[KBrylczyk]

21 hours ago, bostonlva said:

Mr.Six is apparently being brought back from the dead

Vengaboys needed cash flow so I guess they took the dirty knees approach to the C-suite.

[bostonlva]

 

[prozach626]

On 6/22/2024 at 11:42 AM, teacherkim said:

To quote Billy Joel "you may be wrong for all I know but you may be right"

 

[Hilltopper39]

On 6/20/2024 at 9:23 PM, prozach626 said:

You're settling for the potential to pay more and get less out of gratitude toward a massive corporation.

I mean isn't this pretty much the case with everything these days? Entertainment, dining, grocery shopping, movies, ugh buying cars, houses, everything is pay more for less. I'm not saying it's good or bad or right or wrong, I'm just saying it's up the individual consumer to decide what the experience/service/product is worth to them. 

 

On 6/19/2024 at 8:59 PM, prozach626 said:

It's all going to blend into one characterless soup of consolidated debt and product duplication without competition. Maybe eventually a company like Herschend will grow bigger and emerge as the new hero, if they don't get purchased first.

I'm going to slightly disagree with you on this one because I feel like most of these parks are still very regional in nature so their competition is more with other entertainment options in the immediate area and less with the another park 3 hours away. Sure there are a few markets where there is small bit of overlap, like Dorney and Great Adventure and Magic Mountain and Knotts, but for the most part I feel like these parks operate regionally and that's not changing. Like Carowinds and Six Flags over Georgia, sure they're 4 hours apart and maybe some people in the Greenville area have to potentially make a decision between the two, but I'd bet that a large percentage of the attendance of both parks is from the Charlotte/ Atlanta metro areas and a very small percentage even knows about the other park or would consider visiting the other on a regular basis. You're from Missouri, how many people in St Louis do you know that are regularly making that trip over to KC for a day at Worlds of fun? 

 

So that's a couple of long winded answers but all things considered I don't really have any idea how this merger is gong to play out. My best guess is that the existing parks aren't going to look or feel that much different than they do already. 

[prozach626]

Great points. Here's my take.

  

3 hours ago, Hilltopper39 said:

I'm not saying it's good or bad or right or wrong, I'm just saying it's up the individual consumer to decide what the experience/service/product is worth to them. 

Absolutely. This plays into what I'm saying. My concern is that the experience/service/product is all going to feel very much the same, and this is a big step toward that. This may not matter quite as much to the consumer who isn't interested in traveling anywhere outside of their regional market, I agree. However, that's not good for the people desiring a diverse experience by traveling, and it can eliminate incentive. We may not be significant in percentages, but we are vast in numbers. If World's of Fun ends up offering a very similar experience and ride offerings to SFStl, there isn't much of an incentive to travel. It's numbing.

On top of that, you'll pay the same high price at WoF as you will at STStl, because they can more effectively influence more of the norm. It's a reasonable expectation to pay $300 per ticket, when most other parks charge that  much. Maybe they don't care if those who can't afford the $300 tickets attend, because there will still be enough consumers willing to pay. Less guests/higher cost/less crowded parks sold as a  "premium experience." This can result in the same or higher profit with as much effort as they are willing to put into guest experience... because they control the standard of guest experience. Lower the expectations and increase the prices.

It may not work all at once, but it's a step in the right direction for people looking at numbers completely disconnected from the parks. Shareholders couldn't care less. It's not dissimilar to the food service industry in general. Restaurants are feeling more corporate and less diverse. The conglomerate owners don't eat at TGI Fridays, Texas Roadhouse, or Applebee's. Their concerns are focused less on consumer satisfaction as they become formula/profit driven by those who don't care.

I'm somewhat of a car guy. Even the automotive industry is just turning copy/paste automatic transmission focused designs for models that were once considered enthusiast cars. There are fewer standouts as companies start to merge or partner. Performance numbers and outputs are very oddly similar. Subaru partnered with Toyota. Toyota released the GR Corolla, which is a fantastic machine. Although there were some outside contributing factors, the Subaru STI got killed for this chassis (FML). Many critics praise the GR Corolla as 'feeling' very similar to the STI, but modernized, which would have obviously been the natural progression of the next generation STI.

Those are my concerns. The probability of the theme park industries impacts are anyone's guess, but they are by no means unrealistic to those of us paying attention.

[SoCalJasonland]

I had Chat GPT analyze the income statements for Cedar Fair and Six Flags for their reporting periods from their annual reports.  2023 was one of the worst years for profit margins for each chain since COVID-19 closures.  They both have too much debt and their corporate bonds keep resetting at higher interest rates.  You can also see the decline in book value or equity for each company.  Budget cuts are coming since post-pandemic revenue's return hasn't rresulted in equal income increases.

 

These numbers are in millions so for example 2016 Ceadr Fair would be $1,289,000,000 in revenue with $178,000,000 in net income or 13.81% net profit margin.  It would be their third highest year of profit margin with 2022 being first with 2017 being second.  For some reason it left of number 10 on the Six Flags rankings but pretty good otherwise.

My oringal post has been moved from SFMM to this more appropriate forrum.

These are the links to the PDFs of the stock reports where I obtained screen prints of the imcome statments.  Both were from BofA Merril Lynch.

fun stock report.pdf

six stock report.pdf

 

[abovethesink]

I have become more cautiously optimistic about this. I get all the concern though. The track record of large corporations merging his historically not benefited consumers to say the least and that could very well happen here. I am not blind to that very real possibility.

It is just that this "merger of equals" is PR bullshit and I am happy about that. Cedar Fair is legally the acquirer in the deal. Cedar Fair shareholders are getting more than 50% of the stock. All the high level management is coming from Cedar Fair. This "merger of equals" is Cedar Fair acquiring Six Flags spun in a way to try to not impact the Six Flags brand, full stop.

Long term, it is harder to make predictions about the future. It always is. Again, there could be some bad outcomes here. But in the short term at least, it seems to me we are going to see the Cedar Fair model applied to the current Six Flags parks. For the smaller Six Flags parks, not great probably! But I can at least look forward to the flagship parks currently in the old SF chain to get cleaned up and improved presentation coupled with much more aggressive capital investment in new attractions. 

[prozach626]

4 hours ago, abovethesink said:

But in the short term at least, it seems to me we are going to see the Cedar Fair model applied to the current Six Flags parks.

I hope you're right. I gain nothing by winning an argument in this thread.

[abovethesink]

1 hour ago, prozach626 said:

I hope you're right. I gain nothing by winning an argument in this thread.

I've read your posts. There isn't much of anything in them that I see as completely unreasonable. There are definitely reasons to be concerned here. Like I said, the track record for consumers with large mergers like this is not great. Competition breeds better results. The only other reason I am not as doom and gloom about this other than what I said above is that I don't think the chains competed much anyway, only in a couple markets overall, so in that sense this might not be as impactful as most comparable mergers. But I could be wrong, for sure. 

[coreyb]

1 minute ago, abovethesink said:

I've read your posts. There isn't much of anything in them that I see as completely unreasonable. There are definitely reasons to be concerned here. Like I said, the track record for consumers with large mergers like this is not great. Competition breeds better results. The only other reason I am not as doom and gloom about this other than what I said above is that I don't think the chains competed much anyway, only in a couple markets overall, so in that sense this might not be as impactful as most comparable mergers. But I could be wrong, for sure. 

Competition makes better results up to a point; definitely in new industries. However, there gets to be a point where all the innovations have happened, and then competition becomes solely about cutting costs. (Removing features that they think won't get noticed -paying employee less than competitors...) The Autopiam had an article about the feature removing bit: https://www.theautopian.com/why-you-maybe-shouldnt-buy-a-first-model-year-car-or-a-final-model-year-car/

[abovethesink]

25 minutes ago, coreyb said:

Competition makes better results up to a point; definitely in new industries. However, there gets to be a point where all the innovations have happened, and then competition becomes solely about cutting costs. (Removing features that they think won't get noticed -paying employee less than competitors...) The Autopiam had an article about the feature removing bit: https://www.theautopian.com/why-you-maybe-shouldnt-buy-a-first-model-year-car-or-a-final-model-year-car/

For this to be relevant, we would need to be at that point in the theme park industry. Do you think we are? If so, why? 

[coreyb]

On 6/27/2024 at 1:43 PM, abovethesink said:

For this to be relevant, we would need to be at that point in the theme park industry. Do you think we are? If so, why? 

I don't really know. My point is really just to say that "competition is good for consumers" isn't universally true; the truth is more subtle.

[prozach626]

There's a lot more innovation to be had. The AI boom is here.

[teacherkim]

On 6/25/2024 at 8:56 PM, prozach626 said:

 

Uhhhh, ouch, I named my son Joel. Anyway, your opinion which was my whole point, lol. I'm willing to do some speculation but just as willing to assume nothing and wait to see how it plays out.