The resort giant says it will offer credits to Park City guests for fallout from ski patrol strike
Vail Resorts issued its annual early season update to investors on Thursday, reporting that season-to-date total skier visits through Jan. 5 are down 0.3% compared to the same period last season.
But total lift ticket revenue is up 4.5% compared to last year, along with dining revenue which is up 6.6% and ski school revenue which is up 1.1%.
Vail Resorts said season-to-date results benefited from improved weather conditions and the late timing of the Thanksgiving holiday, which occurred on Nov. 28 as heavy snowfall was blanketing areas like Vail and Beaver Creek in the Western United States.
"Early season conditions enabled a strong terrain offering and guest experience, which drove improved local visitation relative to the prior year," said CEO Kirsten Lynch.
Lynch also praised "the execution of our mountain operations teams across all of our mountain resorts," a performance that, if exemplary during Thanksgiving, only created a greater contrast with the Christmas-New Year holiday experience at the company's largest resort in the United States, Park City Mountain, which was severely impacted by a ski patrol strike.
Lynch mentioned the strike in her comments, saying the company is pleased to have now reached an agreement with the Park City Mountain Patrol Union.
"We deeply regret the disruptions caused to our guests during the patrol union strike and are committed to delivering an exceptional and safe experience for our guests and rebuilding their trust and loyalty," she said.
In a separate announcement issued Thursday, the company said it would be offering credits toward pre-purchased passes next season to people who skied at Park City during the strike. The minimum credit for anyone who skied Park City will be a 25% discount on the same pass that they purchased this season, with higher credits given depending on the number of days skied.
"Our hope is that these customized credits demonstrate our commitment to you as a valued Pass Holder," Park City Mountain COO Deirdra Walsh said in a statement. "I am confident that our team's collective passion for Park City Mountain, our guests, and our community is strong, and that we will provide the experience you expect, this season and into the future."
Lynch, in the company's early season update, said Vail Resorts still expects to perform within the profit range suggested in the company's Dec. 9 call to investors. That guidance predicts earnings of $838 million to $894 million in the year.
The reaffirmation of that guidance came as welcome news to analysts covering Vail Resorts, who met the prediction with guarded optimism. Vail Resorts is not a company that is known for living up to its guidance, having missed earnings predictions several times over the last few years.
"After several years of missing financial expectations, maintaining full-year earnings guide is a positive," Patrick Scholes with Truist Securities wrote in a report issued Thursday.
"We are encouraged to see Vail Resorts reiterate FY25 guidance, as we (and anecdotally many investors) forecasted potential modest downside risk resulting from the 12/27-1/8 Park City patroller union strike," wrote Jeff Stantial with Stifel Financial.
Stantial said while Vail Resorts did not quantify the structural labor headwinds the company faced, Stifel's framework "suggests a ~$20M incremental headwind to FY25E Resort Adjusted EBITDA."
Scholes said that given the strong early season conditions in Whistler Blackcomb plus slightly above average conditions in Colorado, he believes the company was tracking toward the higher end of expectations before the strike.
"However because of the strike, which we believe the company did not anticipate happening as a ski resort has not seen a strike in this country in more than 50 years nor the snowballing negative media attention, we suspect the company coming in at the higher-end or above quarterly expectations and raising full year guidance is off the table," he said.
In another bit of negative media attention for the company, the law firm of Pomerantz LLP announced on Tuesday that it is investigating Vail Resorts for potential securities fraud.
The firm cited a report from the financial research platform Seeking Alpha, which on Jan. 2 pointed out that Vail shares "have come under increased selling pressure ... as the strike by 200 members of the Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association continues without a satisfactory offer from the company," which "has now garnered support from ski patrols at Vail Resorts' other locations."
Pomerantz, in a release issued Tuesday, pointed out that Vail Resorts' stock price fell $12.29 per share following the report.
That resulted in "claims on behalf of investors" who are concerned that "Vail Resorts and certain of its officers and/or directors have engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful business practices."
The news came on the heels of another group of attorneys filing a class-action lawsuit against Vail Resorts, claiming the company "intentionally and willfully deceived hundreds of thousands of consumers when it failed to disclose that the ski patrol and mountain safety personnel union, comprised of workers essential to the safety of the skiers and the operations at Park City Mountain Resort, were on strike during the Christmas and New Year's holiday season of 2024/2025," according to the complaint, filed Jan. 9 in U.S. District Court in Utah.
The Park City patrollers union, before coming to an agreement with Vail Resorts on Jan. 9, said it filed multiple unfair labor charges against the company, and the Keystone ski patrollers union also said it has an unfair labor practice charge pending against Vail Resorts for failing to provide merit increases to patrollers who earned a raise from last season.
Vail Resorts is currently involved in a pair of class action lawsuits in federal court in Colorado and state court in California, as well, in which workers have accused the company of failing to pay for all hours worked, among other accusations.
The labor action could have long-lasting ramifications on the company's profit goals, as Scholes pointed out in his Thursday report, because "whatever is agreed to at PCMR may need to be extended to unionized employees elsewhere which would lead to a much larger longer-term expense hit."