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Vail Resorts updates outlook after strong March, April

Strong early pass sales also spur updated guidance

A busy March and April caused Vail Resorts Thursday to update its guidance on the firm’s financial performance.
Chris Dillmann cdillmann@vaildaily.com

Vail Resorts on Thursday updated its guidance range for the nine-month period ending April 30, 2021.

The company now expects net income attributable to Vail Resorts, Inc. to be between $258 million and $280 million and Resort Reported EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amoritization) to be between $636 million and $650 million.

“We are increasing our guidance primarily as a result of stronger than expected performance in March and April,” said Vail Resorts CEO Rob Katz in a news release. “Despite the challenging operating environment as a result of COVID-19 related limitations, our results continued to improve as the season progressed, primarily driven by the performance of our Colorado and Utah resorts where visitation, including lift ticket purchases, exceeded expectations.”



Katz said destination visitation at the company’s Colorado and Utah resorts proved more resilient than anticipated while local visitation remained largely in line with expectations.

“Our ancillary lines of business continued to be negatively impacted by COVID-19 related limitations and restrictions but revenue still outperformed expectations in March and April due to the improved visitation trends in Colorado and Utah,” he said. “Whistler Blackcomb’s performance continued to be negatively impacted due to the Canadian border remaining closed to international guests and was further impacted by the resort closing earlier than expected on March 30, 2021 following a provincial health order issued by the government of British Columbia. We have continued to maintain disciplined cost controls as we near the end of the 2020/2021 North American ski season.”

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The company noted in its release that it expects its lodging division to record negative EBITDA of between $9 million and $12 million, with increases in other sectors.

Commenting on early season pass results, Katz said, “We are very pleased with the response to our season pass sales launch. The pace of sales has been strong over the first month of the selling period, and we are seeing great guest enthusiasm for the enhanced value proposition of our products. We will be providing additional detail on our spring pass sales in our third quarter earnings release in June 2021.”

In mid-day trading Thursday, Vail Resorts stock was trading at $326.10 per share, an increase of 3.5% from Wednesday.


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