Vail Resorts lowers earnings expectations again as final ski season results come in

If there has been a theme running throughout Vail Resorts’ earnings calls this decade, it’s a lowering of earnings expectations from the company, which often shoots high in its initial projections before citing challenging weather for a reduced outlook.

That theme was reiterated again during the company’s earnings call for the third quarter of fiscal 2026 on Monday, when CEO Rob Katz told investors to expect net income and EBITDA* to be more than $100 million less than initial projections.

In December, the company predicted net income for fiscal 2026 to be $201 million to $276 million and Resort Reported EBITDA of $842 million to $898 million this fiscal year, which ends July 31. In March, the company reduced those numbers to $144 million to $190 million in net income and $745 million to $775 million in EBITDA.

And on Monday, those projections were again reduced, this time to $128 million to $162 million in net income and $735 million to $755 million in EBITDA.

“Due to the persistent, historically challenging weather conditions in the Rockies, which continued to limit terrain availability, the company is reducing its fiscal 2026 guidance,” Katz said in his prepared remarks on Monday.

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Katz, who was also CEO from 2006 to 2021, drew attention to the fact that it was exactly one year ago when he first addressed investors again as returning CEO following three and a half years away from the position.

At that time, Katz also lowered the earnings guidance provided by his predecessor, Kirsten Lynch, saying Vail Resorts was expecting to earn a maximum of $298 million in net income in fiscal 2025, down from the estimated top end of $309 million issued during the company’s second-quarter earnings report in March of 2025, which was down from $316 million following the first-quarter earnings report in December of 2024.

Lynch had previously affirmed the $316 million prediction that Katz revised, with investors expressing a guarded optimism.

“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 in January of 2025.

Vail Resorts had also cited weather for lowered earnings expectations in 2023 and 2024, despite many areas of the country seeing record snowfall during the 2022-23 season, contributing to record visitation for ski resorts in North America.

In January 2023, while explaining to investors why season-to-date destination guest visitation at western U.S. resorts was below expectations, the company cited extreme weather that had caused resort closures and airline disruptions.

A year earlier, in January 2022, Vail Resorts also said the season had gotten off to a slow start due to challenging early-season conditions that were worse than expectations.

In January 2021, Vail Resorts said snowfall levels were well below average at the company’s Colorado, Utah and Tahoe resorts through the holiday season, affecting visitation.

And in 2020, “Results at Whistler Blackcomb and Stevens Pass were below expectations, driven by the poor early season conditions that continued through the holiday period,” former CEO Rob Katz said at the time.

Vail Resorts ended fiscal 2025 with a net income of $280 million and EBITDA of $844.1 million. On Monday, Katz said this fiscal year — which is forecast to bring in about half of the net income of last season — was an abnormality that the company is not expecting to see again for some time.

“To give context on the magnitude of the impact of conditions on visitation this past season, industry-wide visitation in the Rockies declines approximately 24 percent. When you look back over 40 years, the prior worst decline in visitation, outside of COVID-related closures, for the Rockies, was down 8 percent in 2012, which illustrates the unprecedented severity of the conditions and the anomaly we just experienced.”

* Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization.