SeaWorld Entertainment, Inc.

and welcome to SeaWorld Parks and Entertainment Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. If you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be opportunity to ask questions. Please note that this event is being recorded. I'd like to turn the call over to Mr. Matthew Stroud, Bachelor of Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Nick, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to SeaWorld's third quarter earnings conference call. Today's call is being webcast and recorded. A press release was issued this morning and is available on our investor relations website at www.seaworldinvestors.com. Replay information for this call can be found in the press release and will be available on our website following the call. Joining me this morning are Mark Swanson, Chief Executive Officer, and Elizabeth Galaxi, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. This morning we will review our third quarter financial results, and then we will open the call to your questions. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that our comments today will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from those forward-looking statements, including those identified in the risk factors section of our annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These risk factors may be updated from time to time and will be included in our filings with the SEC that are available on our website. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. In addition, on the call, we may reference non-GAAP financial measures and other financial metrics such as adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow. More information regarding our forward-looking statements and reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measure is included in our earnings release available on our website and can also be found in our filings with the SEC. Now, I would like to turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Mark Swanson. Mark?

Thank you, Matthew. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'm pleased to report another quarter of strong financial results while continuing to operate in a highly challenging and COVID-19 impacted environment. In the third quarter, we generated among our highest revenue and net income ever reported and another quarter of record adjusted EBITDA. Our pricing and product strategies, along with the strong consumer demand environment, continued to drive higher realized pricing and strong guest spending in the quarter. Our third quarter financial performance would have been even better if not for limited international guest and group related attendance, an unfavorable calendar shift, and a record number of weather impacted days for our parks during the third quarter. In fact, the third quarter of 2021 had a record number of weather impacted operating days with 18% more severe weather days than what we experienced in the third quarter of 2019 which was the previous record. Excluding international and group guests, attendance decreased by approximately 1% when compared to the third quarter of 2019. Our record-breaking financial performance through the first nine months of the year is a testament to the resiliency of our business and the relentless efforts and dedication of our ambassadors. During the quarter, we took advantage of our improved financial performance and favorable market conditions to refinance our debt, which allowed us to reduce our overall debt, meaningfully reduce our go-forward interest expense, push out maturities, and increase our access to liquidity from revolving commitments. We also resumed our share repurchase activities and opportunistically repurchased 1.53% million shares during the quarter. We repurchased an additional 457,000 shares totaling $26.8 million since the end of the quarter and will continue to be opportunistic and purchase shares when we believe it's the best use of our excess cash. Last week we concluded another successful Halloween season at our parks. featuring our award-winning Halloween events, which contributed to meaningfully positive attendance and revenue growth in October compared to October of 2019. In fact, we saw record revenue for our Halloween events. Later this week, we will begin our popular Christmas events at our SeaWorld, Busch Gardens, and Sesame Parks. Our Christmas events feature exciting entertainment unique food and beverage offerings, and seasonal merchandise for guests, young, old, and everyone in between. Turning to other key initiatives, we've built and successfully launched version 1.0 of our new mobile app across eight of our parks as of the end of the third quarter. These apps feature interactive maps, ride wait times, and importantly, e-commerce capabilities that allow for in-park purchases, including food and beverage, quick queue, and other in-park items. We are pleased with the early feedback, adoptions, and results. In restaurants where mobile food ordering has been rolled out, we are seeing a double-digit percentage increase in average check size. We plan to complete the rollout of mobile apps across our entire portfolio by December of 2021. We also plan to continue to add features to the app and enable in-app purchases across more in-park venues over the next several quarters, which we expect to contribute to enhanced guest satisfaction and meaningful incremental revenue opportunities. We continue to make good progress towards implementing our CRM system. When complete, we anticipate that our marketing, analytics, and business capabilities will significantly improve, allowing us to better understand and engage with our guests, which we expect to lead to better targeting and reduced overall marketing costs, increased visitation, and increased overall revenue opportunities. We are also making progress on our hotel strategy, and we will have more to share about this in the coming quarters. Internationally, SeaWorld Abu Dhabi, the first SeaWorld park outside of the United States, remains on track to complete construction by the end of 2022. Looking ahead to 2022, we have announced what we believe is our most significant an exciting lineup of new rides, attractions, events, and upgrades, including something new and meaningful in every one of our parks. This includes the Icebreaker Roller Coaster at SeaWorld Orlando, the Iron Gwazi Roller Coaster at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay, the Pantheon Roller Coaster at Busch Gardens Williamsburg, The Emperor Roller Coaster at SeaWorld San Diego. The Big Birds Tour Bus Ride at Sesame Place, Philadelphia. The Tidal Surge Screaming Swing at SeaWorld San Antonio. The Reef Plunge Waterslide at Aquatica, Orlando. The Rapids Racer and Wahoo Remix waterslides at Adventure Island, Tampa. the Aquazoid Amped Waterslide at Water Country USA, and the Riptide Race Waterslide at Aquatica, Texas. In addition, we are particularly excited to open our newest park, Sesame Place San Diego, in March of 2022. We look forward to bringing the education, fun, and enchantment of Sesame Street to our guests in Southern California. Encouraging for 2022, season pass sales have been strong and pass base is at a record level for this time of year. At the end of October of 2021, our pass base was up approximately 25% compared to October of 2019 and is up approximately 12% higher than the peak pass base we had in 2019. We are also still selling a higher mix of premium passes in our pass base as our pass holders continue to recognize the value and benefits of our higher tiered products. Finally, while the current conditions in the overall labor market have presented staffing and wage challenges, we continue to identify additional cost reduction and efficiency opportunities including continuing to eliminate unnecessary and redundant costs, optimizing our spend levels, and investing in and leveraging technology. Our teams continue to work hard to operate our parks in this extraordinary environment and better position this company for revenue growth and increased profitability. As we have demonstrated in the third quarter and throughout the year, we believe the strategies we have developed and refined over the past few years, along with the actions we have taken throughout the past year, will continue to lead to significantly improved financial results for the company. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Elizabeth to discuss our financial results in more detail. Elizabeth?