Six Flags Entertainment Corporation New

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Six Flags of Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Renz, and I'll be your operator for today's call. During the presentation, all lines will be in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, we'll conduct a question-and-answer session. If you have a question at that time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the pound key. Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Steve Pertel, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations.

Good morning and welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2021 call. With me are Salim Basool, President and CEO of Six Flags, and Sandy Preddy, our Chief Financial Officer. We will begin the call with prepared comments and then open the call to your questions. Our comments will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in such statements, and the company undertakes no obligation to update or revise these statements. In addition, on the call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures. Investors can find both a detailed discussion of business risks and reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures in the company's annual reports quarterly reports, and other forms filed or furnished with the SEC. At this time, I will turn the call over to Salim.

Thank you, Steve. Good morning, and thank you for joining our call. I'm very excited to speak to you today for the first time as CEO of Six Flags. Today, we have divided our call into three parts. First, I will introduce myself and describe how I have spent my first 100 days including my initial observations about the business. Second, Sandeep will discuss our financial results. And finally, I will return to discuss our strategy and priorities in more detail. So let me tell you about myself. I started as CEO of Middleby Corporation from 2001 until 2019. Middleby is a public company that manufactures food service equipment. We were the global leader in the manufacture of items like pizza oven, fryers, grill, stoves, and beverage equipment. When I started at Middleby, the enterprise value was $100 million. By the time I left almost 20 years later, it was valued at more than $7 billion. And Middleby has continued to grow. In fact, Middleby stock has appreciated by 50% since I left three years ago. which makes me very proud because it demonstrates that we developed and promoted the right internal leaders and we built our company to last. Our success at Middleby was driven largely by two things. One, we developed a customer-obsessed culture. And two, we empowered our people to think and behave like owners. This drove a spirit of innovation And Middleby was consistently recognized as the technological leader in its industry. Middleby is, of course, a different business than Six Flags. But I believe that if we can establish a customer-obsessed culture and empower our people to act like owners, then great things can happen at Six Flags just like they did at Middleby. I have been on the board of Six Flags for two years. serving as chairman for the past year until I became CEO. The reason I joined the Six Flags board was because I believed in the power of the brand and of the business model. And I believed that there was tremendous potential to continue to improve the guest experience. I have seven children, including a six-year-old daughter. So as you can imagine, I have spent a fair amount of time and money at theme parks over the years. I have seen firsthand the type of magic that can be created for a family visiting a Six Flags park. My kids would talk about our visits for weeks, and they would beg me to take them back. That's why I'm here, to invigorate the magic of Six Flags. During my first 100 days, my focus was to get to know everyone. I started with a town hall meeting to introduce myself to all employees, then immediately flew out to meet with all of our park presidents. I believe in decentralization and in empowering business unit leaders. And at Six Flags, our business is conducted at each of our parks, not at our corporate headquarters. I wanted to send a message of empowerment and also of accountability to our parks. It is my view that our corporate office exists to serve our parks, and our parks exist to serve our guests. So that will be our mentality as an organization. I also met with more than 100 guests, gaining candid feedback about their visit to our parks. I visited both our own parks and our competitors' parks and interacted with our team members. I analyzed the tremendous data Six Flags has gathered over the years, allowing me to see through the eyes of all our different types of customers. including families, young adults, single mothers, grandparents, and groups. This gave me a good understanding of the perception of Six Flags from our various constituents. The unique identity of each Six Flags park is so evident, and we have the opportunity to further empower each park to maximize its success. I have been amazed. by the passion our team members have for the company and for one another. We have a very talented and committed team. It is clear that it is tremendous demand for our brand of entertainment. Thrilled in an outdoor setting, given in a friendly, clean, and safe environment where fun and memories can be created. I now understand our strength, but also where we have opportunity to improve our performance. We'll focus our efforts in the following areas. First, we have reset our culture. While we have recovered nicely from the pandemic, we need to execute better and we need to execute faster. This requires an agile, nimble, performance-oriented culture. No more corporate bureaucracy. No more over-reliance simply on our brand and our history. We must elevate our game to the next level. Our goal is to be the most innovative and customer-obsessed theme park company in the world, and we are creating a performance-oriented culture to take us there. Second, we have reduced our layers of management from seven to three, downsized the corporate office, and gave more autonomy to the parks. The purpose of these changes was not to cut costs, but to create an agile organization and to expedite decision making. We have brought in some new talent, particularly on the culinary side, and we have given additional responsibility to some of our top internal talent, including leaders with exceptional expertise in revenue management. Finally, we have reset our strategy and operational priorities. I will provide details on our strategic direction later in the call, but at the high level, we'll focus on premiumization. This means we will provide a premium guest experience and we will charge prices that are in line with the value we deliver to our guests. I will now turn the call over to Sandeep, who will give some more details about our financial results. Sandeep?

Thank you, Salim, and good morning, everyone. It has been amazing to be part of Salim's first 100 days. We have significantly accelerated our speed of execution and have begun to focus on providing a premium experience for our guests. I feel very confident in our new direction and I'm very excited for the future. In the fourth quarter, our attendance recovered and per capita spending remained well above 2019 levels. Though we saw some impact from the Omicron virus towards the end of the quarter, this did not impact our Fright Fest event. As a reminder, results for the fourth quarter and full year are not comparable to prior year due to the pandemic, so my comparisons will be to 2019. Total attendance for the quarter was 5.8 million guests, a 6% decline from 2019. Revenue in the quarter was up $56 million or 21% to $317 million as a result of increased per capita spending. This was partially offset by a $4 million decline in sponsorship, international, and accommodations revenue due to the deferral of some sponsorship revenue. The change in our fiscal reporting period resulted in three fewer calendar days in October and two additional days in January for fourth quarter 2021 than were included in the fourth quarter for both 2020 and 2019. The net impact was a reduction of $363,000 in attendance and $26 million of revenue. Guest spending per capita in the quarter increased 32% compared to 2019, driven by a 28% increase in admission spending per capita and a 36% increase in in-park spending per capita. The increase in admission spending per capita came from higher pricing on single-day tickets particularly during Fright Fest, and an increase in the mix of single-day guests. The increase in in-park spending per capita was driven by a robust consumer spending backdrop and also by a higher mix of single-day visitors, who tend to spend more in our parks on average than our season pass holders and members. Attendance from our active pass space in the fourth quarter represented 66% of total attendance versus 71% for fourth quarter 2019, demonstrating our success in attracting visitation of single-day guests. On the cost side, cash operating and SG&A expenses increased by $30 million, or 18%, primarily due to higher wage rates and incentive costs to attract and retain team members, as well as increased security in our parks. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $95 million compared to $72 million of adjusted EBITDA in 2019. Moving to full-year performance, attendance of 28 million guests was down 16% from 2019. Total revenue of $1.5 billion was up $9 million driven by higher guest spending per capita that offset both the decrease in attendance and the $52 million reduction in sponsorship, international agreements, and accommodations revenue. For the year, total guest spending per capita increased more than $10, or 24%, due to our revenue management initiatives, enhanced in-park offerings, and strong consumer spending trends. Though revenue was roughly flat to 2019, cash operating and SG&A expenses were up 5% for the year, primarily due to higher wage rates and incentive costs, increased security in our parks, and higher litigation costs, offset by lower advertising costs. This resulted in adjusted EBITDA of $498 million, a 5% decline from 2019. Relative to 2019, our costs grew faster than our revenues over the past year. This is not acceptable to us, and we are focused on improving our expense management going forward. At the end of 2021, our active pass base was 8.3 million. An increase of 600,000 was at the end of 2019. This total included 2020 season passes that were extended through the end of 2021 and have now expired. Our active base included 2.1 million members and 6.2 million season pass holders. Attendance from our active pass base for the full year represented 63% of total attendance, the same as for full year 2019. Looking ahead, we expect our active pass base to decline throughout 2022 versus 2021 as the 2020 season passes that were extended through the end of 2021 fall out of our active pass base and as we increase pricing for our traditional season passes. Deferred revenue as of January 2nd, 2022 was $178 million, down $27 million or 13% from 2020, but up $34 million or 23% from 2019. The decrease compared to 2020 was primarily due to recognition of revenue from season pass holders whose benefits had been extended through 2021 and are now fully recognized into revenue. Total capital expenditures for the year were $122 million. We expect our 2022 capital spend to be slightly higher than 2021. Our liquidity position as of January 2nd, 2022 was $797 million, including $461 million of available revolver capacity and $336 million of cash. This compares to a liquidity position of $851 million as of October 3rd, 2021. Net cash outflow for the quarter was $54 million and was driven by a $42 million increase in capital expenditures versus 2019 as we ramped up capex spend late in the year. We intend to pay down and refinance our debt later this year in order to reduce our annual cash interest costs and to further improve our balance sheet. Looking ahead, we expect our premiumization strategy to depend less on total attendance and more on total revenue and profit as we focus on more premium guests. We expect our 2022 adjusted EBITDA to exceed our 2019 adjusted EBITDA, but we expect to deliver this through higher per caps and lower attendance. We will also have a strong focus on return on invested capital. For 2021, our ROIC was 14.7%. We expect to grow this metric over time. We are excited about the opportunities ahead as we lay the groundwork for sustainable long-term earnings growth, backed by a significantly improved guest experience. Now, I will pass the call back over to Selim, who will tell you more about our vision.

Thank you, Sandeep. While our results in the fourth quarter were strong, there is enormous end-to-end potential for our business that we can capture through a shift in strategy. I would now like to discuss our new strategic direction in more detail, focusing on three areas. First, the guest experience. Second, pricing. And third, capital allocation. Improving the guest experience is our primary focus. While there are many different ways to further delight our guests, we will prioritize the following six initiatives. Number one, improve our ride efficiency and convenience. This includes reducing wait times at rides, reducing ride downtime, and opening rides when our guests arrive. To accomplish this, we'll reallocate staff from lower value activities to rides and we'll improve our processes in order to load rides faster and ensure cars are full every cycle. This includes adding a single rider lane so that we can fill single seats that would have otherwise been empty. We'll also experiment with virtual viewing technology to help reduce wait times and allow guests to spend more time exploring our parks and less time standing in line. We're also in the process of testing digital screens throughout our parks that display current wait times for rides and restaurants, which should help our guests navigate our parks more efficiently. Number two, create fun through employee friendliness. This means treating our guests like family, having a positive attitude and smiling. Attitudes are infectious, and my experience has taught me that a little smile can go a long way in the customer service business. Number three, park cleanliness. This includes better curb appeal at the front gates, better landscaping, and clean restrooms. In fact, we are currently in the process of updating the front gate X entrance experience at several of our large parks, and we hope to complete this work in advance of our peak summer season. Number four, better quality food. This is a core expertise of mine, and an area in which we can have an immediate impact. We have already hired a renowned executive chef to oversee our culinary program, and we have brought in a food service expert to help us deliver fast food, food fast and efficiently. We'll start by focusing on the top selling items like burgers, pizza, and chicken tenders. Over the past 100 days, we have been reformulating our menu and testing new recipes on a daily basis. In fact, I have tried over 100 burgers, 200 slices of pizza, and 100 orders of chicken tenders. We are still putting the final touches on our new culinary offerings But based on what I've tasted so far, the quality of these items is better than any theme parks I've ever visited. So we are very excited to welcome back our guests this spring with new and improved versions of our top-selling food items. Over time, we'll expand our focus to include healthier menu items, more grilled options, as well as better refreshments, including coffee and alcoholic beverages. In addition, we'll upgrade our point of sale system and kitchen operation to reduce lines and provide fresher, healthier, and better tasting food. Food and beverage represented 21% of our total revenue last year, but it can be much bigger over time. Number five, more guest amenities. In talking to our guests, they consistently requested more benches throughout parks to sit and relax more shaded areas to cool off and parent lounges for some quiet time we are already in the process of adding some of these amenities to our parks for the upcoming season finally priority six is to upgrade our guest-facing technology and in particular our mobile app we are updating our app to make it effective intuitive and relevant improving personalization by using the wealth of data already available in our system. Over the next few months, we plan to improve our mobile app to deliver a more seamless guest experience in the following ways. By increasing speed of entry at the parking lot and at the front gate, increasing access to a digital flash pass, enable guests to skip the line with a click of the button, and increasing usage of our mobile ordering system for food and beverage. More features will be added over time as the app becomes a remote control that facilitates a seamless guest experience. We are also committed to investing in technology that will help ensure a more sustainable future, such as solar energy and waste reduction. Improving the guest experience is our obsession. We wake up every morning and go to sleep every night thinking of ways to further delight our guests. Next, I would like to talk about pricing. Our guest surveys and our guest interviews have both indicated that customers are willing to pay more for better quality of service. However, we have historically ignored this data, and instead, we prioritized filling our parks to maximum capacity at the expense of the guest experience. Data shows that guests who came on heavily discounted or free tickets pre-pandemic did not spend much money in the parks, yet they used up our park capacity. So based on our analysis, our historical reliance on heavy discounting was not the right strategy. Through premiumization, we focused on guests who are willing to pay more for a premium experience which will lessen the crowding of our parks, reducing pressure on operations, and elevating the guest experience. Our pricing goal is to provide value for our guest times and value for the price paid. We'll simplify our ticket offerings by combining season passes and memberships into a new product lineup with fewer choices and targeted blackout dates. Our new pricing architecture will not only be simpler for customers to understand, but we will also create credible upsell opportunities and have the opportunity to dynamically adjust prices based on the season and the day of the week. We have already run successful tests of our new pricing program over the past month, and we are ready to roll out the changes company-wide over the coming weeks. It is important to note that our ability to raise price is directly related to our ability to deliver a higher quality guest experience. So these two strategic priorities go hand in hand. Finally, before opening the call for questions, I would like to briefly comment on our capital allocation strategy. Our capital priorities have evolved, and we are currently focused on only two areas. Our number one priority is reinvesting in our business. Our goal is to lead the industry in terms of innovation, and to do that, we need to invest in our parks and in our system. Historically, innovation was measured in terms of thrill rides. In fact, for years, we have spent about 60% of our capital expenditure budget on new rides and attractions, and we have been able to build an exceptional portfolio of thrill rides. While this strategy provided an effective marketing tool to attract new guests, and increased the capacity of our parks, the marketing impact of each ride was short-lived. As we sit here today, we have ample thrill rides in our parks. And while we continue to selectively add new coasters over time, our near-term focus will be to deploy our resources into guest-facing technology, food and beverage offerings, and other park infrastructure improvements for a higher guest experience impact, with a lower cost than adding new rides. Now, once we have reinvested in our business, our second capital priority will be to pay down debt. These are the only two capital priorities for the time being. In conclusion, Six Flags has a truly unique portfolio of parks, and with our new culture, our reset organization, and our updated strategy in place, I'm confident that we will delight both our guests and our shareholders over time. Hopefully, you can sense that I'm highly energized to serve in this role, and I look forward to updating you on our continued progress in the months ahead. Operator, at this point, could you please open the call for any questions?

Certainly, sir. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Again, that would be star one on your telephone. Our first question comes from the line of James Hardiman with Citi. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my call, and I appreciate all the color around the new strategy, Salim. So I guess my first question would just be, you know, the previous management team, which wasn't that long ago, came in, and it was pretty clear at the time that Six Flags was going to need to take a pretty significant step back before we move forward. You haven't given any new targets, but it doesn't seem like that's sort of the position that we're in today. But I guess how would you characterize the earnings opportunity versus the previous targets that were laid out? And ultimately, how would you characterize this? I guess I don't want to call it a turnaround, but how would you characterize the new era of Six Flags?

James, first of all, good morning. And one, I think that we feel very comfortable that moving forward, our potential for earning growth and EBITDA has substantial potential to go up. So we start, first of all, with what's a change. As I mentioned, the first change in strategy is to price for the value of our parks. And that's very important that we go back and look at what happened before. So before we were very much looking at attendance. Let's fill up the parks. Today we're looking at premiumization strategy. So truly we want to invest in what I call the social aspects of our parks. This is where we're going to spend our money. I spent the first 100 days basically talking to guests, whether it's members or season passes or single day tickets. I also spent time looking at our parks and our competitors' parks. And it was clear that, first of all, guests were willing to pay more for a different experience at Six Flags. Meaning, if we can reduce the wait lines and improve the ride efficiency and convenience, create a better environment for families to come into our parks. Make sure the cleanliness of our park, the curb appeal of our front entrances, our landscaping, the food. In my basically script, I talk about food representing 21% of our revenues. I think this is a huge opportunity to improve on our food offering and on our both revenues from food and merchandising as well as EBITDA from that segment. And then, of course, the guest-facing technology. And this is most probably something that we have lacked in the past. We have not been as strong, especially on a mobile app. And we are truly spending a lot of money on making sure that our app is intuitive, seamless, relevant, and allow people to order online much easier, And in order to do that, we'll talk about changing the way we approach the food. So going back, while I don't want to give guidance, I don't want to give guidance, I would like to say that we will most probably beat and exceed our EBITDA numbers of 2019. Maybe that's a good start to start there. It is.

James, I'll just add one point to that, what Salim said. So I think Just from context, he's given you the strategic context to what we're looking at as we're going forward. But I think apart from the fact that in 2022 we expect to exceed 2019 EBITDA levels, we are expecting to do this in a very different construction. We're expecting to do it with less attendance and higher per capita spending. And that goes back to the premiumization strategy that we talked about. And our goal while we're doing this is to maintain or improve our per-cap spending levels at 2021 levels while we're doing this. So it's definitely a pivot and a shift compared to what we've been talking about previously. And I think that's why it's important to have that context behind the numbers as well as the strategic framework that Sadim just laid out.

Got it. And then just maybe speak to the test program that you ran over the course of last month. I think a lot of people are trying to just figure out what is the order of magnitude that we're talking about here when we talk about less attendance and more per caps, whether it's versus 2019 or versus 2021. How big of a swing should we expect? And ultimately, it's clear that the underlying goal is to have better EBITDA But at the revenue line, just to clarify, we should also expect, you know, despite negative attendance and positive per caps, at the revenue level, we should expect growth over where we previously were. Is that correct?

Great question, James. And I think, number one, we talked about revenue and growth of revenue and profit being the priority. So that's number one. Specifically to attendance, Yes, we expect to be lower than 2019 attendance levels, but we expect to be at 2021 levels or above. And so I think that's basically the trade-off that we're talking about. So if you want to get that sense of order of magnitude, that's the order of magnitude of attendance trade-off for camps.

Okay. And just to clarify, remind me where you were in 2021 attendance. versus 2019 for the full year. I know you gave us those numbers, but we can think about that on a full year basis as the baseline, even though, you know, the most recent fourth quarter numbers, you were better than the full year number, presumably, but that's how we should think about that.

Correct. We were 32.8 million of attendance in 2019. We were 27.7 in 2021. So what we're saying is we're not really striving for 32.8, but we're striving to be at 27.7 or better.

Got it. That's really helpful. Thanks, guys. Welcome.

Thank you. The next question is from the line of David Katz with Jefferies. Your lines are open.

Hi, good morning, everyone. Good to talk to you again and appreciate you taking my questions. Thanks for all the details so far. I just wanted to follow up. Salim, much of your commentary was around investing in digital, investing in the parks. And at the same time, the commentary around costs growing faster than revenues. When we put the pieces together, is it that revenues are going to start to outgrow costs? And how do we contemplate the investment in the context of keeping the costs from growing too much, if you see what I'm getting at? Just a little context there would be helpful.

David, good morning. And first of all, definitely we are looking at revenues, growth, outpacing cost growth over when you look across the year. We're not looking at quarter by quarter, but over the year in 2022, when you look back, our basically revenue growth will be faster, growing faster than our cost growth. So when I look at our cost, And our costs are mainly, when you think about our costs, they are mainly in the parks. And it's mostly about hourly wage is our biggest cost. And then we have costs on the good side. So on the hourly wage inflation, I think we are very comfortable that between the pricing strategy we put together, as well as most probably looking at What happened in 2021, I think we are very well positioned for our most probably stabilizing our hourly wage from there. On the good side, which is where we are looking at most probably food costs, merchandising costs, parts costs, we are today rationalizing our SKUs. We are standardizing purchasing across the parts, and we are adjusting suppliers. We are looking at substituting products. Now technology, such as ERP, automation of security, digital flash passes, is another driver of reducing some of our operating costs. So from a cost standpoint, we are truly remaining committed to lowering our fixed and variable costs, and we have to resize our cost structure.

Understood. And if I may follow up quickly, through all of your thoughtful and comprehensive commentary, there was no mention whatsoever of M&A. Should we consider that to be outside your consciousness in pretty much any form at this point?

I think, honestly, I cannot comment on specific M&A right now. And You know my background came from M&A, so you've seen my background. We have consolidated a major industry in my previous life. However, today we are singularly focused on improving our execution and paying down debt. That's our priority number one. Now, I would say over time we may consider M&A, but I don't see it in the foreseeable future. Honestly, our strategy right now is let's go get our balance sheet better and let's get our guest experience is where we're going to spend most of our money in making sure that we create one of the best guest experiences in what I call regional amusement parks. Perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, David.

Thank you. The next one, we have the line of Ben Chaikin with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Hey, how's it going? Admission per caps was strong all year. My take was that there was some organic items in there, but also some inorganic, such as mix or changes to the season pass allocation that contributed to the increase. As we think about 22 admission per caps, what headwinds and tailwinds do we need to consider when comparing 22 versus 21? It'd be great if we could ballpark quantify that as well. Thanks.

That's a great question, Ben. And I think one of the things that's really important to note is we actually talked about this on the last call in Q3. A big shift that's happened over here is with the premiumization strategy and the new product architecture that we're rolling out, we're really looking at probably a very similar cadence of sales of passes and visitation in 2022 versus 2021. Therefore, we don't expect to see a deterioration in the per caps, 21 versus 22, from that factor, which was what we discussed on the Q3 call. And frankly, apart from the fact that the visitation pattern should be very similar, we're taking incremental pricing like we are. If anything, we see upsides to admissions per caps versus 2021. Gotcha.

And just to clarify, when you say visitation patterns, are you referring to either a mix, like single day versus season pass?

I think it's more the season pass sales. If you recall in 2021, the season pass sales started occurring later in the year because of the pandemic and coming out of it. And so we actually ramped up pretty significantly and the revenue was recognized over a compressed time period. This year, because we are actually focused more on new season pass products and not really selling new membership products, the timing of it will similarly be much later. And as a result, the pattern of which the revenue gets recorded will be very similar. And I think the headwind that we were anticipating from that basically goes away. But you bring up a good point on single-day ticket. We've done extremely well on single-day ticket in the fourth quarter. We continue to expect to see single-day ticket strength to play out as we move forward. And in the prepared remarks, we talked about active passways more than likely being lower than 2021 levels throughout 2022. but we see at the same time a robust penetration of single day tickets to drive our revenue.

Gotcha. That's helpful. And then you kind of, I think Salim, you alluded to this on the call. And then one thing we've noticed over the last few weeks is at a handful of your parks, especially those that are open year round, is what appears to be a simplification of your pricing strategy and also a net increase in pricing. Assuming we're correct, are you able to share any of the early results from this around pricing uplift or the attendance impact? Yeah, thanks.

Well, it's still very early, Ben, to talk about this, but I have to tell you the results have been very encouraging. I would say we have been very pleased with just the few couple of weeks that we've had so far. It's been very, very good. I believe that on the few parts that have been open, With the new pricing strategy, it's been very, very good. So that's where we are. But we need to remember that's a very, very small, small test yet. But it's been very, very encouraging. But let me share with you why I am very optimistic about pricing architecture. So let's talk about it a little bit more specifically. So our pricing architecture that occurred is very data-based. One of the things that Six Flags has which makes it a powerful company is the fact that their data is bar to none. It's so good data they have. They can manage, they can slice and manage attendance in so many ways. And I think one of the reasons why I was very confident when we started looking at our pricing and architecture is talking to our guests. It was clear to me that those guests were randomly selected. We went through calling all types across the nation. Single day tickets, groups, membership, season passes. They all were willing to pay more for a better experience in the park. In fact, one of the comments I've had received constantly is our parks have become overcrowded. Both our parks and our water parks. And when I asked the question, how much more elasticity you can say, I found out that there was a lot of elasticity here for Six Flags. And I think, as I look forward to pricing, I think we shall play for scales, which means taking adventure or elasticity, which should significantly accelerate our growth and provide more EBITDA. Then the other interesting part that is interesting for us then is the timing. With the inflation happening, it's really the timing for us to institute pricing is fantastic. Everybody is accepting, the consumer are accepting price increases. And I think today we will continue adjusting very fast according to what happened to the inflation if we see in the first half or the second half in 2022. But I have to tell you one thing. Our strategy here is to make sure when we get pricing from our guests, it's based on the value we create for them. And when inflation moves behind us, we want this pricing to stick as well. And that's key. We're not just riding the inflation curve. We want to make sure that the value is there so that when Everything goes back to normal. Our guests feel that the pricing, that the new pricing sticks beyond just the inflation.

That's helpful. And then just like last one as a follow-up, are you seeing at the parks that you have implemented the new pricing, are you seeing attendance pull back as expected or is it holding in there?

I'm going to let Sandeep answer that because he's basically analyzing the data.

Yeah, I think, Ben, it's pretty early times right now to actually get into that much detail. But I think Salim said it's a good read. We're very encouraged because we've been testing now for a few weeks. And we're so encouraged by what we've seen so far that we're rolling out the test across all the parks in the system. And so that should give you an idea that it looks pretty good. And we're very confident of where we're going.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you. The next one, we have the line of Stephen Grambling with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Hi, thanks. Maybe a follow-up on expenses. Sandeep mentioned a focus on improving expense management going forward, and Salim, you mentioned the reduction in the layers of management. Has that already been implemented in any way to think about quantifying the savings or potential reinvestment opportunity that those changes represent?

So let me take that, Stephen. And I think there's two layers to it, right? The change in layers of management, a lot of that happened back in the end of Q4 2021. So that's already embedded in our estimates as we go forward. But what Salim was talking about was a broader cost structure discussion. We are looking at our total amount of costs with the fixed costs or variable costs very incisively. And I think what we want to do is make sure that we look under every rock to find what we can actually do to make sure that we find productivities. And at the same time, create basically an ability to invest further to improve the guest experience as we go through. But all of this with the principle of making sure that our revenues are always growing faster than our costs. And that really would be what I would say. The cost element that we are looking at will take a little bit longer to play out, but I think... The actions on the management structure have already happened at the end of Q421.

Got it. And then there was a lot of discussion around reinvesting in the park, but also moving away from the thrill rides. How should we think about the net impact of CapEx going forward versus your historical spend, perhaps relative to sales?

Yeah, I think what I would say on this is the very important thing that we've highlighted is for 2022, our capex shouldn't be much different from 2021. And I think for 2021, if you want to look at a percentage, it was about 8% of sales. But rather than looking at a percentage, I think we're pivoting more to an absolute value in terms of capex dollars. And we really believe that the amount of capex dollars that we're deploying right now makes sense given the capital that we've already got in thrill rides and given the assets that we can leverage. Because What we're talking about, whether it's guest technology or whether it's food and beverage offerings or park infrastructure, is much less expensive to invest in than a thrill ride. And so we don't really think about it necessarily in terms of percentage terms at this point. We're still evolving the strategy, of course, but that's kind of how we're thinking about it.

Helpful. Thanks so much. Thank you, Stephen.

Thank you. The next one we have... Paul Golding with Macquarie.

Thanks so much for taking the question, and Celine, congrats on the new role. I was hoping we could get some more color around how you're thinking higher level about the active pass-based. I know, Sandeep, you were referencing that pass-based versus single-day mixed is falling, and I guess my question is, is this intentional? You've got a new pricing structure that you referenced in the prepared remarks. How should we think about your view around single day as a proportion of mix, whether you're going to lean into pass or not, and sort of the puts and takes of the recurring revenue base?

So let me give you a certification of our guests. That's very important to talk about. On any given day, our highest value guest is the single-day guest. They spend more time in park, purchases food, souvenir, and parking, and their capper guest, as they come as a single-day ticket, is the highest. The season pass holder guest has the highest lifetime value. So we are trying to truly find a balanced mix of both. But truly the biggest interest for us is making sure that single day guest becomes somebody who's coming into our park exponentially higher rate because they come to our park, they spend more money and they are usually coming because they find the park as a destination and aspiration. They are willing to spend that uh money to come to our park and this has been something that we've seen a trend growing on single day tickets uh in 2021 and we're seeing it started the beginning of this year so we're very excited about that and i'm going to turn it to sandeep if you want to add a few more colors on that yes i think salim hit it perfectly i think the only thing i would just add to that is

With the pricing discussion that you had previously on the call, we're expecting to get increased yield on each unit of the active power space that we sell. So looking at the absolute number of active power space units is probably less relevant than the yield from each unit that we sell or hold. And I think that's really the way to think about it, and that's how we're thinking about total revenue. We're not talking about specifically attendance or active power space units. We're talking about revenue growth.

Got it. So pushing price broadly. And then another question, I guess, around the investment in guest-facing technologies. There's a lot of emphasis in the strategy around making the guest experience more efficient, more premium, I guess. Is there anything that we should be thinking about in terms of How the strategy may also focus on reducing physical wage hours in terms of just the digitization of the experience? Should we think that as we see some of these platforms roll out that we may see some attached relief in terms of labor costs?

No, I think that's a really very good question, and I think there's two pieces of it. Guest-facing technology are to really enable the experience of the guest and make it much more seamless to enjoy the park and everything that we offer in the park. There's an opportunity to leverage technology to get productivity in terms of labor management as well. Anything which is not specifically guest-facing in terms of labor that we're deploying is we're looking for ways to actually automate it and actually move it out completely and eliminate that labor because not only is it going to be much more efficient and effective, but I think from a productivity and seamlessness standpoint, that's a lot better for us as well. And that's the layer beneath what we talked about on cost structure. When we talked about looking at our fixed and variable costs, that includes investments that we may need to make on a capital standpoint, which drive cost improvements on the P&L.

To give you an example... Paul would be automating the back of the kitchen, and that expertise I have, and automating our security. And we are working in truly putting some amazing state-of-the-art technology for automating our security and automating our back-of-the-house kitchen.

Great. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Paul.

Thanks, Paul. Thank you. The next one, we have the line of Steve Wisinski with Stifel.

Hey, guys. Good morning. I want to ask about the capital allocation strategy, which now sounds like reinvesting in your business is number one, paying down debt is number two. Historically, Six Flags has always been more of what we call a dividend growth story. Now, that seems like that's clearly changed. I guess the question is, how are you thinking about you know, reinvesting in the business and growing those ROICs, which you referenced in your prepared remarks. And I guess, you know, what level do you think you can get those ROICs to in order to justify, you know, essentially not returning cash to shareholders at this point?

So, Stephen, I think this is a great question. I think if we look at where we were on ROICs this past year, we were at about 15%. And it's slightly lower than where we've been historically at our peak. So there's tremendous runway to at least get to that level, but we believe there is significant upside way beyond that as well. And so our focus is continuing to invest in the business to drive that ROIC up significantly. We're not ready to give a specific number, but there's tremendous potential to have incremental ROIC appreciation. So as long as we can keep on driving that in these investment opportunities, our capital allocation priorities remain the same that we just talked about, invest in the business and pay down debt and get the balance sheet into better shape.

So Steve, I believe in my experience over time, and again, going back to my previous slide, the best investment for return for shareholder is making sure that you create a total shareholder return in terms of creating the best EBITDA, the best cash flow, the best balance sheet cleanliness, and I think distributing dividends is not something we have much better way to return to shareholders than distributing dividends at this moment. Our opportunities in investing and getting return on invested capital from all the investment we're going to make in the parks will yield very strong return back into our shareholders. And down the road, who knows, more additional M&A that comes on top of that. I think it's going to look fantastic. So I want to tell you something, Steve, because you bring up something about our prioritization of CapEx. I have to say that while we have ample thrill rides in our parks, and we are most probably, in thrill rides, we have more thrill rides than any of our competitors in all our parks. Park to park, we have more than anybody else in thrill rides. Now, while we're investing in our parks and our systems, including guest-facing technology, food service, and infrastructure improvement that are most guest-facing, And while rides have not been our priority this year, we are introducing record breaking and first of its kind rides this year. So at Magic Mountain, we're introducing Wonder Moment Flight of Courage, single rail coaster, and it will be the part 20th coaster. At Fiesta, we're introducing Dr. Diabolical Cliffhanger, the world's steepest dive coaster. In Dallas, Aquaman, Power Wave, the first of its kind water coaster in North America, and our park's 15th coaster. Catwoman, whip going in St. Louis. Discovery Kingdom, signed window safari. A unique combination of family coaster, animal exhibits. And we are rebranding Waterpark and Daniel Lake as Hurricane Lake Harbor. So we're doing a lot when it comes to ride still. But it's not the priority where we're spending 60% of our capex. So it's going to be fascinating to see how we go back and listen to our guests in terms of what they really need. And talking about that, I'm gonna give you a simple thing. On a guest experience, we want to basically make sure that our guests, one of the issue I've heard is a lot of people, we lose a lot of people on food service because our waits are so long and by the time they order their food, the food is cold and not in the best of shape. And we need to make sure that we are dedicating pickup lanes for our guests who are ordering food digitally through our mobile app. And I think that will improve significantly the guest experience. Similar to single rider lane, we're gonna most probably also reduce the choking point. So those are some of the examples we're doing. So thank you, thank you very much. And let's go to one more question. Ryan, I think you are next.

Thank you. The next one, we have the line of Ryan Sandby with William Blair.

Yeah. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. So, Wayne, with the focus on premiumization, can you talk about what kind of rebranding investment is maybe needed here to help communicate this change to the consumer? Will we see maybe a new marketing effort here to help Can I explain the shift and why crickets are going higher that ends up in a better experience? And then is this more about reaching out to a new or a different guest than what you've attracted to the parks in the past, or maybe one that's been turned away by that experience previously? Or is this more about segmenting and enhancing the experience for your current guests that have been in the park for many, many years?

I think let's look at the marketing approach. So marketing approach is no longer going to be traditional. We're going to be going through, and we've hired. We are basically hiring right now. We've hired a few, and we have realigned our marketing department to look at three segments of how we're going to market all those new changes to our guests. Number one, we're going to go to social media, very, very strong social media. We are lucky to have some phenomenal influencers that use our parts, and we reach out to a couple of them. and we're gonna basically keep on spreading the message to influencers. Number three that has been interesting for us, we have not been using a lot of SEOs, search engine optimization, to make sure that when you look at the internet and you search, we have not put a lot of energy on that. So we're putting a lot of SEOs investments to make sure that when you're looking at outdoor entertainment, we always come up first and we'll detail what our outdoor entertainment means. Perfect.

Great. I mean, Salim, is this more about reaching a new or different guest than maybe what you've attracted to in the past?

I think we're going to reach, definitely, I can tell you that we would like to reach a, I hate to go back to retail, but let's assume, and it's easy to do that, it's not exactly equivalent, but think about The Walmart, Kmart customer, we're going to target customer, hopefully, with what we're going to do. And we want to attract more families. We want more strollers in our park. That's for sure. That's most probably a big new area that we have not been focusing on in the past. Families in our parks with strollers coming in our park. So we're investing in kids' areas. We're investing in kids' meals. We're investing in tremendous way to bring families back to our park, which has not been in emphasis.

Thank you. That's very helpful.

Thank you. We don't have any further questions at this time. Presenters, please continue.

I would like to have closing remarks. I would like to thank all the dedicated and hardworking employees of Six Flags for committing to our new strategy and vision. This is a great time for Six Flags to shine, and I'm thrilled to be part of your team. We want to remain one of the very best places to work for the most promising and diverse talent, as evidenced by our recognition from Forbes as one of America's best employers for new graduates in 2021 and one of the best employers for women in 2021. To our investors and analysts, thank you for your support. Our guests are seeking thrills in an environment that is fun, safe, convenient, and affordable, something Six Flags is uniquely able to offer. I look forward to seeing you in our parks this season to witness our improvements firsthand. Have a blessed day and thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.