Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Abby and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Six Flags Entertainment Corporation first quarter 2025 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session.

If you would like to ask a question during that time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad if you would like to withdraw your question press star one a second time thank you and i would now like to turn the conference over to six flags management go ahead thanks abby and good morning everyone my name is michael russell corporate director of investor relations for six flags welcome to today's earnings call to review our 2025 first quarter financial results for six flags entertainment corporation Earlier this morning, we distributed via wire service our earnings press release, a copy of which is also available under the News tab of our Investor Relations website at investors.6flags.com. Before we begin, I need to remind you the comments made during this call will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements may involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those described in such statements for a more detailed discussion of these risks you may refer to the company's filings with the sec in compliance with the sec's regulation fd this webcast is being made available to the media and the general public as well as analysts and investors because the webcast is open to all constituents and prior notification has been widely and unselectively disseminated all content on this call will be considered fully disclosed on the call with me this morning are Six Flags Chief Executive Officer Richard Zimmerman and Chief Financial Officer Brian Witherham. With that, I'll turn the call over to Richard.

Thank you, Michael. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. I would like to start by sharing my perspective on where we are as we ramp up operations at all 42 of our parks in our first full year as the new Six Flags. We are making meaningful progress in tapping the full potential to merger. We are seeing stronger market response to our exciting new slate of rides and attractions, improving guest satisfaction ratings, and executing on our plans to deliver significant cost savings. I'm very pleased with the pace of the integration work, and I want to thank our teams for their tireless efforts on all fronts over the past several months. As we noted in our earnings release this morning, our results showed the operating loss that is typical for a seasonal business that has very few parks in operation during the first quarter of the calendar year while the operating loss in the quarter was greater than the combined loss of the legacy companies in 2024 it was only slightly greater than what we expected in our operating plan and was consistent with the level of off-season investment necessary to prepare our parks to open despite the weather and other macro level level challenges we have faced to begin the year we remain confident in our outlook for the business and especially in our 2025 operating plan our plan was built around a strategy to minimize lower value operating days particularly in the first and fourth quarters maximize the number of operating days in the second and third quarters and make upfront investments that will enhance the guest experience and drive demand and revenue generation as we head towards the heart of the 2025 operating our confidence is backed by the solid results we generated in April despite recent weather issues the positive momentum we are seeing long lead indicators such as season pass sales and school and youth group bookings and the excitement being generated in our markets by the compelling slate of new rides and attractions we are introducing this year while overall April results fell short of expectations due to the recent bout of cold and wet weather we are nonetheless encouraged with the improving trends we saw particularly on good weather weekends earlier in the month of April. We are also pleased with the April trends in season pass sales, positive momentum that is encouraging as we head into the peak sales months of May and June, which combined are expected to represent close to 40 percent of the full year sales cycle. And as more parks began to reopen last week, bookings at our resort properties trended higher, up more than 10 percent versus the comparable week last year, another positive indicator consumers remain engaged as we get closer to daily operations and the peak summer season. Most importantly, we saw no detectable change in guest behaviors in April, despite broader market concerns. When the weather was good, we were encouraged by the strong demand we saw. Our guests continued to demonstrate a willingness to spend on goods and experiences they value, reinforcing our view that high quality, close-to-home entertainment options like ours are highly resilient, even a choppy macroeconomic environment. We believe this positions us well to achieve our 2025 performance. While the economic landscape remains unclear, we continue to focus on what we can control, executing our merger integration plan, optimizing our cost structure, and enhancing the guest experience to drive demand. we remain firmly on track to achieve the 120 million in merger cost synergies by the end of the year six months earlier than originally contemplated at the announcement of the merger as brian will outline in a moment and in keeping with our operating plan we now expect current year operating costs and expenses to be more than three percent lower than combined 2024 actuals for both legacy companies. As part of our cost reduction plan, we are engaged in a corporate restructuring process designed to flatten our organizational structure, streamline decision making, and drive cost efficiencies. As an example, earlier this month, we eliminated multiple senior executive leadership positions at the corporate level and consolidated functional ownership under a few key leaders. These changes and others we have underway will create new opportunities for the next generation of leadership within the company, support the cultivation of talent across the organization, and meaningfully reduce costs. Once this initiative is completed, we will have reduced our full-time headcount by more than 10%. Our system-wide RE-ORG effort, along with additional cost-saving initiatives we've identified post-merger, are designed to reset the company's cost base and deliver an incremental $60 million of cost savings above and beyond our original synergy target by the end of 2026. Before I turn the call over to Brian to review our results in more detail, let me take a moment to address the evolving tariff situation. While recent developments in U.S. trade policy have created marketplace uncertainties, based upon the tariffs as currently outlined, we believe our exposure is relatively limited. The fact that labor represents more than 50% of our operating cost structure inherently minimizes the potential impact of any new tariffs. On the non-labor portion of our cost structure, we believe we are well positioned to substantially absorb or offset any impact without significantly affecting our cost structure or margin outlook. Naturally, our teams are already actively working with suppliers and sourcing partners, pursuing mitigation strategies to offset these impacts through material substitutions, alternative sourcing, and where appropriate, pricing adjustments to protect our margins. We will continue to update the market as additional clarity becomes available. With that, I'll turn the call over to Brian for a review of our financials. After his remarks, I'll return with some closing thoughts.

Thank you, Richard, and good morning. I'll begin by providing some before providing an update on select balance sheet items. First, it's important to remember that the first quarter is not indicative of full-year performance. We would normally expect the quarter to represent roughly 7% of full-year attendance and revenues, considerable costs during the first few months of the year related to preparing our parks to open. The small number of operating days and the higher fixed nature of our early season cost structure limits our upside and makes even small variances performance look more meaningful than when it really reflects in terms of full-year performance. It cracks closer to approximately 5.5% of full-year attendance and closer to approximately 6%. As we noted in our earnings release this morning, first quarter results were impacted by operating calendars. While coming into the year we had planned to have approximately five fewer combined operating days in the first quarter compared to last year, we ended the quarter with 14 fewer days. The result of managing our park operating calendars tightly in response to inclement weather and other cost-savings objectives. The fewer operating days combined with the shift of the not- were the biggest drivers of first quarter year-over-year attendance and revenue declines. Timing variances that we expect, particularly at our parks where the opportunities for attendance growth are. Looking at April demand trends, which even out some of the early season calendar shifts, attendance over the past five weeks was up a little more than 1%. This was despite the Midwest being plagued by heavy rain and cooler-than-normal temperatures, over the last two weeks of the month a strong indication that demand for our parks remain strong when not disrupt to make the impact of weather on April attendance was approximately 175,000 visits normalizing for the weather difference April attendance would have been up approximately eight percent on a year-over-year basis meanwhile guest spending trends during the first quarter were also affected by the operating calendar changes this led to a mixed shift to lower price tickets in the absence of higher demand events like their in-park spending visits, April per capita trends improved from the first quarter, consistent with the shift in our operating calendars and higher attendance levels. Based on trends to date and the strategic initiatives we have planned for the season, we expect per capita spending to continue to increase as we get deeper into the season and attendance levels move higher and length of guest stays increase. Coming out of the first quarter, we were pleased to see momentum in the sale of season passes and membership strengthened. The recent robust performance, despite the weather disruptions at the end of April, narrowed the sales gap to prior year to approximately 2% in terms of units sold and 3% in terms of total sales. Shortfalls that our team is focused on closing as we head into the critical May-June sales window. In current program strategies, we expect the average price of a season path at our legacy Cedar Fair parks to be up 3% to 4% over the balance of the sales cycle, while the average price at our legacy Six Flags parks is projected to be essentially flat to prior year, the result of changes to the product structure and a mixed shift in path type solar. disappointed to see attendance over the last two weeks of April impact strong momentum earlier in the month. It's important to note that April only represents roughly 20% of expected second quarter attendance, meaning there is ample time to build upon the 37 operating days in May and June, bringing our projected total second quarter operating days to 2028. It bode well in expanding our opportunities to drive shifting to the cost. From a cost perspective, our teams delivered results largely in line with expectations during the first quarter while there were some anticipated cost timing differences kept controllable variable costs in check without disrupting the guest experience in the quarter we incurred fifteen million dollars of non-recurring merger related integration costs and another five million dollars of adjusted EBITDA ad backs for costs such as severance and commercial liability settlements first quarter operating expenses were largely consistent with expire level of spending was driven pre-opening maintenance work to ensure parks and increase in early season advertising and drive higher decisions resulted in an estimated expense timing difference in the quarter of approximately $10 million. Remaining nimble in our approach, we are committed to making decisions like these that set us up for much stronger performance as demand builds into the key second and third quarters, which by themselves are expected to represent 95% or more of a full year adjusted EBITDA. As Richard noted, we expect the steps we are taking to optimize our cost structure will reduce full-year operating costs and expenses by more than 3% this year, inclusive of our second year of merger-related synergy. The cost savings effort is intended to provide some downside protection against any potential weakening in consumer demand this summer. The targeted cost reductions do not contemplate any potential outsized impacts related to tariffs, which we expect to be minimal based on the available information. We noted in this morning's earnings release we are maintaining our full year 2025 adjusted eva dot guidance of 1.08 billion to 1.12 billion our confidence and our ability to deliver another strong performance this year is underscored by the resilience of our business model as demonstrated in the past by the room less expensive and less complicated choice for entertainment our parks have historically performed well we believe those same staycation attributes are even more relevant today and combined with an outstanding 2025 capital program position us well as we head into the peak summer season. We ended the quarter with ample liquidity including $62 million of cash on hand and $179 million of available capacity under our revolving credit. $5.3 billion of gross debt at the end of the first quarter, which included $626 million. 70% is fixed through long-term notes. And outside of $200 million in senior notes that mature in July of this year, we have no significant maturities before 2027 we are monitoring the credit markets and evaluating options to address our July notes including the possibility of the using projected balance sheet liquidity to fund payoffs programs during the first quarter we spent 140 million dollars on capital expenditures which is consistent with our previously disclosed expectation to spend 475 to 500 million dollars for the full year in 2025 previously said our plan to is to invest a similar amount in 2026 beyond our capex plans we are in a strong position to use account

debt as quickly and efficiently as possible with that i'd like to turn the call back as we look towards the rest of the year i'd like to take a few minutes to expand on our strategic roadmap and how we're positioning six flags to deliver sustainable growth in 2025 and beyond first and foremost as i mentioned earlier we've made significant progress on our merger integration and synergy realization plans. From a systems perspective, our IT integration is on track. Guest data across all parks will be migrated to our in-house ticketing platform by year-end, providing a seamless experience with holders and enabling a more unified approach to pricing. Integration of the full technology stack remains a multi-year initiative, although we're pleased with the groundwork that has already been laid to advance that effort. Our ongoing portfolio optimization efforts are another key of our strategy to strengthen the business and realize the full potential. I'm pleased to say that these efforts are well underway, as evidenced by the recent announcement of our plans to close our Maryland parks after the 2025 season. The decision to sunset Six Flags America and Hurricane Harbor at the end of this season was a difficult but necessary one. A decision that aligns with our broader priorities to simplify our operations, reduce portfolio risk, and focus resources on high margin, high growth parks. Proceeds from the divestiture of non-core assets such as this will support debt reduction, and the transactions are expected to be cash flow accretive, reduce our leverage ratio, and modestly improve EBITDA margins. It's premature to provide a specific timetable for the sale process, but it's reasonable to say it could take 12 to 18 months or more to complete. Along with other asset sale efforts, including excess land adjacent to King's Dominion near Richmond, Virginia, we will work diligently with our real estate advisors to execute these transactions as efficiently as possible while maximizing value. As it relates to the future divestiture of assets, we don't have any plans to close any additional parks at this time. We will continue to evaluate all options and consider other potential transactions to enhance shareholder value. In the meantime, we're operating all 42 of our parks for the 2025 season. We have also made great progress building out our capital plans for the next few years, with our capital strategy remaining disciplined and tightly aligned with our growth priorities. As Brian mentioned earlier, we still expect to invest approximately $1 billion on capital projects for the 2025 and 2026 seasons. Should macroeconomic conditions meaningfully change, we will have several levers at our disposal to reduce our use of cash. Most meaningfully is our ability to quickly adjust the scope of our CapEx program. 30 percent of our annual capex budget is allocated to infrastructure projects that are more discretionary have shorter lead times and can often be delayed until later periods along with our ability to adjust our operating cost structure up and down to match demand levels this affords us the flexibility to rationalize our use of cash should market conditions change materially from plan we will continue to be disciplined and nimble in deploying capital despite broader concerns around the economy, we remain focused on executing our strategic roadmap, driving top-line growth, capturing synergies and resetting our cost structure, optimizing our portfolio of assets, and improving capital efficiency, which positions six flags well to deliver quality earnings growth, substantial free cash flow growth, and enhanced value for our shareholders. We are excited to share more details of our long-term strategy at our upcoming investor day where we will outline our growth objectives through 2028 the pathway to a 40% margin and a clear line of sight for unlocking more shareholder value in closing i want to thank our associates for their commitment to delivering an exceptional guest experience to the investment community we appreciate your continued support and confidence and look forward to keeping you updated on our progress as we pursue our long-range targets abby that concludes our opening remarks please open the line for questions thank you and we will now begin the question and answer session

if you have dialed in and would like to ask a question please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue if you would like to withdraw your question simply press star one a second time if you are called upon to ask your question and are listening via speakerphone on your device please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question to be able to take as many questions as possible we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up you may rejoin the queue if you have additional questions again it is star one if you would like to join the queue and our first question comes from the line of james hardiman with citigroup your line is open hi this is uh sean wagner on

for James Hardiman. I believe the 36 additional operating days works out to about 2% growth in operating days in the second quarter. How do you expect attendance and sales growth in that quarter to compare to that number?

I'll let Sean, it's Richard, I'll let Brian take the number aspect of it. What I will say, I'll reiterate what we said in our guidance, we from the beginning have believed that second and third quarters are where the opportunity were as we look at the combined park portfolio so all of our emphasis is we believe those are higher margin days we below believe those are are going to be highly accretive and we we see a really strong demand heading into those second quarter and third quarter days brian yes sean we don't have uh you know specific quarterly guidance i'm going to the as richard mentioned you know the the the focus coming into 2025 was about optimizing the operating calendar and taking out lower value days in the first,

maybe you can characterize it slightly different and say days that have a lower ceiling and maybe a lower floor at the same time because of the variability of weather. Adding back days in the second and third quarter will be higher value days that we believe not only represent the ability for higher margin days, but also higher attendance.

Okay. And I guess, is there any quantification you can give us on the Easter and or Boysenberry Festival shifts? And now that Easter is behind us and most of the Boysenberry Festivals has occurred, do you expect to make all of that up in TQ or did poor weather kind of hold any of that back?

Well, certainly weather has been, as we noted, a factor in April. We said, you know, weather and led by the Midwest. It wasn't exclusive to the Midwest, but the Midwest was the most impacted. We lost, as we noted on the call in our prepared remarks, about 175,000 visits over that last of April. Boysenberry is still ongoing. The event isn't over the middle of May. And so boysen will have sort of lapped. We do believe, as we were just talking about, the opportunities to add those days in May and June are going to be greater or have greater upside than what was potentially lost in April because of the weather. Now, May and June could also face weather issues. That's the uncertainty of an outdoor entertainment business, but we're excited about the potential that May and June represent with those incremental hours.

Okay, and just to clarify, is there any quantification you can give on, I guess, the attendance impact that the Easter or the Boysenberry Festival shifts had?

Boysen would have been the most pronounced, and Boysenberry, now again, the event's not over, so I don't want to give an uninformed number on Boysen. I think we'll be in a better position to tell you exactly what shifted after the Boysenberry event has fully wrapped.

Yeah, thank you very much.

And our next question comes from the line of Steve Wozinski with Stiefel. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Good morning. How are you guys? I hope you guys are doing well. So, Brian, just want to clarify something. I think you mentioned, I'm pretty sure you mentioned your prepared remarks that you're expecting the first quarter attendance to represent, I think you said about 5.5% for the full year, and then first quarter revenues to be about 6% for the full year. And that's different than what I think was in your release. I think your release says it should be about 7% for both. I assume that's more historical versus anything else. And just want to clarify that I heard you right there because I think there's a lot of folks and investors out there that are kind of a little bit panicked about what was in the release.

Yes, Steve, the 7% would be more of a historical or what we would normally expect coming into a year, given some of the headwinds around timing of operating calendars and other factors. The pace that we're on right now, you heard correctly, on attendance we're currently tracking where first quarter would represent five and a half percent of full year attendance is inside of what would be a normal course or you know the most I think the thing the key thing to take away is that the first quarter is not a um a material quarter by by any stretch it's a very important quarter from a from a setting up the stage for getting the parks ready to open but in terms of trend lines, as we said, it's somewhat of an inconsequential or not indicative quarter when it comes to what full-year potential looks like.

Okay, gotcha. Thanks for that, Brian. And then second question, probably for you, Richard, but I want to ask about the decision to close the Six Flags Park in Maryland. But, you know, look, I guess the thesis is, you know, essentially shut the park down, that land there. I mean, you know, I'm from Maryland. That land has to be worth a decent amount of money, and then you'll be able to keep the majority of those folks, you know, essentially at your King's Dominion Park, which is relatively close in the grand scheme of things. So, you know, I guess the question is, is we kind of look across your portfolio. I know you said you're not actively looking to shut other assets down, but, you know, to me, it would seem like there are, you know, other opportunities to do the same type of thing across, you know, across the portfolio. And so while you're maybe not shopping something today, Is that the right way to think about it?

I think, Steve, let me answer it this way, Steve. I think it's a good question. As I think about that particular land parcel, we think back to the transaction that we did at Legacy Cedar back in 2022 with land underneath our Santa Clara Park. There are times where you have unique opportunities, and this truly is unique. And I put the land in Maryland underneath our D.C. park and the land at richmond underneath the excess land uh at richmond both have huge potential to generate uh values that far in excess of what we think we can produce in terms of results going forward so when we look at the ability to redeploy capital uh we try to be good stewards of the capital that's invested in this company i think we've got an obligation to to spot these types of opportunities and act quickly on them so we're going to we're going to move as quickly as possible while maximizing value as i said in my prepared remarks um we do have now you know parks all across north america so you know there's lots of opportunities for people to buy tickets to our parks in every region including the dc area the baltimore area uh and down through you know raleigh and uh enrichment as well but when we think about the the rest of the portfolio we'll continue to evaluate where there are other opportunities. We don't see as much an opportunity on the underlying land at this point under the rest of the portfolio, but there may be an opportunity, as we said, to maximize value as we think about some of our smaller locations.

Okay, gotcha. Thanks for that, guys. Really appreciate it. Thanks, Dave.

And our next question comes from the line of Arpene Kacharian with UBS. Your line is open.

Thank you so much for taking my question. So, Brian, Richard, I entirely hear you on the Easter shift and events kind of moving out of Q1 into Q2. But then we have sort of April that's tracking a bit softer than what would have been implied by kind of that Easter shift. And I understand you talked about sort of weather impact. I guess my question is, what gives you confidence to keep the guidance here? it sounded like you haven't really seen much impact from kind of the weakening consumer in your business. Is there anything else you're watching closely? I guess the key question is what are those early signs that you're seeing that gives you the confidence to keep the guidance unchanged here? And then I have a quick follow-up.

Thank you. Let me jump in here and say that, you know, we do remain confident in our ability to hit our full year numbers. What we watch are both long lead indicators, and we've talked at length today about season pass sales but also what we're seeing uh as we look at the information becomes available as we open up parks how they're performing you know we opened up cedar point last saturday and then 47 degrees and a driving rain that was almost sideways we had almost 18 000 people in the park because they were there to ride the reopened top thrill too and they were there to experience the beyond there on opening day at cedar point which is a long-held tradition so that type of demand when we see that and a level of demand in less than ideal weather gives us real confidence that we look at things. I know when we also watch, and I know there's a lot of concern about the health of the consumer, when we look at how our consumers perform, let me give you a little backdrop of one thing that we watch. When we look specifically at the e-commerce channel and what we sell through our e-commerce channel on a year-to-date basis since January 1st. We're up 1% in unit volume, and we're up mid-single digits on price if you average out everything that we sell through that channel. So we continue to see a well-in-law of the consumer to recognize value and dip into it. And then lastly, the other thing that I'm really excited about, we've talked at length about our approach to food and beverage and the ability to generate more transactions, grow revenues within our food and beverage segment. We've renovated 11 restaurants across the portfolio, converting them into what we call our crew-serve model. It's a model that improves service capacity, allows us to increase menu variety, and the ability to drive a higher chance. The results have been outstanding and encouraging. Per capita spending is up year-over-year at all 11 locations. The average transaction value across the 11 locations is up almost 10%. Five of the locations have increased transaction accounts by more than 50%. And four, then, has doubled the transactions. So it's not just pricing. It's also the ability to get people to buy up the menu because we have higher quality items that they'll choose. But it's also the ability to drive that revenue in a very efficient way. And when we look at it, that's part of the formula here where we're going to continue to drive that in-park spending. So that combined with our approach to cost management, and I'll reinforce that what Brian and I both said in our prepared remarks, We anticipate that operating costs and expenses will be down 3% or more in this calendar year. So, yes, tough first quarter, not in full-year performance, but the ability to drive top-line revenue growth, really be cost-efficient and take cost out of the system, which is one of the rationales behind the deal, the ability to continue to optimize portfolio, all those things give us confidence that we can achieve the 25 operating plan but also more importantly set up a really successful 26 and beyond and we'll have more for everybody on that topic when we get together for our investor day on may 20th looking forward to that and thank you that's super helpful just a quick follow-up richard if i may in terms of your asset sales is it possible at all to put in perspective kind of what your expectations are in terms of proceeds for the combined land sale and the Maryland sale I guess I'm trying to understand what's the extent of the leveraging we could expect from those to the extent you can answer understanding there could be some sensitivity around how much you can say so I appreciate anything I could get I'll let Brian weigh in as well but we'll have a lot more to say in terms of our leveraging target and how we see the both the proceeds from this and any other potential action between now and 2028 we'll more to say on that on may 20th but we're looking to unlock uh significant proceeds particularly from the land sales and then you know worry to approach anything else that have to be something

that would would generate uh significant impact but it's really about also reducing the complexity of our business model and making sure that the capital we're putting back in the business goes towards those high potential high revenue growth opportunity sites yeah rp we're not going going to put a specific price on those two locations, but if you were to go out and look at market price per acre, you can see a gross proceeds number that could easily get north of a couple hundred million dollars.

Thank you very much. Our next question comes from the line of Thomas Yeh with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Thanks so much. I wanted to ask about progress on unifying your season pass selling strategy. I think you've been implementing a more consistent pricing on the legacy Six Flags footprint than was historically used.

So any more color you can provide on how you've seen behavior shifts on the Six Flags side, maybe both in terms of the blended pricing to date and the pace of adoption you expect and how much you think that contributed to the gains that you saw in the last like four or five week period. listen what we thomas good morning's richard what we saw the last four or five week period indeed was indicative of where we think we could go we strongly believe in a consistent approach to the market so the market understands they can they can they can make their own decisions on on value that we provide and see that the value gets greater we think there's a tremendous opportunity in june and july given the membership aspect of the the six flags program and we've got that's of the installment at some of the pieces we really do need to get back to what what i what i laid out in my prepared remarks which is getting everybody on the same ticketing system we harmonized the programs at a high level we did not want to give up on this season and we rolled out the all park passport which lets you uh visit any of our parks in the portfolio so a lot more work to do but it's really going to be a lot easier and we're going to be a lot more uh efficient and effective when everybody's on the same ticketing system when all the data is feeded into our data warehouse, and the CRM folks that are on our team can go in and mine the value out of our guests and the relationship we have with them and focus on driving more visits and getting more out of every visit from those season pass holders. Brian, anything you want to add?

Yeah, I would just say, Thomas, we knew coming into 25, given all the efforts that Richard just talked about in terms of ticket harmonization, but also program harmonization, that it was going to be a little bit bumpy as we reset the season pass and membership programs on both sides of the portfolio. A little bit later start to the year with a later Easter and maybe deferring some of the opening days a little bit deeper into the season would put us a little bit timing wise, behind where we were last year, but very encouraged by the sales trends, you know, up mid single digits in terms of unit sales over the five weeks of April. And I think it's also important to note that there's multiple bites at this apple, right? It's not just the sale of 2025 passes, which May and June, as Richard noted, noted very meaningful part of the full sales cycle. But, you know, we will, before we know, we'll be quickly into, you know, late summer and selling 2026 passes. And we feel we'll be in a much better place in terms of the consumer's understanding of what the program looks like. We'll be deeper into that exercise of harmonizing the ticketing platform. So we're focused right now, the teams are highly focused on the May-June window, but there's a lot of prep work going on for the 26 launch later this summer. And so there's multiple opportunities to really drive the season pass program in the right direction.

That's helpful. And then maybe just a quick follow-up, pulling off of Steve's initial question on the full-year attendance implied guidance. I think 5.5% for 1Q puts you at around a 2% growth rate for the year. this might be using too much precision on a small number at this point but do you anticipate there's room for attendance to still grow above historical trends which I think is what you got it to the last quarter or did the slightly lower than expected 1q in April take you down a little bit on that thanks so much yeah go ahead Rob yeah I'm just gonna say you know I think you hit hit it on the head Thomas right there's a degree of precision is that that you depending on whether you use five and a half percent or you use 5.7 percent or 5.3

percent you can skew things dramatically you know we said that the tracking it's tracking right now you know we're first quarter would represent closer to approximately five and a half percent but is there upside to that absolute math certainly we we think there's a lot of opportunity in June as evidenced by the expanded operating calendar we think there's great opportunity in July given the weather comps that we have from last year so I think you know depending on on how those those things play out over the balance of the year and what you put into your your model you can you can get to a number that's above the 2% for the full year thank you thanks Thomas and our

next question comes from the line of Ben Chaykin with Mizuho your line is open Hey, good afternoon.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess first on costs, I feel like there's a pretty significant update that we've kind of just glossed over. You're saying 3% or more lower on costs. I just maybe have a couple of clarifications here. Number one, do you define that as all cash costs, so just like the delta between revenue and EBITDA? Point number two, is the down 3% plus, is that a tool kind of like number that we should expect in the P&L, or do we then need to gross that up for inflation? So, meaning like our costs, our reported costs are going to be down 3% plus or up when you take into consideration. And then point number three, what changed versus your previous goal, which I think was $70 million in the year, which I don't think would have gotten you to down 3% plus, and then a few follow-ups. Thanks.

So, Ben, let me jump in here first. Yes, So what we're saying is when I say down 3% operating cost and expenses, I would exclude cost of goods sold. So that's a separate calculation, separate look at things. This is operating expenses and SG&N combined. So we'll be down 3% per our forecast. We did say that, you know, we hit our 120. We hit $50 million of cost synergy savings last year, and this year we'll hit all 70. That's how we complete the 120. So we're comfortable. We got the decisions in place. We're executing on the reorg. We understand that the need to actually expand margins is one of the reasons we did this deal. That's tapping the potential of the merger. So as we look forward, we're continuing to hunt for a little bit more, but I'll also emphasize that the 60 million I referenced in my remarks sits on top of that 120, and that's both the impact in 26 of decisions we're making this year, but also other things that we can't get to until we harmonize the tech stack so there there's we're plotting out the integration and you know mining the fruits of the integration over the next 12 to 24 months we're pleased we got to 50 percent more than the cost synergies and savings we originally promised and we continue to look to be as efficient as possible you should maybe just to follow up there for a second in case i missed it the so i totally hear you on the uh cost x cogs um but is that a

is that a net of inflation number or then will we layer in inflation on top of that i'm just trying to put a modeling perspective think about where expectations should be yeah ben brian um that number is all in inflation inclusive the only thing i would i would you know call out and i think you alluded to this in how you asked the question um you know that would be excluding any integration or other adjusted ebda add backs like severance um you know as we go through this reorg effort there'll be a chunk of severance uh over the second half of the year related to that so really looking at your sort of recurring normal course operating costs and expenses inclusive of sgna um uh in in that target understood and then and then what are these 60 million and totally

appreciate the incremental 60 that are coming in out in 26 which is i think a new data point can we dive in about what encompasses those 60 million and is that also a net of inflation numbers as well.

We'll have more to say in a couple of weeks as we look at the profile of our 2028 target. But I would say, as I said, some of that is the residual impact, the remaining impact of decisions we're making in real time as we go through reorganizing our company. Some are things that we can't get to until next year.

We're still building out the operating plan, but we think that that level of savings takes a big chunk out of the inflation impact in next year so right yeah and I would say right now that that target been maybe slightly different that's a gross synergy or cost savings target for 26 you know we'll be doing a lot more work as we as we get into later in here in the 25 and building up the 26 plan where inflation and some of those other things that may offset. But that's our gross incremental synergy piece that sits above and beyond the original 120.

And then just to lob in a very quick third one, in an ideal world regarding the land sales in Maryland, would you get certain entitlements on that land in Maryland prior to selling, for example, data in order to maximize value? Are you trying to do that currently? Is maybe a better way of asking it?

We're working closely with the jurisdictions in Richmond and also in DC to make sure that the process yields a benefit for the company, but certainly a benefit for the community. Entitlements are always part of that process. We have found engaged and looking to help in the process. So I think those conversations be productive. There's always a tug of war. There's always some tension in the timeline between getting entitlements and what ultimately the property becomes when you redevelop a property and the proceeds you get. So we'll look for the intersection that maximizes value, but that also delivers it in an efficient timeframe and very, very pleased with the cooperation and the discussion so far with the local jurisdictions.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

And our next question comes from the line of Matthew Voss with JP Morgan. Your line is open.

Great, thanks. So, Richard, maybe in light of the near-term economic uncertainty that you cited, how are you thinking about balancing price versus volume near-term? And then at Six Flags, on the recapture opportunity from attendance, just how best to think about the annual cadence of attendance recapture, if we think about maybe the linearity of recapturing the lost attendance relative to investments or initiatives that you have in place multi-year?

Matt, I would say, as we think about the opportunity to drive market penetration, we think it's one of the key opportunities that the combined company has, the new Six Flags has. As we think about that, I think there are under-penetrated markets across the portfolio that reside from either side of the legacy companies. So, what we have seen in the past is you get good traction in year one, you get more traction in year two, and there's a build. So, we're going to talk about, you know, what we see over the next few years beyond 25 and early 26 as we get to May 20th. So, I don't want to foreshadow those comments too much because we've got a robust presentation for everybody and we're excited to go through it. But as we think about the opportunity, it's considerable. You've heard us say that in the underpenetrated parks, if we get those underpenetrated parks up to what we would say are the guide rail levels, there's 10 million in the near term. There's significantly more than that in the longer term. So as we think about 2028, there's a look at how we drive demand with our capital plans, which are coming together nicely. I'm really excited about the reactions we've seen in all of the parks that have opened, and we've seen some tremendous reaction to the coasters that we're opening and that we're about to open. So I think there is a real affinity in each of the markets, and there are a core of customers that really want to come back year after year.

Our job is to execute really well, provide a great guest experience, and get them to come back year after year Brian anything you want to add I just say Matt at a high level you know the 25 business plan is certainly built and focused around driving demand you know as Richard said tapping into the opportunities that are in front of us but at the same time we remain confident in our ability to improve guest spending that opportunity will increase as we get deeper into the season you know as you reference sort of the the cadence of attendance you know and you've heard of talk about keeping our parks comfortably crowded it's important as that extends length of stay which increases spending on things like food and beverage and drives more demand for premium experience so you know while not meaning you know maybe not material increases in the first quarter and in April you know seeing per capita continuing to trend in the right direction is extremely encouraging particularly as you know we think about some of the initiatives that we have in place, and Richard hit on it a little bit earlier in answering one of the questions about some of the early momentum we're seeing in a channel like Food and Beverage with the initiatives of renovating and adding food locations. So I think it's a combination of both volume and per capita, and pricing will follow, right? We'll continue to use dynamic pricing and BI tools that we've always used. but one thing that we should note is we're putting a floor on pricing. While dynamic pricing cuts both ways we're not looking to, we've said this before and we'll continue to say it, we're not discounters. We're looking to maintain pricing discipline. That's a little bit educated by our past experience that shows even in challenging economic times demand becomes highly inelastic meaning that there's no amount of discounting to preserve uh or drive preserve attendance or drive the consumer to behave any differently than they're going to so we'll we'll lean into pricing more than we'll then we'll take pricing down great and then maybe just to follow up brian on on the cost side could you just walk through the puts and takes to consider as it relates to maybe this year's reset of the base relative to the underlying operating cost growth to consider as we think about relative to the low to mid single

digit growth historically?

Yeah. So, I mean, I think coming into this year, as Richard said in previous remarks, you know, it's a continuation of the effort that began last year after the merger closed, challenging, you know, for us to make, you know, significant changes in the middle of the season. So, you know, there was a lot of planning and a lot of work that was going on at that point in time but we had to wait on a lot of those changes until after the season wrapped which for some of our parks was you know early November and other parks it wasn't until you know early January so you know the exercise to reset the cost base is is across the board it involves as we've said you know a review and a reset of the org structure it involves leaning in on other non headcount related cost savings whether that be in the harmonization of our IT staff or or you know driving better terms with our vendor partners and suppliers you know so there's it's it's across the the the spectrum quite frankly Matt I would say early on it skews a little bit more heavily the opportunity skews a little bit more heavily on the headcount side of things and then starts to pivot a little bit more towards the non headcount as Richard said there are some things that are contractually tied up for a little longer than you'd like. And so you get to them maybe later in 25 or they're part of the 26 algorithm for cost savings. In terms of the headwinds, there's always inflation. And so we're dealing with that. But as we noted to Ben's question, we've accounted for that in our target of 3% or more cost reduction.

So I really, Matt, let me jump in here. We said that this would be the great reset when we put these companies together in 2025 will prove to be that when we talk about re-architecting our business it's not just re-architecting the org structure we've gone and applied a lot of science benchmarking different sites against each other we've gone in and read and taken the time to redo our decision making processes so this was a holistic look at our organization not just the structure but how we make decisions and i'm really pleased at where we're coming out and how we've clarified within the organization and will clarify you know um how we be as effective as possible while being as efficient as possible and we're really driving this business through through the use of kpis and embedding the data and analytics around those kpis and all the decisions we're making great color that's the buck thanks back and our next question comes from the line of Michael Swartz with Truist Securities.

Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Good morning. Maybe with all the macro and consumer uncertainty out there, maybe if we just take a step back and go back to prior periods of consumer weakness, where do we typically start to see some of the cracks in the foundation as it pertains to your business?

Good question, Mike. Good morning, Richard. When I think back to 08-09, we saw it going into 08-09 season pass sales were significantly lower we saw group bookings not just eroding but we actually had groups calling us up and canceling and when we looked at our resort bookings you know they just weren't they dropped off considerably heading into season we're not seeing any of that as I said you know let's work backwards here we've seen we've seen a 10% increase in opening weekend of Cedar Point and bookings for that weekend. So people are booking later, but they're booking. We've seen an increase in our small group booking channel, which is our groups that are 15 to 100. You know, that's showing strength. Youth and student groups are showing a lot of strength. So we're not seeing it there. We are seeing companies being cautious, but we're also seeing companies saying, I may not book my spring outing, what do you got available in the fall? so they're they're they're looking a little bit longer with season pass you know north of 50 55 to 60 percent of our attendance we really watch that channel most closely and then again what what we saw and i'll go back to what i said about our e-commerce channel just looking at everything we sell our e-commerce volume up one percent pricing up mid single digits it means that we don't see the erosion of the consumer that maybe some other businesses are seeing that's not to say that it's are not there in other sectors, that our consumers and our markets are reacting the way we would expect them to as we head into late spring.

Okay, great. That's super helpful. And then maybe one off question on the first quarter. And I know there's a lot of noise in the quarter, given the timing of Easter and some of the calendar shifts.

But when I look at the legacy six flags business, it looks like the rate of EBITDA decline was nearly triple what it was last year um maybe just help us unpack what you know why why that why that was yeah mike so i i think as you look at uh you know the the two sides of the portfolio um we we certainly with uh the sixth side uh of our portfolio the six flags parks uh more of those opening up earlier um we invested and it's a big chunk of the timing difference i mentioned on the cost side i'd say more of it is happening from the cost side, is we brought forward a lot of off-season, whether you want to call it maintenance or pre-opening costs. We brought a lot of those from a timing perspective earlier in the year here in 2025. And so that's a bigger part of the equation on our six-flag side of the portfolio. On the seeder side, a little bit more of the headwind is related to the shift of Knott's Berry Farm, but that's really the only park that we have on that side of the portfolio that has any significant or meaningful first quarter operations. On the sick side, we did see a little bit of headwind on some of the calendar issues, but not as demonstrative as maybe what we saw with Knott's Berry Farm's Boysenberry Festival.

Super helpful. Thank you.

And our next question comes from the line of Ian Zafino with Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

That's great. Thank you very much. You know, I know you can talk about F&B and you seem to be leaning very much into it and it seems to be going well. But have you seen any type of shifts on the F&B side? Like, are people still, is it the uptake on, you know, more discretionary F&B, if you call it? Is there any type of softness or anything, or is it pretty much as robust there as it is kind of in the other F&B offerings? Thanks.

Yeah, Ian, it's Richard. You broke up a little bit. I think you asked about the various pieces of F&B. I would say we've seen strength in our meal category. We've seen real strength in beverages. We've still seen great strength in adult beverages. So it really has been across weekend by weekend. I would tell you that if it's a rainy weekend, you don't get as much snack selling. So snacks go down a little because length of stay is probably not the same. But we've seen on normal same-day weather to same-day weather, sunny weather, we've already opened. We've still got a couple more we're going to open in May. And I will tell you, here at our local Charlotte Park, we're putting in an adult swim-up beverage. We see the desire beverage segment, and it really seems to resonate as a guest satisfier. We like it as a revenue growth potential, but it also is something people talk about and one of the reasons they keep coming back.

Okay, then thanks. And then, you know, maybe to broaden the question, just geographically, can you maybe tell us how, you know, businesses kind of geographically, you know, some of the competitors have commented on, like, West Coast softness. Have you seen any of that at all, or is it pretty much broad basis geographically, you know, stable? Thanks.

I would say Brian can weigh in here, but I would say what we've seen, and Brian referenced it, is because we had a couple of inclement weather weekends, rainy weekends, Midwest and East Coast, that sort of colored it. But no, when we've had good weather, we've seen what we would expect to see throughout all the regions. But again, it's a limited sample size at this point. We're only 15% of our operating days in, so it's a little hard to get a read on the whole portfolio when the whole portfolio is not up and operating. That'll be in early June when everybody's seven days a week. So that's when we'll have a real meaningful look at the different regions. But I will say historically what we've seen, the Midwest has been rock solid the last four years. That's continued to perform really well. The coasts have a little more impact from weather, particularly on the East Coast. But what we like about and we'll talk about on May 20th, the geographic diversity means we don't have more than 30 percent of our attendance or revenues in any particular region. That well-diversified model was one of the keys to doing the merger and why we feel really good about that diversification, although it does take an adjustment for Brian and I. Anytime you look at the weather map, we've got parks everywhere, so if there's weather anywhere, it's going to be near us.

All right. Thank you very much.

And we appreciate your patience. We have five questions left in queue, and we would like to take them all. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Waronka with Deutsche Bank.

Your line is open. hey uh good morning guys thanks for uh thanks for working overtime on the um i was hoping they talked a little bit about guest mix at six flags i know you guys you did the chaperone policy um when you closed the deal last summer um i know there was a little bit of near-term disruption with that but but looking forward and i understand your commentary about pricing on six flags legacy passes maybe being flat do you think you can get to where you want a mix this year or is that more of a multi-year you know as i think about the guest mix

one of the things i'll go back to is how we think about capital and you know we've always said and we'll reiterate uh as we talk about this business we think there's a there's a rotation of in any any market of thrill rides family product and water product you see that in our mix this year we've got water park renovations and expansions at la and dallas you see coasters in several parks you see here at charlotte and a couple other markets family product going in i think what we've seen chris is is the broad profile of what we would expect to see as we as we broaden our mix so the markets are reacting chaperone policy has been helpful in the key markets across all of

our we use that extensively but i do think when you offer things that appeal to different segments you'll start to broaden your base over time okay uh thanks thanks richard then quick follow-up just related to that you know also kind of a capex question which is um i know you said about 30 percent of your your capex might be infrastructure i don't think that you know relates to any of the the maintenance stuff you were working on at six flags with respect to you know lighting and you know the little things that had kind of gone gone undone over the years are you are you satisfied that as you head into peak season at the Legacy Six Flags parks that you've got all the little things that need to be fixed? Are they kind of in place by now?

Yeah, I'll let Brian weigh in. We continue to look at things that we can do to improve the guest experience. We prioritize those things that I think the guests give us much value at. Listen, as a guy who ran a park, I will tell you I walked the site that I was responsible for the first year, and 10 years later, I still hadn't gotten everything. So the list is always long. We see things that sometimes our customers don't, but they're important to us. So we're going to continue to make improvements year by year and make sure that we're giving priority to those things the guests value most, which is why we're so focused on food and beverage, because we get a lot of credit for that. There's high perceived value, and it really drives our demand.

Okay. Hey, thanks. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

The question comes from the line of Lizzie Dove with Goldman Sachs. The line is open.

Hi there. Thanks for taking the question. I know there's a lot of moving pieces, but just to kind of round everything out, with the kind of calendar shifts you mentioned in 2Q and 3Q and kind of timing of cost shifting and attendance shifting, any help in how to think about the kind of cadence of EBITDA for the year? I think, you know, the midpoint would imply the next three quarters grow around, call it 15%, but I'm curious if that's more weighted, you know, second quarter, third quarter, fourth quarter based on just some of the operating calendarships that you mentioned.

Yeah, Lizzie, it's Brian. I mean, as we said, you know, the biggest opportunity and the focus coming into this year was second and third quarters. You know, I think third quarter is pretty obvious to everyone as it's the lion's share of the operating calendar. But second quarter represents some great opportunity, particularly May and June, given the expanded number of days in those months. As we said on the call, those two quarters together have the potential to be 95% or more of full-year EBITDA. And so, again, a lot of the timing is often influenced by macro factors like weather. And we've always been very confident then when weather can be a little choppy early in the year, you still have plenty of runway to make it up. So it gets difficult to be precise in an imprecise world like that. But I think the second and third quarters do provide the opportunity to be a significant part of the growth story for 2025.

Got it. And then Brian, I think you said up front that you're expanding your operating calendars and there's particularly at some parks where you see the opportunities for attendance growth are the greatest. I'm curious, like, which are those parks where you see the biggest opportunity or kind of turnaround story or uplift story from here that you would consider to be, you know, call it your most core parks?

Yeah, so, you know, as Richard mentioned, there's a number of parks in the portfolio that from a penetration rate sit, you know, lower than some of the better performing parks. And so we'll focus on those. I think it's also important to call out that, you know, the planned operating calendar changes, the additions we're making, you know, those are always – there's always a little bit of degree of variability to that, meaning that when weather's a little unfavorable, we're going to manage that day maybe out of the system from a cost management perspective. And when we see strong demand, particularly, and this is more of a comment that you would see us make changes maybe late August and into the fall, when we see strong demand, we're not afraid to add days in and ride that demand. So, you know, I think if you look at the operating calendar, you're going to see some very obvious things. We're adding some days back in June at Six Flags Over Texas as an example. We think that that makes a lot of sense in that market. But there are a number of other markets in the system that we see a lot of opportunity for. Carowinds is a fast-growing market. We're continuing to look to find ways to add days in the fall where we can tap into strong momentum.

Great. Thank you.

And our next question comes from the line of Brent Montour with Barclays. Your line is open.

Good morning, everybody. Thanks for taking my question. So just on the past sales, digging in a layer deeper, you gave the overall past revenue pace. You gave the pricing between the two legacy systems. I was wondering if you could maybe talk about it on a volume or unit basis, just sort of when we think about the different pricing, and I understand there's different strategies, but just to give us a sense on sort of momentum on the different programs.

Yeah, I think in terms of, maybe I'll try and answer it this way, you know, in terms of the outlook, we're trying to drive higher volumes on both sides of the combined portfolio. You know, consistent with the attendance trends, you know, coming into this year, where on our legacy CEDAR side of the portfolio, you know, attendance was back to near pre-pandemic levels. you know, the season pass base is somewhat reflective of that. On the sixth side of our portfolio, you know, attendance is still well off of pre-pandemic levels. And because season pass and membership is such a big part of our overall attendance, you can assume that the pass base is down as well to pre-pandemic levels. So the volume opportunity, much like for attendance, is higher on, we're not satisfied and going to settle for the volume numbers that we have on the CEDAR side as well. So we're going to lean into both. If I was trying to separate between the two, I'd say the opportunity for volume is higher on the CEDAR side right now than the CEDAR side of the portfolio. The pricing, we can be a little bit more aggressive as we noted in our prepared remarks on the CEDAR side.

Okay, that's helpful. And then just a bigger picture question on the full year guidance, obviously reaffirming EBITDA. And you called out macro in the release, and you've got some other moving pieces, right? Sounding a little bit better on OPEX and obviously 1Q was a bit tough versus plan. But when I, you know, take a step back and think about all the comments you guys gave today about, you know, demand momentum and what you're seeing in terms of top-line KPIs. It doesn't seem like you're implying any change to your plan for top-line for the year, but please let me know if I'm sort of, you know, walking myself off a cliff here.

No, I would say, listen, we are encouraged by a number of things we've seen the kpis that we look at uh we came in thinking that there was meaningful top line growth to go get we still believe that so we're chasing that hard we're also trying to be as responsible as as possible on the thought side and make sure that we as we've talked at length on this call get to the meaningful cost savings that'll that combination of driving the top line and meaningful cost reduction should drive a healthy increase in margin but But I've commented throughout this call on various channels. We see things that are encouraging, but I'm looking forward to getting all 42 of our parks open so we can get a real read on where everything is.

Thanks, everyone.

And our final question comes from the line of David Katz with Jeffries. Your line is open. And, David, I'm not sure if you are on mute.

Sorry about that. Thanks for taking my questions. I appreciate you staying on just a little bit longer. Just very quick detail. Number one, there was some discussion about a couple of hundred million in deals. And I think what we heard is American Hurricane was 100 plus, but there's a couple hundred. Could we just unpack that a little bit? What else is in that couple of hundred? Are you ready to talk about that at this point? Or are we saving that for Ohio?

No, I'll let Brian clarify, but the comments about the real estate value of the land in Richmond and the land in D.C. could be $200 million or more, I think is what we said.

Correct. Yeah, we're not putting a price on anything separate at this point, David, and we're still working through the process. If you look at market, you can get the map for those two combined locations.

And then just my second question is, I hope you would just give us a little insight on the technology side of things and you know i i know richard you've talked about analytics you know being kind of a decision driver uh you know how much of that is technology driven and what inning would you feel like you are at in terms of kind of pushing that part of the company going forward i know that it was a legacy six issue i would say say this i think in terms of what we we desire to have i think we're in the middle innings of building a lot of that out dashboards are coming online virtually every week on different kpis we found a way to migrate data

over so we can have the information we need but we need to go back to the underlying tech stack and get everybody on on the same system whether that's the same you know pos system we found ways and as you would expect us to to get the data pulled out a little more cumbersome a little more clunky i would say we know what where we want to go we're in the early innings of the tech stack integration but we're making progress fast okay we'll take it uh thanks very much and appreciate being included thank you and that will conclude our question and answer session i will not turn the conference back over to mr richard zimmerman for closing remarks thanks for joining us on today's call brian michael and i look forward to seeing you many of you on investor day we're We've decided to share our perspective on the growth potential of a larger and more formative Six Flags, as well as our plan for monetizing the growth for the benefit of our shareholders and other constituents across North America and beyond. We will be sure to keep you updated on our progress along the way.

Thanks, Richard. Please feel free to contact our IR department at 419-627-2233. and our next earnings call will be in August after the release of our 2025 second quarter results. Abby, that concludes our call today. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, again, this concludes today's call, and we thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.