United Parks & Resorts Inc. Q4 FY2021 Earnings Call

Good morning, and welcome to the SeaWorld’s Q4 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Operator Instructions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Matthew Stroud of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to SeaWorld's Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being webcast and recorded. A press release was issued this morning and is available on our Investor Relations Web site at www.seaworldinvestors.com. Replay information for this call can be found in the press release and will be available on our Web site following the call. Joining me this morning are Marc Swanson, Chief Executive Officer; and Elizabeth Gulacsy, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. This morning, we will review our fourth quarter and fiscal 2021 financial results, and then we will open up the call to your questions. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that our comments today will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from those forward-looking statements, including those identified in the Risk Factors section of our annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These risk factors may be updated from time to time and will be included in our filings with the SEC that are available on our Web site. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. In addition, on the call, we may reference non-GAAP financial measures and other financial metrics, such as adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow. More information regarding our forward-looking statements and reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measure is included in our earnings release available on our website and can also be found in our filings with the SEC. Now I would like to turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Marc Swanson. Marc?

Thank you, Matthew. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We are pleased to report another quarter of record financial results and record financial results for the fiscal year. In the fourth quarter and fiscal 2021, we delivered record revenue, record net income and record adjusted EBITDA. We are especially pleased to deliver these record results while continuing to operate in an environment with significant and unprecedented headwinds related to COVID-19. These results are a testament to the tireless work of our incredible team, the demonstrated resiliency of our business model and the continued successful implementation of our proven business plan and strategies. Our fourth quarter and fiscal year financial performance would have been even better if not for limited international guest attendance and reduced group-related attendance related to the impact of COVID-19. While we have made good progress on our plans, as we look to the future, we continue to be highly confident that we can deliver even more operational and financial improvements that we expect will lead to meaningful increases in shareholder value. In particular, we believe our forward ride, attraction and park enhancement investment plans are the most robust they have ever been and currently reflect the key focus areas and strategies we have been working towards. We are extremely excited about the new rides we have opened and plan to open this year and the new additions, upgrades and improvements we've made to our parks. We encourage you all to visit our parks with your family and friends very soon and often this year. We continue to improve our commercial functionality with investments in talent and capabilities in revenue management and marketing and have opportunity to continue to improve in these areas. We also continue to identify, track and execute on additional cost reduction and efficiency opportunities that we expect to continue to help offset inflationary pressures and lead to structurally improved profitability. With respect to our digital capabilities, including our mobile app and CRM implementations, we are encouraged by the early results and are in the very early innings of realizing the full potential of these initiatives. I would also say that we believe we are behind our competitors in some of these areas, which gives us even greater confidence in the potential we have yet to realize. And we continue to make progress on our inorganic growth initiatives related to hotels, new parks and international expansion and expect to have more to share later in the year. We are also pleased to have ended 2021 in a particularly strong financial position as a result of the proactive and decisive decisions made over the last couple of years as well as our record financial performance in 2021. Our available liquidity, including cash on our balance sheet and capacity on our revolving credit facility, was over $800 million and our total leverage was less than 2.50x. Our strong financial position provides us significant flexibility to invest in our business, fund high-growth ROI initiatives, consider strategic opportunities and/or return capital to our shareholders. In 2021, we are proud to have received numerous industry honors and recognitions, including SeaWorld Orlando voted as number one for Nation's Best Amusement Park by USA Today readers. Aquatica Orlando voted as number one for the Nation's Best Outdoor Water Park by USA Today readers and Busch Gardens Williamsburg named World's Most Beautiful Theme Park for the 31st year in a row by the National Amusement Park Historical Association. In addition, two of our other water parks, Water Country USA and Adventure Island Tampa, were voted in the top 10 of the Nation's Best Outdoor Water Parks by USA Today readers. The Mako rollercoaster at SeaWorld Orlando was ranked as the number one for Best Rollercoaster and the Celtic Fire Dance Show at Busch Gardens Williamsburg was voted as number one for Best Amusement Park Entertainment each by USA Today readers. We also launched new iOS and Android mobile apps for all our parks in 2021 and completed what we believe to be the most significant transformation of our in-park venues as many were redesigned, refreshed or added across our parks in 2021. We are very excited for 2022 as we believe we have the most exciting lineup of new rides, attractions, events and upgrades we have ever had in our history with something new and meaningful in every one of our parks, including, according to USA Today, four of the nine most anticipated rollercoasters of 2022 opening across our parks this year. We recently opened the Ice Breaker rollercoaster at SeaWorld Orlando, a quadruple launch coaster featuring four airtime-filled launches, both backwards and forwards, culminating in a reverse launch, up a 93-foot vertical spike, leading to the steepest beyond vertical drop in Florida. The Iron Gwazi rollercoaster at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay, what we believe could be the best roller coaster in the world and has certainly generated significant hype already, opens for pass holders on February 13 and will open to the general public on March 11. This will be the tallest hybrid coaster in North America and the world's fastest and steepest hybrid coaster with the world's tallest drop. Riders will climb more than 200 feet before plunging into a beyond vertical drop, reaching speeds of 76 miles per hour and experiencing a dozen airtime moments. In addition, the Emperor rollercoaster at SeaWorld San Diego will open to pass holders on March 2 and to the general public on March 12. This will be the tallest, fastest, longest and first floorless dive coaster on the West Coast. After climbing more than 150 feet, riders will dangle at a 90-degree angle before plunging into a 143-foot vertical drop that will accelerate riders to more than 60 miles per hour. And the Pantheon roller coaster at Busch Gardens Williamsburg will open to pass holders on March 4 and to the general public on March 25. Pantheon will be the world's fastest multi-launch coaster, will accelerate riders to a speed of 73 miles per hour and will include a 180-foot drop at 95 degrees, four launches, two inversions and 15 airtime moments. All four of these coasters are among the nine most anticipated coasters of 2022 according to USA Today. Also at SeaWorld San Antonio, the Tidal Surge Screaming Swing, the world's tallest and fastest screaming swing, will open Saturday to select season pass holders and on March 5 to all guests. Later this spring, we will open the Big Bird's Tour Bus at Sesame Place Philadelphia, the Reef Plunge water slide at Aquatica Orlando, the Rapids Racer and Wahoo Remix water slides at Adventure Island Tampa, the Aquazoid Amped water slide at Water Country USA and the Riptide Race water slide at Aquatica San Antonio. Overall, we are very excited about this new lineup at our parks. In addition to these attractions, we're also very excited that our newest park, Sesame Place San Diego, will open March 26. This will be the first Sesame Place theme park on the West Coast and only the second in the United States. This will be the first new theme park we have opened since 2013. On the technology front, we are pleased to have completed the rollout of our mobile app across our parks. These mobile apps feature interactive maps, ride wait times and e-commerce capabilities that allow for in-park purchases and are now being used by guests in our parks to improve their visit. We plan to continue to add features to the app and enable in-app purchases across more in-park venues over the next several quarters, which we expect to contribute to enhanced guest satisfaction, incremental revenue opportunities and cost efficiencies. Turning to our pass base. At the end of January 2022, our pass base was up approximately 27% compared to January of 2021 and was approximately 19% higher than January of 2020, which was the previous January record. This is especially encouraging as the peak pass selling seasons of spring and summer are still ahead of us. We are also seeing a higher mix of premium passes in our pass base compared to prior year as our pass holders continue to recognize the value and benefits of our higher-tiered products. Finally, like many other companies, the current labor market continues to present staffing and wage challenges, which we are working to manage through, including expanding our use of international workers at our parks, something we didn't take advantage of as much as our competitors may have in the past. We continue to work on cost reduction and efficiency opportunities, including continuing to eliminate unnecessary and redundant costs, optimizing our staffing and spend levels and investing in and leveraging technology. Our teams continue to make extraordinary efforts to operate our parks despite the challenging environment we face this year and better position this company for revenue growth and increased profitability. As we have demonstrated in the fourth quarter and throughout 2021, we believe the strategies we have developed and refined over the past few years, along with the actions we have taken since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, will continue to lead to significantly improved financial results for the company. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Elizabeth to discuss our financial results in more detail. Elizabeth?

Thank you, Marc, and good morning, everyone. Similar to last quarter, due to the disruption we experienced when we temporarily closed all of our parks on March 16, 2020, I'll provide commentary today around the financial results compared to 2019. We believe this comparison provides more meaningful insights on our performance and operating trajectory. For those interested, we provide a comparison versus both 2019 and 2020 in our earnings release and will do so as well in our Form 10-K. During the fourth quarter, we generated record total revenue of $370.8 million, an increase of $72.8 million or 24.4% when compared to the fourth quarter of 2019. The increase in revenue is due to an increase in total revenue per capita of 18.1% and an increase in attendance of 5.4% when compared to the fourth quarter of 2019. Attendance would have been even better if not for limited international guest attendance due in part to travel restrictions and reduced group-related attendance. Excluding international guests and group-related attendance, attendance in the fourth quarter increased by approximately 20% when compared to the fourth quarter of 2019. Our pricing and product strategies, along with the strong consumer demand environment, continued to drive higher realized pricing and strong guest spending, resulting in total revenue per capita in the quarter of $74.87 compared to $63.42 in the fourth quarter of 2019. This increase was driven by improvements in both admissions per capita and in-park per capita spending. This is the highest total revenue per capita we have ever reported in the fourth quarter. Admissions per capita increased by 15.2% to $43.65 and in-park per capita spending increased by 22.3% to $31.22 in the fourth quarter of 2021 compared to the fourth quarter of 2019. The increase in admissions per capita primarily relates to the realization of higher prices for admission products resulting from our strategic pricing efforts, partially offset by the net impact of the admissions product mix when compared to the fourth quarter of 2019. In-park per capita spending improved due to a combination of factors, including an improved product mix, higher realized prices and fees and the impact of new or enhanced and expanded in-park offerings compared to 2019. We also benefited from a strong consumer demand environment, which contributed to higher guest spending levels during the quarter. We generated record net income of $71.5 million compared to a net loss of $24.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2019. And we generated record adjusted EBITDA of $152.8 million, an increase of $68.8 million or 82% when compared to the fourth quarter of 2019. The increases in net income and adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter 2021 were primarily impacted by an increase in total revenue when compared to the fourth quarter of 2019. Looking at our results for the full year, which were still impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, total attendance was approximately 20.2 million guests, a decrease of 10.7% versus 2019. Excluding international guest visitation and group-related attendance, attendance in 2021 increased by approximately 2% when compared to 2019. Total revenue was a record $1.5 billion, an increase of $105.5 million or 7.5% when compared to 2019. Fiscal 2021 total revenue per capita was $74.43 compared to $61.80 in 2019, a 20.4% increase driven by an increase in admissions per capita and in-park per capita spending. Admissions per capita increased 18.9% to $42.17 compared to $35.48 in 2019. The improvement in admissions per capita is primarily due to the realization of higher prices in our admission products resulting from our strategic pricing efforts, along with the net impact of the admissions product mix when compared to 2019. In-park per capita spending improved by 22.6% to $32.26 from $26.32 in 2019. The increase was primarily due to a combination of factors, including an improved product mix, higher realized prices and fees and the impact of new enhanced or expanded in-park offerings when compared to 2019. Operating expenses decreased by $27.2 million or 4.2% when compared to 2019 primarily due to a net reduction in labor-related costs and other operating costs, resulting from structural cost savings initiatives and the impact of modified and/or limited operations due to COVID-19. These factors were partially offset by certain nonrecurring contractual liabilities and real costs impacted by the temporary COVID-19 park closures, operating costs associated with incremental operating days and events added in 2021 and an increase in noncash equity compensation expense. Selling, general and administrative expenses decreased by $76.8 million or 29.4% when compared to 2019 primarily due to a targeted reduction in marketing-related costs, a decrease in legal costs largely related to a legal settlement charge in 2019, a decline in third-party consulting costs and the impact of cost savings and efficiency initiatives. These factors were partially offset by an increase in noncash equity compensation expense. Net income for the year was a record $256.5 million, an increase of $167 million. Adjusted EBITDA was a record $662 million, an increase of $205.1 million when compared to 2019, which held the previous record in both net income and adjusted EBITDA. Now turning to our balance sheet. Our current deferred revenue balance as of the end of the fourth quarter was $154.8 million, an increase of approximately 48.2% when compared to December of 2019 due in part to our strong pass sales. As we have discussed throughout this year, we continue to be encouraged with the trends we have seen in our pass base. At the end of January 2022, our pass base was up approximately 27% compared to January 2021. We are also still seeing a higher mix of premium passes in our pass base as our pass holders continue to recognize the value and benefits of our higher-tiered products. Additionally, we continue to see the impact of our pricing strategies with stronger realized prices on our pass sales. We continue to opportunistically repurchase shares during the quarter, buying approximately 2.2 million shares of common stock at a total cost of $133 million. As of December 31, 2021, our total available liquidity was approximately $808 million, including $443.7 million of cash and cash equivalents on our balance sheet and $364.5 million available on our revolving credit facility, which was undrawn. Cash flow from operations was a record $86.6 million for the fourth quarter of 2021 and a record $503 million for fiscal 2021. Free cash flow was a record $31.3 million for the fourth quarter of 2021 and a record $374.2 million for fiscal 2021. We've spent $55.3 million on CapEx in the fourth quarter 2021, of which approximately $25.4 million was on core CapEx and approximately $29.9 million was on expansion ROI projects. For 2022, we plan on spending approximately $150 million in core capital expenditures and another $30 million to $50 million on growth or ROI capital expenditures. Now let me turn the call back over to Marc, who will share some final thoughts. Marc?

Thank you, Elizabeth. Before we open the call to your questions, I have some closing comments. In the fourth quarter, we helped rescue almost 370 animals and we are approaching nearly 39,900 animal rescues over the company's history. We are one of the world's leading animal rescue organizations and we are proud of our efforts to protect and save wildlife. Lately, our rescue teams have been even busier helping to save manatees throughout Florida due to the recent cold weather as well as the overall degradation of their habitat, which is reducing their primary food source. In fact, we have seen such an increase in the number of manatees in need of help that our Florida team proactively added temporary pools to allow us to rescue and rehabilitate even more manatees. I'm really proud of the team's hard work and their continued dedication to these important rescue efforts. I want to thank them and all our ambassadors for all they do to operate our parks in this current environment. We are excited about 2022. We have an exciting lineup of new rides, attractions and events that we believe is one of our best offerings ever. We recognize that we have made good progress over the past year, but we continue to believe there are significant additional opportunities to improve our execution, take advantage of clear growth opportunities and continue to drive meaningful growth in both revenue and adjusted EBITDA. We continue to have high confidence in our long-term strategy in our ability to deliver significantly improved operating and financial results that we believe will lead to meaningfully increased value for stakeholders. Now let's take your questions.

Operator Instructions. Our first question comes from Steve Wieczynski with Stifel.

So Marc, obviously, you guys don't give annual guidance. But I guess as you look to this year, and you're obviously coming off of an all-time high EBITDA year in '21, how should we think about the opportunity to grow EBITDA from current levels? And I guess maybe a better way of asking that is what are some of the gives and takes we need to be thinking about for this year that could impact that EBITDA growth? And then kind of the last part of that question is did you guys witness any type of impact in January around the variant that we need to be thinking about as well?

I'll start with the last part of your question. On the variant, there's a lot of factors that impact our attendance and some of them are easier than others to tease out. But certainly, we know the variant was on people's minds. We see it in our surveys. We saw the travel disruptions across the country. We saw workers calling in sick and things like that. So I'm sure it had an impact. What I can't give you is an exact number of what that is, but I'm sure it had an impact. I think the good news for the country is we seem to be on a better path now here in February, just based on the news that we see out there regarding the variant. I think your second question about where we see the business going and how we think about the opportunities we have to grow EBITDA: I think one of the things that I immediately go towards is if you look at our attendance this year versus 2019, we're still down over 2.4 million people. So if we can get back to 2019 attendance levels, pick up another 2.4 million people, you flow that through our P&L, you can do the math on that. I think that's pretty meaningful, obviously significant. Beyond that, we're going to continue to execute on our per caps. I think we have a lot of momentum and still plenty of opportunity as well. We have new venues in our parks. We've expanded menus and offerings in our parks. We refurbished things in our parks. We have a great lineup of new rides and attractions. You heard me talk a lot about that. We believe it's our best lineup; these coasters and some of these other rides are just going to be fantastic. And then on the go-forward, the longer-term plan is, again, what we believe is the most robust plan we've had. So there's a lot of positive things, I think, ahead of us there. And then as far as the cost, we continue to focus, as we have for a number of years, on achieving cost savings, on identifying efficiencies and trying to offset as much of the inflationary pressures as we can. And so we're going to continue with those strategies, and we believe that's a good recipe. And I think probably with that information, you can do some of the math. I think what I would also remind you is our pass base here in January is the highest pass base we've ever had for January. So a lot of things, I think, that we're excited about for 2022.

And then second question, and I've got to ask this question, I think, I'm not sure what you're going to say. But you indicated in your prepared remarks about using excess capital to consider strategic opportunities. And I'm just wondering what that comment meant in the grand scheme of things. What are some of those strategic opportunities you guys would look at? And obviously, there was a public offer for Cedar Fair. Maybe you could comment on what attracted you to those assets?

I'm not going to comment a whole lot on Cedar Fair, but what I can tell you is we like the industry. We have a lot of respect for Cedar Fair, their assets and their management team, and we believe the combination made sense for us. They rejected the offer, so it didn't work out. As I said in my prepared remarks, we like the strong financial position we find ourselves in. I think we have some flexibility: investing in the business, which we're clearly doing with rides and attractions, refurbishments and technology like our mobile app; pursuing other ROI-type initiatives; opening a new park in San Diego and a new Sesame Place; returning capital to shareholders; and pursuing M&A opportunities. I'm not going to speculate on what we may or may not do, but you can rest assured we would be opportunistic and study those uses of cash with our board and advisers. Beyond that, we're focused on getting ready for spring break. Our rides are opening, and we're excited about the year.

Our next question comes from Stephen Grambling with Goldman Sachs.

Just wanted to ask on Sesame Place, the opening in March. Any thoughts you could give us in terms of what the contribution might look like to attendance, revenue and what the margin profile of this park might look like relative to the company average?

So as I said in my prepared remarks, we're very excited. That park will be opening here at the end of March. We're very excited. And I think you can assume that one of the things that gets us excited is we believe it has a better margin profile than the park that was there previously. The Sesame product is a great IP, and we'll be able to open this park more on a year-round basis because it will have some dry attractions as well as water attractions. So I'm pretty optimistic that there's a better margin profile, a better attendance profile and better EBITDA profile from that location. I'm not going to guide you to a specific number, but I think that probably gives you enough information there to help you.

Maybe going back to your comments on strategic investments, how do you generally think through synergies or broader consolidation upside? What makes an asset more or less attractive?

I'm not going to comment a whole lot. I think you heard me say, we like the industry. Certainly with Cedar, we had a lot of respect for their assets and their management team. I think every opportunity will have different puts and takes. But I would assure you we like the position we're in and the flexibility to deploy cash in a variety of ways. Whether it's back into our own business, which we've been doing, other ROI initiatives, returning capital to shareholders or some sort of M&A transaction, we would evaluate those opportunities carefully with our Board and advisers.

Our next question comes from Mike Swartz with Truist Securities.

Just wanted to dig into the per caps for a bit. You saw some strong growth there over the past year. How much of that was within your control versus exogenous factors? And then how should we think about per caps in 2022? Do you think you can keep them at these levels or grow them further? Any puts and takes we should be thinking about? And second, on the labor environment: I know you tend to have a larger year-round full-time labor base and it sounds like you're going to expand use of the J-1 visa program. How should we think about labor or wage inflation in 2022 relative to what we saw in 2021?

What I'll go back to is a couple of things. One, you acknowledged it and we acknowledge it clearly that we're operating in a good economic environment. That's benefited us. But setting that aside, I've been at this company a long time, and I see us doing better than we have before but with still areas to improve. One area is our revenue management team and optimizing our pricing and how we look at products, how we price them, how we promote them. That work has done well but still has a lot more opportunity, especially around understanding, testing and optimizing what promotions are really driving people and what levers to pull that will have a direct impact. On the marketing side, there's also a lot of opportunity to generate demand and stimulate visits. We've benefited in 2021, but we're in the very early innings of our mobile app and CRM implementation, and realizing the full potential of those over the next several years should help grow our per caps. We also did this growth without significant international attendance; that will eventually be a tailwind when it returns and those guests generally spend more. Add to that new venues, new menus, expanded events and our lineup of rides and attractions, and there are many initiatives to drive pricing power. On labor, we have a tremendous focus on cost. Labor is one of our larger costs, and we're going to continue to find efficiencies and other opportunities to offset as much of that inflation as we can. We're expanding our use of international worker programs this year and are excited about that, as it provides a stable level of workers. Beyond wages, we're focused on improving other aspects of working at our parks to attract and retain talent, such as showcasing the fun, leadership and development opportunities that come with working in a theme park. Wage is certainly a factor, but there are nonwage actions we are pursuing as well.

Our next question comes from Ben Chaiken with Credit Suisse.

You've talked a lot about offsetting cost inflation. Is there any way to quantify how much of the recent inflation you either have already or expect to offset relative to what was in your original 6/90 illustration? I'm trying to get some brackets of either what the headwind is or how much do you expect to offset. And thinking out over the next 12 months, given changes in variables like inflation but also positive things like per caps and attendance, how do you feel about updating that illustration at some point over the next year?

I think the 6/90 you referred to was an illustration and wasn't meant to be guidance. One of the things we are focused on is finding offsets to inflationary pressures. We know inflation, especially in labor and some supply chain areas, has been higher than normal. We're continuously identifying and executing on efficiency opportunities. As we discover opportunities, we vet them, research them and, if they make sense, we execute. That's our goal: to offset as much of the inflationary pressures as we can. Regarding updating illustrations, I'm not going to comment specifically on when we may or may not update something. But as I noted earlier, we are not even back to 2019 attendance levels; we are over 2 million people shy of that in 2021. A big portion of that is international attendance, and when international and group return, there is meaningful flow-through. We've talked about per caps and why we believe we have runway there; our lineup of attractions and investments give us reasons to be optimistic about continued growth.

Our next question comes from James Hardiman with Citigroup.

So the attendance of 5% against 2019 in the quarter, is that a good baseline for us to think about 2022? Or should we be thinking somewhere closer to the in-between that and the 20% number that you talked about excluding group and international? What's the opportunity if you can get those two cohorts back to pre-pandemic levels? And related to international, particularly for Orlando, how do you view domestic visitors having more international options and the return of some international visitors to the United States balancing out in 2022?

I don't have a specific baseline to guide you to. We laid out potential tailwinds, including international and group attendance returning, though I can't predict exactly when. When we look at the back half of the year, we see some potential for improvement. We're investing in the business—new attractions, refurbishments and events—which generally drives visitation when executed well. Regarding international specifically, across our company international attendance is about 10% of total attendance, so roughly 90% of guests are domestic. That means while international is an important tailwind when it returns, the vast majority of our business is driven by domestic guests. The little forward data we have suggests international starts to get better in the second half of the year, but we'll monitor developments.

Our next question comes from Paul Golding with Macquarie.

I wanted to ask about your thoughts on the capital plan. You're doing four new coasters and continuing to invest in attractions and also talking about potential returns to shareholders. Are the levels of CapEx you've guided for 2022 a run rate you see continuing, or is there an opportunity to find more leverage in the investments you've made in terms of new attractions? And on attendance mix, any color on the group component and how to think about mix going forward?

We're very excited about our forward plan for rides, attractions and general park investment. For 2022, we said approximately $150 million in core CapEx and another $30 million to $50 million of noncore ROI capital expenditures. I think that's a reasonable starting point for the go forward. When we build an attraction, we look to build something compelling for our guests and sometimes refresh older areas with new offerings. Beyond attraction mix, we work with our Board on uses of cash, considering investing in the business, other ROI initiatives, returning capital to shareholders, and potentially hotels or other opportunities. On group attendance, it's not as large as international but is meaningful. Group business depends on things like field trips, church outings and convention business returning. In the meantime, we're filling demand with other guests—locals and drive-in visitors—and our higher pass base helps offset those gaps. In Q4, attendance would have been up around 20% excluding international and group, so we've been finding ways to grow even without full returns of those segments.

This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Marc Swanson for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Anthony. On behalf of Elizabeth and the rest of the management team at SeaWorld Entertainment, we want to thank you for joining us this morning. As you've heard today, we are confident in our long-term strategy, which we believe will drive improved operating and financial results and long-term value for stakeholders. Thank you, and we look forward to speaking with you next quarter.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.