United Parks second quarter earnings conference 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 this time, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. I'll now turn the conference over to Matthew Stroud, Investor Relations.

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

Thank you, Matthew. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We are pleased with the continued progress we are making across certain initiatives. Results in the second quarter were impacted, as expected, by the shift in the timing of Easter. The earlier holiday meant fewer holiday days in Q2 compared to the prior year quarter, and a continued decline in international visitation. Adjusting for these impacts, attendance would have been flat for the quarter. We delivered another quarter of growth in total revenue per capita, driven by continued strong in-park execution. During the quarter, we again grew in-park per capita spending to a record for the quarter. Looking ahead, we continue to see strength in our forward indicators for Discovery Cove and our group business with advanced bookings revenue for both up double digits versus prior year. We continue to repurchase shares in the second quarter by an approximately 3.3 million shares for nearly $125 million. These buybacks emphasize our strong cash flow generation, our long-standing commitment to returning excess cash to our shareholders, and our belief that our shares are materially undervalued. While we face first-half headwinds across international visitation, weather impacts, and holiday shifts, we are fully focused on executing against our strategic priorities, and driving growth in revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and total shareholder value. Our exciting summer event lineup continues for the next several weeks as we close out the season with red, white, and barbecue at SeaWorld Orlando and SeaWorld San Antonio. Summer is spectacular at SeaWorld San Diego, and beer fest brews and barbecue at both Bush Gardens Tampa Bay and Bush Gardens Williamsburg. In September, we will kick off our award-winning Halloween events, which will run through October, followed by our Christmas celebrations in November and December. These seasonal offerings continue to resonate with our guests, and we are excited to introduce new intellectual property elements to our Holoscream event, something we have done very little of historically, but believe represents a significant opportunity for the business. This year, we have partnered with Sony Pictures to introduce popular horror films, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Anaconda to our Hall of Scream lineup at our SeaWorld and Busch Gardens parks, respectively. Early forward booking ticket sales for a Hall of Scream event are already running ahead of last year's across our parks. I want to thank all of our ambassadors for their hard work and dedicated efforts to produce these events and deliver memorable guest experiences. Before I move to some updates on strategic initiatives, let me briefly provide an update on July performance. As you all likely know, the weather in July was pretty tough across the country, including in some of our markets, including wildfires and related air quality issues, excessive heat, untimely and extended rain. We had a little bit of everything. This poor weather, not surprisingly, impacted our attendance in the month. Fortunately, though, we saw good admissions and in-part per capita growth during the month. Our preliminary view has revenue being down approximately 2% in the month of July. We have a little more than half the quarter ahead of ourselves, and amongst other things, are looking forward to hopefully more normalized weather.

Now, let me give a brief update on just some of our strategic initiatives.

On real estate, we are happy to have received significant interest from serious parties to acquire some or most of our real estate. We have been actively engaged with these parties over the past months to clarify and negotiate terms that can meet our requirements. While we don't want to share too much as we are in current discussions, I can tell you that the valuation being offered for our real estate compares very favorably to the valuation the public equity markets assign to our enterprise. When and if we transact with one or more of these counterparties will be determined by the ultimate terms we negotiate, our view of the future value of the business that's currently situated, general market conditions, and other relevant factors. A key takeaway from this exercise to date is that multiple highly credible third parties assign significant value to our real estate that we do not believe is currently reflected in the public market price of our common equity. On sponsorships, based on our current pipeline, we still expect to realize over $15 million in sponsorship revenue in 2026. As previously discussed, we expect this business to be at least a $30 million line of business in the coming years. We are very excited for this opportunity. On International, we have continued discussions with multiple partners, and we expect to be able to share more in the coming quarters. On IP partnerships, we recently announced a partnership with Sony Pictures to bring two of their horror IPs to our hollow screen events across our parks. We are in multiple active discussions to bring additional, compelling, and well-recognized IP into our parks in innovative and exciting ways.

We expect to have more to share related to these opportunities in 2027 and beyond.

On marketing, as we've previously communicated, we have had less than stellar execution in our marketing activities this year.

It's an area that has been, frankly, quite frustrating.

We are making investments to reach new and incremental audiences and to provide more compelling visuals and messaging and related awareness. There's more work to do, but we are confident the changes we are making will help strengthen how we communicate and position us to engage a broader audience more effectively. On cost, we continue to be on pace to achieve our $50 million gross cost savings target for 2026, and we are actively working on our 2027 objectives. Regarding capital allocation, as we've discussed in the past, our strong balance sheet provides us with the flexibility to allocate capital to maximize the long-term value of our enterprise. Our board is focused on maximizing long-term value for shareholders and will act dynamically with that objective as opportunities are presented. Let me briefly comment on our balance sheet. As of June 30, 2026, we had approximately $658 million of total available liquidity, including approximately $19 million of cash on the balance sheet as we head into the peak of our summer season where we generate a significant amount of our cash flow. This strong balance sheet gives us flexibility to continue to invest in and grow our business and to opportunistically allocate capital with the goal to maximize long-term value for shareholders. During the second quarter, we repurchased 3.3 million shares for an aggregate total of approximately $125 million. I'm excited about the opportunities we see ahead, the significant investments we are making, and the many initiatives we have underway across our business that we expect will improve the guest experience, allow us to generate more revenue, and make us a more efficient and more profitable enterprise. We are building an even stronger and more resilient business that we are confident will deliver improved operational and financial results and increases in value for our stakeholders.

With that, Jim will discuss our financial results in more detail.

Thank you, Mark. During the second quarter, we generated total revenue of $483.3 million, a decrease of $6.9 million, or 1.4%, when compared to the second quarter of 2025. The decrease in total revenue compared to the second quarter of 2025 was primarily a result of a decrease in attendance, partially offset by an increase in total revenue per capita. Attendance for the second quarter of 2026 decreased by approximately 179,000 guests, or 2.9%, when compared to the prior year quarter. The decrease in attendance was primarily due to an unfavorable calendar shift, including the timing of the Easter holiday and a decrease in international visitation compared to the same prior year quarter. Adjusting for these impacts, attendance would have been flat for the quarter. In the second quarter of 2026, total revenue per capita increased 1.5%. Admission per capita decreased 1.8%, and in-part per capita spending increased 5.1%. Admission per capita decreased primarily due to the net impact of the admissions product mix when compared to the same prior year quarter. In-part per capita spending increased primarily due to higher penetration and the impact of pricing initiatives compared to the same prior year quarter. Operating expenses increased $10.9 million or 5.3% when compared to the second quarter of 2025. Selling, general, and administrative expenses increased $2.2 million or 3.4% compared to the second quarter of 2025. We reported net income of $63.3 million for the second quarter compared to net income of $80.1 million in the second quarter of 2025. We generated adjusted EBITDA of $195.5 million, a decrease of $10.8 million when compared to the second quarter of 2025. Looking at our results for the first half of 2026 compared to 2025, total revenue was $761.6 million, a decrease of $15.5 million, or 2%. Total attendance was 9.3 million guests, a decrease of approximately 350,000 guests, or 3.6%. Net income for the period was $29.2 million, a decrease of $34.8 million, and adjusted EBITDA was $253.4 million, a decrease of $20.3 million. Now turning to our balance sheet. As of June 30, 2026, we had approximately $658 million of total available liquidity, including approximately $19 million of cash on the balance sheet. The strong balance sheet gives us flexibility to continue to invest in and grow our business and to opportunistically allocate capital with a goal to maximize long-term value for our shareholders. During the second quarter, we repurchased 3.3 million shares for an aggregate total of approximately $125 million. For the first half of the year, we bought back approximately 5.9 million shares or 12.1% of total shares outstanding for approximately $217.7 million. Our deferred revenue balance as of the end of June was $211.9 million. Deferred revenue increased approximately 2% when compared to June of 2025. Our deferred revenue balance contains a number of products that include ticketing, vacation packages, annual and seasonal passes, and ancillary products. We also continue to see many pass holders who have been with us for at least a year who transitioned to month-to-month payments at the completion of their initial pass commitment. This month-to-month revenue does not show up as deferred revenue, but demonstrates continued pass holder loyalty. Through June 2026, our paid pass base was down 1% compared to June 2025. We're now starting to launch our pass product for 2027, which will include our best benefits ever. We have a new dedicated team, a new strategy, an approach to pass that we expect will lead to a meaningful increase in pass space for 2027 and beyond. We spent approximately $68.6 million on CapEx in the second quarter of 2026, of which approximately $65.3 million was on core CapEx and approximately $3.2 million was on expansion or ROI projects.

For 2026, we expect to spend approximately $180 million to 190 million dollars on core capex and approximately 75 million to 85 million dollars of capex on growth and roi projects now let me turn the call back over to mark who will share some final thoughts mark thank you jim before we open to call your questions i have some closing comments in the second quarter of 2026 we came to the aid of 331 animals in need Over our history, we have helped over 43,000 animals, including bottlenose dolphins, manatees, sea lions, seals, sea turtles, sharks, birds, and more. And just a few weeks ago, our animal care experts from SeaWorld helped lead an important and inspirational international effort to rescue beluga whales from the marine land of Canada. SeaWorld San Antonio received the first of these beluga whales rescued from Marineland of Canada, and they, along with SeaWorld San Diego, are set to receive more whales as part of the ongoing multi-facility collaboration and rescue effort. I'm really proud of the team's hard work and their continued dedication to these important rescue efforts. Moving forward, our focus remains on building an even more resilient business, driving guest engagement and delivering meaningful value to our stakeholders. Our growth strategy centers on several key initiatives, including a compelling lineup of new rides and attractions alongside an updated and evolving events calendar, infrastructure upgrades such as improving and monetizing our food and retail locations to enhance on-site spending, and finally a tailored marketing program to increase awareness, engagement, and visitation. We operate in a growing industry with a favorable competitive structure. Our irreplaceable brands, strong business model, and well-capitalized assets, we are confident in the substantial opportunities ahead to create long-term shareholder value. With that, we can now take your questions.

Thank you. If you have a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad if you wish to remove yourself from the queue simply press star one again we do ask that you please restrict yourself to one question and one follow-up and queue back up for any additional follow-ups one moment please for your first question your first question comes from the line of steve wichinski of stifle your line is open yeah hey guys good morning um so so mark i guess this is probably going to be kind of the the same question I asked you guys three months ago, but at this point, I'm probably a little bit surprised

you guys think you can still grow EBITDA this year, given what you produced so far in the first half, coupled with your comments around July and how that didn't turn out to be the way you wanted to just due to wildfires and weather and stuff like that. So with international visitation still kind of below ideal levels as well, it seems to us like you would need to, you know, to kind of have, you know, really almost perfect weather between now and year end, you know, to beat last year's EBITDA base. You know, so am I way off on that thinking or are there, you know, other factors we aren't, you know, properly accounting for at this point?

Yeah. Hey, Steve, I can help you with the question.

I think what we were trying to point out is from here, you know, going forward, we like to set up to be able to grow the business, whether that growth will be enough to offset the revenue and the EBITDA decline year-to-date, we'll have to see. So I wasn't necessarily saying we're going to grow this year for the full year. I think what we're saying is we expect to grow the business kind of these next five months going forward, and we'll have to see where that ends up for the full year. Hopefully, that's a little bit of a clarification for you. But in general, you know, just to talk about growth for a minute, I think what gives us confidence that we can grow, you know, in these next five months really is, you know, the lineup of things we've got coming up in the parks with our Halloween and Christmas products. We're really excited to be introducing the new IP at Hall of Scream with the, you know, supported by Sony Pictures with I Know What You Did Last Summer and Anaconda. you know, that's something we've not historically done. And we're excited, you know, that potentially the opportunity there to grow that event more. And so far, you know, when we look at the combined ticket sales for that event, it looks, you know, looks good. It's still a ways to go, obviously. And then our per cap growth and impact has been strong. And I expect that'll continue to be strong going forward. And, you know, our preliminary view on July looks like admissions per cap moved into the positive territory. So I'm optimistic we can see that in a better place as well. And I think we've done a reasonably good job of managing our EBITDA cost over the year. So putting all that together, that provides the backdrop to how I think we can achieve some growth here in these next several months.

Obviously, if we can get some sort of better weather that would be great uh if you know we'll have to see it on control the weather obviously but that would be helpful as well as you know so hopefully that provides you some more color on your question yeah exactly so to summarize that you're basically saying like the full you might not be able to beat the you know you might not be able to grow off the the 25 EBITDA base but the back half of the year you're kind of expecting growth relative to 3Q and 4Q 25 is Is that kind of the right way to think about it?

Yeah, I think that's the right way to think about it. You know, we have, you know, I gave you a little bit of color on July with the revenue down. You know, it's a preliminary number, right? So, you know, I would, you know, I don't have an EBITDA number. We have a revenue number that, you know, was down about 2%. That may move around a little bit, maybe, but, you know, I think we're comfortable saying 2%. So, we've got to grow now, you know, in August and September to see if we can offset that. And then, you know, we'd have to grow in Q4 as well. But we like, I think what I want to stress is the per cap growth is helping to offset, obviously, some of the attendance declines. So, that's something we have not had as much lately.

Yeah, and that was my second question. And you kind of touched on a little bit, Mark, but, you know, it sounds like the admission per cap, you know, you said turn positive for, you know, for July. And I guess, you know, as we think about that, you know, over the next couple of months, over the next two quarters or so, you know, maybe wondering if you could get a little more color about how you're kind of thinking that admission per cap line should look, given it's, you start to come off a, you know, pretty easy year-over-year comparisons.

Yeah, I think a couple of things. One, so you're right. I mean, the comparison going forward should be something that we can manage better against than last year, obviously. But, look, we like the pricing environment as far as opportunities to grow price. Now, as you know, we're always focused on driving total revenue. So there may be times we do things that are at odds with per capita. We like the total revenue play. But in general, as we think about the business over a period of time, we like the pricing opportunities. I think that's strengthened even more so moving into Halloween and Christmas, which are both popular programs with our guests. Having the new IP in the parks, I think, gives you another reason to be able to hopefully drive more pricing for hollow screen as well, because you have something new to be able to talk about and people generally are okay, you know, paying more for new things that are, that are well done. So there, there's, there's an element of that as well. The thing I want to point out on the, on the, on the admissions for CAP though for Q2 is we did have a higher, you know, percentage of our attendance was from past holders than last year. So just as you know, from covering the business for so long, if you have a greater mix of pass holders that generally just naturally puts a little bit of tension on your admissions per cap and um so you know controlling for that you know that could influence things going forward one way or the other but we like we would rather have more pass visits than less obviously so okay thanks mark really appreciate the color your next question comes from the line of arpana kocharian of ubs your line is open hi uh good morning thanks very much for taking my question um i was hoping you could give a little bit more detail on the cadence of the quarter it

seemed like we knew before today that april was obviously down with the calendar shift and then i'm calculating that international maybe drove like one and a half percent of decline for the for the quarter does that mean that may and june were up in visitation in attendance um and then And then just one quick follow-up, you know, did any sponsorship revenue help admissions and revenue per cap this quarter? And if so, can you quantify it really quickly? Then I have a quick follow-up thing.

Yeah, as far as the cadence on attendance, I mean, I think you've pointed out appropriately that the bulk of the decline was in April. And then you had obviously some additional negative in the two months of May and June combined. But, you know, the biggest piece was in April. And that was mainly, as we noted, the Easter ship. The international drag, if you will, kind of occurs throughout all three months. So hopefully that's helpful. As far as the sponsorship revenue, if any of that is in admissions per cap, I think.

Yeah, there's some. I would say it's a ramp up. We've entered into some new agreements that will have more impact as the year progresses. There was some in the quarter, but not material. I think she's asking, was it in the admissions per cap, right? Right. There is some in there, but it will grow over time as some of our sponsors purchase some our tickets for use. Okay.

Great. That's helpful. I'm so sorry for three questions. I just have one quick follow-up. You know, ad bags, ad bags to EBITDA were quite sizable this quarter. I think 3X a year over year to be exact. What is in those pockets? It seems like, you know, it's recurring every quarter and not subsiding. And why did it accelerate so much this quarter?

Yeah, I would say the biggest driver we had, and I think we've mentioned this in our last earnings call, was the historic freeze in the Florida markets drove a significant amount of damage to our properties in Orlando, specifically in Tampa. And so we've had to do a lot of replacements of materials, plant materials and equipment and repairs for that period of time. We've also engaged in a number of strategic initiatives that have support that are one time in nature. And then on some of them, we have our continued amortization, non-cash of our SAP implementation from last quarter.

Thank you very much. Next question comes from the line of Ben Chaykin of Mizuho.

Your line is open.

Think about deferred revenue.

It's up, or the implications of deferred revenue, rather, which is up for the first half of the year, for the first time in a few years, you know, juxtaposed against first-half revenue that's down. Does that kind of suggest some type of pent-up revenue you should get in 2-H, or is there some timing dynamic I'm missing? And then related to this, I guess, somewhat, I think I caught you say that you have a new dedicated pass team, and you suggested 27 passes should be up meaningfully. Can you just expand on that or maybe the rationale? Thanks.

So your question on deferred revenue, it's kind of how I think about it as well, what I think you described as if your deferred revenue is up, but your attendance is down, you know, it would kind of imply, right, you've got a higher price on things. Now, keep in mind our deferred revenue bucket has a lot of things in it, you know, so there's all sorts of things in there. But the fact that it's positive is a good sign, to your point, and, you know, will only help with revenue and the admissions per cap on a go-forward basis. And then as far as the PASS question, I mean, look, PASS is an important part of our business, right? It's about 40% of our attendance or so across the company comes on some sort of PASS. I think we recognized you got to build a really solid team around that, people that kind of live and breathe PASS every day of the week. and so we we've beefed that up we've hired some new people that i think are doing a relatively good job we're we're going to be kicking off as jim noted you know that process kind of for for 2027 starts kind of now um and you know starts to ramp up you know the first big milestone is really around um black friday but you know we we start to sell passes now for next year But we sell them year-round, and kind of the peak selling season is really spring and the summer. But we're launching for next year. We're excited about the benefits and the attractions we're going to have to support those and the events and things like that. So we're excited about the opportunity to grow an important part of our business.

Okay, and then maybe just a quick one on the July result. It sounds like attendance down, but per cap's higher with both admissions and in-park higher. I guess what are you seeing on the per cap side that's not translating to attendance? I guess simplistically you would think that if both your admission and in-park is higher, that would lead to attendance being higher as well directionally. Maybe the answer is just weather and the items you referenced. I mean, how do you think about those variables?

You know, there's a lot of factors.

I don't know that I can point to any one thing. I think the good news is what you alluded to, that the people that are coming, or at least, you know, in July and even before that on in-park, you know, they're spending money in the park. And so we've been able to grow in-park again here in the second quarter. It's up in July as well. So I like that backdrop. And we'll continue to try to drive more guests, obviously. But certainly weather is an impact. You know, there's always different factors, but weather was certainly one in July that I think several of you guys have already kind of telegraphed and written about.

But we like the setup we're seeing on the Percaps.

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Your next question comes to the line of James Hardiman of Citi. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. So I wanted to circle back to sort of the two call-outs, right? Easter and international, I guess, pretty flattish XO's impacts. I guess help me understand the Easter shift. I just assumed that it was a shift from 2Q into 1Q, but there's some discussion that it was a negative for the first half of the year. Maybe first help me sort of understand that. And then on the international side, I guess thoughts on when you think that peace may ultimately begin to improve? Is that something we should be thinking about? You know, we should be thinking about your business, X, the international business, because there's sort of temporary pressures. um and and maybe it might help to think about that you know is that is that sort of a macro united states or orlando issue or more of a sort of sea world issue you guys aren't sort of um keeping your fair share of the international customers that that that come to town thanks so i can try to help you on both those and jim can add anything he'd like so on easter the way we think about it uh typically kind of the the nine days before the actual easter holiday of

uh which was april 5th this year you know so so if you back up to march 28th that kind of starts like one of the big peak easter weeks starts kind of that saturday so the 28th 29th 30th and 31st um we're in q1 this year last year with with easter being on i think it was april 20th all those days were in in q2 so we lost those four days uh which are which are pretty meaningful days obviously to uh to lose and so that that that that drove kind of the impact for the for the quarter um as far as uh i think your next question on kind of international you know where we started to see the, you know, the fall off was really, you know, this time last year, you know, kind of more the second half of the year. So, you know, others, I think, have talked about this. You know, most of our international attendance is in the state of Florida. And so, you know, there's obviously things I'm sure we can be doing better, but I think there's obviously a big component that is more macro related. When that planes, you know, I'm not for certain, but until then, we've got to do a better job of filling that gap with other attendants. And then when International does rebound, make sure we're getting our share of it. Just to be clear, I mean, I like our setup in Orlando and I'm confident that when International comes back, we will be in a position to, you know, like we've done for over 50 years here, share in any sort of rebound in international.

That's helpful. And then there was, there were some very specific remarks as part of the prepared remarks on the real estate piece, the idea that there are parties that are interested in acquiring, I think you said some or most of your real estate. I guess I'm curious, I don't know how much more you can add to that, probably not much, but curious what's on the table here. Are we talking sort of the sale of unused or undeveloped land, or are we, you know, is the idea of a broader sort of REIT spinoff prop co-op co actually on the table as you talk to some of these interested parties?

Yeah, James, I'll try to share what I can.

I mean, just I want to be sensitive to just the fact that, you know, we're kind of, you know, as I said in my prepared remarks, we don't want to share too much, obviously. But so we did try to give you guys some more color. But I think what you could have there is anything from, you know, one property to multiple properties. And, you know, we've heard from people who like the idea of, you know, something along that spectrum. Maybe you sell one to demonstrate the value. Maybe you sell multiple ones if you can get a really strong value. So I think the point we are making is there could be multiple ways to think about it. And that's probably all we can share now. I mean, what I was trying to emphasize in the remarks is that there are people out there, names you would recognize who recognize the value of our real estate, that doesn't seem to translate to the public equity value. So the valuation they're ascribing to our real estate or how to think about our real estate, it compares very favorably, I guess, to the public market value of our stock. So if nothing else, even if we don't do anything, and who knows if we will do anything, there's no guarantee, obviously, but a good part of this exercise is that there are people who are now recognizing the value of our real estate, but we'd like to see more of that transfer over, obviously, to our stock price.

That's helpful. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Patrick Scholes of True Securities. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning. Thank you. First question, unless I missed it, I didn't hear or see in the press release that 3Q saw continued share repurchases. I know the last couple of quarters you've called out that share repurchases continued after the most recent quarter. So the question is, have they continued into 3Q? Thank you.

Yeah, I guess I'm not going to comment on the third quarter. So if we do anything in the third quarter, it'll be in the third quarter press release.

And shifting gears here regarding the comments on international, do you think you lost some international visitation due to the World Cup, You know, specifically Orlando not holding World Cup, San Diego not World Cup, Tampa, you know, not World Cup. And I'd have to just theoretically think if I was from England or Argentina that's going to a game, coming to the United States, going to a game or even staying home, watching games probably is a priority than visiting theme parks. What are your thoughts on sort of that theory and as it relates to June and July visitation?

I mean, I think it's great that the United States hosted the World Cup, obviously, and did a really good job with that. You know, but I don't think we saw, to your point, more people visiting our parks because of that. And so to your point, you know, did people decide to spend their money going to the soccer games and other cities instead of Orlando? I'm sure that's a very good possibility because we did not see, you know, an improvement in international visitation from from, you know, those people being at soccer games.

OK, I'm all set.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Jordan Bender of Citizens. Your line is open.

Hi, everyone. Morning. Thanks for the question. In-park spending continues to be a bright spot, and we've touched on a few times on the call. But maybe just to kind of opine there a little bit, I mean, are you seeing consumers trading up in higher value offerings? Is it growth being driven by the mix in guest spending? Is it purely just pricing initiatives? Any color there would be helpful. Thank you.

Jordan, I can help you.

I think it's a multiple of things that we're executing well on, and certainly you've got things around pricing, penetration, new facilities. We talk a lot about investing in the business with capital to upgrade parts of our parks, whether it's retail or culinary locations or other things that people, frankly, spend money on. And, you know, I think that is showing through as well. So I don't think there's one singular thing. We've got a good team leading that group. And I think they're doing a good job of executing on some different things. So probably a lot of things just working well now.

Yeah, the only thing I might add, Mark, is we continue to, as you mentioned, invest in technology, and some of the things that we have delivered, like our self-order kiosk for food and beverage, have shown significant improvement in our operation, as well as our strategies on things like our photo business and our continued drive on our catering events, I think, are all coming into play to really improve that in part per cat.

Great.

Thank you. And then my follow-up maybe actually is related to that. I believe your expansion, your ROI CapEx budget for 26 went up this quarter. Is that a function of timing, like a pull forward from 27, or is there kind of incremental spend that you guys just layered in for the year? Thank you.

Yeah, let me start, and then Jim can add some things. But one of the things I think is important to get across is our board, and you obviously know we're significantly owned by a private equity firm, Hillpath, and they're three board seats and exercise a lot of involvement in the company and tremendously involved, obviously. And one of the things they and others on the board encourage us to do is when we have high conviction RLI projects, whether it's revenue generating or cost savings opportunities, to bring those forward for discussion. And if they make sense and we can demonstrate the return, we will pull the trigger on those type of things. So I think what you're seeing is the spirit of that, where we have opportunities to return either expense savings or revenue opportunities with additional capex. They're supportive of that. And that's what you're seeing for the most part. But Jim can add anything there as well.

Yeah, there, you know, we have a variety of attractions and sometimes there's timing of those that we have to have going all the way out to 2029 and beyond that sometimes we have to think about when we make those investments and deposits. But primarily, as Mark mentioned, our biggest focus, as you saw, was the large increase in ROI capital that the board provided us on. And that's going to take and address things like eliminating many of our lease costs that we have been incurring for equipment we could purchase. The house cream IP that Mark mentioned in his remarks, there's some investment there. And most importantly, the engine to continue to fuel that in-park revenue growth. We've got a variety of technology and in-park improvements that will continue to improve our per caps on the in-park side.

Great. Thank you very much.

And again, if you have a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Chris Roronka of Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for the questions. Mark, I know you mentioned back earlier the prepared comments about marketing mis-execution. I'm curious as to whether, you know, if you could share with us what steps you've taken to remedy that, if you've brought in any new partners on that side, or whether they're, I don't know if it could be external, third-party consultants, but just give a sense for, you know, kind of where you are in trying to get that turned around.

Yeah, I think, you know, again, as I noted, you know, we're disappointed with, you know, what, how we've done this year. We've made a series of changes, really around, when I set back like increasing awareness so one of the one of the i think neat things about our parks is they have a tremendous amount of things to do and whether that's um you know rides or the animal attractions or behind the scenes tours and rescue areas whatever it may be the awareness is not you know i think people still don't know all the things we have and it gets very frustrating uh at times. So we're taking steps to, you know, increase that awareness, reach new people, make sure they understand what we have. And, you know, there's multiple ways you can do that with, you know, either creative or storytelling and, you know, how we market on social media, those type of things. So really just revamping that. I know the marketing world kind of um changes often right and there's i think a lot of people who are learning how to market in this age of ai and and other you know ways people consume media and things like that so ours is some of the things i just talked about and i'm confident that going forward you know hopefully this will will be a better setup for us but if we can get um more awareness of our parks and what we offer i think that'll be a big a big step in the right direction for us okay um appreciate that mark and then um a follow-up question on the on the real estate front you know obviously not want

to commit to anything today but um use of proceeds i mean i think we would probably almost assume that that if you get anything done you you might look to share repurchase um is that a fair general directional statement if it's not what else might be might be on the table that you'd consider thanks yeah i don't chris i don't know that i can really comment other than uh you know that would be something clearly we would work with the board on and i think what obviously we would do what we believed was the best return for shareholders so it could be a number of things And I don't want to commit to any one thing.

Obviously, we've done buybacks in the past, but not to say that we wouldn't do something different going forward. It would really be a discussion with the board and driven by them.

Great. Thanks. Your next question comes to the line of Lizzie Dove of Goldman Sachs.

Your line is open.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I just wanted to ask about kind of more specifically on the Orlando market, kind of beyond what we've talked about from the international side of things, just given some of the comments we had from Comcast a week or two ago and how you see the market there, whether it's more competitive, less competitive, and just how you see things generally. Thanks.

Yeah, we live in Orlando, and so if you look at our performance in Q2, you know, the performance of the three Orlando parks on a combined basis, you know, relative to some of our other locations, we were pleased with. So we like the setup in Orlando. We continue, as we've said for some time now, believe that more high-quality investment in this market is good for everybody. And so having more investment is a good thing. And what I like about this market, you know, a couple more things, and we've been here for 50 years, but, you know, us and others in the area continue to make investments, and they're high-quality investments. The county, you know, supports things around, like, airport expansion and trying to make transportation improvements. You know, there's an effort. I don't know if it'll be successful. There's an effort around trying to bring a Major League Baseball team to Orlando. So everyone in this market, I think, kind of rose in the same direction as far as making this a great market to be in. And I think of all the places, you know, we want to be and have three of our parks, I think Orlando is it'd be hard to find any place better where everybody's kind of rowing together to support this market. We'll continue to support it. We have a different product than a lot of the other people in the market. We have a different value proposition. And we've been here for over 50 years and have had, you know, success over that time. So we are definitely still very bullish on Orlando and like the setup. And I'm glad we're here. I think it's going to be a great market for years to come.

And I guess on that topic, I guess, as my follow-up, you know, I think you've made some comments in the past about Tampa. and, you know, I think some of the foot traffic data we all look at, it does show that kind of Orlando has actually been more of a bright spot and some of the attendance at the non-Orlando parks has maybe been weaker. Could you maybe talk more about what you think is driving that and what's the kind of gating factor there of kind of getting back to some more growth?

Sure. It's a good question.

So one of the things, the question that Chris asked around marketing, I think clearly like a park like Busch Gardens Tampa, for example, a lot of people have no idea that that park has phenomenal roller coasters and a whole zoo component to it. So you can get great rides and animals and shows and all sorts of things. The name actually, you know, doesn't lend itself to describing what it is. So we have to raise more awareness. It's a great name. It's a great equity. But we have to make sure people are aware of what's at that park. You know, there's other factors there as well. We have to obviously deliver on a good experience. We have to make sure people are having, you know, opportunities to do things and all that. So, you know, those are just things that I'm confident we can turn around. You know, when I look at some of our other parks, you've got a mix of different impacts. Some are impacted at times by weather factors. Some are impacted by, you know, promotions we may or may not run intentionally. So, but, you know, we like the setup in the regions we're in. We like, you know, outside of Florida, the states we're in and the markets we're in. Generally, our markets where growth is occurring. So I think a lot of it comes down to just we've got to market ourselves better and make sure people are aware of what's in our parks and the strong value proposition we offer.

Great. Thank you so much.

There are no further questions at this time.

I will now turn the call back over to CEO Mark Swanson for closing remarks.

All right. Thank you.

On behalf of Jim and the rest of the management team here at United Parks Resorts, I want to thank you for joining us this morning. You know, as you 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. We invite everyone to join us at our parks this year to experience the energy and excitement we are offering.

Thank you, and we look forward to talking next quarter.

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.