Six Flags Entertainment Corp (SIX) 2005 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good morning, and welcome to the Six Flags, Inc. first quarter earnings conference call.

At this time all participants have been place on a listen-only mode.

Following the presentation the floor will be open for questions.

At this time I would like to turn the floor over to your host, Erika Levy.

Ma'am, you may begin.

Thank you.

Last night the Company released its financial and operating results for the first quarter of 2005.

A copy of the earnings release is available on the Company's Web site at www.sixflags.com under the heading investors.

Before I turn the call over to the Company's executives, they've asked me to remind you that in compliance with SEC Regulation FD, a webcast of this call is being made available to the media and the general public, as well as analysts and investors.

The Company cautions you that comments made during the call will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Federal Securities laws.

These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in such statements.

You may refer to the Company's 2004 annual report on Form 10(K) which is also posted on its Web site for a detailed discussion of these risks.

Because the webcast is open to all constituents and prior notification has been widely and unselectively disseminated, all contents of the call will be considered fully disclosed.

In accordance with SEC Regulation G, non-GAAP financial measures used in the earning release and in the Company's oral presentation today are required to be reconciled to the most directly comparable GAAP measure.

Those reconciliations are available to investors in the earning release and on the Company's Web site.

References by management in this call to EBITDA mean EBITDA modified which is former known as EBITDA adjust from consolidated operations, but now includes results of the four parks that were previously unconsolidated.

Now I'd like to introduce Kieran Burke, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Six Flags.

Kieran?

Thank you, Erica.

Good morning.

Thank you for joining us on today's call.

Yesterday after the close of the markets we announced our first quarter results.

Revenues for the period were 21.3% higher than the prior year, reflecting an attendance increase of 330,000 or 25.1%, resulting from a positive market reaction to our new capital additions, especially in our Mexico City park, as well as the greater number of operating days due to the timing of the Easter holiday.

Total revenue per capita declined by 3% for the quarter, reflecting the larger percentage of operations in the quarter from our Mexico City park, which has lower per capita revenues than our domestic operations.

In line with plan, our cash operating expenses in the 2005 quarter were about 8.8 million higher than in the first quarter of 2004.

This increase includes 1.3 million in increased costs of goods sold, primarily reflecting higher in-park revenues.

Also includes other planned increases in operating expenses due to the earlier commencement of park operations in many markets because of the timing of the Easter holiday.

Therefore adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was basically flat to 2004.

In any event, first quarter results are not very meaningful for us since only a limited number of our parks are in operation during that period.

For example, the first quarter accounts for less than 5% of our budgeted attendance for the year.

As a result on the call this morning, I will speak to year-to-date performance and group sales and season pass sales.

It's still quite early for these categories as well, but they provide some indicators as to how our season is beginning to unfold.

Then following Jim Dannhauser's comments about the quarterly results, we'll open the floor to questions.

We're open now almost exclusively in weekend operations in most locations other than Montreal, Lake George, Buffalo, Seattle and some of the water parks.

It is very early.

At this point in the season, we have experienced a very modest portion of the season's total operating calendar.

Just over 10% of the full year attendance has been budgeted year-to-date.

So as always, it is a mistake to extrapolate full-year performance from results at this time of the year.

Particularly because the comparative performance of early season weekend operations can be easily distorted by the impact of operating calendar differences, weather and other factors.

At this point in the season, we are really looking for early trends, particularly on operating days with reasonable weather and in markets where we have been open for more than just a few days.

That being said we are encouraged with the start of our 2005 operating season.

Year-to-date through Sunday, May 1st, park level revenues system-wide are up approximately 3.3% over prior year.

System-wide attendance is up 4.2%, and per capita revenues are down just less than 1%, reflecting the higher percentage of attendance at our Mexico City park with its highly-successful coaster introduction.

So in early going, people seem to be responding well to our new capital additions and year two of our successful advertising campaign coming out for the parks in solid numbers and spending well on their visits.

In terms of other early season indicators, our season pass sales are pacing well ahead of last year with pass sales up 200,000, or 19% over 2004.

Pass sales year-to-date represent 51.5% of our full year target, compared to just 46.6% of full-year actual sales this time last year; and we are seeing significant week-over-week momentum.

Our group bookings are also pacing ahead of last year with hard ticket book groupings up 1.2% over 2004.

We feel good about the beginning to our season.

We expect attendance growth in 2005 to be driven by our robust plan for capital additions to our parks, combined with our ongoing guest service initiatives.

That plan encompasses new attractions in 13 of our 18 domestic theme parks and 3 of our water parks, and a new children's area in our Montreal park with the largest initiatives concentrated in our major markets, especially in Chicago and New Jersey.

We've also added a major new roller coaster in our park in Mexico City, which continues to experience strong year-over-year attendance gains.

We believe that this investment program should drive significant attendance and revenue growth in 2005, and set the stage for several years of sustained growth.

I'm very pleased with the progress of our capital projects which are on schedule and rapidly nearing completion in most markets.

The new section at our Great Adventure park in New Jersey is particularly impressive.

A dramatic new jungle-theme 11-acre entertainment section anchored by the world's tallest, fastest roller coaster and including a new stadium for unique tiger shows, an expansive new children's area, as well as heavily themed shops and food outlets.

I believe it represents the best work our Company has ever executed, and is on par with the quality of the destination parks.

This incredible new section and world record coaster are scheduled to open to the public next week on May 12.

In addition to the new section, we've completely changed landscaping at the park and made substantial improvements to the parks overall ambience.

There is an incredible buzz building in the marketplace about the new Great Adventure as evidenced by the sale in just this past week of nearly 50,000 season passes at we hit our first season pass price deadline.

The improvements this year are an important step in the redevelopment of this facility with its three separate gated attractions on 2200 acres in our largest market, which will be a key driver of our Company's future growth.

Our expansive new water park at our Chicago park is also proceeding well and should open on the Memorial Day weekend.

We expect it to generate a similar market reaction as our efforts in New Jersey, and the market reaction to our new steel hypercoaster in New Mexico has clearly exceeded our expectations and continues to drive significant year-over-year attendance growth.

In addition to introducing great rides and attractions in a significant number of our markets this season, we are also building on the strides we made in delivering a better quality guest experience in 2004.

Continuing to improve guest service is our Company's number one priority, and we're clearly making progress.

Guest reactions to our efforts in person and on Internet postings have been very positive system-wide, particularly in our New Jersey, Texas and California parks.

This will be a continuing focus of our entire management team over the next several seasons.

So again it's extremely early.

Given where we are in the calendar, we do not have much visibility yet about full-year performance.

We're making continued progress toward both our season pass and group sales goals, and we have seen a number of positives.

So we remain comfortable with our full-year target for generating adjusted EBITDA of 300 million in 2005, compared to 258.6 million in 2004.

With that I'll turn it over to Jim Dannhauser.

Thanks, Kieran.

I'll start by reviewing and providing some greater detail on the quarterly numbers which we released yesterday.

In order to keep this performance in perspective, it's important to recognize that the first quarter includes a limited number of parks in operation.

In terms of magnitude, the quarter accounts for less than 5% of expected full-year attendance and revenues.

Because of the timing of Easter, which fell in the first quarter this year and the second quarter in 2004, there were 211 operating days in the 2005 quarter as compared to 193 in 2004.

This resulted in higher attendance and revenues in the first quarter this year, and correspondingly higher expenses as parks accelerate their preopening preparation into the first quarter.

As a reminder, the reported results for the first quarter of both years reflects the consolidation of the results of Six Flags Over Georgia and White Water Atlanta, the nearby water park;

Six Flags Over Texas and Six Flags Marine World in accordance with financial interpretation number 46.

They also reflect the treatment as discontinued operations in 2004 of our European division and our Cleveland park, with all those parks results excluded from revenue, expenses, and EBITDA, and reflected only in a discontinued operations line.

With that having been said, first quarter revenues were $54.4 million up 9.6 million, or 21.3%, from the first quarter last year.

Total attendance for the quarter was 1.64 million, up 25.1% from the prior year period.

In the 2005 quarter, our domestic operations achieved $41.5 million in revenues on attendance of 1.04 million, versus 37.5 million in revenues on attendance of 0.92 million in the year ago period.

International operations, which now include only Mexico and Montreal, generated $12.87 million in revenues as compared to 7.3 million last year, on attendance this year of 0.61 million, compared to 0.39 million in the 2004 quarter.

While per capita revenues were down 3% year-over-year, this is attributable to two factors unique to the first quarter.

First, Mexico, which has lower per caps, had a strong first quarter and is therefore a larger part of the attendance this year and that's skews per capita results.

Second, it was a relatively constant amount of sponsorship and other non-park revenues, which when spread over a larger attendance base causes a lower per cap.

These factors will naturally ameliorate over the balance of year, and we remain comfortable with our expectations for per capita revenue growth for 2005 and its full year.

Cash expenses, including operating expenses, SG&A, and cost of good sold, but excluding depreciation and amortization as well as non-cash compensation, were $8.8 million higher in 2005 than in the prior year.

This primarily reflects expected timing of operations and higher early season wage and repair and maintenance expense as the parks gear up for their earlier operating days.

EBITDA, including 100% of the performance of the partnership parks, was a negative 79.3 million, 0.8 million better than the prior year; and adjusted EBITDA, excluding third-party share of the performance of the partnership park operations, was a negative $74 million, as compared to a negative 74.1 million in the 2004 quarter.

Park level EBITDA from domestic operations, including the partnership parks, was a negative 74.5 million.

Park level EBITDA from international operations was a positive $1.4 million.

Depreciation and amortization expense for the quarter was 37.5 million, as compared to 37 million last year.

Net interest expense was $44.7 million for the quarter, as compared to 51.9 million last year, reflecting the benefit of the debt pay downs affected in 2004 and the retirement of 2009 notes in early February.

Income tax for the 2005 quarter was $955,000, as compared to a benefit of 70 million in the year-ago period.

The 2005 income tax expense reflects the effect of a $67.2 million income tax valuation allowance for the quarter as a result of off season losses.

This has no effect on our cash tax obligations and does not affect the utilization of our tax loss carry-forwards to reduce taxable income that we may generate in future years.

Net loss applicable to common stock was $184.2 million, or $1.98 a share.

The 2004 period loss applicable to common stock before discontinued operations was 125.4 million, or $1.35 a share.

Absent the tax valuation allowance and the loss from early repurchase of debt, the net loss applicable to common stock would have been $97.7 million in 2005; or $1.05 a share; compared with a net loss before discontinued operations of 109.8 million, or $1.18 per share in the 2004 quarter, absent that period's debt repurchase loss.

As to the balance sheet, gross debt at the quarter end was 2.16 billion, excluding the $135 million then drawn against our $300 million working capital revolver, and the amounts then drawn on separate revolvers at Six Flags Over Georgia and Six Flags Over Texas.

Net debt, excluding the amounts outstanding on the revolvers, was 2.09 billion.

Our blended interest rate, excluding revolvers, is approximately 7.64%.

Financially, I would note that with the annual limited partner tender process now concluded, once again we received no unit tenders inside either Six Flags Over Georgia or Six Flags Over Texas for 2005.

Kieran?

Thanks, Jim.

We can open the floor to questions.

[OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS].

David Miller, Sanders Morris.

Yes, hi.

Good morning, guys, and congratulations on the stellar results.

It looks like you guys are off to a pretty good start here at 2005.

A couple of questions.

Kieran, it sounds like there's somewhat of a divergence here between group bookings and season pass sales.

Season pass sales obviously a lot of higher than at least, we thought up 19% so far.

Though group bookings looks like it's up sort of a more of a muted number, 1.2%.

What's the reason for that?

Is it a budgetary thing going on with local schools or local municipalities?

To what do you attribute the divergence there?

And I have a follow-up.

Thanks.

Well, thanks, David.

Obviously, we're very pleased with the season pass numbers, which are pacing significantly ahead of what our full-year targets were.

So -- and I think that reflects the excitement in the markets about the new capital, reactions to improvement in the guest service, and all of that together.

So that's just a very positive trend at this point, which we'll continue to monitor and hope will follow through.

As far as group sales, actually the group sales report is encouraging.

I would say the following: If you broke our group sales down and you looked at our catered and non-catered outings, which are two significant pieces of business, they're actually up 2.8%.

And our special events business is up about 4.5%.

So at the moment where we're a little bit sluggish is in the school groups.

But even as I was reviewing business as it was coming in this week, we're starting to see movement in those categories.

So that cash group business, which tends to book in much closer to actual events and a certain amount of it on almost a walk up basis, I think is going to take care of itself as we're getting our attractions open and as we move into what is really the cash group season year-end school type business in May and June.

So I,m actually comfortable with our season -- with our group sales position at this point, and extremely pleased with where we are with season pass.

Okay.

And have you stated a group bookings goal for the year?

Yes.

We'd like to see our group sales up about 3% for the year.

And I certainly think that's an attainable level from where we sit today.

And remember that our season pass goal is 7.5% growth year-over-year.

Right.

Okay.

Great.

And then also, just one last quick question, to what do you attribute the upside in the revenues in Q1 excluding the Easter holiday effect and excluding Mexico City?

In other words, is it all just Mexico City operationally or was there some contribution from your other warm weather parks such as Los Angeles, Houston, et cetera?

Thanks.

Clearly the other parks, while just getting open and with less operating days than certainly Mexico, have performed well out of the blocks.

So we're seeing good results in a number of locations, and all of that is very encouraging.

So it's a pretty broad-based reaction from the consumer to the parks this year.

So we're very pleased with that.

If you looked at it in terms of attendance per operating day, which helps us to strip out calendar differences, our attendance per operating day in '05 as compared to '04 in the quarter was up by 14.5%.

Wonderful.

This is great news, guys.

Thanks very much.

Kathy Styponias, Prudential Equity Group.

Hi.

This is Mike Morris on for Kathy.

Wanted to see, are your expenses coming back into line after being up 7% in the quarter for the full year?

And then also, are you seeing incremental spending on advertising for new attractions in the local markets?

And any incremental spending on the improvement in guest services?

Thanks.

The -- in terms of the expenses they were as we said in accordance with plan.

We knew that the first quarter would have a higher level of operating expenses because of the operating a calendar.

Again, if you look at it on an average per operating day, our expenses are actually down year-over-year per operating day by just under 3%.

They are absolutely coming back into line.

We are not seeing a significant increase in our advertising expense.

In fact, as I've mentioned previously, because of production savings we actually expect to see a slight decrease year-over-year in our total advertising expenses.

There is clearly some additional labor that is in the budgets to continue with our guest service initiatives, not to the same level as we saw in the increases in '04 over '03.

So we're in good shape from an expense point of view at this point.

Great.

Thank you.

David Marsh, FBR.

Thanks.

Good indicators, guys.

Very pleased with the way things are shaping up here.

Could you talk about, with regard to you've been exploring some potential land sales around the DC park.

Could you just talk about where you guys might be in terms of progress on that front?

Sure.

We continue to work through the capacity to sell land.

We're working on a joint venture relationship with a home builder.

We will then be looking to take that through a regulatory process, which will maximize our proceeds from the exercise by having actual plotted parcels that we can then sell as opposed to just selling the raw land.

I would expect that to play itself out over probably the next 12 to 18 months.

Clearly the best way for to us maximize value.

The home building market, while nationally has had some indications of ups and downs, remains extremely strong in the Washington D.C. market.

It is an area that is generating probably, David, as you know well, 70,000 jobs a year.

The housing stock close in to the city is very crowded.

So we're not really running any risk that we will lose value, and this is clearly the best way for to us maximize it.

Sounds good.

Also, you guys had mentioned on the last call about perhaps exploring a JV around the New Jersey park maybe to develop a hotel asset?

Have you guys had any progress on that front?

We're making a lot of progress in terms of our planning process for that development.

So we're deeply involved in the master planning on a multi-year basis as well as our specific plans for the '06 season.

We've not really stepped out to try at this point to structure any kind of joint venture relationship.

We will obviously make sure that as we go forward that our development plans are well-matched by available capital.

And we'll keep you posted as we go through that.

One of the things is the opportunity there we think is so significant we certainly don't want to rush to judgment in terms of how we would structure that.

So -- but we're continuing to work very hard on that asset.

Absolutely.

I appreciate that.

That's good discipline.

Could you just talk about the other, the other lodge -- lodging asset that you have up at, up in the New York park and kind of the performance of that asset and how like bookings are starting to shape up, if there are any material bookings for the summer season?

I guess that might end up being more of a winter asset with the water park.

Actually, David, it's expected to be a full-year asset.

Remember that we just began construction of that property in late December.

It was never expected to be open and available for bookings and operational until December '05, Jan '06.

I'm pleased to tell you that construction's moved along quite well, and I would anticipate that we will remain on target to deliver the product at that period of time.

For those on the call who are not as familiar, what we did -- and this is in our park up in Lake George, New York, we contributed to a joint venture.

Land that we owned on the road -- opposite side of the road from the park, as well as a restaurant that we owned, to a joint venture.

That joint venture is building an indoor water park hotel, which will be directly across the street from our park.

We will -- under the deal terms we have a 40% interest in that joint venture, and we will be managers of the hotel, plus we will obviously benefit from the spill-over traffic to the theme park while the theme park is in operation.

So the water park hotel is expected to be, and clearly will be, a full year operation.

So we're not in a position at this point in time to have any bookings for it.

I can tell you that there have been significant expressions of interest that have come in on an inbound basis, and as we continue to look at the success in various markets, particularly in northern climates, of the indoor water park hotels we are very encouraged that we'll have a very successful operation there when it opens, probably in December of '05.

And how will that run through the P&L?

Will it be equity method?

Yes.

Okay.

Great.

Sounds good, guys.

Keep it up.

Thank you.

Thanks, David.

Randy Golk [ph], Muzinich.

Yes.

Good morning.

Could you just give a little bit more flavor on the season pass and the other group ticket sales, maybe on a park basis, especially with an emphasis on New Jersey and Chicago?

Can you break that down a bit?

I could -- both of those parks are doing quite well in terms of their season pass sales, which is as we would have expected.

The -- it's early obviously in the Chicago season, and we don't usually comment on individual park performances, but we are seeing very good growth in season pass sales in both of those assets.

Are you seeing the strength across the board, too, or is it more so in just those two and would it be significantly weaker in the other markets?

I -- it would not be to the same level of growth in the other markets, but we are seeing strength in our season pass sales in a vast number of markets.

But as we expected the -- a big part of the growth this year is going to be coming from New Jersey and Chicago.

So it's actually very encouraging to see a good pace of season pass sales in a broad number of markets.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Gary McDaniel, Standard & Poor's.

Hi, good morning.

I wonder if you could -- back on the season ticket prices, if we could talk about what the average prices have been, maybe relative to single day admission or relative to last year?

I can tell you that year-over-year, the average season pass price is up by about 2%.

And generally the average season pass price, when you factor in all of the operations including water parks, et cetera, is going to be in a range of $55.

Okay.

And what do you expect average discounts to be this summer, relative to full price tickets?

That is a very significant variation in discount levels from market to market.

Each of our parks have their discount programs in place.

They will -- it's very difficult to answer that question just in the abstract.

You have to look at to look at it market by market.

We would anticipate having no deeper discounts in general than we had last year, and in fact in most markets we have been able to shrink the discounts somewhat, and we have not yet seen any significant fall off in promotional attendance as a result.

Okay.

And regarding your deferred tax assets and the carry-forward, what probability would you assign to being able to realize those?

Well, obviously it's a function of generating positive income, either on a stand-alone basis or ultimately in combination with others.

We do have a have over $1.6 billion of net operating loss carry-forwards.

A substantial portion of them, over 70 percent, do not begin to expire until after 2015.

So there's quite a substantial period of time for us to go.

Okay.

And just one last question.

Other than the new ride, what steps are you taking to improve guest experience this year?

Well, I would have to say it's pretty comprehensive, and we've been looking at every aspect of our operations, focusing quite a bit on throughput.

So trying to improve line speed.

Everything from at the toll booths where we take the parking revenues at the front gate lines for selling tickets as well as through the gates.

And accomplishing that in a variety of ways, some of it structurally where we move metal detectors or we reconfigure our front gates; some of it operationally.

We've availed ourselves, not only of what is a very vast internal capacity when you think about all the theme park experience that we have, but also reach outside to some outside companies that have consulted with us on those issues as well as a number of others.

We've worked very hard in our restaurant and revenue outlets as well on the same issues.

Again, in some instances reconfiguring kitchens or serveries.

We've done quite a bit of painting and general upkeep in the parks, and I think that in a number of parks it's had a very tangible impression.

I think as I mentioned earlier, Great Adventure New Jersey is just remarkable in terms of the change with our landscaping and a number of other things.

We've introduced greeters in a number of parks at the front gates as well as strategically located throughout the parks which is very helpful in providing information and facilitating people's visits at the park.

Increased training of seasonal and full-time staff, I think much better recruitment on the seasonal side, again using some additional resources in terms of over the Internet and other ways that we've sourced, I think, a better quality of seasonal employee, much tougher in our interviewing process, much more aggressive in our recruiting process.

So it's pretty comprehensive across the board.

And I would by no means suggest that we're where we want to be because I think that the answer for us is that we're never going to be where we want to be.

That we have to continually work at improving our guest service, but I will tell you that it is far and away the number one priority from top to bottom in the Company, and we're going to bang away.

We got very good improvement in our scores in our surveying last year in 2004, and we're really hoping to build on that, and most importantly, really sustain it over the course of the entire operating season.

Great.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

[OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS].

Rick Gable [ph], Sun Capital.

Hi.

Could you just explain or talk about how you book revenues from your sponsor relationships and season passes?

Yes.

The season passes we established deferred income.

Each pass is barcoded.

And we relieve, on a per visit basis, a designated amount of that deferred income into the P&L during the course of the operating season.

We would look at historic utilization patterns at each of the individual parks, and a park has an average utilization historically of 3.8 times.

We will use that as the factor to determine how much income should come into the P&L on each season pass visit, and we will continue to analyze that and true it up during the course of the second and third quarters.

Obviously, all of that revenue is relieved into income in the course of the full year.

So there's no carry-over balance of season pass revenue from a year-to-year perspective.

In terms of sponsorship revenue, we book that on the basis of -- largely on the basis of even periods over the operating year.

So if we have a sponsorship contract it gives us X dollars of revenues, we will recognize that pro rata during the course of the operating season.

Okay.

And is it -- I mean, do you get from a sponsorship things other than revenue?

We only book as revenue the cash revenue that we receive.

But we do receive a wide variety of support from sponsorship partners, most notably co-op media, where we're including -- included in commercials of other sponsors and --.

Or where the soda can maybe at the cost of a bottling company.

But importantly, nothing but the cash we get flows through our income statement.

Okay.

Last question just on pricing, what -- can you just kind of put your pricing increases in perspective?

When are some of last times or last seasons where you were able to finish the season with substantial price increases?

I think as we've said previously, we were, I think, cautious in the last couple of years not to move prices generally.

And this season we felt, based on improvements in the economy, based on the significant capital additions to the parks and the fact that we hadn't moved prices in several years that we could take price increases in a number of locations.

So it again varies by park.

And typically in terms of the main gate, maybe it's a dollar or two type increases.

Of course, our main gate full paying customer -- that's not a big percentage of the business, but those increases obviously flow through to the other categories, which would be discounted sometimes dollars off or sometimes on a fixed price.

So that gives you some sense of the type of price moves that we've made based on the everyday tickets.

And then in the season pass, it's varied probably anywhere from $2.50 to $5 in most locations, and maybe a little bit more in a couple of the more significant parks.

But certainly price levels that -- and season passes have not inhibited our pass sales at all, so we feel good about that.

Great.

Thanks.

David Miller, Sanders Morris Harris.

Hello.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Sorry about that.

I was having some audio problems here.

Could you guys just quickly address the Dan Schneider situation?

Have you talked to Mr. Schneider?

He filed an amended 13 D, I believe, a couple of weeks ago, issuing some language in there with regard to accumulating shares, possible hostile take over, at least that's the way the market treated it on the day that he made the filing.

Could you talk about that?

Where do you stand in your relationship with Mr. Schneider?

Thanks.

Well, David, I'd start off by saying I don't think that that's necessarily representative of his filing, which is not really for me to try to interpret his filing.

But I think that if you read the letter that he filed, it's extremely broad.

And includes just about any specific action you could take from selling shares, buying shares, buying assets, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So I think what it did really was to set out a very broad boiler plate that kind of gave him maximum flexibility to determine what he chooses to do as he goes forward.

So I think that's really what the filing did.

Second, we've not had any contact from Mr. Schneider since that filing nor for several months prior to that.

And as you would recall, we did meet with him both as management, independent directors, but we have heard nothing since nor have we ever received any concrete proposals that either the board or management felt could move the business forward.

So we're really not getting very hung up on that, frankly.

We're paying strict attention to our program, our plan, which we put in place in the end of the '03 season, which we think is really starting to bear fruit.

Obviously, we're very early here, so we've got to make it happen throughout the course of '05.

But that's where our focus is.

It's really banging out what we think is a very rational plan that would really deliver growth for the Company on a sustained basis and benefit all shareholders alike.

So that's where our focus is.

Okay.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Thank you, David.

Thank you.

There appear to be no further questions at this time.

Okay.

Well, thank you, everyone, for joining us on the call and for your attention, and we look forward to reporting to you as we proceed in the season.

Thank you.

Thank you for your participation.

This does conclude today's teleconference.

You may disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day.