Vail Resorts CEO Defends Ownership Model On Podcast

Days after Semafor reported that an activist investor was considering a proxy fight to shake up Vail Resorts' board and explore selling off the company's ski resorts, CEO Rob Katz used his Epic By Nature podcast to explain why he believes an owned-and-operated network of mountains was at the "heart" of the Vail Resorts business model.



"That network is what has enabled our success over the past nearly 20 years," he said in the podcast. "It's what made the Epic Pass possible that reshaped the global ski industry, but more importantly, it's what will allow us to innovate across our resorts."



"We just don't see how it makes any sense for us whatsoever to sell our resorts," Katz said later.



Citing anonymous sources, the Semafor story published on June 18 reported that Oasis Capital Management was behind the idea of a possible board change and a sell-off of Vail Resorts' ski areas. The investor has a sizable stake in Vail Resorts of almost 8%, according to the Colorado Sun.



Another Semafor article, published the same day, also reported that Vail Resorts was working with takeover-defense bankers to help it assess its vulnerabilities.



In both articles, Semafor reported that Vail Resorts didn't return requests for comment. And, in the Epic By Nature podcast episode, Katz said that Vail Resorts has "not hired anybody, bankers or otherwise, to try and, you know, defend ourselves."



"It's not something we're spending any time on, because where we're focused is on running the business; we are focused on operational excellence," Katz continued.

The Semafor stories join the ongoing saga of Matthew Prince, a tech billionaire who's continued to prod Vail Resorts in the hopes of the company selling Park City Mountain, Utah, to him.



Over the past several years, Vail Resorts has grown from owning five ski resorts to 42, becoming a titan in the snow business. That roster of ski resorts, Katz said in Epic By Nature, is "one of our biggest strengths as a company."



He called that vast network "critical" as Vail Resorts launched the now-massively popular Epic Pass, which provides access to the company's owned ski areas and some partners' resorts.



"If we were going to offer people a product that they had to buy before the season, we knew that the more resorts we could put on the pass, the better," Katz said. By owning such a big stable of ski resorts, Katz said, Vail Resorts facilitated a "more rapid progression" for employees' careers.



"They could join as a lift operator in one resort, they could move up to a lift supervisor in another resort, they could move up to management in another resort," he said.

Katz said that when Vail Resorts is looking to promote a new COO or general manager at a ski area, 95% of the time the hires come from within, "because we've created this incredible progression for people."



Katz also addressed the model used by other multi-passes, some of which rely more heavily on partners rather than owned ski areas. Vail Resorts' main competitor, Alterra Mountain Company, for example, owns 17 ski resorts but, with its Ikon Pass partners, offers access to over 70 ski resorts.



Why doesn't Vail Resorts want to take that approach?



"When you have a partnership model, you're only getting a very small percentage of the revenue that comes from season passes," Katz said, which he explained can make tweaking the price of passes difficult. He cited Vail Resorts' newly released, cheaper young adult pass as an example of what the company can do as an owner and an operator. At $889, that pass costs about $550 less than Ikon's flagship offering and is available to skiers aged 18 to 30.



"You also have a little bit of diffusion, right, where you have the central pass partner marketing their pass, but then you also have each individual resort marketing their own pass," Katz said, offering what he saw as another challenge associated with the partnership model.



He added that, under the partnership model, a company can't control lift ticket prices or the marketing of those lift tickets at individual resorts. This "means that you're not collecting the data, you don't know who's skiing at the resort, it's hard to know how or where or to who to market to," he said.

With season pass sales slowing, "going forward it's not really about passes alone," Katz said. "It's about how you market lift tickets and passes, and actually one of the big growth areas for us is lift tickets."



As for selling Park City Mountain, Katz, as he has in the past, held fast, and shared another barrier beyond his company wanting to hang on to the resort: he said that Vail Resorts has no right to sell Park City because it's a tenant on the land with a 300-year lease.



"It's always been kind of a silly conversation on every front," Katz said. "It doesn't make sense strategically, and it's just not feasible for a company like ours to just start selling off resorts one by one."



Prince, for his part, didn't miss the opportunity to take an apparent jab at Vail Resorts after the podcast episode aired.



"If you're explaining, you're losing," he wrote in a social media post referencing Epic By Nature. He signed off the message with a hashtag that read "rent free."



You can find the entire Epic By Nature episode by following this link.

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