United Parks: Buybacks, Assets, and a Missing Plan

United Parks & Resorts reported fiscal 2025 results this week; Revenue, attendance, net income, EBITDA were all down. "Our fiscal 2025 results did not meet our expectations. While the consumer environment was uneven and our results were impacted by negative international tourism trends and volatile weather during certain peak visitation periods, we should have delivered better results, particularly on the cost side of the income statement," CEO Marc Swanson said during the earnings call. The earnings call, however, spent relatively little time on what went wrong in the parks. Instead, the company debuted a supplemental investor presentation focused on the value of its real estate, the replacement cost of its assets, and why the stock is undervalued. The company has spent $247 million on stock buybacks over the past 14 months, while cutting expansion CapEx nearly in half.Watch bonus episodes on Patreon.