Six Flags Entertainment Corporation is one of the largest regional amusement and resort operators in North America. The current company was created through the July 2024 merger of the former Six Flags and Cedar Fair, combining two established amusement-park platforms. The historical Six Flags business traces its origins to 1961, ...Six Flags Entertainment Corporation is one of the largest regional amusement and resort operators in North America. The current company was created through the July 2024 merger of the former Six Flags and Cedar Fair, combining two established amusement-park platforms. The historical Six Flags business traces its origins to 1961, when Six Flags Over Texas opened in Arlington, Texas. The merged company is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, and is led by President and Chief Executive Officer John T. Reilly.
The company’s operating model centers on owning and managing destination-based leisure properties. Its portfolio includes approximately 20 amusement parks, 14 water parks, and nine resort properties across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, with the broader operating footprint described as including roughly 42 properties. Individual assets can include major theme parks, seasonal amusement parks, stand-alone water parks, hotels, and associated entertainment venues. Representative brands and properties include Six Flags Magic Mountain, Six Flags Great Adventure, Six Flags Over Texas, Knott’s Berry Farm, Canada’s Wonderland, Kings Island, and California’s Great America.
Six Flags generates revenue primarily from admission tickets, season passes, memberships, food and beverage sales, merchandise, games, parking, sponsorships, licensing, and hotel or resort stays. The company uses well-known entertainment brands, including DC Comics, Looney Tunes, and PEANUTS, to support themed attractions and strengthen customer appeal. Its value proposition combines thrill rides and roller coasters with family-oriented attractions, water parks, live entertainment, and seasonal events such as Halloween and holiday programs.
As a service and leisure company, Six Flags does not have a conventional manufacturing bill of materials. Its major operating cost drivers include employee wages, seasonal staffing, ride maintenance, insurance, utilities, park repairs, food and merchandise inventory, marketing, property operations, capital expenditures, and debt service. The business is highly seasonal, with attendance and cash generation generally concentrated in the warmer months and holiday periods. Seasonal attendance, weather, consumer discretionary spending, pricing, pass-holder retention, and park capacity utilization are important performance variables.
The supplied financial snapshot reports approximately $1.67 billion in market capitalization and $6.70 billion in enterprise value. It also shows substantial leverage, negative trailing net income, negative EBITDA, a current ratio below one, and significant interest and debt-service pressure. These figures indicate that integration execution, operating improvement, attendance growth, pricing, cost control, and balance-sheet management are central financial priorities. Management’s strategic opportunities include combining the legacy park networks, improving guest spending, expanding memberships and season passes, upgrading attractions, increasing hotel utilization, realizing merger synergies, and strengthening free cash flow. The company reported 4,225 full-time employees; its total workforce is materially larger when seasonal and part-time employees are included, reflecting the labor-intensive nature of theme-park operations.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen thank you for standing by. My name is Desiree, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the Six Flags Entertainment Corporation 2026 First Quarter Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Six Flags' management for opening remarks. Go ahead please.
Michael Russell: Good morning and welcome to Six Flags Entertainment Corporation's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. I'm Michael Russell Six Flags' Head of IR. On the call with me today are John Reilly President and Chief Executive Officer; Brian Witherow; and Dave Hoffman Chief Accounting Officer and Interim Finance Lead. Before we begin I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made during this call may be forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described. Please refer to our earnings release and SEC filings for a discussion of those risks. Today's call will begin with prepared remarks from John followed by Dave after which John will return for closing remarks. We will then open the call for questions. With that I'll turn the call over to John. John?
John Reilly: Thank you Michael and good morning. Before discussing the quarter I want to address the leadership changes we announced this morning. We have made targeted adjustments across key areas of our senior leadership team including finance administration and marketing to better align our organization with our strategic priorities going forward. We thank Brian for his many years of service and contributions to this company. Dave Hoffman our Chief Accounting Officer will step in on a temporary basis to lead the finance organization. I am confident Dave will help make this a smooth transition. Since stepping into the role of CEO I've worked with the team to take deliberate actions to strengthen the company's strategic and financial positioning including the sale of noncore assets, monetization of excess land and refinancing of our balance sheet. These actions, together with the leadership actions we are implementing, position us to execute against our core operating objectives. Turning to the quarter. We delivered meaningful year-over-year improvement driven by higher attendance, increased guest spending and disciplined cost management. While the first quarter is seasonally limited with only a subset of parks open, including our parks in California, Mexico and Texas, the strong first quarter results demonstrate the resilience of our operating model and progress against our priorities. Before getting into the drivers of the quarter, I do want to acknowledge that results benefited from the earlier timing of Easter and spring break as well as more normalized operating conditions in California relative to the disruption that we experienced in the prior year. While these factors helped, first quarter …