Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EPS Exceed Company's Earnings Guidance and Consensus Analyst Estimates
Great Wolf Resorts, Inc. (NASDAQ:WOLF) , North America's leading family of indoor waterpark resorts, today reported results for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2007.
Highlights
• Achieved Adjusted EBITDA of $11.5 million and Adjusted net loss per share of $(0.05) for the 2007 fourth quarter, resulting in full year 2007 amounts of $51.1 million of Adjusted EBITDA and $0.03 of Adjusted EPS, exceeding both consensus analyst estimates and the top end of the company's earnings guidance for the quarter and the full year.
• Generated seventh consecutive quarter of same store RevPAR improvement, with Great Wolf Lodge(R) brand same store Total RevPAR up 6.6 percent compared to the same period last year, and have seen an increase in same store rooms sold / booked in the first quarter of 2008 compared to the first quarter of 2007.
• Opened the 402-suite Great Wolf Lodge resort in Grapevine, Texas in December, featuring the state's largest indoor waterpark. Also broke ground on construction of a 203-suite and 20,000 square-foot meeting space expansion to the newly-opened resort. Achieved 25,000 sold and future booked rooms on the new resort to date.
• Broke ground on construction of a 402-suite Great Wolf Lodge resort in Concord, N.C. in October 2007.
• Completed a significant expansion of the Traverse City, Mich., Great Wolf Lodge in the 2007 fourth quarter, adding 9,000 square feet of meeting space.
• Capitalized on increased emphasis on group sales at resorts, resulting in a 35 percent year-over-year increase in same store total number of group rooms sold / booked through February 18, 2008.
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The company reported a 2007 fourth quarter net loss of $(7.7) million, or $(0.25) per diluted share, compared to a net loss of $(49.0) million, or $(1.61) per diluted share in last year's fourth quarter. Fourth quarter 2006 operating results included the impact of a pre-tax, $51.0 million goodwill impairment charge and the related effect on income taxes.
Fourth Quarter Operating Results
"Our portfolio of resorts continued to perform well, providing operating results that exceeded both the top end of our earnings guidance and consensus analyst estimates for the fourth quarter," said John Emery, chief executive officer. "We continued our seven-quarter string of strong year-over-year same store revenue per available room (RevPAR) growth. We believe this is due in large part to the impact of our targeted marketing and our continued focus on great guest service, a feature at the core of our business. Our fourth quarter is heavily dependent upon holiday activities, and our business appears to have held up better than certain other companies which are dependent on discretionary consumer spending. We believe this clearly demonstrates the advantage of our business model: providing a high-quality, drive-to, destination family resort experience."
The company reported fourth quarter Adjusted EBITDA of $11.5 million and Adjusted EPS of $(0.05), resulting in full year 2007 amounts of $51.1 million of Adjusted EBITDA and $0.03 of Adjusted EPS. The company's 2007 fourth quarter Adjusted EBITDA increased 40 percent over the 2006 period.
The company's newest resort, located in Grapevine, Texas, opened in December 2007. "We are pleased with the early consumer demand for our new resort in Grapevine," Emery commented. "The initial booking patterns for the resort have been strong, with Grapevine having the second highest total bookings among our resorts in January. To date, we have approximately 25,000 rooms sold or on the books for Grapevine since its mid-December opening, a pace significantly ahead of the totals for our Williamsburg and Mason resorts for the same time periods following their respective openings.
"Our Grapevine resort reflects the continuing evolution of our brand to encompass an increasingly wide array of activities designed to entertain all members of the family," Emery added. The Grapevine resort includes the company's newest amenity, gr8_space(TM), a 1,200 square-foot interactive family tech center. gr8_space features multiple computer stations offering family-friendly Internet access, docking stations for digital music players, as well as multiple gaming stations. Additionally, gr8_space features family events, like rock star karaoke and family challenge games. "We are excited to add this gr8_space concept in Grapevine and we expect to incorporate it into our future resorts as well," Emery said. "We think the presentation of technology in a family-friendly atmosphere further increases the attractiveness of our resort to 'tweens' who visit our resort." The company is evaluating adding the gr8_space amenity to existing resorts, with plans to add it to its Williamsburg resort in 2008.
"We continue to look for ways to enhance our existing properties," Emery noted. "For example, in the 2007 fourth quarter, we completed the last phase of enhancements to our Traverse City resort. This included the completion of a 9,000 square-foot, full-service conference facility, capable of handling groups ranging from 10 - 270. We believe this will generate more mid-week group business, as well as support reunions and other large family and social get-togethers."
The company also noted its continuing emphasis on growing group business throughout its resorts as a complement to its core leisure business. "Group sales are an attractive opportunity for us to build mid-week occupancy rates," Emery commented. "Through today, our system-wide group rooms sold or booked are running more than 13,000 rooms, or 35 percent, ahead of last year, with the largest increases coming from Mason (6,500 rooms, up 164 percent), Traverse City (2,300 rooms, up 48 percent) and Sheboygan (1,700 rooms, up 20 percent)."
The company added the interactive, live-action, fantasy adventure game, MagiQuest(TM), to its Mason resort in the fourth quarter, bringing to six the number of resorts that offer the popular attraction. Earlier in 2007, the company made an investment in Creative Kingdoms, LLC, developers of MagiQuest. "Throughout the past year, we have been constantly refining and upgrading our product offering within our resort portfolio," Emery said. "As we develop our new resorts, we will look to incorporate our various enhancements -- such as the gr8_space family tech center, Scooops (R) Kid Spa, minigolf, increased meeting space, larger food and beverage and retail outlets, and MagiQuest -- to provide an increasingly robust experience for all of our guests."
The company noted that the operating environment at its upper Midwest properties continues to be impacted by ongoing difficulties of the U.S. automobile industry companies. "We expect a few of our markets, particularly those for our Sandusky and Traverse City locations, will continue to feel the effects of the auto industry problems and remain difficult for at least the next few quarters," Emery noted.
Fourth quarter 2007 operating statistics for the company's portfolio of Great Wolf Lodge resorts were as follows:
Same Store Comparison (a)
Q4 Q4 Increase (Decrease)
2007 2006 $ %
(a) Same store comparison includes only Great Wolf Lodge resorts that were
open for all of both Q4 2007 and Q4 2006.
Construction Update
The company hosted the grand opening of its 402-suite Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine, Texas on January 10, 2008. In November 2007, the company broke ground on a 203-suite addition and a 20,000 square-foot meeting facility at the Grapevine resort. "Much of the resort's initial infrastructure was designed to support 600+ suites because of the significant size of the Dallas/Ft. Worth metropolitan market," Emery commented. "Based upon our forecasts of market demand, we accelerated the construction of the planned expansion." The addition is a connecting wing to the existing resort structure and is being built without disruption to current guests. "We expect the first phase of the expansion to open in December 2008," Emery added.
The 398-suite Great Wolf Lodge in Grand Mound, Wash., remains on schedule to open in March 2008. That resort is owned by a joint venture between a subsidiary of Great Wolf Resorts and the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation. The resort is located adjacent to Interstate 5, the major highway link between Portland and Seattle/Tacoma. "This is the first major indoor waterpark resort in that region," Emery said. "Pre-opening interest is strong, especially since we expect to open just before the region's spring break period."
In the fourth quarter, the company broke ground on the 402-suite Great Wolf Lodge resort in Concord, N.C., near Charlotte, off of Speedway Boulevard and Interstate 85 and near the Lowes Motor Speedway and Concord Mills Mall. The resort will include a 98,000 square-foot indoor entertainment area, featuring what will be the state's largest indoor waterpark, 20,000 square feet of meeting space, multiple food outlets, a confectionary cafe, a spa and Scooops Kid Spa, a children's craft and activity room, a game arcade, MagiQuest, an 18-hole outdoor miniature golf course, gr8_space, a fitness room, a gift emporium, and an animated clock tower. The property is expected to open in Spring 2009. "The nearby Lowes Motor Speedway recently announced it will invest $200 million to expand its facilities," Emery said. "We believe this will further enhance the destination aspects of the area and create more year-round events which will attract more leisure travelers to the area and increase demand for our resort."
The company noted that the pace of construction cost increases on its projects that commenced in 2007 appears to have moderated somewhat. "As we have noted in the past and similar to other companies involved in the construction of large commercial projects, we have seen steeply increased construction costs over the past two-three years," Emery noted. "We are focused on and committed to controlling and mitigating these construction cost increases in our construction and development projects. Our current projection of construction costs for our projects that commenced in the fourth quarter -- our Concord resort and Grapevine expansion -- are still in line with our initial estimates.
"Even in the recent rising construction cost environment, our portfolio returns continued to be healthy," Emery added. "For our Great Wolf Lodge brand consolidated resorts open more than 18 months as of December 31, 2007, we achieved an unlevered return (calculated as Adjusted EBITDA divided by the average net book value of property and equipment) of more than 14 percent for 2007. For 2008, we project a portfolio unlevered return on those same resorts of approximately 16 percent, assuming the mid-point of our full-year earnings guidance. We are targeting for our newer assets to eventually achieve reasonably similar returns following their ramp-up."
Development Update
"We continue to work on the development of several projects which are currently under letters of intent," Emery said. These include: a Great Wolf Lodge resort at the Mall of America(R), located in Bloomington, Minn., a joint venture with the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation to develop a Great Wolf Lodge resort of up to 700 suites on tribal-owned land near its southeast Connecticut reservation and Foxwoods Resort Casino, and a Great Wolf Lodge resort on the shores of Lake Lanier, near Atlanta, Ga. "All three of these projects, along with others in our development pipeline, are in the early planning stages. We continue to be focused on high-quality opportunities like these, although it is difficult to predict the precise timing or approval of these potential projects as they move through the development process and into the construction phase," he added.
The company's domestic development is concentrated primarily on the East and West Coasts in markets near large population centers. International development opportunities are currently focused principally on Canada, Europe and Asia. The company's preferred model for international development is for third-party ownership of international projects, with the company licensing its brand concept to third-party owners, as well as possibly management and other consulting assignments.
Emery noted that, at any one time, the company has identified approximately two dozen potential development sites and is in the due diligence process on a number of them. "Our resorts are large and complex, so we are working with a number of different governmental agencies in the entitlement process, which takes time. We continue to feel that unit growth is the best way to expand our brand presence more rapidly. But we will only pursue opportunities where we feel that both marketplace demand is sufficient and we can reasonably expect to obtain capital funding for the debt and equity portions of the project.
"We believe we are well-positioned despite the recent constraints in the capital markets," he continued. "The fallout from the subprime loan crisis has constricted borrowing opportunities for smaller companies and may benefit us by limiting the entry of competition. This impact on potential new competition allows us to continue to build our brand recognition, which we believe may provide us a long-term competitive advantage by helping us create national awareness for our resorts."
Capital Structure and Liquidity
In February 2008, the company obtained a $55 million mortgage loan secured by its Great Wolf Lodge resort in Williamsburg. The loan has a one-year term and bears interest at a floating rate of LIBOR plus 300 basis points, with a minimum rate of 6.50 percent per annum.
"We closed on this loan to add liquidity to our balance sheet," said James A. Calder, chief financial officer. "We think closing on a loan like this in a tough debt market is a positive reflection on our company. As we have noted previously, our strategy continues to be ensuring that our liquidity is more than sufficient to achieve our current development objectives."
"As we have mentioned before, given the number of development opportunities we have, we expect to use joint ventures or licensing arrangements for certain projects," Emery noted. "We feel that our Grand Mound and Niagara Falls properties have shown the benefits of incorporating the joint venture and licensing strategies into our business model. We are currently in discussions on possible joint venture arrangements for each of our planned future resorts. We believe joint venture and licensing strategies provide a good opportunity for us to continue to meet our brand growth objectives, even in the current constrained capital environment."
"Our current construction projects are the expansion of our existing Grapevine resort (first phase expected to open at the end of 2008) and our new Concord resort (expected to open in Spring 2009)," Calder said. "Through the Concord resort construction timeline, assuming no other borrowings from this point other than the expected construction loan for Concord, our primary sources of capital to fund these projects are a combination of cash on hand, cash provided by operations and the Concord construction loan. We expect these potential sources to exceed $200 million through the completion of the Concord resort. Our expected remaining cash requirements for these two projects over the same period total approximately $150 million. With more than $50 million of expected sources of capital in excess of expected uses, we feel we are well-positioned to execute our current projects."
"Additionally, we believe we will have, over the next 12-18 months, more than $100 million of liquidity through borrowing capacity on our unlevered or lower-levered assets," Emery noted. "We believe this potential additional liquidity source provides us with a comfortable cushion as we navigate through the choppy current capital market environment."
"We are currently working with our lead lender to finalize a construction loan of approximately $90 million for our Concord resort," Calder noted. "The lead lender on this loan has historically been the largest construction lender in the indoor waterpark industry. The Concord construction loan is the fourth resort financing we have done with this lender. Their process to complete the financing is moving forward as anticipated and we expect to close on the loan within the next 60 days."
At year-end 2007, the company had $18.6 million of unrestricted cash. More than 83 percent of the company's long-term debt was effectively fixed with a weighted average interest rate of 7.1 percent and an average debt maturity of 9.0 years.
Key Financial Data
As of December 31, 2007, Great Wolf Resorts had:
-- Total cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash of $20.9 million
-- Total secured debt of $315.8 million.
-- Total unsecured debt of $80.6 million.
-- Weighted average cost of total debt of 7.1 percent.
-- Weighted average debt maturity of 9.0 years.
-- Total construction in progress for consolidated resorts and other projects currently under construction but not yet opened of $19.7 million
Outlook and Guidance
"Our resort portfolio continues to produce year-over-year, same-store RevPAR growth," Emery said. "We think our product offering may have greater recession resistance than other entertainment venues. We believe our resorts can continue to be a reasonably-priced, convenient family vacation alternative. The all-in cost for a family vacation at one of our resorts is substantially lower than flying to a destination resort with a major entertainment component, and weather is not an issue."
The company provides the following outlook and earnings guidance for the 2008 first quarter and full year 2008 (amounts in thousands, except per share data). The outlook and earnings guidance information is based on the company's current outlook of business conditions, including consumer demand and discretionary spending trends, as of February 20, 2008. As in the past, the company does not anticipate updating its guidance again until next quarter's earnings release. The company may, however, update any portion of its business outlook at any time as conditions dictate:
Q1 2008 Full year 2008
Low High Low High
Net income (loss) $(3,330) $(2,130) $(17,790) $(12,990)
Net income (loss) per
diluted share $(0.11) $(0.07) $(0.58) $(0.42)
Adjusted EBITDA (a) $17,500 $19,500 $62,000 $70,000
Adjusted net income
(loss) (a) $(0.05) $(0.01) $(0.45) $(0.30)
Adjusted net income
(loss) per diluted
share $(0.05) $(0.01) $(0.45) $(0.30)
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Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EPS Exceed Company's Earnings Guidance and Consensus Analyst Estimates
