Why do PE firms like theme parks?
Hi guys:
I’ve been going through PE fund’s portfolio companies listed on their websites, and a few top notch funds have theme parks/resorts in their portfolio- why are these assets good targets for PE? Wouldn’t they be fairly volatile during recession? Thank you
Some of these places are actually pretty poorly run which leads to significant opportunity for your standard PE operational improvements. Some of it is pretty basic like just modernizing their social media presence. Huge ability to leverage tech to better track and monetize user data.
Sea World, for example, used to not be able to tell when season pass ticket holders come and what they buy (sure, were swiping in at different locations, but that info wasn't being tracked), had a non-existent email program, no real CRM database - essentially no idea how to collect or manage data, let alone gather insights from that data for higher monetization.
And depending on the park, a very high % of customers are local / regional - most parks other than like Disney World are mostly attended by people who live fairly close by. So some parks actually fare pretty well in a downturn because instead of flying to a different country / state or doing a big blowout vacation, people still want to have fun and take time off, so theme parks are a relatively affordable way to do that.
this is an interesting write-up - thanks!
Yeah that's a good thought but like the other poster said theme parks (as well as movie theatres) tend to outperform other assets in recessions.
Delete
Some were bought during a recession :)
Thanks guys!
You must be this tall to afford to replicate the assets
Limited competition and enormous margins on concessions. An old boss of mine used to be the CIO of a series of funds which invested in a few water parks - he said they made boatloads of cash due by increasing F&B sales.
I thought a bunch of those deals ended up in restructuring. My guess is underestimating maintenance capex
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