Ardent Leisure Group HY19 Financial Results

[Jamberoo Fan]

Ardent Leisure Group announced today that it will announce it's HY19 Financial Results on Friday 22nd of February 2019 at 10am (AEDT).

This should be an interesting announcement on 22nd of February given how DW's state has changed since the last financial results were released - their major new ride, SkyVoyager, has still not opened & ride operating hours are reducing. All the answers to these issues should be answered during that announcement.

And it should be more interesting if the Thunder River Rapids Incident Coronial Inquest Findings are released prior to then or coincidentally, at the same time.

[aaronm]

Will be grabbing the popcorn for this one. They can’t even blame the weather this year...

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

"unprecedented floods in townsville last week have impacted on the park's Q2 profitability"

[Brad2912]

“The opening of the Coomera town centre 500m from our door has awoken the locals to the fact that something exists outside of Dreamworld to keep them entertained. We’re screwed”. 

[Jdude95]

The inquest findings are still a few months off unfortunately so it most likely wont hit them for this financial report.

[pushbutton]

So can anyone guess when they might actually make the announcement then. Will it be this financial year, or maybe next? 

To be on the safe (ish) side, I reckon it'll be about 2022. Maybe in August. 

On a more serious note, maybe it will actually include some sort of information on what's going on with SkyVoyager! 

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

18 minutes ago, pushbutton said:

So can anyone guess when they might actually make the announcement then. Will it be this financial year, or maybe next? 

To be on the safe (ish) side, I reckon it'll be about 2022. Maybe in August. 

On a more serious note, maybe it will actually include some sort of information on what's going on with SkyVoyager! 

Hi @pushbutton. We're excited to announce that we will soon announce when we will be making the announcement about our announcement day. It will be in the coming weeks.

But what does "in the coming weeks" mean?

Technically, and according to our marketing department, August 2022 is technically within "the coming weeks" - but then so is October 2047... all of these are made up of several 7 day periods, meeting the plural "weeks" and they are all coming... eventually.

Our legal department assures us that we can continue to say 'in the coming weeks' as those weeks will eventually come, unless the world ends. They've cautioned us that we could technically be sued for false advertising if that happens, but as we'll all be boiling in a primordial soup of lava and microorganisms, we're confident that people would have a hard time finding a lawyer to take the case.

[Jamberoo Fan]

On 06/02/2019 at 7:11 PM, Jamberoo Fan said:

This should be an interesting announcement on 22nd of February given how DW's state has changed since the last financial results were released - their major new ride, SkyVoyager, has still not opened & ride operating hours are reducing. All the answers to these issues should be answered during that announcement.

16 days later & SkyVoyager is still not opened. 10am is when the results are released, which is not far away. When the results are released, how many think Ardent will explain why SkyVoyager still has not opened or why they are reducing ride operating hours?

Edited February 21, 2019 by Jamberoo Fan

[New display name]

9 hours ago, Jamberoo Fan said:

how many think Ardent will explain why SkyVoyager

zero

9 hours ago, Jamberoo Fan said:

why they are reducing ride operating hours?

zero

[Brad2912]

Yep.. just listening in. 

Someone has just asked in the first question.

SV - construction was 4-6 weeks behind needed for Christmas. Ride is finished except for some defects which are being resolved before the ride can be registered. They hope this will happen “in the near future” 

 

capital light focus on entertainment offerings to bring local/pass holders into the park more

master plan underway with focus to increase profitability on a much smaller footprint - analysing what/how land can be utilised for commercial and residential development. 

$5m per annum reduction in expenses (read: less staff, less operating hours)

[Vidgamer]

2H19 Theme Park priorities include: i) Dreamworld to target break even EBITDA in Q4 FY19, ii) opening Sky Voyager, iii) implement capital-light events and entertainment, and iv) continual improvement in safety management.

After showing signs of growth in FY18 Theme Park visitation declined during the Coronial Inquest hearings that were held between Jun-Dec 18.

Extended our existing credit facility to February 2020 and in advanced stages of establishing increased funding for execution of the Group’s medium term growth strategies of both the Main Event and Theme Parks businesses.

Results for the current period continue to be impacted by Dreamworld incident costs due to coronial inquest hearings, as well as non-recurring restructuring costs in Main Event, Theme Parks and Corporate.

Prior period results were significantly impacted by a write-down in the value of Dreamworld following the incident in October 2016, together with the impact of the sale of businesses. 

Theme Parks:

Masterplan underway

Vision

 Theme Park with world class rides and attractions
 Water Park with world class slides and leisure areas
 Innovative animal displays with a focus on the conservation of koalas and tigers
 Showcase of indigenous culture and history
 Indoor and outdoor event and entertainment spaces
 In-house and branded F&B and retail outlets
 Hotel and/or other short term accommodation options
 

 Our new world class attraction, Sky Voyager is expected to open during 2H19 (this is financial year)

 

This is all sourced from the Ardent appendix on the site.

 

Edited February 21, 2019 by Lukevl

[Brad2912]

No other majors rides or attractions planned currently though the master plan will include a roll out strategy when it is completed

[New display name]

21 minutes ago, Brad2912 said:

Ride is finished except for some defects.

Some defects. 😉

 

Ardent are also pretending nobody remembers WWW's lazy river project that has now been killed off.  

Edited February 21, 2019 by Skeeta

[Gold Coast Amusement Force]

Do we know for sure it has been killed off because they already had earth works done. 

[themagician]

I’d say it’s not killed off, just on hold/they are going to try and lower the cost of the attraction. If I were them, I’d remove any animal aspects of the ride they were going to be include, and just purely create a lazy river, with a possible rapids section or route on the course. Make it feel like a tropical get away, and add immersive theming and facilities 

[pushbutton]

To my knowledge, there was never a plan for a lazy river. However there is a plan to construct an adventure river in Whitewater World, which as far as I know is still happening.

 

[New display name]

7 minutes ago, Gold Coast Amusement Force said:

Do we know for sure it has been killed off because they already had earth works done. 

 

3 minutes ago, Parkz News said:

There's no new major rides or attractions coming to Dreamworld after Sky Voyager

Dreamworld's owners have pulled the plug on future expansion plans that were meant to total more than $50 million dollars following disappointing half-year results.

Click here to continue reading

 

[Gold Coast Amusement Force]

Article posted after my comment

[Jobe]

5 minutes ago, pushbutton said:

To my knowledge, there was never a plan for a lazy river. However there is a plan to construct an adventure river in Whitewater World, which as far as I know is still happening.

 

Pretty sure that we ascertained that Dreamworld's "Adventure River" was going to be merely a Lazy river with animal displays. Nothing really adventurous about it. And now even that is off the table.

[themagician]

If SV is opening in the 2H19, does that mean its opening some time in the next 3-4 months?

[New display name]

14 minutes ago, pushbutton said:

To my knowledge, there was never a plan for a lazy river. However there is a plan to construct an adventure river in Whitewater World, which as far as I know is still happening.

 

No it was only a plain sponge cake with no icing on the top.

8 minutes ago, Gold Coast Amusement Force said:

Article posted after my comment

Correct.

[Brad2912]

13 minutes ago, themagician said:

If SV is opening in the 2H19, does that mean its opening some time in the next 3-4 months?

Apparently... depends how long it takes to fix the defects... nothing like spending $20m+ and your ride can’t be registered due to defects....

[aaronm]

Capital light = "we're going to spend as little as possible and hope nobody notices"

So basically the same strategy they've been running with for the last two decades.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

7 hours ago, Brad2912 said:

They hope this will happen “in the near future coming weeks” 

Fixed.

6 hours ago, Gold Coast Amusement Force said:

Do we know for sure it has been killed off because they already had earth works done. 

Pay no attention to the earthworks behind the curtain. We weren't building anything - just moving dirt to build a drainage hill behind Sky Voyager. The hill is definitely not a previously proposed ampitheatre either, and its to drain the mist effects away from Sky Voyager, to rectify the defective issues with the mist effects where we accidentally installed fire sprinklers instead.

6 hours ago, themagician said:

If SV is opening in the 2H19, does that mean its opening some time in the next 3-4 months?

In the coming weeks.

[GoGoBoy]

It’s a pity Ardent don’t look at Dreamworld’s own history books to realise that each major turning point for DW in terms of a positive trajectory for profits and attendance came about with the introduction of major new attractions... Wipeout, Tower of Terror, Nickelodeon Land. The answer does not lie in retreat.

Edited February 22, 2019 by GoGoBoy