Full Transcript: Vail Resorts Q4 2026 Earnings Call

Vail Resorts (NYSE: MTN ) reported fourth-quarter financial results on Monday. The transcript from the company's fourth-quarter earnings call has been provided below. APIs provide real-time access to earnings call transcripts and financial data. Visit to learn more.

View the webcast at Summary Vail Resorts reported a challenging fiscal 2026 due to adverse weather but highlighted the resilience of its business model, achieving record guest satisfaction despite the conditions. Key strategic initiatives include the Advanced Commitment Strategy, Resource Efficiency Transformation Plan, and the new Epic Experience growth strategy aimed at enhancing guest engagement and operational efficiency. Fiscal 2026 resort reported EBITDA was $746 million, in line with expectations despite weather impacts, and the company is guiding for fiscal 2027 resort reported EBITDA of $805 million to $865 million.

Pass sales declined by 12%, but the company believes this is due to delayed decision-making by customers rather than a decrease in skiing intent, with potential recovery through lift ticket sales. Vail Resorts plans significant capital investments, including new lift infrastructure at Park City Mountain, and continues to focus on marketing and pricing strategies to capture market share. The company is leveraging AI for operational efficiency and guest engagement, aiming to create a seamless, personalized experience.

Management anticipates a recovery in visitation for fiscal 2027, though not fully to fiscal 2025 levels, with a focus on capturing uncommitted guests through strategic pricing and marketing. Full Transcript OPERATOR Please stand by. Your meeting is about to begin. Good afternoon, and welcome to the Vail Resorts Fiscal 2026 fourth quarter and year-end earnings conference call.

Today's conference is being recorded. Currently, all callers have been placed in a listen-only mode, and following management's prepared remarks, the call will be open to your questions. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you need to remove yourself from the queue, press star 2.

To get to as many questions as time permits, we ask you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up at any time. Should you need operator assistance, please press 0. I will now turn the call over to Connie Wang, Vice President of Investor Relations at Vail Resorts. You may begin.

Connie Wang, Vice President of Investor Relations Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Vail Resorts Fiscal 2026 fourth quarter earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today are Rob Katz, our Chief Executive Officer, and Angela Korch, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, let me remind you that some information provided during this call may include forward-looking statements that are based on certain assumptions and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties as described in our Annual Report on Form 10-K, and actual future results may vary materially.

Forward-looking statements in our press release issued this afternoon, along with our remarks on this call, are made as of today, September 28, 2026, and we undertake no duty to update them as actual events unfold. Today's remarks also include certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these measures are provided in the tables included with our press release, which, along with our Annual Report on Form 10-K, were filed this afternoon with the SEC and are also available on the Investor Relations section of our website at I would now like to turn the call over to Rob for opening remarks. Rob Katz, Chief Executive Officer Thank you, Connie.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our fourth quarter earnings call. Looking back at fiscal 2026, while it was an exceptionally challenging weather year, it also demonstrated the resilience of our business model that was intentionally built over time. In particular, our Advanced Commitment Strategy and Resource Efficiency Transformation Plan delivered meaningful stability that enabled us to stay focused on our long-term objectives. The year also underscored the value of the investments we've made in our people, operations, and the guest experience.

Even in a difficult weather environment, we achieved record guest satisfaction scores and strong employee engagement and retention, demonstrating the importance of the investments we've made in talent and strong execution across the business. That said, we recognize that our stock price performance has been disappointing over the last couple of years, and the Board and company are not standing still.

Over the past 18 months, we have accelerated the pace of change across the organization as we strengthened our leadership team with a new CEO and Chief Revenue Officer, added a new board member with extensive hospitality experience, revamped our marketing approach including increasing marketing spend, adjusting channel mix, elevating resort branding and messaging, and optimizing products and pricing. We also expanded our Resource Efficiency transformation program by $30 million and launched a new company-wide guest-focused growth strategy, Epic Experience.

The actions we've taken are grounded in a clear view of where we can improve and have the greatest opportunity to strengthen the business and drive strong competitive differentiation. We have moved with urgency but while remaining disciplined, very mindful that in an operationally driven company with over 50,000 team members, speed has to be balanced with executional excellence to ensure we are building a great company for the long term. Our focus remains on delivering on these priorities and demonstrating their value through sustained improvement in financial performance.

While many of these initiatives are in the early stages, we're encouraged by the progress we're seeing across the business. In marketing, our changes in media strategy heading into last winter helped improve pass sales trends Labor Day by approximately 5 points compared to the earlier selling period during the past season. We made changes to our products and pricing across lift tickets with the introduction of Epic Friends and super-advanced lift ticket pricing, along with targeted pricing actions at certain resorts and time periods.

As mentioned on the last call, those new products and strategies had strong results despite the weather, and we outperformed the industry in lift ticket visitation. With all of these changes to our marketing approach, we also benefited from increases in unaided brand awareness from destination guests for our top resorts heading into this upcoming winter season. While pass sales remain down to prior year during this selling period, third-party data indicates we continue to outperform the broader industry, even more so on comparable unlimited products.

While we're clearly not satisfied with any decline in pass sales, this is not necessarily surprising given the severity of the conditions we experienced this past season and the massive growth we saw in pass sales in the previous five years, especially in our frequency products, which continue to see the largest declines to date and are our least committed passholder group. Angela will discuss the results in more detail, but we do believe that a portion of the decline is likely due to delayed decision-making rather than reduced overall intent to ski next season.

This creates an opportunity for potential improvements for pass sales in the final selling season and/or ultimately through in-season lift ticket purchases next year. S. ski market data, visitation typically recovers quickly following a season with poor conditions when the following year has normal conditions, and we are positioned well to capture that recovery given the breadth of our owned and operated network and our ability to market across that network through our pass and lift ticket products. That said, last season was a true anomaly, and it certainly creates risk heading into next season.

In addition to the marketing changes discussed, we are also making progress across our Resource Efficiency Transformation Plan and our Epic Experience growth strategy. Starting with the Resource Efficiency Transformation Plan, we remain on track to exceed our original $100 million target of annual savings and announced an additional $30 million of identified technology-related efficiencies that we expect to realize by fiscal 2028. Turning to Epic Experience, this is our long-term strategy we announced this summer, which provides the framework for our next phase of growth.

While several of the initiatives behind Epic Experience were already underway, the strategy aligns them around a common objective: creating a more seamless, personalized, and differentiated guest experience that drives greater loyalty, visitation, and guest lifetime value. What makes this opportunity unique is our ability to connect the entire end-to-end guest experience across our resorts, products, ancillary services, and digital platforms in a way and at a scale that is not easily replicated by others. I want to touch on the five key pillars of Epic Experience, starting with Guest Engagement and the Digital Experience.

As part of Epic Experience, we are expanding the My Epic app into a personalized digital companion for the entire ski experience, bringing planning, purchasing, and in-resort engagement into a single platform. This month we introduced native in-app commerce and added Apple Pay and Google Pay for pass offerings, and we'll shortly be launching that functionality for lift tickets across all our resorts, making it even easier for guests to transact within our ecosystem. Next, we are reimagining how guests access and use gear with My Epic Gear.

Over a multi-year timeframe, we will allow guests the ability to rent the gear they want, when they want, where they want, without the need for either transporting their gear or going through today's current lengthy rental process. This season we will roll out pick-your-own demo gear and an updated web platform, and in FY28 we will be rolling out the first full incarnation of the program along with full personalized app integration. For Ski & Ride School, we are elevating lessons into a more personalized mountain experience.

This includes upgrading the private lesson experience through Epic Ascent, a premium private lesson offering that provides dedicated concierge support, personalized trip planning, and enhanced benefits that help guests build confidence and deepen their connection to skiing and riding. S. destination resorts, allowing for a seamless arrival with direct-to-digital check-in and real-time updates and progress monitoring within the app. For our on-mountain dining, we are elevating the ski day classics—burgers, chicken fingers, chili, hot dogs, fries, and mac and cheese.

By investing in higher-quality ingredients and refined presentation, we see an opportunity to make dining an additive, differentiated part of the entire ski experience and another reason guests choose to spend more time with us on the mountain. In the future, we will be adding technology to improve the guest experience in our restaurants. Finally, delivering an exceptional guest experience starts with people, who will always be at the foundation of this company. That's why we continue to invest in our frontline teams through training, development, engagement, and retention initiatives that strengthen our ability to deliver a differentiated guest experience at scale.

It is also one of the most important proof points of our company's ability to deliver on Epic Experience, with our frontline staffing and talent being a competitive strength today, only accepting 11% of those who apply for frontline roles, versus the challenges the company experienced in staffing just four years ago. By placing the guest at the center of everything we do, we see a significant opportunity to drive higher visitation, deepen guest loyalty, increase ancillary spending, and ultimately grow guest lifetime value.

Through our continued investments across our resorts, the digital experience, and in talent, we are uniquely positioned to differentiate the guest experience with our integrated, owned-and-operated network of world-class destination and regional resorts connected through our pass and marketing ecosystem and supported by a unified data and technology platform. These are the building blocks that will ultimately support sustainable long-term growth and value creation. As we noted in a release earlier this month, we have received notices of intent to nominate individuals for election to our Board of Directors.

The Board is evaluating those nominees, and given that this process is ongoing, we will not be answering any questions on this topic today. With that, I'll turn it over to Angela to walk through the financial results. Angela Korch, Chief Financial Officer Thank you, Rob. Starting with our results for the fourth quarter, resort net revenue was about flat year over year.

Results were impacted by unfavorable weather conditions in Australia where cumulative snowfall was more than 50% below the 10-year average. Those conditions pressured visitation and revenue during the quarter, partially offset by growth in Australian pass sales heading into their winter period and revenue growth at Grand Teton Lodge Co. Looking at the full year, as Rob mentioned, fiscal 2026 demonstrated the resilience of our business despite historically challenging weather conditions across several key markets. 5% despite a 13% decline in skier visitation, supported by 4% growth in pass revenue, highlighting the resilience of our advance commitment model.

Fiscal 2026 resort reported EBITDA of 746 million landed in line with the midpoint of the range we provided in June despite the softer Australia results, reflecting the benefits of not just our advance commitment strategy but also our disciplined cost management, continued progress on Resource Efficiency Transformation, and the strong execution of our teams across the organization. Turning to pass sales through September 18, pass units declined 12%, days sold declined 10% and sales dollars including tax were down 6%. Performance through the September deadline remains consistent with the spring selling period when excluding auto-renewal during that period.

We believe the performance to date continues to be affected by the prior season's historically challenging conditions. Since the spring deadline, we saw modest improvements in Colorado, Utah and Tahoe local performance, while the weakness remains concentrated among destination frequency products, especially lower frequency passes. This may suggest delayed decision-making for lower frequency guests that may move later into the pass selling period or migrate back into lift ticket products sold during the season.

Importantly, we continue to see evidence that we are outperforming the broader industry via third-party data, particularly within comparable unlimited products, which gives us confidence that our competitive position remains strong despite softer overall pass sale trends to date. As Rob noted earlier, we view the current environment as being driven more by delayed purchasing behavior than a structural change in demand. As a result, we see meaningful opportunities to recapture demand through both pass sales and lift tickets in season. With that in mind, I want to spend some time on our fiscal 2027 outlook.

We are guiding to net income attributable to Vail Resorts of 158 million to 233 million and resort reported EBITDA of 805 million to 865 million, including approximately 14 million of one-time costs. S. Given the current pass sale trends, we are not expecting an overall improvement during the rest of the selling season and expect to recapture a meaningful portion of lower pass visitation through increased lift ticket visitation. Importantly, the level of lift ticket visitation embedded in our guidance remains well below historical levels achieved when the Pass program was significantly smaller and below levels achieved following the fiscal 2022 pass price reset.

Current pass sale trends leave a larger pool of uncommitted guests heading into the season. We are making targeted investments in pricing and product optimization and marketing to capture that demand and drive visitation. While these investments are expected to support near-term demand generation, they are also consistent with our larger strategy of strengthening guest awareness, acquisition and engagement to drive sustainable growth over time. Outside of the expected changes in visitation, we also expect benefits from pricing and capture initiatives across our rental, ski school, dining and other lines of business.

On the cost side, beyond variable expenses on the increased revenue, our outlook incorporates labor and expense inflation of approximately 4%, including normal wage inflation together with higher utility, fuel, legal and professional services costs. In addition to inflation and variable expenses, our guidance reflects approximately 20 million from the normalization of incentive compensation relative to fiscal 2026, approximately 10 million of incremental marketing investment, 3 million associated with the renewal of the Grand Teton Lodging Company contract, and 3 million of incremental Resource Efficiency Transformation one-time costs.