SeaWorld: free beer helped bring in more visitors to parks

The
“Shamu” attraction at Seaward in Orlando
Josh Hallett

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Free beer is good for business, SeaWorld
executives said Monday.

Promotions at two parks helped fuel the company’s second quarter
earnings beat that sent its stock flying as much as 20% in
trading Monday.

“We brought back free beer as a summer promotion in Tampa and
Orlando,” John Reilly, SeaWorld’s chief executive, told investors
and analysts on a conference call Monday
morning.  “As you can imagine, this limited
time promotion has been popular with our guests.”

Attendance rose 4.8% for the second quarter across all parks, the
company said. That helped it beat Wall Street’s estimates to post
adjusted earnings of $0.41 per share where analysts had expected
$0.28. It also beat on revenue, bringing in $391.92 million where
analysts had expected $369 million. 

To keep the wave rolling, SeaWorld said it’s also planning a
similar beer fest later this quarter at its San Antonio location
and both Busch Gardens parks in Virginia and Tampa Bay.

“We are particularly pleased with our second quarter
attendance growth, which more than offset the negative impacts
from unfavorable weather across several of our markets in the
quarter, and the earlier timing of the Easter holiday in 2018,
which benefitted the first quarter at the expense of the second
quarter,” Reilly
said in a press release. 

SeaWorld has born the brunt of activism in recent years following
the 2013 release of Blackfish, a documentary focused on the
parks’ killer whale program. In 2016, it
said it would phase out breeding of killer whales — and shows
involving them entirely — following the death of a trainer.

The company also disclosed a $4 million settlement with federal
regulators, who alleged SeaWorld didn’t adequately warn investors
of the impact of Blackfish.

“We are impressed with the strong performance despite weather
headwinds,” Tim Conder, an analyst at Wells Fargo, said in a note
to clients Monday, Bloomberg reported.

Shares of SeaWorld are now up more than 77% since the beginning
of the year, but still well off their highs of nearly $40 in 2014
shortly after Blackstone sold its controlling stake the chain in
a public offering.

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