Thomas Yeh: Okay. That’s helpful color. On the cost front, do you have any incremental color on just the broader labor wage rate outlook? I think certain of your peers have flagged incremental pressure in certain areas or states. I don’t know across your footprint if that’s something that you’re trying to offset and certainly there are these cost efficiencies that you talked about. But from a broader macro perspective is that something that you’re kind of fighting against this year?
James Forrester: Thomas, its Jim, I think as we’ve said in previous quarters, we are very pleased with the way we’ve been able to handle our labor expense. This quarter was no different than the previous quarters where we’re actually down year-over-year in our labor rate. I think we’ve had a very successful focus on managing that labor expense through reductions in overtime uses of technology ensuring the right mix of support to our guests were actually improved overall from 2019 and 2023, by better metrics in our labor hours per guest required. So I think overall we’ve shown an ability to control that cost pretty effectively.
Thomas Yeh: Okay. Appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Operator: The next question comes from Paul Golding of Macquarie. Go ahead, please.
Paul Golding: Thanks so much. Just a couple on the group and international progress, first just to clarify in terms of mix progression it sounds like group is ahead of 2023 and international also ahead of ’23 but still behind 2019. Should we take away from that that group is further ahead and ahead of 2019 as well and then, a follow-up to that, please. Thanks.
Marc Swanson: Yeah. Thanks, Paul. So what you can — what I was trying to say there is group is up not only to last year but also up to 2019. So group is outpacing kind of international. International got better in Q1 of 2024 and — but still is down since 2019. So yes group is outpatient and international.
Paul Golding: So as we see international come back it sounds like, there’s more room to go in international than there is potentially to go in group. How should we think about the per cap premium that you used to see maybe in 2019 on international relative to what we’re seeing today just as we think through the potential uplift or room to go and per cap strength on that mix left to go in international? Thanks so much.
Marc Swanson: Sure. I can help you with that question. It’s a good one. So remember back in 2018 we did about $2.3 million in international attendance. It was roughly 10% of our attendance back in 2019 as a company. So the — there’s a lot of runway still to get back to that. So in Q1 of 2024, we were still down roughly 35% to 2019 on international attendants. Now that’s better than what we were down last year. Last year we were down for the full year about 44%. And so it’s moving in the right direction but it gives you some sense of still being down third of international attendance on — when we used to do $2.3 million. It gives you a good sense of the size of potential that’s ahead if we can recover international attendance and certainly that’s our goal and we’re putting efforts behind that.
So I think that is an upside down the road whenever that does recover. As far as your question on per cap, I mean, I would think international people oftentimes on a total visit basis have more spend in total. It really depends on what kind of ticket they buy. But if they buy, a multi-day ticket, which some of them do obviously that per cap is going to be spread over multiple visits and would be less than like a single-day ticket. So it can have a mix impact, as I was talking about earlier. I think in general, we’re pleased International is moving in the right direction. We need to get it back to 2019 levels but it gives you some sense of the opportunity there which is meaningful.
Paul Golding: Thanks so much Marc.
Operator: Our next question comes from Lizzie Dove of Goldman Sachs. Go ahead please.
Lizzie Dove: Hi there. Good morning. Congrats on a nice set of results. There’s been more and more focus on Epic Universe coming next year. They’ve put more and more marketing out there about it. I’m curious kind of what your base case is and how you feel about the setup there whether it’s from a pricing standpoint whether you feel the need to maybe kind of invest more in the Orlando parks? Anything on those lines would be helpful.
Marc Swanson: Yeah. Thanks Lizzie, I can help you with that. Look on Epic, look, I don’t have a crystal ball and we think about Epic. But generally we view things — new things in the market that we expect will bring people to the market. That’s good for us and the industry as a whole. And here’s why. You got to remember we’ve been — SeaWorld Orlando has been here for 50 years. It opened in the early 1970s. And if you think about the number of parks that have opened since SeaWorld opened 50 years ago you’ve got more Disney parks you’ve got more universal parks. You’ve got LEGOLAND. You’ve got — we added two parks Aquatica and Discovery Cove. And over that time SeaWorld over that long term grew to EBITDA and participated in that growth of EBITDA to the market.
So we like when more people come here we have a differentiated product. We — I think have a better value proposition for visiting our part relative to some of the competitors in town. And we have our own unique rides and events and things to do that people do find a lot of enjoyment in. We also get I would guess more of our tenants than they do. I’m not for certain, but we get a lot of our tenants obviously from the state of Florida into SeaWorld Orlando Park and Aquatica. So those are setups that we like that setup going forward. We’ve competed here for certainly a long time. I’m not suggesting Epic won’t have an impact or anything like that. I’m sure, there’s going to be days, where they’re going to be very crowded and we might feel that — we like the setup of — we’ve been competing here for a long time.
We like our product. We like our value proposition. We like what we have to offer. And so I think we’ve demonstrated over a long history that we’ve competed well with a lot of new things coming into the market during that time.
Lizzie Dove: Perfect. That’s helpful. And then just one follow-up. On the buyback, you made very solid progress there. I guess, like in dairy if I look at the numbers, it feels like with the cash you have and the revolver you could potentially finish that by the end of this year. So how do you evaluate kind of the pacing and capital allocation priorities of that versus deleveraging or capital investments or anything else hotels, I guess, too?
Marc Swanson: Yes. Thanks. Look, I mean, we’ll work with — like we we’ll work with the Board on the use of cash. I mean certainly, I think to the extent the stock remains undervalued, like we believe it is, that would lean towards doing — probably trying to do more of those buybacks, obviously, right? And that — we saw that with the shareholders that was overwhelmingly approved. So I think a lot of people recognize investors recognize that the stock is undervalued. So — the pacing will really just come down to does it stay undervalued and then how do we work with our team and the Board to kind of navigate, like you said, the cash. But keep in mind that the business overall generates strong free cash flow. So you can model that out.
It sounds like you kind of did. And we do have — we are entering kind of the peak season here where we would generate more of our cash. So we’ll keep you posted each quarter. But certainly, we’re — we recognize the stock is undervalued and certainly believe in the buybacks.
Lizzie Dove: Great. Thanks so much.
Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Marc Swanson, CEO, for any closing remarks.
Marc Swanson: Yes. Thank you, Cindy. On behalf of Jim and the rest of the management team at United Parks Resorts, we want to thank you for joining us this morning. As you heard today, we are confident in our long-term strategy, which we believe will drive improved operating and financial results and long-term value for stakeholders. So thank you for joining. We look forward to speaking with you next quarter.
Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.