Parks! America Q1 Fiscal Year 2026 Earnings Call - Accounting tweak and marketing hires, buybacks slow due to illiquid float
Summary
This was a compact, low-drama call. Management flagged a small but concrete accounting change to ticket revenue recognition, confirmed 2-3 new full-time marketing hires that will raise personnel costs in dollar terms, and said the newly authorized share repurchase program produced no buys yet because the plan was only active a few days and the shares are illiquid and often held in old physical form. Weather gave a modest boost around Christmas, but the company warned the current quarter is seasonally weak with closures from winter storms.
The company filed its 10-Q and earnings release last Friday, and reiterated that non-GAAP measures are reconciled there. No formal guidance was provided, no investor questions arrived ahead of the call, and management suggested buybacks will likely be slow to ramp as administrative frictions are ironed out.
Key Takeaways
- No repurchases were made under the new stock repurchase plan during Q1, management attributes this to the plan being active for only a few days in the quarter.
- Company expects buybacks to be slow initially because the stock is illiquid, many shares are held long-term in physical certificates, and administrative work is required to execute buys.
- Revenue recognition policy for tickets changed in FY2026, tickets will no longer be treated as redeemable for a full subsequent year, intended to simplify accounting.
- Management believes the revenue recognition change will be a small item, not expected to materially affect reported sales.
- Parks! America added 2-3 full-time marketing personnel, expenses recorded in personnel costs and allocated across the three parks.
- The marketing hires will increase personnel costs in dollar terms this year, management gave no firm guidance on the impact to margins as a percent of sales.
- This is the first time the company has allocated personnel expenses across all three parks in this way, signaling a modest operational shift toward centralized marketing.
- Weather was unusually favorable the week of Christmas and likely added a couple percentage points to sales at each park, but management judged the effect not huge.
- Management suggested peer comps will reveal whether weather materially changed results, inviting investors to compare attraction operators for context.
- The current quarter is seasonally slow and has already seen ice storms and park closures, management warned there will be stretches with minimal sales.
- The company filed its Quarterly Earnings Release and Form 10-Q last Friday, including forward-looking statement language and reconciliations of non-GAAP measures.
- The call was brief and low-engagement, with no emailed questions submitted and no live questions taken, limiting new detail for investors.
- Management reiterated the buyback intent, but emphasized administrative and liquidity hurdles that make near-term repurchases uncertain.
- No new sales or margin guidance was provided on the call, leaving investors dependent on the 10-Q and future updates for more clarity.
Full Transcript
Doug Jaffe, Operator/Call Host, Parks! America: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Parks! America First Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 earnings call. My name is Doug Jaffe, and I will be your operator for today’s call. Today’s call is being webcast and recorded. Before we begin, I’d like to remind everyone that our comments today will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Federal Securities Laws. These statements may involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those forward-looking statements. For a more detailed discussion of those risks, you may refer to the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, we may reference non-GAAP financial measures and other financial metrics on the call. More information regarding our forward-looking statements and reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measure is included in our Form 10-Q. Last Friday, we filed our Quarterly Earnings Release and our 10-Q with the SEC.
In our Quarterly Earnings Release, you will find a summary information related to our segment financial results. We encourage all our shareholders to read and complete the 10-Q. In a few moments, I will turn the call over to our President, Jeff Gannon, to answer any questions. I don’t currently see that we have any questions that had been submitted via email, so we’re going to shortly take to any types of questions that we may have on today’s call. For those who would like to ask a follow-up question, you can use the raise your hand feature at the bottom of your screen at any time to indicate that you have a question. When you are called on to ask a question, your line will be unmuted. When you are finished asking your question, please state that you have no further questions. Your line will be muted afterwards.
We will take as many questions as possible within a 30-minute window. That concludes my instructions. I will now turn the call over to Jeff Gannon for opening remarks.
Jeff Gannon, President, Parks! America: Okay. So because we didn’t have any email questions come in, I thought that before we turned it over to live questions, I might just go over a couple topics for kind of technical items. So we have here in the 10-Q disclosures that there were no repurchases made under the stock repurchase plan that was put in place. Obviously, there’s only a few days in the quarter where that plan would be in place, but I would say that we expect that to be fairly slow going just because of administrative reasons. We’re illiquid stock. Some people have held stock for a long time, physical form, all sorts of things. So it doesn’t mean that we’re not interested in buying back stock. If you don’t see meaningful amounts of that early on, I think it will just take a little time to administer that as compared to some companies.
There was a first mention of something with revenue recognition. So you may have seen that in the note on revenue recognition; it’s mentioned that we are changing in this year, 2026. We’re going to have the way that tickets are redeemed is going to be different in the sense that they’re not just available to be redeemed for a whole year. I expect that to be a really small item so that you understand how that works. Most people obviously buy a ticket, come to the park, we scan it, and recognize the revenue. Then occasionally, for whatever reason, a ticket is bought, not scanned. And because we had a policy up until this year that you could use it anytime in the next year, you’d wait a full year before recognizing that revenue.
It’s not expected to be a big item, but I think it’ll just make our accounting simpler to do, and so we adopted it. That’s about it.
Doug Jaffe, Operator/Call Host, Parks! America: All right. Jeff, as of right now, I do not see any questions from the audience. So I don’t know if you have any concluding remarks.
Jeff Gannon, President, Parks! America: Sure. I’ll also mention then that we will have somewhat higher expenses for some salaries related to marketing. I’ve mentioned this was planned for a while. This is 2-3 people. There’s a mention of it now for the first time in personnel costs. Just to be clear on that, these people are working on events, social media, graphic design, various marketing things internally. And they work for all three parks. But I just wanted to make clear that they are allocated to those parks when you see the expenses. So that’s fully covered in the segment income and all of that that you see. But I do expect that in dollar amounts, we’ll increase expenses in personnel costs this year. Depending on how sales go, I don’t have any guidance there that it’ll actually reduce margin or increase it as a % of sales or something.
But in dollar amounts, we’ll have higher personnel costs because we will have 2-3 more full-time employees over time at the company split between the three parks. And that’s probably the biggest kind of expense thing that I can mention that I’m sure we’ll run through all four quarters of the year, and this is the first quarter that you’ve seen it. Previously, the company had not had really any personnel expenses that were that way where they were working at all three parks. So that is a change. And I’d say that will probably be the biggest change. Other thing I would call out is we do mention weather was particularly good the week of Christmas. I don’t think this is a huge factor, but it might matter for a couple % of sales at each of the parks.
So the easiest way to tell how big a factor weather is is basically to wait for some larger comps of our sort of that also have theme parks and things and to see how much they mention weather and how much it helped them. If our results are a lot different than theirs, better or worse, then probably weather’s not that much of a factor because we have three different parks in three different states, and it would really show up in any sort of results of any attractions business in the United States. So it’s very easy to comp us against peers to tell if weather’s a major factor. I think it was a factor, but not a huge factor. And obviously, in this quarter that we’re in now, weather will not be good, as everyone knows. There’s been ice storms and park closures and things like that.
That’s not going to be a surprise. But this is a slow time of year for us, but we will have a couple weeks where we do barely any sales. So you should just be prepared for that. That is all that I have.
Doug Jaffe, Operator/Call Host, Parks! America: Okay. Terrific. I still don’t see any calls at this time. So with that, we will conclude today’s earnings call. Wanted to just thank everyone for taking the time to dial in today. Thank you, and have a great day.
