Good day everyone and welcome to the Vail Resorts Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2017 Earnings Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. For opening remarks, I’ll now turn the conference over to Mr. Rob Katz, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Good morning everyone. Welcome to our fiscal third quarter 2017 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call this morning is Michael Barkin, 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 subject to a number of risks and uncertainties as described in our SEC filings and actual future results may vary materially. Forward-looking statements in our press release issued this morning, along with our remarks on this call are made as of today, June 8, 2017, 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 quarterly report on Form 10-Q were filed this morning with the SEC and are also available on the Investor Relations section of our website at www.vailresorts.com. So with that said, let's turn to our third quarter fiscal 2017 results. We are very pleased with our performance in the quarter and for the entirety of the 2016/2017 North American ski season. Including results from Whistler Blackcomb, total lift revenue increased 25.3% driven by a 26% growth in visitation, partially offset by a 0.5% decrease in effective ticket price compared to the same period in the prior year. The ETP decline was driven by the inclusion of Whistler Blackcomb’s ETP in results in fiscal 2017, which are lower on a US dollar basis than the company average. Excluding Whistler Blackcomb, ETP increased 7.5% in the third fiscal quarter compared to the prior year. Guest spending continues to be strong, which with the addition of Whistler Blackcomb drove a 23.5% increase in ski school revenue, a…

Thanks Rob, and good morning everyone. Before discussing our results and fiscal 2017 guidance, I want to remind you that you can find a full discussion of our financial results for the third quarter and year-to-date periods of fiscal 2017 in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q, which we filed this morning with the SEC. Our Form 10-Q and our earnings announcement can be found on our website at www.valeresorts.com. As Rob mentioned, we are pleased with our third quarter results. Including results from Whistler Blackcomb in the third quarter of fiscal 2017, resort net revenue was $789.8 million, an increase of 22.3% compared to the prior year. Resort reported EBITDA was $392 million, an increase of 27.9% compared to the prior year. Our resort EBITDA margin for the third fiscal quarter improved 210 basis points over the prior year as we continue to drive strong flow through from our revenue growth and leverage our scale. Excluding transaction, transition, and integration costs, and Whistler Blackcomb operations in the third quarter of fiscal 2017 as well as $3.5 million of lodging reported EBITDA associated with the termination of the company's Half Moon resort management agreement in the third quarter of fiscal 2016, resort reported EBITDA increased 7% compared to the prior year. Including results from Whistler Blackcomb in the third quarter of fiscal 2017, Mountain revenue was $721.2 million, up 25.9% from the prior year, while Mountain reported EBITDA was $381.3 million for the third quarter, up 31% from the prior year. Excluding transaction, transition, and integration expenses of $2.3 million and Whistler Blackcomb operations, Mountain reported EBITDA increased 7.9%. Our third fiscal quarter lodging segment net revenue excluding payroll cost reimbursements decreased 6.3% compared to the prior year period, with the prior-year period including the receipt of the one-time $3.5…

Thanks Michael. We are very pleased with the results for our season pass sales to-date. Pass sales through May 30, 2017 for the upcoming 2017/2018 North American ski season increased approximately 10% in units and approximately 16% in sales dollars as compared to the prior year period through May 31, 2016. This represents continued significant growth over our record unit performance last spring, which was up 29% over spring of 2015 and our strong results in the spring of 2015, which was up 12% over spring of 2014. Our spring pass sales include strong growth from our destination guests and particular strength in our Northern California and Pacific Northwest local markets following great conditions in the 2016/2017 ski season and the full inclusion of Whistler Blackcomb on the Epic Pass for next season. Whistler Blackcomb pass products are included in both current and prior-year periods at comparable exchange rates with the exception of one and three day EDGE cards, the vast majority of which were sold after the beginning of the ski season and will not be offered for the 2017/2018 ski season. While in the past two years, we have seen a material deceleration of our pass sales growth rate from spring results to fall results, we expect the growth rate this year to be more stable between the two time periods. We look forward to being able to fully include Stowe in our season pass marketing efforts this fall and incorporating the guest information they have into our database CRM efforts. Further we look forward to beginning our more comprehensive guest information collection effort at Whistler Blackcomb for the upcoming season. Historically, Whistler Blackcomb has had information on only approximately 20% of their non-season pass guests, dramatically lower than our US resorts data capture of approximately 96%. We…

[Operator Instructions] We’ll go first today to Shaun Kelley with Bank of America.

Rob, I was hoping maybe you could touch on the comment around the season pass sales volume, so you said that typically, you do see the volumes decelerate as you move through the pass selling period, but this year, you're looking for them to be more stable. What gives you the confidence there, is it including Stowe that's really going to help that and what else you’re seeing that’s sort of changing - you think might change that pattern.

I would say a couple of things. I think first, there's no doubt that as we look at the kind of velocity of sales, the period that we're kind of going up against obviously also dictates the growth rate. And so since last spring, we were going up against a truly historic rate - a growth rate in the spring. Obviously, we knew that it would be more challenging to drive more significant growth as we look to the fall. We feel like we can maintain kind of the velocity and momentum that we have and obviously that will ultimately create a more stable year-long growth rate versus last year where we were so strong in the beginning and then we knew it was going to decelerate towards the finish. That said, I also do think, yes that as we include Whistler, as we include Stowe, as we're bringing new people into the program, very often those are people who are less willing to commit right in the spring and if they're brand new to the program are more willing to consider a new purchase in the fall. So I'd say both of those trends actually kind of have us believe that yeah, the growth rates will be more stable where last year obviously was a pretty lopsided in terms of the balance between spring and fall.

And then sort of - the other area where we’re focused on was on the Whistler results clearly, I think surprised to the upside as you look at how well they perform there, the question here is did you, obviously, there was a significant synergy target that you had provided when you originally announced this transaction and did you pull forward any of the synergies or initiatives you were expecting to achieve early to help bolster those Whistler results or is this pretty organic and really a reflection of snowfall and everything and performance at the mountain itself?

I think there is probably some - I think there's some pull forward, as some of our efforts but I would say we - yeah, we certainly think that much of what we want to accomplish is still yet to come. But there's no doubt that, yes, some of that we absolutely saw this year. And there's also just trending right in terms of this – this was a year where we saw significant US destination visitation go to Canada, and we saw significant visitation on our Epic Pass at Whistler and so what I'd say is, I think, we already have started to see some of the benefits of kind of that network effect, but there are other components of it that we won't be able to implement until next year.

We’ll go next to Anthony Powell with Barclays.

The Aspen and KSL consortium has clearly made some bigger deals in recent months, how do you view them as a competitor in terms of both customer mind share and also as a competitor for acquisitions in the future.

Yeah. I think it's - I guess I'd say broadly speaking, we think it's a good thing for the industry. I mean I think to the extent that there's enthusiasm and energy investment in the industry, we think that's positive. And so I think we have made that same commentary before about the Mountain Collective and about the MAX Pass and other things that have been introduced. We think the more that the skiing public has more choices, has more value opportunities to really engage in the sport, that builds broad enthusiasm and we're quite comfortable that given the resorts that we have that we're going to do great in that environment and so candidly, we wish them nothing but the best. And I do feel, to the extent that this new entity certainly can come out with products that provide the same kind of enthusiasm that our Epic Pass has, I think that would be fantastic. And those are, so we kind of look forward to that. And then I think on the acquisition front, our perspective and I think we've been quite clear about that over the years as, at the end of the day, we’re pretty focused on the things that we think will really make a difference in our network and when we identify those, we're very aggressive, but we're also fairly disciplined and obviously there's a lot of ski resorts, both in the US and North America, around the world and we tend to focus on the handful that's important to us. And I would say that it’s certainly - it's always good to have competition around that, but I think we always have had other people who are interested and candidly just I think within our industry, given the passion, a lot of those acquisition discussions, they take a long time, they're about building relationships, and again I think we feel quite good that having more folks around to talk to people about yeah, how we can improve the overall industry we think is a good thing.

Thanks for that. And on the season passes, how have your season pass sales fared in Colorado, especially among the more locally value oriented passes and if they were slower there due to conditions this year, do you have any initiatives to maybe accelerate those in the fall?

I would say - I would say our pass sales here in Colorado were fairly stable. I think we - I think Colorado is a more mature market for us, kind of always have been if you go back historically. It's been one of the slower growing markets, because of that maturity and because we've been at the kind of season pass effort here in Colorado for so many years. So we do feel, that said, it's one of our - it's obviously one of the biggest, if not the biggest market we have. So there's no doubt that we'll be focused on continuing to drive engagement and enthusiasm, both I'd say in terms of getting pass sales and in terms of just making sure that people get off to the resorts and I think fully enjoy and experience their pass. So it's a little bit of a different effort than what we're doing on the destination side, but no less important.

Got it. And one more granular one for me, I think your lodging EBITDA guidance for the full year implies roughly 79 million in the fourth quarter EBITDA. That would be a big increase over 4 million last year. What's driving that in the fourth quarter?

Well, the fourth quarter for lodging includes Grand Teton, lodge company and - which is a big driver of EBITDA if you look at - I’ll follow-up with you on the implied growth.

We’ll go next to Cameron McKnight with Wells Fargo.

First of all, on summer, Rob or Mike, are you able to point to or talk about anything you’re seeing on - anything you’re seeing in terms of - in terms of forward bookings and anything - anything new at Vail and Heavenly this year on the summer aside.

I would say, we feel good about summer bookings. Typically, those bookings don't have the same kind of lead times as you might see obviously in the winter, but I think certainly from what we've seen so far, we feel good. I think I’d say even more strongly I think up in Canada at Whistler and so we feel good as we go into the summer. And I think I said, we have kind of two efforts still on the bookings side. Our summer activities that we're putting up on the mountain, we're not - we don't know that those are necessarily driving incremental bookings to our resorts. We think they kind of help, right, with the overall compliment of activities, but it's a pretty wide array of activities. So our goal there is right - obviously, our lodging groups and our [indiscernible] groups there, out there booking for summer just like they always have been and again we feel - we feel good about what we're seeing so far for the summer. But then our real focus is how do we get people to really get up on the mountain and kind of experience our mountains in a different way than they have before and we have always felt that we've got significant summer visitation in all of our key kind of summer resorts, Vail, Breckenridge, Heavenly, certainly Whistler, Park City and so the goal for us really is that we know they're going to come because of the overall community experience that's provided and so now the question for us is how do we again give them this opportunity to get up on the mountain in a new way.

Great. Thanks. And then just back to the third quarter, in terms of the 7.5% ETP growth, excluding Whistler, are you able to talk to some of the drivers of that and some of the mix effect that might be flowing through that result.

Yeah. I would say it is, we have - we take a very methodical and detailed approach to our pricing and we're constantly looking at opportunities for us to make sure we're connecting in the right way to our guests and delivering value and obviously all the capital that we invest in our resorts, the upgrades, the improvements, the new things we're doing, that's a huge driver of that. And it's not - less about specific price increases at any one resort and a little bit more about, yeah, how we kind of think about our overall portfolio and kind of drive visitation to that and there's no doubt that the strength that we saw, I think in Tahoe, the strength that we see in Park City, right helps as you’re overall looking to drive your total yield.

We’ll go next to Chris Agnew with MKM Partners.

Just wondering what's, if you could frame what inning you think you are with respect to CRM segmentation and targeted marketing and how much more opportunity you continue to see.

Well, I think what we would say on season passes, I think we've talked about as we feel like, we're maybe in a inning right over 6 or 7. I mean, and where I think one of the, we've done, we feel an amazing job at segmentation, it's studying the data going back historically and then using that. I think the key thing on season pass, as we mentioned in our remarks is actually having the data on our guests to be able to market season passes to them and that is where we're really looking forward to this season collecting the data from Whistler Blackcomb. And so - and then obviously using that to help drive FY19, obviously, we have some data going into this season, but obviously even more data we think that will help drive FY19 and beyond. On kind of our traditional day-to-day destination marketing, non-season pass marketing, yeah, we're at very early innings there, probably kind of second inning or something, where we have a long way to go, not really in the technique, but in building up the data capture. So although we mentioned in our remarks that we collect 96% of our, let's take a data on our guests and Whistler maybe at 20%, but we've only been collecting at that level for a couple of years. So the sophistication and the precision and the insight that we have right goes up pretty dramatically every year in that segment with those guests. So we kind of feel like, yeah, we’ve got a nice ramp here to continue to get better at not only the season pass piece which obviously we feel like we’re on a great trajectory, but then it really including that daily lift ticket sale as well.

Thank you. And then little more detailed question, the operating laws at Stowe, the 3.5 million that you talk about, is that a normalized run rate for this time a year and is it fair to assume if you think about a pro forma number for the quarter that would be 5 million to 6 million. Thanks.

Yeah. I think, this is kind of our best estimate we obviously just closed on the deal and so I think we're using our best estimate based on the information that we have at this point. So we'll get in there and evaluate what we think the run rate is. Obviously, we've also not right integrated the resort and so that has its own piece of evaluation, which we plan to do, it’s actually not in advance of this season, but sometime in advance of next season. So I think it is our best estimate at this point and yeah, we'll go from there and provide more information as we get deeper into it.

Ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude our question-and-answer session. Mr. Katz, I'll turn it back to you for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. This concludes our fiscal third quarter 2017 earnings call. Thanks everyone who joined us on the conference call today. Please feel free to contact Michael or me directly should you have any further questions. Thank you for your time this morning and good bye.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This does conclude our conference for today. You may now disconnect.