Heavenly posts 3.3 percent more visits

Despite an unusually warm and dry March, Heavenly Mountain Resort sailed through the 2003-04 ski season with a 3.3 percent net increase in skier visits.

Heavenly's parent corporation, Vail Resorts Inc., recorded 965,000 visitors to the California-Nevada slopes over the nine-month season, according to an earnings report released Monday.

But for the third quarter ending April 30, Heavenly's skier visits showed a 2.2 percent drop - largely due to a meltdown of snow in the middle of the period.

"We had a good February, but we had an incredibly warm March with no new snow. And the warm temperatures totally eroded the existing snow," Heavenly Chief Operating Officer Blaise Carrig said of the third-quarter results.

Overall, Carrig - like Vail Chief Executive Officer Adam Aron - was pleased with the showing. At Heavenly, it was boosted by a 22 percent hike in skier visits in the second quarter over last year. This period ending January involved a wet Christmas-New Year's holiday period.

Aron singled out Heavenly for improving its cash flow by one-third, adding the resort's contributions have "exceeded management expectations." When the company bought Heavenly, it pledged to put $40 million in improvements into the resort. It's spent about half of that, with another six-person chair lift planned for the next ski season to replace the Powderbowl and Waterfall lifts.

Aron said the results closed out the 2003-04 ski season in "grand style," telling investors it's "the best quarter we've ever delivered in 42 years."

Vail's mountain revenue for the third quarter came in at $234.2 million, an 11.1 increase in comparison to the same period last year.

The Colorado-based company raised its net income of $62.5 million by 86 percent in the third quarter, despite a 1.9 percent decline in total skier visits, amounting to 3 million.

Vail Resorts stock rose Monday by $1.23 to close at $16.80 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Susan Wood can be reached at (530) 542-8009 or via e-mail at swood@tahoedailytribune.com