Vail Resorts, CHMN. & CEO, Interview.

(From CEOWire)

Byline: Ted David, Liz Claman

TED DAVID, CNBC ANCHOR: Vail Resorts out with better-than-expected second- quarter earnings this morning. The company also reaffirming its guidance for the full year. Shares of Vail Resorts, ticker MTN, like mountain, up 13 cents at 17.16 a share. Joining us now, Adam Aron, chairman and CEO of Vail Resorts. He joins us from New York. Good morning. Good to see you. ADAM ARON, VAIL RESORTS CHMN. AND CEO: Good morning, Ted. Nice to be with you again. DAVID: Your thoughts on the revenues and expense numbers. And if you would break down the performance for us, because the way you do it, it`s in terms of mountain, lodging and real estate and we need to get the feel that way. ARON: Well, we just had a fabulous second fiscal quarter. The November- December-January quarter, the beginning of the 2003-2004 ski season - our cash flow from our resort operations, which is our ski resort division and our lodging division - was up 21 percent year over year. If you look at the first six months of our fiscal 2004 resort cash flow, was up 49 percent year over year. As we sift (ph) through the end of January, resort cash flow is $15 million ahead of last year. Our ski resorts are doing great. RevPar - that`s revenue per available room... DAVID: Yes. ARON: ....in our Rock Resorts-Hotels, was up 4 percent year over year. RevPar at our ski resort base area lodging was up 16 percent year over year. The numbers are just great, and this was, in fact, a record second quarter for Vail Resorts. DAVID: In the - in the release it said it was an expected drop in real estate revenue. Why was that?

ARON: Well, last year we sold some - a lot of lower-margin condominiums, and this year we sold some pieces of land and some higher-margin, higher- priced condominiums.

But if you look at the real estate profitability of our real-estate division for the first six months of fiscal 2004, we had more profitability in the first six months this year... DAVID: Right. ARON: ...than we had in the entire year last year. So... DAVID: OK. ARON: ...we`re having a great real-estate year. It was just a seasonally weak quarter. DAVID: I`m running out of time and I got a gazillion questions here. Quickly, what have you done to recast your debt and cut expenses? I know that`s been very important to you. ARON: Oh, it`s very exciting too.

We fully refinanced our $360 million of long-term debt. It was at 8 3/4 percent, maturing in 2009. It`s now at 6 3/4 percent, maturing in 2014. That`s a ...