Q4 2007 Cedar Fair LP Earnings Conference Call - Final.

Original Source: FD (FAIR DISCLOSURE) WIRE

OPERATOR: Good morning and afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Cedar Fair fourth quarter and year-end earnings conference call. During today's presentation all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, the conference will be open for questions. (OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS) This conference is being recorded today, Thursday, February 7, 2008. At this time, I would like to turn the presentation over to Brian weather row. Please go ahead, sir.

BRIAN WITHEROW, VP & CORPORATE CONTROLLER, CEDAR FAIR LP: Thank you, Andrew. Good afternoon and welcome to our year-end earnings conference call. I'm Brian Witherow, Cedar Fair's Vice President and Corporate Controller. Earlier today we issued our fourth quarter and year-end earnings release. A copy of that release can be obtained on our corporate website, www.cedarfair.com, or by contacting our Investor Relations offices at 419-627-2233. On the call this afternoon are Dick Kinzel, our Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Peter Crage, our Corporate Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I need to caution you that comments made during the call will include 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 materially from those described in such statements.

You may refer to filings by the Company with the SEC for a more detailed discussion of these risks. In addition, in accordance with regulation G, non-GAAP financial measures used on the call today are required to be reconciled to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. During today's call we will make reference to adjusted EBITDA as defined in our earnings release. The required reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA is in the earnings release and is also available on our website via the conference call access page. In compliance with SEC regulation FD, the webcast is being made available to the media and the general public as well as analysts and investors. Because the webcast is open to all constituents and prior notification has been widely and unselectively disseminated, all content of this call will be considered fully disclosed. Now let me turn the call over to Dick Kinzel.

DICK KINZEL, CHAIRMAN, PRESIDENT & CEO, CEDAR FAIR LP: Good afternoon. As you can see from our earnings release, we generated solid results in 2007 and finished the year in excellent financial condition. The integration of the parks we acquired in 2006 continues to go well and our legacy parks did a fine job in contributing to the full year performance. Although we had a few soft spots, we're pleased with our overall performance in 2007. On the call today we'll discuss our 2007 performance on a combined and same park basis and provide our view of the 2008 season and beyond. Peter will discuss the details behind our results in just a bit. But right now, I would like to briefly comment on our performance this past year. In 2007 we entertained a record 22.1 million guests and generated $987 million in combined net revenues. Average in-park per capita grew to $40.60 from $38.71 in 2006, a 5% increase. And adjusted EBITDA on a combined basis increased $31 million to $341 million in 2007.

I'm happy to report that these results are right in-line with the board guidance we provided when we made the acquisition in June of 2006. Although we did see softness in attendance at some of our parks, we attribute much of this to the progress of modifying admission pricing to insure pricing integrity at the park level as well as eliminating many complimentary passes. While we have heard concerns from customers on pricing, we have remained flexible and made additional modifications geared to making sure the price value relationship remains intact. We continue to believe that building price integrity while maintaining flexibility is the best way to maximize attendance and per capita spending over the long-term. On a same park basis, excluding the parks acquired in 2006, revenues increased $19 million to …