Vail Resorts today released its fiscal 2025 fourth quarter and full year earnings report, including updates on pass sales, cost cutting and capital improvements. Net income for the year ended July 31st rose 21 percent to $280 million compared with $231.1 million a year earlier. Resort Reported EBITDA landed at $844.1 million compared to $825.1 million for fiscal 2024, an increase of 2 percent. On the less bright side, pass product sales for next season declined 3 percent in units and rose just 1 percent in dollars through September 19th despite a 7 percent price increase. The Company provided an outlook for fiscal 2026, expecting net income attributable to Vail Resorts, Inc. to decline to between $201 million and $276 million and Resort Reported EBITDA to fall between $842 million and $898 million. In a subsequent release, Vail announced the departure of two longtime board members. Vail Resorts’ share price has fallen roughly 15 percent year to date and declined 2 percent after hours upon the earnings release.
“The results from this past season were below expectations and our season-to-date pass sales growth has been limited,” noted Rob Katz, Vail’s newly-returned CEO. “We recognize that we are not yet delivering on the full growth potential that we expect from this business, in particular on revenue growth, in both this past season and in our projected guidance for fiscal year 2026. However, we are confident that we are well positioned to return to higher growth in fiscal year 2027 and beyond.” Vail acknowledged an outsized focus on email for attracting guests and a drive toward season pass sales at the expense of lift ticket revenue. “Our approach to engaging with guests has not kept pace with shifting consumer behaviors and as a result, we have not been able to fully capitalize on our competitive advantages or adapted our execution appropriately to respond to shifting dynamics,” Katz said. “While email was for many years our most effective channel, its impact has declined significantly in recent years, and we’ve been slow to shift to new and emerging marketing channels. We also believe we need to shift more focus to marketing our lift ticket business, which has not received the same level of focus, creativity, and resources as pass penetration increased.” Commenting on recent pass sales, Katz noted the company is seeing lower renewal rates from less-tenured passholders and fewer new passholders. Renewal rates are better for people who’ve held a pass for many years. ” We continue to see long-term opportunity to further expand the reach of our pass program,” Katz said.
Vail is largely on track with its resource efficiency transformation plan announced a year ago. At the time, the company planned to achieve $100 million in annual cost savings by fiscal 2026 through scaled operations, global shared services and expanded workforce management. It achieved $37 million in savings for fiscal 2025 and plans $75 million in savings in fiscal 2026. Vail plans to exceed $100 million in efficiencies in fiscal year 2027.
Vail traditionally announces new lift projects and key capital priorities for the following year in September. This go around Vail affirmed its commitment to build a new Canyons Village gondola in 2026, replacing the aging Cabriolet. Subject to approval, the 10 passenger gondola will include a mid-station to service the middle village and will also serve the new Canyons Village parking structure, set to open this winter. “This new gondola will provide an upgraded arrival experience to the resort and complement the Canyons Village Parking Garage, a new covered parking structure with over 1,800 spaces,” said Vail. Vail Resorts and the Canyons Village Management Association will split the cost of the village gondola, similar to the nearly complete Sunrise Gondola by Leitner-Poma.
Notably Park City plans to resubmit plans to replace Eagle and Silverlode, projects sidelined in 2022 over a process dispute. If approved, the six-seater Eagle and eight-seater Silverlode would be constructed in 2027. Vail sent the original Doppelmayr equipment for these lifts to Whistler Blackcomb in 2023 and 2024 so the project will need to be contracted anew.
The only other capital projects Vail announced across its 42 resorts was a hotel renovation at Vail and additional functionality in the My Epic App. There certainly are other needs, however, and additional projects could be announced with Vail’s next earnings in December.
Lift Blog 
Thank goodness for a re-do on Eagle and Silverlode planned.
LikeLike
Vail’s lack of significant investment in improving the lifts or the runs at any of its resorts since the Bergman bowl expansion is telling. This sense of stagnation is one reason customers are not growing. Places like Crested Butte that have growth potential need attention. Likewise, the midwest resorts are all rotting on the vine. They need to think out side of PC and Vail and really invest.
LikeLike
Definitely not a fan of Vail but they don’t own the land. Its very difficult to get permission to change the runs. As for the lifts, they have plenty of them. There’s just too many skiers and it’s time that resorts(not just Vail) give weekly blackouts to every passholder.
LikeLike
I hope some other resorts get some improvements too. If Vail announces more projects at the December earnings, I could see Breckenridge Peak 9 gondola, and replacements for Orient and Little Eagle at Vail being on the agenda. I doubt Vail would do C chair the same year as Peak 9 gondola though.
LikeLike
I am shocked Vail plans to pursue Eagle and Silverlode upgrades without any sort of concession or guarantee from the town. It sets a poor precedent to block and resist future development without consequences. Continuing to invest in the Canyons side of the resort, outside the town’s jurisdiction, is a better strategy until new laws are set that prevent the situation in 2022 from occurring again.
At some point, Rob Katz will need to bring Vail back into the lift construction business. The Epic Lift Upgrade in 2022 was excellent, but the following years saw 4, 3, and only 1 lift built each summer, respectively. Only 1 lift is scheduled for construction in 2026. With over 400 lifts in North America alone, at an average lifespan of about 40 years, there must be 10 new lifts each summer just to keep the fleet up-to-date without expansions. 4+ years of underinvestment will create a backlog of dozens of lifts.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I could not agree more. It only gets worse when you factor in how many shortcuts they take for their lift maintenance, or what “cost-cutting” measures they tell the rest of their staff, or just struggling to keep things afloat at their resorts during the core ski season.
It really bothers me when a company claims they are “progressive” and “innovative”, but then suddenly has no comment when it comes addressing how bad certain situations are.
LikeLike
Frankly, this is ridiculous with over 120 detachable lifts in their portfolio and the average lifespan of a detachable being thirty years they should be replacing 4 a year. In addition, to the over 150 fixed grip chairlifts with a life-span of 30-50 years (without significant upgrades) they should be replacing 3-5 a year. This is ignoring all expansions, infill terrain, real estate lifts etc.
Furthermore, zero snowmaking upgrades is ridiculous, nearly every other east/midwest resort continues to invest year over year in their snowmaking to open earlier and close later (Killington adding over 1,000 low E guns in the last two years. Loon doubling snowmaking capacity on North Peak, Gunstock adding 24 new fanguns, Jay Peak replacing miles of Snowmaking Pipe etc.).
Vail needs to worried, In Colorado Alterra has invested hugely in Steamboat (4 new detachables in as many years) Winter Park is recieving a new Gondola, and has an ambitious masterplan. Arapahoe Basin recently filed an extremly ambitous masterplan as well as having the newest lift fleet in Colorado.
In Utah, Deer Valley has doubled terrain, while Park City had 15% of it’s terrain open during Christmas week. And partner resorts are seeing 4 new chairlifts in the next three years
In the West, Mammoth has received two D-Line 6 packs Palisades Tahoe received an $80 million gondola, and Crystal installed the new REX this year and is doubling night skiing nights. June Mountain installed snowmaking recently. Comparatively, Kirkwood, Heavenly, Northstar, and Steven’s Pass, have received zero new lifts in the past two years, and have zero on the docket. In additon, partner resorts like Summit and Snoqualmie continue to invest hugely in new lifts, and night skiing.
In the East, Alterra recently committed to a new lift at Stratton, I’ve heard that there is a private timeline for the Timber Expansion. Vail has zero snowmaking plans and zero lifts.
Other midwest resorts continue to expand and upgrade with Trollhaugen and Bohemia both expanding, and Boyne adding two D-Lines (In addition, to many other projects by many other resorts) It is crazy that the largest ski conglomerate in history, cannot invest into their resorts.
Finally, Lift accidents continue to be exceedingly rare, but after a $20 million dollar lawsuit, and high profile lift failures at Heavenly and Attitash, It’s shocking they aren’t doing more to alleviate consumer worries. (yes, I know chairlifts are very safe, but many people were genuinely scared after those accidents.)
LikeLiked by 3 people
Ah well.. you win some, and you lose some.
LikeLike
I hope I can get to Vail and Beaver Creek before they replace the last of their CLD-260s
LikeLike
Sounds like you still have a few decades to make that happen
LikeLiked by 2 people
At this rate it will be on Mars before they are replaced.
LikeLike
I just hope the PC Council gets restructured to a point where it doesn’t care about their paralyzing politics anymore. If anything, they should’ve really thought twice before blocking these projects in the first place, in the end, it wasn’t really Vail’s fault and all its doing is bringing in longer lines and making both lifts more older and more unreliable. The 2034 Olympics is more than enough for upgrades to happen along that front, with Snowbasin and Deer Valley already pulling ahead.
It’s not just Eagle and Silverlode that needs to happen. Other potential PC Upgrades that I can see happening before 2034 may include replacements of Town Lift, Pioneer, Dreamcatcher, Day Break, Timberline, etc.
Will Silverlode stick to the plan to be a non-bubble D-Line as before, since I believe Doppelmayr only has the D-Line option for 8s.
LikeLike
I wouldn’t assume Doppelmayr as the only contender for Silverlode. The D-Line was originally contracted five years ago. There’s no reason LPOA couldn’t do an eight place for the right customer and price. Which way the Canyons Village gondola goes could give us a clue.
One thing that could favor Doppelmayr is if they kept the Eagle mid-station in storage somewhere. I’m not sure it was ever fully produced though.
LikeLike
Peter,
Mid station never went into production.
LikeLike
I’d just always mildly assumed had it gone to production it would be being used as challenger’s mid station
LikeLike
Would be a big win for LPOA to steal the Silverlode / Eagle contract. They have plenty of 8-pack installations in Europe and could import them just as well as Doppelmayr imports D-Line equipment. But to win that deal when Doppelmayr went as far as to make all of the equipment and deliver it to the parking lot would be a big win in Doppelmayr’s backyard. Park City has a ton of long-deferred replacements and now has a shiny new LPA gondola to get familiar with this year, and Deer Valley has Doppelmayr’s production schedule filled.
Park City will probably be in the market for a few more 8-packs soon (Bonanza is only a year newer than Silverlode and just as crowded) and plenty of quads (Dreamcatcher, Pioneer, Thaynes, whatever they do with Peak 5, eventual McConkey’s replacement) and six-packs (Saddleback, eventual Payday and Crescent)
LikeLiked by 1 person
A seven percent price increase (faster than inflation) contributed to a three percent drop in unit sales. Seems like rational customer behavior.
And maybe that 3% drop might occasionally be noticeable on peak days! Long lift lines this past winter may also have played a role in customer value calculus.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Interesting sketch with Uni-g stations and Diamond sigma cabins
LikeLiked by 1 person
Rendering folks had plenty of red Sigma Diamond cabins in the parking lot to look at for inspiration the last two summers for Sunrise and the Red Pine replacements
LikeLiked by 1 person
Its just something with a gondola or a chair lift with a mid station or two that is so cool in my book.
LikeLike
Am I the only person on this site who doesn’t believe in 8-packs as a way to ease congestion? I’ve seen this in action at Sunday River and (without excellent line management) this doesn’t work.
I was there on a pretty crowded day (10min lines) and each chair was going up with an average 5-6 people (with a shocking number of 3s and 4s). Since 8-pack spacing is larger than that of a six pack, that means actual capacity was ~2400pph.
Meanwhile Barker (and a few other six packs I rode that weekend) were *also* solidly averaging 5-6 people per chair. That’s an actual capacity of ~3300pph.
This was reflected by the speed that the lines moved..
I understand that this works in Europe where people don’t care as much about riding with their group, but when you start combining 3 groups with singles things get too confusing. People are way too clueless in liftlines for this. I’m really interested in seeing how this pans out at a really crowded pod like Silverlode.
LikeLike
People in Europe care just as much about riding with their group. The operators don’t care anywhere near as much about filling the lift, and instead just overprovision capacity.
LikeLike
I think its more of a combination of both with the queue management and chair interval being the biggest factor. I worked at Snowbird and I would see peak weekends hit massive crowds on Gadzoom and with fast queue management so there are always people filling the chairs, I could clear the lunch rush line in under 45 minutes based on my timing. Peruvian was the same story, Mineral Basin is the only lift where even the best queue management couldn’t change the lines that much, but if there was no queue management in Mineral that lift would ABSOLUTELY have 15-20 min lines 24/7.
LikeLike
8 packs are just crazy because you clearly need like 6+ employees running the line to make it work. SR had 3 and it was nowhere near enough. Making groups of 8 is just genuinely hard when you’re in a crowded lift line full of people who aren’t even trying.
LikeLike
I recommend looking at the Quicksilver SuperSix thread. It’s got some great conversation about this topic.
LikeLike
Does anyone have the old map of where the eagle lift new route was supposed to look like? I imagine silverlodes stay the same.
LikeLike
Eagle would start at the same position as the old one, but paralleling with 3 Kings with a mid-station just above lookers left of the entrance to Pick N’ Shovel. It would either be a half-mid or a full-mid depending if there’ll be an angle change or not. It’ll then continue up the face of the Crescent Trails until it terminates at the ridgetop next to King Con. The top terminal would also be higher than old Eaglet since you can directly access Quicksilver, Pix-Axe, the front-facing blacks or King Con’s popular blues.
LikeLike
Thanks, eagle and eaglet would disappear I assume?
LikeLike
Openskimap often shows the path of planned lifts:
https://openskimap.org/#13.57/40.64662/-111.51572
LikeLike