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Merlin Entertainments: General Discussion

It's the curse of a demand for perpetual growth at all costs.

I don't know how it works within Merlin but at our company we have Cost Saving Managers who's sole role is as it sounds, to save £X over the course of X number of months at the expense of everything and everyone else within the business.
 
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Breakdown of overall group revenue of £2.06bn.

- Theme parks (not including Legoland) = £429m or roughly 21%

- Midways - £751m or roughly 37%

- Legoland parks - £869m or roughly 42%


It's easy to see why they have invested into two further Legoland parks over recent years with even more still to come. They clearly make a lot of money from that brand. The problem is these two latest offerings in New York and Korea have been a complete and utter financial disaster with attendances way below what they were anticipating. This has only added to the previous flop of Legoland Dubai which is like a ghost town 90% of the time. So out of the 10 Legoland parks it's really only a select few that are hugely profitable and doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
 
I'm quite curious to know how Merlin apportion the revenue generated from MAP sales as it must represent a fair portion of the income generated by the theme parks.

So far this year I've used my MAP to visit Alton Towers and a regional Sea Life centre. How do they know if I bought the pass primarily to attend theme parks or for medway attractions? And thus how can they accurately establish the profitability of either as a result?
 
Find those profit figures questionable, given that they lost £200 million last year. More likely to be EBITDA, and compared with last year's £622 million.
 
Tom said:
Find those profit figures questionable, given that they lost £200 million last year. More likely to be EBITDA, and compared with last year's £622 million.
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I'm not a finance person, but I agree that this presumably isn't what most people think of as profit. £573 million profit on a £2.06 billion turnover would mean a profit margin over 25%. Even if Merlin were doing well, I don't think the theme park industry normally delivers those kinds of margins.
 
Tom said:
Official report isn't out on the website yet, but suspect it is earnings not profit.
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Specifically, it is underlying adjusted profit, not EBITDA.
Merlin recorded an underlying adjusted profit of £573 million for the year to December 28, down 15.1 per cent on the year before, amid higher operating costs and continued investment into its portfolio.
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EBITDA provides a view of a company's operational profitability, excluding the impact of financing, taxes, and non-cash accounting charges. It isolates the earnings generated from core business activities.

Underlying adjusted profit aims to present a normalised view of recurring earnings. It extends beyond EBITDA by removing non-recurring or unusual items, offering a clearer picture of sustainable profitability.

I'll agree they are similar, but underlying adjusted profit tends to be more refined.
 
Merlin are teaming up with RWS Global to provide entertainment to all the UK Merlin Parks. It is a shame about redundancies however this is still better than no entertainment.

RWS Global also work with Disney, Europa Park and Hershey Park
 
It's weird how, similar to the Aramark deal, this only includes the UK/US parks, and not their Asian or European operations. Not sure why the lines have been drawn where they have been because it's my understanding that decisions have previously been made under the division of the company and the continent that they belonged so I don't understand why the UK RTPs and US Legoland parks seem to be pretty much lockstep at the moment.

It must be some sort of restructuring within the company, I wonder whether the other attractions will follow suit. But as long as we get the entertainment back, I think this is a very good thing, and if parks wanted something bigger than they could provide internally before, then Merlin can just pay RWS for that entertainment for that period of time. It's going to be interesting to see how Towers' Scarefest evolves under new management and direction!
 
Bert2theSpark said:
It's weird how, similar to the Aramark deal, this only includes the UK/US parks, and not their Asian or European operations. Not sure why the lines have been drawn where they have been because it's my understanding that decisions have previously been made under the division of the company and the continent that they belonged so I don't understand why the UK RTPs and US Legoland parks seem to be pretty much lockstep at the moment.

It must be some sort of restructuring within the company, I wonder whether the other attractions will follow suit. But as long as we get the entertainment back, I think this is a very good thing, and if parks wanted something bigger than they could provide internally before, then Merlin can just pay RWS for that entertainment for that period of time. It's going to be interesting to see how Towers' Scarefest evolves under new management and direction!
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Easier to sell?
 
Hmm, if it means we get a Scarefest that blows the previous two years out of the water or any Ents for that matter then I doubt anyone will have issues with this.
 
QTXAdsy said:
Hmm, if it means we get a Scarefest that blows the previous two years out of the water or any Ents for that matter then I doubt anyone will have issues with this.
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Scarefest needs improvement and was better last year with Compound and Altonville is always great.

Just hope they don't ruin Fright Nights as Frights Nights last year felt like Halloween Horror Nights
 
Rob said:
Merlin just don't want to do anything themselves do they? Food, nahhh let Aramark handle that. Entertainment, over to you RWS. What will it be next, hotels or ride operations?
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Hotels for sure 🤔 Possibly retail too.

I think the only thing left would be ride/park operations in my opinion.

Franchising might be a route they could go down as well although Thorpe Park seems to be the only park in the UK with franchising right now.
 
Rob said:
Merlin just don't want to do anything themselves do they? Food, nahhh let Aramark handle that. Entertainment, over to you RWS. What will it be next, hotels or ride operations?
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RWS has the potential to massively improve Entertainments. The fact they work with Disbey, Europa and Hershey says a lot of what their capable of.

Also I wouldn't be against outsourcing if it means improving the experience only food has been a real issue mostly due to price hopefully that cab be resolved at some point many parks do outsource stuff even Fireworks has always been outsourced
 
Rob said:
Merlin just don't want to do anything themselves do they? Food, nahhh let Aramark handle that. Entertainment, over to you RWS. What will it be next, hotels or ride operations?
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Hmm, privatisation of Merlin then splitting it into sections like the railways then? Honestly given how low the bar has been set in terms of Merlin's operations of rides and the hotels of late anyone would have nothing to lose by this point.
 
Hid said:
RWS has the potential to massively improve Entertainments. The fact they work with Disbey, Europa and Hershey says a lot of what their capable of.

Also I wouldn't be against outsourcing if it means improving the experience only food has been a real issue mostly due to price hopefully that cab be resolved at some point many parks do outsource stuff even Fireworks has always been outsourced
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Yes, but it all depends what you put in. Are Merlin going to pay them the big bucks to get top quality? Time will tell.

Just had a look at what they have done for EP and it was just the creation of the Junior Club show. EP's vast array of entertainment is managed in-house.
 
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