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Oakwood Discussion

Jay Curtis' Explores has a wonderful video on the current state of the park.

They've cleared the Northern edge of the land right up to the border of Bluestone...
 
I'm still non the wiser what they are planning to do with the remains of the park. I'm surprised they didn't try and sell it as a going concern and instead went straight to asset striping
 
Nobody wants to buy into theme parks at the moment due to the state of the economy.
They seem to be quite a good way of losing money quickly, especially where there is no large local population.
There are thousands of better investment options.
A decade of underinvestment eventually comes home to roost.
Like Camelot/Morecambe/Belle Vue etc.
 
True, but that is more the lower value cards being shuffled round the pack by the other players.
I suppose the big exception is Universal, but that is big long term.

Times are hard.
 
Quantum said:
I'm still non the wiser what they are planning to do with the remains of the park. I'm surprised they didn't try and sell it as a going concern and instead went straight to asset striping
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When you sell a business as a "going concern", the concern actually has to be going somewhere other than into the ground.

A sale requires a willing buyer. Who, in the current economic climate, looks at a geographically isolated park in West Wales (with a ride lineup which requires millions in immediate maintenance CAPEX just to pass ADIPS) and a catchment area limited to holidaymakers and sheep, and sees a profit opportunity?

Lightwater Valley and Pleasurewood Hills (regardless of who's currently shuffling them around the deck) have local catchment areas and infrastructure that make them viable fixer uppers for a domestic operator looking to expand a regional portfolio. Oakwood is an outlier. It is too big to be a family fun park, but too remote to be a national destination.

As I alluded to previously, for a multinational conglomerate like Aspro, the maths is different. Selling the park for a nominal £1 fee just to get it off the books doesn't help them.

Stripping the assets, however, allows them to write off the book value of the rides as a loss against their group profits (reducing their tax bill), whilst retaining the freehold of the land which will sit on the balance sheet as an appreciating asset for future development.

It's worth more to them dead than it is alive (or sold).
Squiggs said:
*and Puy du Fou.
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History does have a rather uncomfortable habit of repeating itself.

It's a well documented phenomenon that far right nationalists often view periods of severe economic instability and national decline as the opportune moment to expand their territory.

If nothing else, at least they are consistent with the playbook.
 
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