October continued the Q3 trend of positive weather as Golf Playable Hours (GPH) came in at +7% vs. Year Ago (YA) at the national level. For the Year-to-Period (YtD), the GPH comparative measure continues to improve clawing its way back from over -10% earlier in the year to half that level finishing October at -5%. The YtD regional breadth ratio continues to be negative registering at 1:4 with 7 regions having favorable weather against 26 regions with unfavorable weather (12 regions are in the neutral zone of +/- 2%). Looking at YtD weather impact performance by day-of-week, we’re also seeing a gradual balancing between weekdays vs. weekends (after October, the best comparative weather day this season shifted to Tuesdays, which isn’t a great help). For the full-year forecast, our October update suggests we’ve made up as much ground as we’re going to for the year. The values for the above two metrics, the GPH results by day-of-the-week, the monthly timeseries for the entire year as well as market-level Utilization Rates are available to Pellucid Publications Members via the Client Login section at the Pellucid website (go to
www.pellucidcorp.com for information or to subscribe).
Looking back on September rounds played as reported by Golf Datatech to calculate the facility % Utilization Rate (UR), rounds demand (+1%) marginally lagged the positive weather performance (+2%) resulting in a UR level for the month of 51% which is 1 point behind than the benchmark 2012 year-end value. For the YtD period the measure remained slightly up with a rounds decline rate (-5%) slightly beating the weather decline rate (-7%) producing a UR of 52% or +1 pt vs. the 2012 year-end value.Jim Koppenhaver comments, “The pessimist in me says, “Too little, too late” but my inner optimist says “Thank God, better late than never!” As I’ve mentioned in several previous months, our annual weather impact forecast for the year that we made back in January was looking kind of silly as we finished May and had me worried, but math made a comeback in the 2nd and (especially) 3rd quarter and we’re now in position to potentially deliver a better case (but still >-5%) result for the year’s comparative weather than our projection. As all the operators can attest to, back-end loading of rounds and revenue isn’t the optimal pattern we prefer in golf where a considerable amount of our expenses are front-end loaded but most have been able to weather the cashflow shift as long as this pattern vs. last year either levels out or improves. The Pacific Northwest continues to be the shining star weather-wise compared to last year’s numbers posting gains of roughly 5% while a number of key regions are still down double digits on the weather front vs. last year such as the regions of NYC and the Washington DC/Northern VA area, the western Great Lakes and Minnesota.”On the revenue side via the September YtD PGA PerformanceTrak numbers, they’re reporting Median Total Revenue basically flat and Median Golf Fee (GF) Revenue off 3% (both slight improvements from last month). Comparing their YtD GF Revenue (-3%) and Rounds Played (-5%) metrics produces a +2% change on GF rate-per-played-round. Pellucid calculations combining our GPH measure and their GF Revenue measure also produce a positive change in Revenue-per-Available Round (RevpAR, or the revenue efficiency of our “factories”). The actual RevpAR value and the percent change are also available to Pellucid Publications members on a monthly basis at the national level.
A broader and more detailed scorecard of the monthly key industry metrics can be found in Pellucid’s free digital magazine, The Pellucid Perspective. To register to get the current and future editions, go tohttp://www.pellucidcorp.com/news/elist, fill in the information and you will be registered for the next edition on 11/15/13.
Intelligent, curious and courageous industry stakeholders wanting the detailed metrics and monthly updates on weather impact at the national, regional and market level as well as utilization and the full year forecast numbers can subscribe to the Pellucid Publications Membership (Outside the Ropes monthly newsletter, 2012 State of the Industry, 2012 Industry Golf Consumer Franchise Scorecard, Monthly Market-Level Weather Impact, 2012 Top 25 US Golf Markets reports) for $495 annually. For individual facility owner/operators who need facility-level history, current year results by month and day-of-week and full year forecast data, Pellucid/Edgehill’s self-serve, web-delivered, real-time weather impact service product, Cognilogic, is your answer. It’s available for $240 for the year-end report and 12 month tracking or $120 for a single year-end report. For more information, contact Stuart Lindsay of Edgehill Golf Advisors (edgehillgolf@msn.com). You can now order either of the above information services via Pellucid’s online store at http://www.pellucidcorp.com/purchase-reports/online-store
