Gregory Gives Bullish Report
Mammoth Resorts set revenue record last year. Aims even higher.
Mammoth Mountain CEO Rusty Gregory presented a “Mammoth Resorts State of the Company” at Mammoth’s regular Town Council meeting on Wednesday.
Mammoth’s 2016 Fiscal Year ended on October 31. Gregory said, “We have just completed our most successful year in history for the company … not in terms of skier visits but in terms of revenue …”
Among Mammoth’s four resorts, the company realized $235 million in gross revenue.
Gregory spoke to the audience and Council for about 20 minutes, presenting a slideshow of skier visits and Return on Investment (ROI) bar graphs dating back to the early ‘80s when, Gregory said, Mammoth was “by far the most visited ski area in the country,” followed by Killington Mountain in Vermont, and Vail, “a distant third.”
Interestingly, Gregory said, Mammoth Mountain’s high of 1.6 million skier visits during that period has not really been surpassed in the modern day. “Mammoth was Number One in the early ‘80s doing about the same number of skier visits on a good year that we do today,” Gregory said. “That’s very telling.”
He revisited the devastating period during 1990-91 when “we almost lost the company” due to several bad snow years and a lack of snowmaking equipment. He recalled “Black Monday,” in 1991 when 150 year-round employees lost their jobs in one day. “The average length [tenure] of an employee was 21 years” at that time, Gregory said.
“During this time it was so incredibly painful in town. Our friends were leaving… Forget about development, there was barely enough money to turn the gas on. That pain brought us together.”
Gregory presented a silver lining—a great many plans were made during that period. “Anti-development and development interests got together. We put our differences aside, got off our poles and got into discussions. Those plans served us well for the next 10 years.”
Between 1996-2006, Gregory said, there were 1,300 units built in Mammoth, mostly by Intrawest and its affiliates. It was a great period, Gregory said, “that was a lot of fun. I vaguely remember that.”
The global financial meltdown coupled with drought defined the next decade.
