December weather was a solid finish to a record year as Golf Playable Hours (GPH) registered up 2% vs. the same period last year at the national level. That maintained the strong favorability in the national Year-to-Date (YtD) GPH at +8% vs. the comparable year ago period. The regional breadth for the YtD period finished widely favorable at 36:1 with 36 regions having favorable weather against 1 region with unfavorable weather (Hawaii was the lone underperformer, the remaining 8 in the neutral zone of +/- 2%). Looking at YtD weather impact performance by day-of-week, the favorable weather was slightly more skewed to weekdays vs. weekends. For the full-year forecast, our previous calls that early season favorability would hold up were accurate based on the finish reported above. The values for the above two metrics, the monthly timeseries for the entire year as well as market-level Utilization for the preceding month are available to Pellucid Publications Members via the Client section at the Pellucid website (go to www.pellucidcorp.com for information or to subscribe).
Looking back on November rounds played (as reported by Golf Datatech/NGF) to calculate the facility % Utilization Rate (UR), rounds demand (+3%) outpaced the weather decline (-7%) resulting in a UR level for the month of 57% (solid!) which handily beat the benchmark 2011 year-end value (+5 pts). For the YtD period, the UR held its own (51%) but still lags year ago by 1 point comprised of a healthy increase in rounds demand (+6%) slightly trailing even better weather (+8%). At the market level for the YtD period, the UR breadth continued in the negative with a 1:2 ratio of favorable/unfavorable markets (comprised of 8 markets up vs. 15 down and 38 in the neutral zone) as most markets have been unable to keep pace on the rounds demand side against the incredible and broad-based weather favorability.
Jim Koppenhaver comments, “I went back to beginning of Pellucid’s Weather Impact tracking (5+ yrs) and found nothing that even approached the magnitude and breadth of the weather favorability that Mother Nature provided to the golf industry this year. I think I can safely say that this will be remembered for a long time as one for the record books and provides a mixed blessing for the industry. The incredible upside is that it gave intelligent and persistent owner/operators a much-needed revenue and profit infusion. The downside is that it will undoubtedly encourage some number of marginal owner/operators to hang in there at least another year rather than transacting or shuttering their facilities. In my opinion though that’s a small price to pay for the broader-based dividend of 2012 courtesy of incredible weather. Underneath the national mosaic of positive weather, Pellucid’s market-level utilization tracking combining our weather data with Golf Datatech’s rounds demand shows there were winners, maintainers and losers. The winners were markets as diverse as Detroit and San Francisco as were the losers spanning Dallas to Boston. We’ll have more details and the tale of the weather tape in our upcoming State of the Industry presentation in Orlando but, for the moment, we’ll just collectively as an industry bask in the glory of an incredibly benevolent weather year (OK, time’s up, get back to work worrying about January 2013).
On the Golf Fee Revenue (GFR) side via the November PGA PerformanceTrak numbers, they’re reporting flat performance for the month (slightly lower than the 1% rounds increase which means rate-per-played-round was off 1% vs. YA). For the YtD period, GFR is +7% (statistically even with the 7% rounds increase meaning rate-per-round is flat vs. YA). Inferring Revenue per Available Round (RevpAR, or the revenue efficiency of our “factories”) by comparing the YtD GFR gain (+7%) against the GPH gain (+8%), it suggests that RevpAR is off only slightly (-1%) vs. year ago meaning we can explain all of the positive revenue variance within favorable weather.
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 to http://www.pellucidcorp.com/news/elist, fill in the information and you will be registered for the next edition on 1/15/13.
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, 2011 State of the Industry, Monthly Weather Impact and Top 25 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.
Contact:
Jim Koppenhaver, President, Pellucid Corp.
jimk@pellucidcorp.com
www.pellucidcorp.com