August built on the July positive weather mojo as Golf Playable Hours (GPH) came in at +2% vs. Year Ago (YA) at the national level. For the Year-to-Period (YtD), the GPH comparative measure continued to improve but remains in negative territory at -8%. Additionally, the YtD regional breadth ratio improved slightly with one more region “feeling the weather love” registering at 1:4 with 7 regions having favorable weather against 31 regions with unfavorable weather (7 regions are in the neutral zone of +/- 2%). Looking at YtD weather impact performance by day-of-week, the unfavorable weather continues to be slightly more concentrated in weekdays vs. weekends (interestingly the Saturday vs. Sunday weather is meaningfully different). For the full-year forecast, our July update continued to suggest a 2nd half upswing in weather and projects we’ll roughly return to 2011’s level (read closely, that’s not a typo, it says 2011 on purpose). 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 July rounds played as reported by Golf Datatech to calculate the facility % Utilization Rate (UR), rounds demand (-1%) failed to match the positive weather performance (+4%) resulting in a UR level for the month of 49% which is 2 points below the benchmark 2012 year-end value of 51%. For the YtD period the measure remained slightly up with a rounds decline rate (-8%) slightly beating the weather decline rate (-10%) producing a UR of 52% or up 1 point vs. 2012 year-end.
Jim Koppenhaver comments, “To say that August weather favorability was a critical shot in the collective industry arm would be an understatement. This is however consistent with Pellucid’s early year projections on the weather forecast which suggested that the poor weather start would not continue unabated. The critical question as we finish Q3 is whether we’ll get commensurate rounds response to the more favorable weather (see Stuart Lindsay’s “golfers are more like bears than squirrels” postulate). The July rounds response to the favorable weather isn’t an encouraging datapoint but we’ll keep an open mind and positive outlook (Pellucid hallmarks for those of you who know us, ha, ha). One encouraging underlying trend at the market level is that we’re seeing positive utilization in key markets with roughly half (15 of 29) of the key markets (those contributing 1% or more to the national total) beating the weather YtD. That’s kind of the silver lining of the dark cloud angle; while they’re experiencing rounds and revenue declines, we can quantify that it’s due to circumstances beyond their control and it’s not necessarily a fundamental flaw in their course conditioning, operations, customer satisfaction, marketing or market positioning.”
On the revenue side via the July YtD PGA PerformanceTrak numbers, they’re reporting Median Total Revenue off 2% and Median Golf Fee Revenue off 6%. Comparing their YtD GF Revenue and Rounds Played metrics produces a +2% change on GF rate-per-played-round. Pellucid calculations combining our GPH measure and their GF Revenue measure produces 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 to http://www.pellucidcorp.com/news/elist, fill in the information and you will be registered for the next edition on 9/15/13.
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.
Contact:
Jim Koppenhaver, President, Pellucid Corp.
jimk@pellucidcorp.com
www.pellucidcorp.com
