December brought a painful weather whipsaw after a phenomenally favorable November as Golf Playable Hours (GPH) at the national level registered -36% vs. Year Ago (YA). That basically eliminated the entire Year-to-Date GPH favorability and the year landed statistically flat to 2015. Unfavorability was nearly universal with only 2 of 45 regions posting positive “comps”. The unfortunate December results reversed once again the YtD regional positive/negative breadth ratio from a positive distribution through November to a negative one finishing at 1:2 with 6 regions having favorable weather against 13 regions with unfavorable weather (the neutral zone regions of +/- 2% represented the majority result comprised of the remaining 26 regions). Looking at YtD weather impact performance by day-of-week, weather favorability continued to skew to weekdays vs. weekends which invokes a slight headwind to revenue (given weekday pricing is less favorable to facilities). Little did we know when making our assertion in October that the trailing two months wouldn’t have a meaningful impact that we would get a huge November and crushing December in weather. Pellucid subscribers have access each month to our “call” for year-end 2016 GPH for Total US, the comparison to the 10-year average, the regional swings beneath the national figure and the day-of-week breakdowns via the Geographic Weather Impact Tracking report or Pellucid Publications suite through the Client Login section at the Pellucid website. Cognilogic facility weather impact subscribers also know these figures for their individual facility (go to www.pellucidcorp.com to subscribe or for more information and in exchange we’ll send you a sample of the ’16 1st half actual results to review).
Rounds demand data for November as published by Golf Datatech revealed a pleasant surprise with a monthly jump of +11% vs. YA (2nd consecutive month in positive territory) which “goosed” the YtD level to a solid +1% vs. ’15. Comparing that result to Pellucid’s previously-reported GPH results, the very encouraging news was that demand followed favorable weather linearly; an unusual occurrence in Q4 for the golf industry. For the YtD period at the national level, Utilization still looks like a draw with modestly positive rounds trailing the slightly higher weather gains. How the considerably negative December weighs on YtD demand and Utilization will be seen at the end of January. Utilization figures for the month at the National and 61 key Markets (including Pellucid’s designated Top 25 markets) level are also available to Pellucid Publications members and Geographic Weather Impact report subscribers.
Jim Koppenhaver comments, “The December weather was an ambush in that there weren’t any major weather events with widespread impact and coverage. Part of it is a high baseline vs. a favorable ’15 December but we also significantly lagged the 10-yr average for the month (one of the reasons we also track that benchmark). The regional weather impact map was a “sea of red” (declines less than 2% vs. YA) for the month and which also switched a number of YtD favorable regions into the neutral zone. Only 2 regions had positive monthly “comps” while 3 were neutral and 6 were N/A (i.e. they had no GPH in ’15 or ’16 for the month) leaving 34 regions in the red for weather for the month (wow!). Looking back at November Utilization, as mentioned above the double-digit increase in rounds is interesting anomaly compared to history where we’ve generally seen demand trail favorable weather in Q4 as golfers’ attention is diverted to other activities (like TV football and kids’ sports leagues back in full swing). The rare but encouraging story is that post-Labor Day demand can keep up with weather favorability, we just have to figure out the “how” and then replicate that going forward. At the 61 market level focusing on our Top 25 markets for YtD Utilization, we see Pittsburgh, Minneapolis and Dallas as the top performers in Utilization gains while Tampa and Orlando are laggards. Across the 61 market universe as a whole, the storyline continues to be flat Utilization meaning that demand is basically following the weather. While there could be worse news, the fact that we can’t seem to drive demand independent of weather doesn’t give us a credible growth story in the short-term on the key volume metric.”
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 www.pellucidcorp.com/news/elist, fill in the information and you’ll be registered for the next edition on 1/15/17.
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 have two subscription options:
• Subscribe to the Geographic Weather Impact Analysis Tracking service ($299, 12 reports annually at national, 45 weather regions and 61 key markets levels) or
• Subscribe to the Pellucid Publications Membership (Outside the Ropes monthly newsletter, 2015 State of the Industry, 2015 Industry Golf Consumer Franchise Scorecard, Geographic Weather Impact Analysis tracking, 2014 Top 25 US Golf Markets reports, Golf Participant Base Projection analysis) 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 unlimited annual access via the Cognilogic web portal or $120 for a single year-end report. For more information, contact Stuart Lindsay of Edgehill Golf Advisors (edgehillgolf@msn.com) or click here Order Cognilogic.
You can order any of the above information services via Pellucid’s Online Store.
Contact:
Jim Koppenhaver, President, Pellucid Corp.
jimk@pellucidcorp.com
www.pellucidcorp.com
