Vail Resorts shareholder Late Apex Partners LLC on Monday issued a second letter to the company’s board of directors, expressing concerns for Vail Resorts’ management and frustration with the company’s “hollow reassurances.”
The letter follows the shareholder’s Jan. 27 letter calling for the termination of current CEO Kirsten Lynch and CFO Angela Korch.
“Your perfunctory response exemplifies your mismanagement of Vail over the past several years — superficial, short-sighted, and self-defeating,” wrote Late Apex founder Taylor Schmidt in the March 17 letter. “Others have been more receptive, however. In recent weeks, we’ve spoken with not only numerous Vail stakeholders, but a critical mass of MTN shareholders who, we believe, share our view that complete transformation of both the Board and C-Suite is overdue.”
The March 17 letter returns to the plan outlined in the Jan. 27 letter demanding a reset of current leadership and a return to focusing on customers’ skiing experiences.
“The Board must understand that Management cannot take back the narrative. They have already written themselves out of the story. Confront the brutal facts,” wrote Schmidt.
The letter posed 10 questions for Vail Resorts regarding the company’s position relative to Alterra Mountain Company, rankings including SKI magazine, and others.
“We are fully committed to seeing Vail realize its full potential. To that end, it remains our sincere desire to work constructively with the Board. Yet, if the Board resists action, we are also ready to utilize all available shareholder rights to prompt the long overdue wake-up call. Action solves everything,” he wrote.
Noting seven weeks without a satisfactory response from the company, Schmidt made clear his beliefs about the company and his role as an actor within it.
“The fun is just beginning,” wrote Schmidt.
In the firm’s initial investment research presentation, Schmidt outlines the Park City ski patrol strike over the holidays as a boiling point and representation of management undervaluing the guest experience. The research asserts a five-year failure to provide expected services and a destruction of value beginning with the tenure of Lynch and Korch.
As a small investor, Late Apex Partners acknowledged the importance of collective, concerted action among other shareholders toward garnering a public response from the company, he said.
While Vail Resorts remains Late Apex Partners’ single largest position, the share price of MTN stock is down 28% year over year, trading at $160.74 as of Tuesday afternoon.