Six Flags CEO blames weak attendance on ‘rowdy teenagers’

Yahoo Finance Live anchors discuss the Six Flags CEO’s comments that the parks had become "a cheap daycare center" for teenagers and his take on quarterly earnings.

Video transcript

BRAD SMITH: But one other company that's in the business of roller coasters that we're watching, Six Flags CEO. Yeah, they blamed weaker attendance on a new initiative to push out rowdy teenagers. OK, all right, so the shares here on the day, they are up by about 4%. I mean, look, you should be doing everything you can to engage with teenagers or any family that's coming to Six Flags.

I don't know how rowdy things can be. I mean, everybody is looking out for their safety, hopefully, in an environment where you do know that there is some heavy machinery that is in the experience. Now, at the same time, yeah, people are going to go there. They're going to have fun.

It's really about how you as a company are doing the best possible engagement strategy and initiating that so that your employees better understand how to engage, how to initiate a lot of that contact with not just perspective, but on the ground type of customers as well that are there, that are enjoying the Park experience. And so, I mean, anybody who's there, I don't know why you would be trying to push them out. A day care center?

BRIAN SOZZI: Brad, I don't know what planet Six Flags CEO Selim Bassoul is on, but now he will forever be remembered for that quote. He could go out and put up--

BRAD SMITH: It's a terrible quote.

BRIAN SOZZI: --10 great quarters in a row. He's going to be remembered for saying that on an earnings call, potentially alienating a whole lot of people to its parks. And now I'm looking at a note from Deutsche Bank.

Deutsche Bank and a lot of other firms are ripping this company to shreds here, the day after. Deutsche Bank noting, saying, "We think the stock has completely written off prospects for a turnaround this year and is implicitly taking a bleak view of 2023 as well." Deutsche Bank saying, that bleakness is justified and fair.

BRAD SMITH: It's absolutely justified. Six Flags has not done a good job of reengaging people, getting them back into the parks experience. For a lot of the year over year comps, even if they were to blame the timing of different events that would have given people time off to come to the parks, that's still, by the street, they're not accepting that in any sense.

In totality, they're going to buck that and say, "you know what? You should have come up with more mechanisms to try and reengage consumers, to try and ensure that their park experience was not one where they felt like, hey, we might get kicked out. So we're not going to go back there." I think at the end of the day, it's just a poor management issue.

BRIAN SOZZI: I do like their merry-go-rounds. I'm a big merry-go horse fan. I know, it's really cool. Classic, I'm a classic ride guy. All right, coming up--