It’s been a stormy ride for SeaWorld Entertainment Inc. over the last several months. Heightened optimism among shareholders at the front end of the theme park company’s 2016 spring and summer season has been doused by a steep drop in its stock value.
In February, as SeaWorld, which operates SeaWorld San Antonio, was preparing for its 2016 season, CEO Joel Manby said the parent company’s business was “stabilizing.”
But last month, SeaWorld reported a net loss of $63.3 million on revenue of $591.4 million for the first six months of 2016. One factor that contributed to the company’s negative performance: 411,000 fewer guests visited SeaWorld parks during the first half of this year compared with the same period in 2015.
“It’s been tough. We were in a perfect storm,” SeaWorld San Antonio President Carl Lum told me during a visit to the park in May. “We had a death of a trainer and then we had the narrative of ‘Blackfish,’ which had a lot of inaccuracies. That put us right on the tip of the spear.”
SeaWorld has indeed struggled to separate itself from the backlash of “Blackfish,” a controversial documentary that included footage about an incident in 2010 at its Orlando park in which an orca killed a trainer.
In March, SeaWorld announced it would end all orca breeding and create more natural habitats for the remaining killer whales in its captivity. The company got some mileage out of that good-will move. In late March, the company’s stock was trading near a 52-week high at $21.85 per share.
However, the momentum on Wall Street didn’t last long. When trading closed on Sept. 15, SeaWorld stock was at $12.64 a share. The 52-week low for the company was $11.92 per share.
This week, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a new law that will ban the breeding of captive orcas in that state. While SeaWorld has already volunteered to end such breeding, the California Legislature’s action has placed the company front and center in the ongoing debate about the captivity of animals. A Reuters report about the California law, for example, noted the deaths of three mammals — a killer whale, dolphin and beluga whale — over a four-month span in 2015 and 2016 at SeaWorld San Antonio.
There has been some good news in San Antonio. SeaWorld’s Alamo City park has helped stem the tide of reduced visitation in Orlando.
Lum said SeaWorld visitors will continue to see more changes at the marine life parks.
“When you look at our product, it will be more balanced — less killer whale-centric than it might have been in the past,” he said.