$PRKS: SeaWorld, an 8% cash yield, and a possible 80% short squeeze | Hawkins Entrekin

United Parks ($PRKS) owns SeaWorld and Busch Gardens, trades around 8x EBITDA with an 8%+ unlevered cash yield, and is plowing basically 100% of free cash flow into buybacks while Hill Path sits on roughly 60% of the stock. Adjust for passive holders and effective short interest lands somewhere near 80% of float; Bloomberg's short squeeze score is 93 out of 100. Hawkins Entrekin (Valyte, and the guy who pitched Vornado on this podcast right at the bottom of New York real estate) thinks you're buying irreplaceable hard assets below replacement cost, with a squeeze as the cherry on top. His fair value: low $80s against a stock in the high $40s.

It's catnip to me, which is exactly why I push back. EBITDA fell from roughly $700 million to $600 million in an inflationary environment; is that Epic Universe's one-time supply hit, or a sign SeaWorld is the industry's swing capacity? Management has blamed weather in 15 of the last 16 quarters (I counted). And when a 60% owner is pushing every dollar into buybacks while attendance sits 20% below the 2008 peak, you have to ask whether this is being run for long-term operations or just for the spreadsheet.

Hawkins' United Parks write-up: https://valyteresearch.substack.com/p/united-parks-and-resorts

The Trata call I used to prep: https://www.trata.com/prks

This episode is sponsored by AlphaSense: https://alpha-sense.com/yavp. Most AI tools are very good at sounding right, but can you trace the answer back to the filing, the transcript, the exact passage that drove it? AlphaSense is the AI platform built for that: over 500 million curated documents, from broker research and expert transcripts to filings and earnings calls, with every answer linked back to an exact, verifiable source. Try a free trial at https://alpha-sense.com/yavp.

Chapters:

(00:00) Intro: everything I love in a stock, and why that scares me

(01:34) AlphaSense (sponsor)

(02:49) Welcome back Hawkins Entrekin

(03:41) What is United Parks?

(04:44) The short squeeze setup: ~80% of effective float

(05:50) A real estate lens on theme parks

(08:36) What are the shorts seeing?

(10:32) EBITDA went from $700M to $600M; why?

(12:01) Epic Universe and the new-supply explanation

(17:27) Weather excuses: 15 of the last 16 quarters

(19:44) Capex and the asset-stripping check

(24:08) The real estate angles (and OpCo/PropCo cold water)

(28:19) What's the excess land worth?

(30:34) Can you comp a theme park on NOI?

(32:13) Valuation: low-$80s fair value vs a high-$40s stock

(34:33) Why 8x when Blackstone paid 12-14x? Plus replacement cost

(40:45) Hill Path at 60%: squeeze, take-private, or sale?

(46:05) Attendance is down 20% from the 2008 peak

(48:47) The bulls have been early for three years

(56:58) What is Valyte?

(58:28) Seritage, Elme, and a hard stop

Hawkins Entrekin / Valyte: https://www.valytedata.com/

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Production and editing by The Podcast Consultant - https://thepodcastconsultant.com/