Dancing Geezer fails to prop 6Flags and JNPR (pump and dump)
(Sherlock, noted this Bs note changing rating on a $10m increase in guidance earlier, and coffee is free at JNPR !!)
Six Flags up on new holder stake
By William Spain, CBS.MarketWatch.com 4:21 PM ET Aug31/04
CHICAGO (CBS.MW) - Shares of battered Six Flags were on the rise for a change Tuesday, gaining nearly 25 percent on word that the owner of the Washington Redskins quietly gobbled up a big chunk of the troubled theme park operator this month - and may lean on management to sell or merge the company. A Securities and Exchange Commission filing disclosed that Daniel Snyder bought 8.1 million shares of Six Flags (PKS: news, chart, profile) in August, making him the third-largest shareholder in the company.
In the filing, Snyder said he believes the shares are undervalued and will seek to influence management to find ways to improve operations. He may also try for a seat on the board of directors or seek a sale or merger of the company.
"The company's management has failed to implement measures to increase revenues and decrease expenses, and its failure to do so has caused the company to be continuously outperformed by its peers in the amusement, recreation and leisure industry," the filing said. Calls to Six Flags were not returned.
Six Flags was up $1.11 to close at $5.57 Tuesday. Its 52-week high of $8.80 was back in March; it scraped bottom at $3.36 on August 10. Four years ago, it was north of $30. The company has been having miserable summer thus far, reporting early this month that a slump in attendance and revenue kept its numbers in the hole during the second quarter as a July turnaround failed to materialize. In July, Six Flags said that park-level revenue for the first six months of the year was down almost 1 percent, while attendance dropped 4 percent to 12.8 million.
In a note to investors, Kit Spring at Stifel Nicolaus & Co. said Snyder's buy-up is positive for Six Flags, although he questioned whether a buyer can be found for the entire company. "We aren't highly familiar with Mr. Snyder's track record, but we view the move positively as it increases the likelihood that sales of under-performing assets will be made by the company," he said. In order to get a high returns on buying the whole company, he continued, a buyer would have to re-capitalize the balance sheet at lower rates. "This likely eliminates most private equity buyers and leaves only conglomerates with good balance sheets that already own theme parks, such as Disney (DIS: news, chart, profile), General Electric (GE: news, chart, profile), Anheuser-Busch (BUD: news, chart, profile), and Viacom (VIA: news, chart, profile)," Spring wrote. "We really don't know what GE or Anheuser might do, but we're pretty sure frustrated shareholders of Disney and Viacom generally aren't interested in those companies speculating on PKS."
(Viacom is a significant shareholder in MarketWatch, the publisher of this report.)
AI
Market Data 
Markets 
