Vail Resorts Faces Prince Push to Sell Park City Mountain Resort
Matthew Prince wants vail resorts to sell him Park City Mountain Resort, the largest ski area in the United States, and he says the company should move faster than it has. The 50-year-old Cloudflare founder made the pitch publicly after first pressing the idea in March.
Prince Pushes Park City Sale
Matthew Prince said he is now increasingly convinced he could get the ski area a lot faster than the five years he once expected, because he thinks Vail Resorts is under pressure. “Selling Park City Mountain Resort is the right thing to do,” he said, adding that “The current management team does not sell properties.”
He also argued that Vail Resorts should shift to an “asset-light” franchise model. “You don’t need to own the resorts in order to have the resorts take your pass,” Prince said, framing the sale as part of a broader restructuring rather than a one-off deal.
Vail Resorts Owns 42 Ski Areas
Vail Resorts owns 42 ski areas in the United States, Canada, Austria and Australia, and Prince said the company has never sold a ski area. He called the company “a bad capital allocator” and said its market capitalization is less than the combined value of all of its ski hills.
Prince also said Vail Resorts’ share price is around $137 and down more than 60% from its 2021 peak, with around 35.6 million outstanding shares. He said, “At some point shareholders are going to say you know what, you don’t get to be a capital allocator anymore,” and added, “You can’t have stock that is limping along for 10 years and not have a change.”
For Prince, the argument is personal as much as financial: he grew up at Park City Mountain Resort and worked there as a ski instructor in the mid-1990s. He is now Utah’s wealthiest person, and he said, “I was hopeful they would come to that conclusion themselves.”
Prince also warned that shareholder pressure could arrive before management chooses to act. “Current management has not ever gotten rid of a resort but I’m not sure that the current management is long for this world,” he said, and later added, “I am now increasingly convinced it’s going to happen a lot faster than that, because they’re in real trouble.”
That leaves Park City Mountain Resort at the center of a rare public push for a sale from a named buyer with deep local ties. If Prince keeps pressing, Vail Resorts faces a test of whether it keeps every resort or starts breaking up the portfolio he says is worth more than the company itself.
Rob Katz Faces A Sale Test
Rob Katz now faces the clearest challenge yet to Vail Resorts’ ownership model from an outside bidder who wants one of its most visible assets. Prince said activist investors could also target other resorts, including Whistler-Blackcomb, Breckenridge, Vail-Beaver Creek and Park City Mountain Resort, which makes the current fight larger than one mountain in Utah.
