ORDA Posts Updated Financials

ORDA has released this seasons financial report. Here are the Whiteface numbers:



Here are the Whiteface numbers from last year's report:





While the numbers for the skier visits remained the same for the previous years the revenue numbers have been changed in the previous years. There are no notations for this discrepancy.

Maybe the accounting rules changed, but if this is the case there should be notes to explain the changed revenue in previous years. It could be an error. It could be somebody trying to hope nobody notices the change.

Anybody have any ideas?

ORDA 2010-2011 Annual Report
ORDA 2009-2010 Annual Report

Good catch X.

To me, it just goes to show ORDA can't be trusted. Some of those years are off by over a million dollars/10 % +. That's alot. It's not like ORDA is a Billion $ Corp w/ a gazillion liability entries and global laws to deal with. They're a pretty small operation and this chart reflects the simple entry of revenue paid by skiers, et al. A few keystrokes would reveal that answer.

Likely, no one at ORDA even bothered to reconcile this new chart with their other " releases " prior to publishment. Sometimes people who are too busy patting themselves on the back get careless....opps!

IMO, I don't go for this crap of accounting practices changed, blah blah BS. I know it's an oft told explanation but I don't buy it.

Numbers are numbers. When they start shuffling the cards too much, they're practicing sleight of hand. Seen it done before and it turned out people were lying. Just my experience.

Wonder what their " prestigous " auditors/accounting firms filed on their behalf for those years.

Maybe Cuomo/ Uncle Sam are gonna get serious with these nebulous agencies and they felt they better start to come clean.

I should add I have absolutely no doubt that Belle's financial numbers are similarly fudged up.

This is why those citizen's groups down there can not get a straight answer on the simple question from the DEC ....is Belle profitable or not?

I would say it is. That is why the DEC will not definitively put this very simple question to bed for them. After years of saying Belle loses money, the DEC is in a hard place now. If they continue to say it loses money and then it turns out it doesn't, then their deception is exposed.

They don't want anything more on the record as it may end up in Court now and the powers of discovery come into play. So they Sgt. Schultz it..." I know nothing ! ".

Wait a second, I thought that Belleayre was the enemy and ORDA did everything by the books.

Jamesdeluxe wrote

Wait a second, I thought that Belleayre was the enemy and ORDA did everything by the books.

It just depends on which books.

I see what they did - they added the summer revenue to the winter revenue to get a total.  It might be technically correct but its certainly misleading

ausable skier wrote

I see what they did - they added the summer revenue to the winter revenue to get a total.  It might be technically correct but its certainly misleading

Really?
You may want to use a calculator next time. None of the numbers match adding summer and winter revenue, including a reduction in revenue 05/06 and 06/07.

I reached out to Jon Lundin at ORDA to see if he could shed some light on this.

Harvey44 wrote

I reached out to Jon Lundin at ORDA to see if he could shed some light on this.

 
Aw, wish you hadn't done that.

I actually noticed this on July 7. If you look in our blog entry that serves as our record...

http://nyskiblog.com/orda-skier-visits/

...you'll see the at the bottom I'm crediting three sources - the ORDA 2010 Annual Report, the ORDA 2011 Annual Report, and just ORDA.  What I have there is all the historical numbers (2004 - 2010) are quoted from the 2010 report and the numbers for the 2010/2011 are from the 2011 report.

The exception is the 2010/2011 numbers for Gore weren't in the annual report - I got them directly from Gore.

I asked Jon Lundin about the difference. He said:

"We didn't capture all of the revenue from 2009-10. The new numbers are the actual audited numbers."

I followed up, asking about all the numbers back to 2005-2006. All the Whiteface numbers back to that date are different, some higher, some lower:

"This is true and upon audit we discovered this and corrected the situation."

I wish I understood what caused the difference, but I don't think I am going to get more than this.

In the world of financial reporting it is not uncommon for prior year numbers to be restated for consistency with the current year's presentation.  That can happen when accounting standards change.  I doubt it is a case of sloppiness or oversight.  Sure, I'd like an explanation (Jon Lundin's explanation is a non-answer), but the reports are audited by an independent external accounting firm (Marvin & Co.).  I am personally familiar with Marvin & Co. and their reputation is top notch.  As an Authority, ORDA is required to report their numbers publicly, and that alone adds a significant level of transparency that wouldn't exist if those facilities were operated by DEC.  In the interest of full disclosure, I'll add that I haven't yet read the most recent ORDA annual report, but I have read the prior year's.  I'll get around to browsing the new document eventually and add any additional comments to this thread.

Is the explanation of a change in accounting methods something a non-accounting average joe could understand?  I was wondering if maybe Jon didn't explain because he didn't think I would understand, or maybe he didn't fully understand it himself.

I was curious about what exactly changed in the methodology, so I could understand why revenue numbers 2005-06 and 2006-07 were lowered while 2007-08, 2008-09 and 2009-2010 were raised for Whiteface.

I also wondered why Gore's numbers weren't published.  There was a graph for Gore's revenue, but it was hard to get a real number from it:



And no numbers for skier visits were reported for Gore. (Did I miss them?)

As the text above the graph notes, Gore surpassed 8 million in revenue for  the last three years. To me this indicates that Gore's numbers may have been audited or revised to as the 2010 annual report shows three years of $8M in revenue, so 2010-11 should be the fourth year reaching that level.

One other piece of small confusion regarding Gore's numbers is that at the ORDA board meeting in June, Ted mentioned that Whiteface was up by 22,000 skier visits in 2010-11 and Gore was up by 7,000. According the report those numbers jive for Whiteface, but not with the numbers I got directly from Gore that show Gore was basically flat year over year.

Just one of those things like the snowfall total that I keep for Gore - doesn't REALLY matter, I'm just a curious nut.

Harvey44 wrote

Is the explanation of a change in accounting methods something a non-accounting average joe could understand?  I was wondering if maybe Jon didn't explain because he didn't think I would understand, or maybe he didn't fully understand it himself.

Of course it depends on exactly what the change was.  I don't think it's a case of Jon not understanding or a case of Jon thinking you wouldn't understand.  I think it's more likely a case of being out of Jon's area of responsibility, interest and involvement, so he essentially blew it off.

The other shortcomings you point out are indeed frustrating for those of us with an interest in the details.  This whole exercise points out the pervasiveness of estimates (for example # of ski days for season pass holders and for groups) and a practice of using different sets of numbers or assumptions for one audience versus another.  Though frustrating, that's not necessarily "bad" or "wrong" - companies frequently use different sets of numbers internally to manage the company than what they report externally.  Speaking from memory, I recall being frustrated that although I could separate out the revenue figures for Gore and WF, I couldn't separate out expenses for each in order to determine the 2 mountains' profitability.   I suspect that may be intentional on ORDA's part, but it's frustrating.

All I can say is that you should use numbers that come from a single source, i.e. the most recent annual report.  At least that way you should be working with apples and apples.

I will take a look at the annual report and let you know if I have anything further to add.

I posted the new numbers from the annual report on the blog:

http://nyskiblog.com/orda-skier-visits/

Included are revenue and visit numbers for Whiteface and revenue for Gore.

Why doesn't Gore publish numbers in the same transparent manner as Whiteface? If they are lacking the computer expertise, I'll donate a calculator and a box of crayons! It seems as if tickets sales and attendance figures have always been a big secret at Gore.