Does Vail Resorts knows what it’s doing?

Late July, Vail Resorts practically doubled its stable of ski resorts by 17 by announcing that it would acquire Peak Resorts, Inc. for $11 per share or about 265 millions, pending regulatory review and Peak Resorts' shareholder approval.

Since the stock was only priced at $5.08 when the announcement was made, this has been a great deal for Peak Resorts shareholders.

These additional ski areas are small located near major metropolitan areas including New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Columbus, St. Louis, Kansas City and Louisville where snow reliability isn’t a factor.

Upon closing on this transaction, Vail Resorts will own or operate 37 ski areas worldwide. Most people may marvel at Vail Resorts strategic play, thinking that Katz its CEO “must know what he’s doing” but one could question the wisdom of buying these feeder market resorts when climate change is only starting to rear its ugly head and become worse than ever before.

Even if Rob Katz is supposed to know the business, only one of the Company’s directors has a leisure industry background, so welcome to ski business ignorance.

This, in many ways, reminds me of Theranos, with its celebrity board members like Henry Kissinger, James Mattis, and George Shultz that couldn’t see how badly the company was lead.

I guess, like with many other subjects, time will tell...