SAM Magazine - Broomfield, CO, March 13, 2007 - Vail Resorts has posed a strong second quarter, with a 23% gain in net income and a 21% increase per earnings per diluted share over their 2006 numbers. The company racked up a second quarter net income of $53.0 million ($1.35 per diluted share) to post those gains.

"We are very pleased with our strong performance in the second quarter, which clearly exceeded our expectations," said Robert Katz, Chief Executive Officer. "The second quarter, which essentially contains the first half of the 2006/2007 ski season, reflected a total Mountain segment revenue increase of 10.5% against record prior year comparables, with lift revenues up 13.4% and the ancillary businesses up commensurately. The lift revenue increase was helped by strong season pass sales, up 20.0% over the prior year (of which we recognized 52.4% in the second quarter, with the remainder to be recognized in the third quarter). Excluding skier visits from season passes, our skier visitation was up 4.8% at our Colorado resorts, reflecting strong destination guest visitation, partially offset by a weather-impacted decrease of 6.2% in total skier visits at our Heavenly resort (in California).

"Effective Ticket Price was up 7.0% excluding the season pass revenue, reflecting our continuing ability to increase absolute prices combined with the favorable mix impact resulting from the increase in destination guest visitation," Katz continued. "The increase in destination visitors at our mountain resorts favorably impacted our lodging operations as well, with revenue per available room, or RevPAR, up 16.7% for the quarter on a 'same store' basis at our owned lodging properties and condominiums we manage around our mountain resorts. The increased revenues in our Resort business flowed through at a very high rate to the bottom line, resulting in a 20.3% increase in Resort Reported EBITDA."

In addition, Vail Resorts is moving forward on creating a fourth portal to Vail mountain which will include high-value real estate development. The project, called Ever Vail and located west of the current Lionshead area, is expected to be one of the largest environmentally friendly base village developments ever undertaken by a ski area, with a price tag of approximately $1 billion. Ever Vail will feature a combination of residences, a hotel, offices, retail shops and restaurants, mountain operations facilities, a public parking garage, a new gondola and related skier portal and a public park. The company anticipates a total of 600,000 to 700,000 saleable square feet and beginning real estate sales on the project in 2009. \

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