In this clip from "The Rank" on Motley Fool Live, recorded on May 23, Motley Fool contributor Jason Hall discusses Six Flags Entertainment (SIX) CEO Selim Bassoul and why the executive may be just what the theme park operator needs to juice results.
Jason Hall: Six Flags is kind of like Disney, only without anything that has to do anything with Disney. It's nothing like Disney. This is a pure-play amusement parks business. I don't know there's really anything else of any major value that's not one of their seven or eight amusement parks that they have. Again, they are less like travel destination-oriented. They tend to be within driving distance of major metro areas. They're like weekend trips, day trips, that thing. They try to encourage frequent use. They tend to have more affordable season passes than you see from Disney.
The interesting thing about this business to me is Selim Bassoul is now the CEO. I guess he's been the CEO maybe a year now. For longtime Fools, Selim Bassoul's a name that might ring a bell. He was the CEO of Middleby. Basically built Middleby, ran it for 18 years and built Middleby from a couple of $100 million business. Like a $6 billion business when he left and it was a huge winner in several Motley Fool services because of what he did. He retired and took some time away. Now he's come back to try to use the same capital allocation, operational excellence savvy to do the same thing at Six Flags that he did at Middleby. To me, I think there's a little bit if you're investing in Six Flags, if you're betting on the jockey play as they say, there's great leader who has a history of doing a thing really well and being able to do that thing with another company.
For Six Flags, it's coming in, being capital disciplined, being operational disciplined, and also thinking about expanding the brand. There's some potential there for mergers and acquisitions in that space. The stock just absolutely get killed after earnings. I think this is an important part of where I ranked it, too. It got hit very hard based on guidance. I think to me that resetting of expectations, the stock's down by solid double digits just a couple of weeks ago on earnings day, that resetting of expectations on the stock price, I think puts it in maybe a better position than a lot of people think about in terms of its longtime potential.
