Universal Parks at Bank of America Conference: Strategic Growth Insights

On Wednesday, 03 September 2025, Universal Parks and Resorts, a subsidiary of Comcast Corp (NASDAQ:CMCSA), presented its strategic vision at the Bank of America 2025 Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference. Chairman and CEO Mark Woodberry shared an optimistic outlook, emphasizing Universal’s growth through investment in existing parks, expansion into new markets, and leveraging technology, while acknowledging challenges in competitive markets.

Key Takeaways

• Universal’s strategic pillars focus on investing in existing businesses, expanding the brand to new audiences, and increasing its global footprint.
• Epic Universe’s strong performance in Orlando is driving incremental attendance and exceeding expectations in per capita spending.
• The company is exploring regional park concepts and international expansion, including new projects in the UK and continued investment in Japan and Beijing.
• AI is being utilized to enhance growth through dynamic pricing and predictive maintenance, while balancing consumer sentiment and market conditions.
• The company has seen significant EBITDA growth since its acquisition by Comcast in 2011.

Financial Results

• EBITDA has quintupled since Comcast’s acquisition in 2011, showcasing substantial growth.
• Epic Universe has exceeded expectations in food and beverage and merchandise sales, with no cannibalization from new hotel rooms.
• Regional parks, including Universal Kids Resort and Universal Horror Unleashed, are performing well, aligning with overall company margins.

Operational Updates

• Epic Universe has opened with strong reception, driving attendance and high per capita spending.
• Universal Horror Unleashed in Las Vegas had a successful soft opening, with a grand opening set for September 18.
• Universal Kids Resort in Frisco, Texas, targets families with young children, featuring a 300-room hotel.
• Universal Studios Japan and Universal Beijing Resort continue to be key international attractions.

Future Outlook

• Universal plans to invest in existing businesses while expanding its brand to new audiences and markets, including a new destination resort in the UK.
• Epic Universe has space for future expansion, with multiple attractions in development across its parks.
• Regional park concepts, like Universal Horror Unleashed, are planned for further locations, with Chicago slated for 2028.
• CapEx investments are expected to continue, particularly with the UK park development in 2029/2030.

Q&A Highlights

• Success metrics for Epic Universe include incremental attendance, per capita growth, occupancy, and EBITDA contribution.
• The Orlando market is expected to grow, driven by Universal’s expansion and competitor investments.
• In Japan, the opening of MGM Osaka’s resort in 2030 is anticipated to enhance the market rather than compete directly.
• In China, Universal balances global IP with local content, and future expansion at Universal Beijing Resort depends on milestone achievements.

For a more detailed understanding, readers are encouraged to refer to the full conference call transcript.

Full transcript - Bank of America 2025 Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference:

Unidentified speaker: Started with Comcast, but really Universal theme parks. We’re thrilled to have Mark Woodberry back, chairman and CEO of Universal Parks and Resorts. So thank you for for joining us again.

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Pleasure.

Unidentified speaker: You’ve been at Universal for over thirty years and chairman and CEO of Universal Destinations and Experiences since 2021. Pretty turbulent period and a lot of change. Prior to that, you were vice chairman of Universal Creative, which is responsible for planning and design for Universal attractions and destinations worldwide. So kind of a very extensive background at the parks. And over that time, you’ve seen some transformative developments in the whole industry, particularly, you know, like, I guess, a lot there’s just been so much change in, like, post COVID.

It it it feels like the the market’s changed. Like, there’s just been this surge in, growth and attendance in, like, brands and major theme parks. So, you know, what do you like, what do you think accounts for that?

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Well, you know, I think parks have always been a place for families and friends to create shared experiences and memories that last them a lifetime. And I think the pandemic reinforced that and and really made people realize how precious those opportunities are. So I think that’s a piece of it. Then you combine it with just the complexity of life. I mean, you know, you see what the work experience is like, you know, both parents working, kids in school, after school activities.

Those opportunities to get together and create a special experience are rare. And I think people really have just doubled down on the value of that. We see it in how they use the parks. And I think it’s supported by, you know, the what we do in the business is to create something truly unique that is a must see experience and creates that, you know, intent to visit and drive to get people to take the opportunity. And our hope, of course, is that they do it with us around the world.

But in order to do it, you have to have really great product, and Comcast has been behind us all the way in helping execute that.

Unidentified speaker: So before we get specifically to Universal Theme Parks, just a general question, but, like, just, you know, what is your outlook for the theme park industry over the next, say, three to five years?

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Yeah. I you know, it’s it’s strong. I think we think the future is quite favorable for the parks business. We see near term, midterm, and long term, and we plan accordingly. And I you know, our strategy is aligned with that.

Our strategy looks at really three pillars: to continue to invest in our existing businesses, drive those, deliver the product that we’ve been known to deliver, do it at an exceptionally high level, and continue to grow those businesses. And we have a really clear line of sight in each of our destinations around the world as to how far we can take that, and it’s considerable. Second piece of it is to bring the Universal brand to new audiences in new markets, and you can see that in what we’re doing with Universal Horror Unleashed in Las Vegas, which will open next week, and Universal Kids Resort in Frisco, Texas. And I can talk more about that if you’d like. And then the third piece of it is to expand our global footprint, and you can see that taking shape with the announcement that we made right before opening Epic Universe in The UK.

So UK will be our next major destination resort. And so, you know, you look at those three pillars as part of our strategy and it all leads into our bullish outlook on the future.

Unidentified speaker: Right. And then, you just actually alluded to, you know, what what helped Comcast. So, you know, over your tenure, which is probably as long as I’ve been following the company, Universal’s had a lot of owners. I mean, a couple of them come to mind, MCA, Seagram, GE, and all I’m missing, like, somebody else.

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Matsushita.

Unidentified speaker: Matsushita. And then Comcast. So there’s five owners. So how does being part of the Comcast umbrella benefit Universal Parks?

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Well, I’ve been with the company long enough to have experienced all five of those owners prior to Comcast. And, you know, Comcast is just a different game. And being part of a company as great as it is with the superior leadership and Brian and Mike and Jason. Mean, it’s just a different game and a different value that they put on the business. We’re one of the six growth pillars of the company, and their continued investment in it is evidence of that.

So, you know, we think it’s it’s been a fantastic run. I think the best evidence that you can look at, the best illustration, is if you look at the origins of our business, started in 1964 in Los Angeles with the tram tour. From 1964 to 02/2011, we grew the business to a modest $600,000,000 EBITDA business. Since being part of Comcast, 2011 to today, we’ve quintupled that performance. So it’s just evidence of the enthusiasm and continued support that we get from Comcast across the board.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. So now drilling down to what everyone wants to talk about, Epic, you know, you opened in May. I think the official date was May 22. Can you talk about the wrong you shaking your head? Oh, no.

No. I thought you were saying no. How has the initial reception and attendance trended since opening? And what key metrics are you most encouraged by so far?

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Yeah. So you have to look at the strategy behind Epic. So if you rewind a few years, we had these two great parks, water park, hotels, and we had reached a point in that market where we were banging up against, you know, how to continue to grow. So we went out to our fan base and we asked them, what’s it gonna take to get you to give us more of your vacation time? And they they told us.

They told us, we love your intellectual property. We love your technology. We love how you create these immersive worlds. Give us more of what you do best, and we’ll give you more time. And that was the origins of Epic.

It’s the way we we launched into creating the most technologically advanced park we’ve ever created with some of the greatest intellectual property we could muster, and the results have been really strong. It’s doing exactly what we wanted to do in terms of driving incremental attendance to the resort as a whole, and the performance on per caps, very strong since we opened the doors. And you can see it in merchandise. You see it in the food offerings. A lot of great creative work went into both of those.

Not without, you know, challenges when you open an entire theme park at once. I mean, when you take technology that we deliver, even on a standalone attraction, it’s always a little complicated to get it to ramp up to full speed, we’re in the process of doing that now. Nothing that we didn’t expect. So we’re very pleased with how things are shaping up.

Unidentified speaker: Are there any early KPIs that you can share, like from just, you know, summer’s just over? What have you seen so far in guest mix or per cap spending relative to the two existing Orlando parks? Is there any notable outperformance in food and beverage or merchandise?

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Yeah. We’re not giving specific guidance on Epic, but I can tell you that the performance on food and beverage and merchandise exceed our expectations considerably. And the Front Gated Epic is a premium over our other two parks. And then when you look at the incremental attendance growth at the resort combined with those per caps, a pretty great start.

Unidentified speaker: Right. So now that Epic Universe is open, what are the top three priorities for the next, say, twelve to eighteen months to cement Universal Orlando as would you guys have set his goal a week long destination from the current three days or so? Three days or so.

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Yeah. Get the full week. Yeah. So when you look at what we’re focused on, you know, this business is really driven by creating a pipeline of great product, telling the world that you have it with really breakthrough marketing, and then maybe most importantly, delivering it with world class service across the board to create that awareness, create that intent to revisit, and that that’s that’s course number one. Continue to drive that.

Two, get the message out to the Outer US, continue to drive awareness, continue to drive share of voice, and continue to drive business to the marketplace. And we think that we’ll see UO continue to grow visitation to the market as well as take market share in the process.

Unidentified speaker: Well, that actually was kind of my question, like my next one, which is like, do you think that it will lift the overall Orlando market? It sounds like you think there’ll be some share shifts as well, but

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Yeah, we think both. We think we’ll drive incremental visits to the market and we’ll drive share shift. And we’re seeing that in the first two, three months of operations.

Unidentified speaker: So how would you define success in year one? Is it attendance, per caps, occupancy, EBITDA contribution? Like how do you how would you define it?

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: I’m going with all the above. Yeah. Definitely all the above. Incremental attendance, incremental per cap growth. You look at our premium products, incremental growth on things like Universal Express, great product for us.

As part of Epic, we introduced 2,000 new hotel rooms. One premium in the form of 500 rooms at the Helios Hotel, which is positioned within Epic Universe in a geography that is really unparalleled, creating magnificent views and proximity to the park that has just never been seen before. And it’s it’s themed into the whole experience. So we’re we’re seeing great performance in that hotel in terms of occupancy and ADR. And then the two other hotels, Terra and Stella, 1,500 rooms that are part of our value proposition.

The great thing about that is we introduced those 2,000 rooms now have 11,000 total, and we saw no cannibalization. In fact, we see ADR growth across the resort on the back of those and strong occupancy sustain. So we think that that strategy is really working.

Unidentified speaker: And what’s the potential for Epic expansion? How long do you think it’ll be before we see a sixth world or maybe a Wicked world? I

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: think I might have stirred that pot when I saw the Wicked sets and said it was a theme park waiting to happen. If you if you fly over Epic, you know, or you look at Google Earth, you’ll see how we plan the park and you’ll see greenfield space between the existing worlds, and that is strategically positioned to give us flexibility to expand a world or create a new world. And so that’s how we how we look at it. I don’t really have anything to announce specifically as attractions, but I can tell you that there are multiple attractions in the works, not just at Epic, but when you have the three parks, the cadence of product delivery across the resort to continue to drive the resort is really a key part of our strategy going forward. And like I said at the opening, we have a clear line of sight into how far we can take this.

It’s considerable. And we have a pretty sophisticated and well thought through long range plan that takes us out another decade in terms of product offerings, not in Orlando, but around the world.

Unidentified speaker: Right. And you mentioned you do believe, given the high quality product that you just introduced, that you will take share. Do you think that you could ultimately wind up with something approaching an equal attendance split in the market? Well, you know, I I I think Impressive? Or

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Yeah. I I think that we have a we’re in a really strong position to continue to drive incremental growth to the overall marketplace to take share in the process of that. You know, our chief competitor, Disney, is is a strong competitor. They’re going to be investing pretty heavily in the market too. I think it’s a case of, you know, all ships rise with the tide.

We’ll both drive audience to the marketplace, and we’ll be able to take our share of that.

Unidentified speaker: And then turning to some of the regional parks. As you mentioned, you you opened a couple of weeks ago the Hora Unleashed in Las Vegas. You have the kids one coming in Texas. You’ve got another Hora, I think, planned for Chicago in ’28. Right?

How do you think about the right mix between destination resorts and this kind of new category with younger kids, you know, this regional model horror concepts? I mean, this all seems pretty new. There other concepts coming? How do you just how do you think about the mix and what’s coming?

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Yeah. Well, you if you go back to the to the strategy and and those three pillars, this is really where I think what you’re about is the that second pillar of being able to bring the universal brand to new audiences that we we don’t see as cannibalistic to the big destinations. It also gives us the opportunity to to focus our big destinations on what we do best, and those destinations are really targeted at families with kids eight and above, and that allows us to go deep into immersion, to explore the kind of intellectual properties that we think really are resonating with the audience, and to deliver a level of thrill that we’re known for. And so our big destination’s families eight and above. That created a space for us to go after a new audience, families with kids three to eight.

And we we think this is really a great place for us to be because we have a terrific pipeline of intellectual property in the form of DreamWorks and Trolls and Gavi’s Dollhouse to build around. And so Frisco is our first universal kids resort that allows us to both segment the audience and segment our portfolio of properties and in the process build a regional product that is sort of a rite of passage for families and much more accessible for young families in a in a regional regional form. They can get to that park from all over Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and 300 room hotel as part of it. Great product and a feeder as they age up to become aligned with our brand and then grow into our bigger parks. And then you mentioned Universal Horror Unleashed in Vegas opens next week.

That is another opportunity where we’ve had great success with our Halloween horror nights over the last thirty two years. Fantastic business for us. But it’s really a local play. It’s a local regional play for Orlando, and it’s a local regional play for Los Angeles. So there’s a lot of space in the rest of The US and internationally to bring to life horror franchises that we’re we’re known for in our film business as well as our parks, and Universal Horror and Leash is exactly that.

It’s a 120,000 square foot, a year round horror experience. We like to say that horror isn’t for Halloween or just for Halloween anymore. More different houses, a couple bars, great food. We’ve been open for a few weeks in a soft opening period in Vegas. We go grand open on the eighteenth and reaction to the product has been really great and performance of the product has been really great from a per cap standpoint.

And then we plan to roll that out. So Chicago is our next place and we pick those destinations because they have a great base population and they have big inbound tourists.

Unidentified speaker: So is there anything you can say about what a successful ramp looks like in year one?

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: For either of those? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, this year you’ll see our ramp up. Again, September 18, we opened it.

You know, we’re gonna hit the ground running because we’ve had a really good soft opening period in Vegas. And I I know, you know, people comment often recently that Vegas business is down. They still have, you know, close to 40,000,000 tourists that come to Vegas, and we only need a very small margin to that to make this very profitable. So we’ll see that happen, and then you’ll we’ll see Chicago in in 2028. Right.

And then next destinations downstream from that.

Unidentified speaker: And how how should we think about, like, margins for the regional businesses? So they how do they compare to the typical theme park margins?

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Yeah. The the regional businesses, kids, the kids perform a and the horror perform a are in line margin wise with the balance of our businesses at EDX.

Unidentified speaker: Pretty healthy margins. What are the two highest priority DMAs for the next wave of regional products besides you mentioned besides Chicago? I mean, there thresholds for population, for tourism flow, land cost? Like, how how do you

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: make those decisions? Well, you know, before we started to execute the strategy, we looked at a deep dive into those DNAs, and we have a pretty good lineup of places that we think both of those products could play. And you size them up just like you said, it’s, you know, base population, inbound tourist. In the case of kids, it’s a strong growth market, high family population, and we think there are several of those to explore.

Unidentified speaker: So you just said there’s a lot of room for expansion at Epic Universe. What’s the calculation for adding capacity or new IP to that park versus like a greenfield regional or even a resort build elsewhere?

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Well, you you know, when you are trying to drive that full week destination over the long term, which Epic is, it’s a it’s a long term play, you’ve gotta have a strong pipeline of continuing to bring new news to the marketplace. And it’s not just not just true about Epic. It’s true about Los Angeles. You’ll see in Los Angeles, we’re gonna next year open a new Fast and Furious roller coaster, and then we have a pipeline of new product coming to Los Angeles. In Japan, same, you know, same story.

We’ve had a release of Donkey Kong last year that was an addition to our Nintendo world that we opened in at USJ and a pipeline of attractions that will continue to feed USJ as well. So clear line of sight to continue to build those businesses. And then we look for the opportunity to plant the flag in new geographies like UK.

Unidentified speaker: Right. So I’m gonna get situated on, like, one more question. But just on on The US, like, how should we think about multiyear CapEx for The US parks now that you’ve opened Epic?

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Yeah. So when you you look at the cycle, the development cycle of a major theme park like EPIC, you know, multibillion dollar investment, the the big part of that CapEx lands in the last two years of that development cycle. So that, in the case of EPIC, would be 23, ’24. And then when you look forward to UK, it’ll be 2930 to open in in ’31. So that in between period, you know, we’ll see less investment on individual at at that scale.

So the individual things that we’re looking at range from big attractions to new lands. But even at that, and even when you look at the the kids and horror, those are in the hundreds to several hundreds of millions of dollars versus billions for Right. The theme park.

Unidentified speaker: Right. Okay. So let’s turn to Japan. Over the next three to five years, how are you prioritizing larger expansion versus capital light activations at Universal Japan versus, like, just alternative uses of capital?

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Yeah. I mean, you know, you look at Japan, we’re tremendously proud of that business. Opened in 02/2001, opened to 11,000,000 year one. It was a record breaking opening of a theme park, and we’ve built just a tremendous business in Japan. It’s a top rated brand in Japan to the extent that one in seven tourists that come to the country of Japan visit Universal Studios Japan.

That’s a powerful a powerful statement about how a strong a brand we’ve built there. We’ve continued to add great attractions over time, thrill attractions, the whole Nintendo Land, Donkey Kong recently. Next year will be our twenty fifth anniversary, big celebration around that. And this year, we opened a minion attraction based on VillainCon, an interactive gaming attraction. So a lot of runway in Japan and a and a really well thought out master plan to continue to grow that well into the future.

And on top of that, we just have a stellar team, management team on the ground, not just in Japan, but across our different businesses. And that’s so important to make them work.

Unidentified speaker: Is that one in seven tourists to Japan? Is that, like, that’s a kind of a shocking number because it’s It’s a little it’s not this is not Tokyo. Is Osaka. Right. It’s another it’s another plane ride away.

No. No.

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: It’s a it’s the Kansai region is where where our park is in Osaka. And the the great thing about that number and the strength of the Universal brand in Japan is Japan’s move and vision for 2030. Tourism in Japan is about 42,000,000 now, and the plan by the vision of the central government of Japan is to move that number another 20,000,000. So to take inbound tourism up to 60,000,000 in Japan. The expo was a piece of that, you know, that’s the kind of thing that they’re doing to drive drive destination Japan, and that’s that’s definitely a place where we’re leaning into continuing to drive our business as part of that growth.

Unidentified speaker: With MGM Osaka’s resort slated to open in 2030, how do you think that resort will impact the overall tourism to Osaka, and how do you think about capturing, like, incremental demand?

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Well, Yubashima Island, where this will be, where MGM is planning to be, is a little bit of a complicated connectivity from Osaka. So there really isn’t an opportunity, we didn’t think, for us to really be part of that, and it didn’t make sense for us to be a part of that growth wise. So we see MGM Integrated Resort going there. We we don’t see it as cannibalistic. They’re really two different audiences.

You know, we experience that with our park in in Singapore. Very different audience that goes to the casino experience and goes to the park family park experience. So we don’t we don’t see them as cannibalistic. We do see it as lifting the overall market, and and we’ll tap into that as best we can regardless of that point about the different audiences.

Unidentified speaker: Actually, we move on to China, like so with the lifts, this is basically like a 50% lift in visitation to Japan over the, you know, I don’t know, next like

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: By twenty thirty? Thirty is

Unidentified speaker: by their time. Would would do you think that the same the one in seven would apply? Like, you know, do you think you’ll is that your goal?

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Oh, well, hopefully grow it. You know, the inbound tourists to Japan are coming from Mainland China, Taiwan, and Korea predominantly. And, you know, we have great channels to those destinations. Our ability to drive awareness and salience and share a voice in those markets feeding USJ is pretty strong.

Unidentified speaker: And do you own just remind us. You own the whole park or

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: We do.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. So on China, can you give us an update on phase two expansion at Universal Beijing Resort? Are there specific milestones that have to be met to fully green light phase two and for construction to begin?

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Yeah. I mean, just a little bit of background on that. You know, it’s one thing to build a theme park anywhere complicated endeavor. It’s another one to build it in the capital city of the People’s Republic Of China, and it’s almost, you know, unimaginable to do it in the middle of the pandemic. But we did all those things, and and we opened in in September 2021.

We have a spectacular master plan that our first phase Universal Studios Beijing is part of with its two hotels and its city walk. But that master plan very much resembles Orlando in terms of potential. So we’re now we’re we’re focused on driving our business in Beijing. We have a tremendous market in the form of the Beijing population and the surrounding Hubei province in terms of population. 100 some million people in that area alone, which is, you know, as you know, less the tenth of the overall population of China.

So this is really a China play. It doesn’t rely on inbound tourism really at all. It relies on inbound to Beijing. So great opportunity, great potential, better ways to go before we announce anything for future expansion.

Unidentified speaker: And then just one more thing on China, but how are you balancing global IP with China specific content? You know, are there issues with governance? You know, how do you think

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: about repatriation risk? Yeah. I mean, without sounding, you know, corny, the product that we build is in Beijing is predominantly a universal branded product with the addition of Harry Potter and Transformers from Hasbro. And what we have found is those Western intellectual properties are universal. And, you know, I’m not not being cute on that, but that is what really works.

And that that is what define has defined that business. And it’s not at the not to the exclusion of being able to find opportunities to do things with Chinese properties like the Honor of Kings, but we’re doing it those at kind of an event scale. We use it as as parade material. We use it as entertainment opportunities. So we’re we think that balance works.

But the the the point is really that the Western properties that define us as a brand and the way that we deliver them are what works in China and what works around the world.

Unidentified speaker: And then moving on to The UK. So I think you just finished the special development order consultation process. It was like the August, I think was the end date. Can you walk us through that post consultation timetable? Is there anything that could affect the 2026 groundbreaking and the 2030 or 2031 opening?

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: ’thirty one. Yeah, we haven’t finished the consultation process. We’re in the consultation process. We submitted a special development order, which is a very complex submission to the government that you would be surprised that, you know, 10,000 pages of documents, and that’s not an exaggeration, it’s actually a number. 10,000 pages of documents submitted to the government that support the whole development.

And then what the government does is they take that out, the consultation, to the local marketplace to test support for the project. But our due diligence when we did that work testing support, we had 93% support for the project. We have had 18,000 people register on our app to come and work for us. 2,000 vendors in the marketplace that wanna be part of this development. So our hope, you know, our hope is that that process will go very smoothly.

But parks are complicated, you know, organisms, and this takes some infrastructure in the form of rail expansion and highway off ramps and things like that. Not things that we haven’t done before, but they’re complicated. So, you know, that could be an issue, but we think we have a pretty good handle on it at this point.

Unidentified speaker: So could you outline the CapEx, the return profile, the timetables? You already gave us peak year spend. Even attendance, like what, you know, kind of how do you

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Yeah. The best way to look at it is look at it like one of our standalone parks. It’s a full blown universal theme park with a 500 room hotel that is part of it, very much like Epic in terms of a park with a hotel. It’s designed in a way that we don’t see as cannibalistic to our strong UK visitation to Orlando. So we’ve created a different mix of attractions that we think will work great in The UK.

But basically, it’ll perform very much like one of our stand alone parks in terms of attendance, in terms of per caps, and overall EBITDA performance.

Unidentified speaker: And then how do you mitigate UK seasonality? Like, you have the same issue, I guess, in China with the weather. Mhmm.

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: In Japan.

Unidentified speaker: And oh, right. Yeah. In

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Japan. I mean, you know, those are you design it design it in a way that allows you to really take advantage of of the great weather and protect against the inclement weather as best you can. But, you know, Japan, it gets, you know, very cold in the winter, very hot in the summer. China has its, you know, cold climate as well. UK, the issue in UK is precipitation, but you’d be surprised to find that it’s a lot less than Orlando.

And it just rains less and more frequently, which is not a bad problem. The torrential downpours are the bigger one. But yeah, you just design accordingly.

Unidentified speaker: What are the biggest differences in developing a park internationally versus either building or adding on to an existing park in The US?

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Yeah. The process is pretty much the same. You do come across different governmental protocols and and processes in terms of development. The UK is unique in terms of the STO. China was very unique.

Different procurement in terms of construction, different business culture in that building part of the project. But most of the hardware comes from tried and true sources predominantly around Europe and and North America from a ride system and show system product and then its mainstream construction. And then when you get into the detail of design, like I said before, I mean, the main the main product is Universal and its Universal branded IPs. But then you get really focused onmenu is very unique culturally. You have to pay close attention to that.

And the other place where international development is unique is around humor. Humor varies very differently in different cultures. Interesting.

Unidentified speaker: So as a live entertainment operation, theme parks are somewhat insulated from some of the harmful impacts that other areas had to of entertainment have had to experience. What are the some of the ways theme park operators can take advantage of technology, to benefit the business? For instance, the to improve the in park experience by enhancing crowd management through AI tools, or what are the ways you you know, what kind of you know, are there other ways that you’re integrating AI into the planning process?

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Yeah. Like like I’m sure all of you do in in your businesses, you’re focused on how to leverage AI technologies to the betterment of your operation, we’re no different. We bucket it in two buckets, really. We look at how AI can help us enhance growth and revenue generation, and we see several areas for that dynamic pricing, making dynamic variable pricing much more efficient and much more real time. We see new product offerings.

We see AI assistance at our call centers, and that enables our agents to move much quicker to better customize offerings for the consumer. Same goes for our AI assisted conversational AI on our website. So that’s multilingual. So all those things really speed through the entire funnel from consideration to conversion. And that’s where we kind of see it on the growth front.

And then on the savings front, I’m sure all of you are doing the same, back of house on legal and HR and those support functions. Everywhere you can streamline those is savings. So we’re hard at it on those fronts. Probably one of the bigger areas for us that’s unique to our business is how AI can assist in predictive maintenance on the rides to reduce maintenance costs, which is a considerable piece of business for us. So being able to employ that, employ different ways to look at machine learning in terms of how guests use the park to be able to direct them to revenue generating opportunities in the form of food and merchandise to manage crowds.

And all those things are in deep work right now and part of a big operation that’s not just at Parks and Resorts, but is part of the NBC and Comcast overall. Right.

Unidentified speaker: On pricing, there’s a couple of things you mentioned, so I’m just asking for pricing. How do you think about pricing and instituting price increases across your various parks?

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Yeah. So, you know, we pay close attention to pricing. We’re looking at top line revenue generation at the front gate. I mentioned that a place like Epic right now is premium over our other two parks. We think it garners that because it’s the first park built in twenty five years, most technologically advanced park, and all those things that make it what it is.

So it’s at a premium. But we’re also looking closely at consumer sentiment. We’re looking closely at the marketplace in each of our businesses to manage price. And then, you know, we’ve got the ability to dynamically price now way much better than we had historically.

Unidentified speaker: And then you mentioned Comcast properties. Like, how do you prioritize using NBCU IP versus third party licenses? I mean, obviously, have a lot of third party, like Harry Potter.

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: But Yeah.

Unidentified speaker: You know, how do you think about the balance?

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: Well, we have a great pipeline of properties. If you if you look at our base offering, Jurassic Park, Minions, DreamWorks, that pipeline continues to come forward. New movie being made on Shrek. I mentioned Fast and Furious in Hollywood. So the universal IP is our bread and butter and the foundation of our work.

But we’re not afraid to go outside when we see an opportunity to drive business with the unique properties like Harry Potter or Nintendo. And

Unidentified speaker: then I guess finally, because we’re kind of running out of time, but are there any other paths to grow universal destinations and experiences that we haven’t discussed? You know, a question I know you always get is cruise ships. Is there anything else?

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: We’re always looking at every opportunity near, mid, and long term to drive the business. And I and, you know, we’re we take a very hard look at each different industry that may be adjacent for us, where we can form another engine to drive our business. So pay close attention to all those ancillary industries that we could potentially tap into in the future, but nothing new to announce today.

Unidentified speaker: Well, one thing that, you know, Disney just announced in, you know, his opening in The Middle East. Is that something like, did, like, does that take years and years before planning? Is that

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: You know, I know the the their announcement is is pretty fresh. The Middle East has been a sort of on a boon for a while. Yeah. It’s just, you know, a place that you look, investigate, and make decisions about where your priorities are. Our priorities right now are driving Epic to full throttle and to execute on UK and then our mid strategy.

And at the same time, looking ahead for other places and opportunities.

Unidentified speaker: That’s great. Thank you. Obviously, this is a long growth path here. Thank you so much.

Mark Woodberry, chairman and CEO, Universal Parks and Resorts: My pleasure. So.

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