Pacific Group Resorts Enters Asset Purchase Agreement for Jay Peak
Receiver will still accept additional bids
Pacific Group Resorts (PGRI) has entered into an Asset Purchase Agreement (APA) to buy Vermont’s Jay Peak Resort for $58 million, The Storm Skiing Journal has learned.
The sale of Jay is not final, and is still “subject to a competitive bidding and auction process.” PRG is defined as the initial, or “stalking horse” bidder, and the receiver will accept additional bids for no less than PRG’s offer price. If there one or more qualified bids are submitted, the receiver will hold an auction for the resort.
“The time has come for the Receiver to sell the Jay Peak Resort,” a statement filed by court-appointed receiver Michael Goldberg states. “When the Receiver took over the Jay Peak Resort in April, 2016, it was on the verge of collapse having little money and making very little profit. In fact, the Receiver had many sleepless nights during the summer of 2016 wondering if he would be able to even make payroll. Now, after more than 6 years, the Jay Peak Resort is significantly more profitable and hundreds of jobs have been saved. The Receiver attributes this success to his top-notch management team and the dedicated employees who work tirelessly to make Jay Peak one of the greatest ski resorts in the country.”
When asked for comment, Jay Peak General Manager Steve Wright said “This is a step in the process but there are more steps to go that will likely continue to stretch forward into the summer; signing an asset purchase agreement (APA) simply initiates and, in reality, continues, the process.”
Asked for any additional thoughts on PGRI or the process itself, Wright continued, “In roughly all aspects, I can’t get into specifics relative to the sale as the process is underway. Suffice to say PGRI is a world-class operator of resorts and were they to complete that process, both the resort and their organization would be better for the relationship.”
PGRI owns and operates five other North American ski areas: Ragged Mountain, New Hampshire; Wisp, Maryland; Wintergreen, Virginia; Powderhorn, Colorado; and Mount Washington Alpine, British Columbia. Jay Peak would instantly become the company’s flagship resort.
Jay Peak is a gem of New England, with the largest average annual snowfall of any ski area east of the Rockies, an extensive glade network, and one of only two ski area aerial trams in New England.
The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 80/100 in 2022, and number 326 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane). You can also email skiing@substack.com.
I'd be very interested in understanding the $58 Million minimum purchase price in the context of other recent ski area acquisitions. Hidden Springs went for almost twice that. 40% of Andermatt went for three times that. Peak Resorts and Triple Peaks are harder to compare as multi-resort sales. Shawnee and Sugarbush might be useful to the extent the represent other Northeast sales (and in the latter, similar resort tier) but I believe both those terms were private.
Despite the early optimistic footnote about a competitive bid process the note in Paragraph 35 about receiving only one binding bid out of 15 offers and the highest bid being set at $55 does not suggest a late surge in interest.
Makes perfect sense. They are going to take great care of it, they do a great job with Ragged!!!