In a blistering, at times vicious attack on Vail Resorts management and its CEO Rob Katz, dissident shareholder Oasis Management urged shareholders Monday to support its two board nominees, portraying them as the company’s greatest — and perhaps only — hope for reversing what Oasis sees as ye ars of mismanagement and lax oversight by existing board members. “Despite its competitive advantages, Vail Resorts has gone downhill,” Oasis founder and chief investment officer Seth Fischer said in a letter to shareholders released Monday. “The company has been operationally mismanaged, resulting in a stagnant guest experience, deteriorating operating performance and disappointing returns for shareholders. … The board has failed in its most fundamental responsibilities: selecting the company’s executive team, overseeing strategy and execution, appropriately aligning executive compensation with shareholder value and ensuring the board itself has the experience the company needs. Unfortunately, the board appears content with continued stagnation and underperformance.” Oasis, whose stake in Vail Resorts is currently worth around $500 million, began a proxy fight last month to unseat two of the company’s nine incumbent directors at the annual meeting on Dec. 14. That battle has gotten increasingly nasty, with each side lobbing increasingly personal artillery at the other. In its letter Monday, Oasis placed the blame for the company’s recent underperformance squarely on the shoulders of Katz and the board. “The company’s stock price is down more than 50% over the last five years, erasing more than $8 billion of market value,” Oasis noted. “This persistent underperformance has coincided with multi-year declines in North American skier visits, pass unit sales and Resort Reported EBITDA margins, along with frequent guidance cuts, which we believe have damaged the credibility of management and the voard. … The guest experience has suffered as a result of long lift lines, overcrowding and escalating food prices, with too few options and experiences offered for both value-conscious and premium customers.” Then Oasis got nastier. “The company’s CEO, who has served on the board for 30 years and has led the company as CEO or executive chairperson for 20 years, is asking shareholders for patience,” Fischer said. “In the company’s proxy statement, Mr. Katz writes that the company is at ‘just the beginning’ of its ‘new strategy’ and the board claims that recent initiatives ‘are only just starting to demonstrate their potential.’ Shareholders have heard similar promises before, and many earlier strategic initiatives implemented with the board’s approval have failed to deliver sustainable earnings growth or shareholder value. Seth Fischer “The company’s problems are not new, even if Mr. Katz’s ‘focus’ on solutions is. Vail Resorts’ North American customer base has been shrinking for three consecutive fiscal years. During the 2024-25 season, when industrywide skier visits rose 3%, visits to the company’s resorts fell 3%. During the 2025-26 season, the company’s North American skier visits fell by 15%, underperforming the industry decline of 10%. “The problem is not with the assets the company owns but with how the company has mismanaged those assets. Unfortunately, this board appears content with continued stagnation and underperformance. Under the current board-approved plan, management is forecasting fiscal 2027 Resort Reported EBITDA that, at the midpoint of the guidance range, is essentially unchanged from what the company earned five years ago in fiscal 2022, with a profit margin that is more than 600 basis points below the fiscal 2022 margin.” Oasis is urging encouraging shareholders to support its two nominees, former Disney CEO Robert Chapek and Utah businessman M. Ashton Hudson. It has also launched a website, liftingthevail.oasiscm.com , to provide shareholders with additional information. It faces a steep uphill climb to prevail in the Dec. 14 vote since Baron Capital, Vail Resorts’ largest shareholder with 18.3% of the stock, said on Friday it would vote for management’s nine incumbent directors. Vail Resorts responded to Oasis’s broadside by saying the company is in the midst of a promising turnaround after the most challenging winter in its history. It urged shareholders to opt for retaining the existing board members, arguing they have the experience and insight that Oasis’s two nominees lack. “As an experienced, refreshed board, we have acted decisively to adjust the company’s strategy, including modernizing its marketing approach, introducing new pass and lift-ticket products and pricing options, and launching the Epic Experience growth strategy,” Katz wrote recently to shareholders. “Following one of the most challenging winters in history, the company achieved record guest satisfaction, increased lift-ticket market share, and is outperforming the industry in pass sales for the upcoming season. “Epic Experience is designed to build on this progress and drive guest loyalty and the next phase of growth by delivering a more seamless, personalized and differentiated guest experience — something the company is uniquely positioned to do with its integrated network of 42 owned and operated resorts, marketing capabilities, and investments in talent and technology. These initiatives are only just starting to demonstrate their potential, and we should not disrupt our progress toward delivering long-term shareholder value.” Vail Resorts has accused the Hong Kong-based Oasis of failing to articulate a clear plan of what it would do to improve the performance of the company, instead focusing on criticizing management and, according to Vail Resorts, working secretly in concert with Cloudflare cofounder and CEO Matthew Prince, a Park City resident, to boost Prince’s efforts to buy the Park City resort. “None of the dissident nominees have offered any new or compelling ideas, views or perspectives regarding the company’s strategic direction, execution of its business plan, technological innovation or sustainability efforts,” Katz said. “Aside from Mr. Hudson, no dissident candidate showed any awareness of the company’s recently announced strategic initiatives.” Not so, said Fischer. “We have identified concrete initiatives that we believe can help reinvigorate customer loyalty, restore growth and deliver better outcomes for guests, employees and shareholders. Our goal is to make Vail Resorts better, not break it up. The question we’d ask is this: With so many competitive advantages, why has the company performed so poorly for shareholders? “The board has sought to distract shareholders by fabricating a theory that we are working ‘in collaboration with Matthew Prince,’ who has expressed an interest in acquiring the company’s resort there. Let us be clear: We are not coordinating with Mr. Prince in any way. Neither of our two nominees has ever spoken with Mr. Prince. And, notably, our plan for improving Vail Resorts’ performance does not include moving to an asset-light model. In fact, we regard the company’s integrated resort network as one of its greatest competitive strengths. … Mr. Katz has led the company as either CEO or executive phairperson for more than 20 years, including throughout the last five years during which execution has faltered, and the guest experience has deteriorated. … The company needs to think bigger, move faster and execute better.” Vail Resorts rebuts this argument, saying shareholders are better off relying on seasoned board members and management. “Your board combines deep knowledge of Vail Resorts’ resort network and season-pass business model with relevant expertise across hospitality, consumer businesses, digital innovation, finance, governance, and talent development,” it said in a recent letter. “These complementary perspectives are directly relevant to the company’s next phase of growth, including building guest loyalty, strengthening marketing, driving revenue generation, improving operational execution, and allocating capital with discipline. … The company is uniquely situated to transform the guest experience because of the scale, technology, and integrated resort network it has strategically built over time. “Through Epic Experience, the company is leveraging those advantages to increase loyalty, visitation and guest lifetime value. Announced in July 2026, the strategy centers on making every part of the mountain journey more seamless, personalized and memorable so that guests are inspired to return.” While Oasis has a reputation as a boardroom gunfighter, it claims its goal is merely to bolster management, not disrupt it, although it concedes its elbows can be a bit pointed. “Our plan is making the company better, not breaking it up,” the letter said. “Realizing the company’s full potential will require new directors with a mandate to challenge management, demand better performance and oversee the execution of a more ambitious plan. (Our nominees) aim to exercise independent judgment, challenge assumptions, establish rigorous performance targets and hold leadership accountable for execution — all with a sense of urgency that we believe has been sorely lacking among the incumbent directors.” Not surprisingly, Vail Resorts management sees things a bit differently. Katz says that Vail Resorts met with Chapek and Hudson but concluded neither represented a meaningful upgrade in its board. “The board conducted a thorough interview and evaluation of the dissident nominees, including self-nominated shareholder, Gregory Syvert Meyer, and the two Oasis Management nominees: Robert Chapek and M. Ashton Hudson. Following that process, the board determined that Oasis’ nominees lacked the characteristics to advance the company’s strategy and enhance value creation. …We firmly believe Oasis Management’s campaign is disruptive, ill-informed, and risks undermining the progress already underway.” Perhaps it’s fitting to give Prince, the only player in this drama maintaining a sense of humor about the whole thing, the last word. Asked how he felt about the rapidly unfolding give-and-take, he quipped: “Not my circus, not my monkeys.” Prince and wife Tatiana own The Park Record. John Taylor is a former business reporter and Forbes bureau chief who later worked as a financial analyst on Wall Street for 20 years before retiring to Vail in 2017. He owns no Vail Resorts stock. Email him at [email protected]. The post Oasis unloads on Vail Resorts in board election campaign appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less