SAM Magazine--Park City, Utah, June 15, 2006--American Skiing Company (ASC) released its third quarter figures and the news was good on a quarter to quarter comparison, but the company's debt load still runs high.

Net revenues for resort operations for the 13 weeks ended April 30, 2006 were $132.8 million, compared to $132.3 million during the same period in 2005. Net revenue from real estate for this quarter was $24.2 million, which reflects the company's auctioning off of its remaining fractional inventory at Steamboat. Real estate revenue from 2005 was $2.9 million for the same period. So, thanks to the real estate proceeds, total revenue was $157 million compared with $135.2 million in 2005.

When it came to operating expenses, ASC was in line with last year, except for a jump in real estate expenses. Total operating expenses were $106.6 million in 2006 compared to $91.4 million last year.

Now for the debt: accumulated deficit at the beginning of the third quarter in 2006 was $670.4 million. Minus the net income of $29.4 million, ASC whittled its debt down during the thrid quarter to $641 million. At the end of the third quarter last year, ASC was carrying $579.6 million in the deficit column.

In the fiscal year-to-date numbers, the net loss for the 39 weeks ended April 30, 2006 was $24.1 million compared to $36 million for the 40 weeks ended May 1, 2005.

Thanks to a great year in the west, but a challenging year in the East, overall skier visits were down 6.9 percent from 3,987,017 for the 2004/05 season to 3,710,106 this past season. Individually, skier visit numbers panned out like this: Attitash came in with 186,693, down from 211,301 last year; The Canyons jumped 16.1 percent from 403,043 last year to 467,799 this year; Killington dropped almost 20 percent from 985,962 to 795,400 this year; Mount Snow fell from 523,698 in 2005 to 429,822 in 2006; Sugarloaf lost 56,000 visits over 2005 with 310,583; Sunday River came in with 473,159, down from 524,861 in 2005; lastly, Steamboat broke the one million mark with 1,046,650 visits this season compared to 971,770 last year.