The Pellucid Perspective - September 2016 - 12

INDUSTRY SCORECARD Top 25 markets) level are also available to Pellucid Publications members and Geographic Weather Impact report subscribers. Jim Koppenhaver comments, "August's results continue the pattern we saw in July with a combination of temperature and heat index contributing to the decline in many regions across the country. There was some rain activity mixed in but it was mostly the muggy conditions that DQ'd a number of hours from being "playable" using Pellucid's definitions. GPH gainers for the month were led by Desert SW which had double-digit gains vs. YA as well as more modest gains for the Great Lakes, South Florida and Minnesota. Among the biggest losers, the Northeast was a sea of red in GPH figures as well as the Ohio Valley. Looking back at July Utilization, we held our own at the national level, which marks the 3rd month this year in which we notched a Utilization gain (Apr, Jun, Jul). Relative to previous years where we were lucky to post more than 2 months of gains across the entire year, we're doing slightly better this year at the national level in outperforming weather. We still don't appear to have cracked the code on this but as evidence that we're getting better, we also have 13 markets which have YtD Utilization gains so there are benchmarks that it can be done (again, if you want to know which 13 markets are beating the weather through July, it's available to our subscribers in their monthly report)." n Rounds by Facility Type Jul 2016 All Fac. Types Public Access Private 3.0% ___________________________________________ n Curr Month 2.4% 2.5% ___________________________________________ n Curr YtD 2.0% 2.0% ___________________________________________ 1.5% ___________________________________________ 1.0% ___________________________________________ 0.5% ___________________________________________ 0.1% 0.0% ___________________________________________ -0.5% ___________________________________________ -0.4% -0.6% -1.0% ___________________________________________ -1.1% -1.5% ___________________________________________ Looking at rounds demand for golf for the current month, the demand "comps" were basically flat at -1%, driven by a decline in the Private sector. For the Year-to-Date (YtD) period, the flat July results only slightly trimmed the first half gains and now stand at +2% through seven months, driven exclusively by Public gains with Private pancake flat. While Private isn't necessarily attending the "rounds party," if you have to choose between one or the other showing gains we'll take the Public sector due to its size and the fact that the Private sector can still be reasonably healthy without rounds gains (due to the heavier reliance on fixed dues vs. visits and ancillary spending dependent on the variable rounds measure). Source: GDT/NGCOA/NGF alliance As we introduced recently, this is a new view which replaces the former tables on Revenue and Rate (until a PerformanceTrak successor emerges) with a view into Utilization and the Point Change vs. the Year End '15 value to quantify how rounds demand is being influenced by favorable/unfavorable weather. For those relatively new to Pellucid Weather Impact tracking, the underlying concept is relatively simple. In a perfect world (i.e. if rounds are linearly correlated to weather), a 5% increase in Golf Playable Hours (Capacity Rounds) would produce a 5% gain in actual Rounds Played. By comparing Rounds Played to Capacity Rounds, we can determine the Utilization of the average facility and how it's changing across the year vs. some benchmark (here we use the last full year's rate of 51%). The first set of bars above show that July posted a Utilization rate of 52% which represents a 1 pt gain vs. the FY '15 value. In other words, the month's marginal drop in Rounds Played was not as big as the modest decline in weather for the month. We'll take this as a positive Utilization gain which is the 3rd month this year where the industry has outperformed the weather (not record-breaking but we'll take it). The second set of bars show the Year-to-Date (YtD) values which report Utilization of right on 51% which is basically flat to the FY '15 12 The Pellucid PersPecTive value so the "halved hole" in July Utilization basically kept us in line with weather for the YtD period. Getting back to even in weather isn't what we ultimately aspire to as an industry but, given the performance of the past few years, it's a step in the right direction. Utilization & Point Change Jul 2016 n %Utilization Curr. Month n Pt. Chng vs. FY '15 YtD 60.0% ___________________________________________ 51.9% 0.6 51.1% 50.0% ___________________________________________ 40.0% ___________________________________________ 30.0% ___________________________________________ 20.0% ___________________________________________ 10.0% ___________________________________________ -0.2 0.0% ___________________________________________ Source: GDT/NGCOA/NGF alliance; Pellucid September 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Pellucid Perspective - September 2016