The Pellucid Perspective - October 2023 - 8

'23 YEAR-END
OUTLOOK
Nat'l Rounds Demand (Ms)
come up with our perspective on what we think those annual
numbers have been and the V-shaped trend of decline ('00-'18)
and growth ('19-'22). See graphic above.
As you can see, it would appear that between '00 and '18 we
gradually lost ~91M rounds from the peak of 518M to the nadir
of 427M. It's a little surprising that COVID Yr 1 ('19) actually
showed a slight rebound from that '18 low as we went through
the near-death experience of lockdowns to being anointed as
one of the " safe " recreational activities and consumers discovered
or re-discovered the appeal of golf as an outside, social, moderately
strenuous form of exercise with moments of immediate
gratification (those occasional shots well-struck).
We have several equity capital clients who value both our
monthly report-outs on Rounds and Golf Revenue as well as
our annual projection (starting back with the January results
for the year believe it or not). We're uniquely suited to do
that using trailing averages (which anyone with the historical
rounds figures could do) in conjunction with the balance-ofyear
national weather impact forecast (which no one else can
do, so we have a " slight " edge there, ha, ha). What that's been
telling us since Jun-Jul is that we have a chance to overtake
the modern-era high water mark of 518M rounds. For those
of you paying attention and playing along at home, yes, we did
match that figure in '21 according to the above chart but we
didn't exceed it so, technically, setting the modern-era record
for rounds will require a 519M or higher reading. Since we're
fairly late in the year and it's less of a guarded secret now with
only 4 months left to log (but still ~30% of total year rounds),
below is our current client " call " for '23. See graphic below.
As you can see, if we clear the 519M bar, it won't be by
much and we could still " grasp defeat from the jaws of victory "
but right now the slightly favorable weather impact
" call " at the national level for Oct-Dec and recent trends in
monthly rounds reporting suggest we've got a good shot at
520M.
Long-time Pellucid followers likely know what's coming
next; the above doesn't factor in the annual vagaries of weather
and that could be either inflating or handicapping the apparent
success in looking at rounds trends in a vacuum. In yet
another counterpoint to all those in the industry who've historically
referred to us as the " naysayers " , we've actually got
even better news when we look at Utilization patterns and
take weather out of the above trend picture and storyline. See
graphic on next page.
As you can see here in the trendline which represents %
Utilization (Played Rounds/Capacity Rounds), we actually
turned the corner on efficiency of our golf " factories " back in
'16 after bottoming out in '15 at 52%. So rounds declines we
saw in '16-'18 were actually 100% due to weather impact and,
in '19 and beyond, demand actually has outpaced any weather
favorability bestowed upon us. It also shows the '22 dip in
rounds was actually also 100% due to weather as Utilization
continued its upward march. The '23 year end projection is
calling for rounds favorability to exceed weather favorability
keeping Utilization above 70% and actually slightly extending
the cushion.
In conclusion, right now the indicators and math we have
show us to quietly (because no one else tracks or publishes this
Nat'l Rounds Demand (Ms)
8 The Pellucid PersPecTive
OctOber 2023
The Pellucid Perspective - October 2023

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