Vail Resorts facing a proxy fight over its board, business strategy 

As momentous the 2026 midterm elections were, Vail Resorts leaders are fretting an equally disruptive election in December. 

A proxy fight over Vail Resorts nearly 20-year business strategy has erupted as the company heads into its December annual meeting. Oasis Management, which has a nearly 10% stake in Vail Resorts stock worth about $500 million, is seeking two seats on the nine-member board, arguing for a significant shift in the resort operator’s business plan as its stock price continues to wallow at a 10-year low. It is calling its campaign for its two board nominees “Lifting the Vail.”

 “Despite its competitive advantages, however, Vail Resorts has gone downhill,” Seth H. Fischer, the founder and CEO of Oasis Management, said in a scathing letter to shareholders published this week. “The company has been operationally mismanaged, in our view, resulting in a stagnant guest experience, deteriorating operating performance and disappointing returns for shareholders. It’s time to get Vail Resorts back on its edges.”

Vail Resorts, the largest ski resort company in the world with 42 ski areas on three continents and 50,000 seasonal employees, is asking shareholders for patience as company CEO Rob Katz orchestrates a rebound with technological and customer-focused innovations. The recovery comes as sales continue to slow for the Epic Pass, which transformed the industry and delivered soaring annual gains for more than 15 years. 

The Broomfield-based company is recommending the reelection of its nine incumbent board members — eight independent directors and Katz — who have served an average of eight years and support Katz’s strategy. 

Vail Resorts, in its Oct. 30 proxy statement, said the Oasis Management nominees “lack the experience and judgment required to oversee this strategy and … would put our progress at risk.” 

The company is urging patience for the turnaround, pointing to progress in the last 17 months since the board replaced former CEO Kirsten Lynch with Katz, who has served 30 years on the Vail Resorts board and more than 20 years as company CEO. Under Katz, since he released the industry-transforming Epic Pass in 2008, shareholder returns have increased twelvefold, which is triple the returns of the S&P 500 over the same period. 

And in the last year, Katz has unveiled new pricing plans — like discounted friends tickets for passholders and lower prices for skiers who buy lift tickets long before their ski day. The new “Epic Experience” initiative announced this summer taps the company’s app for easier gear rentals, ski lessons and purchases. 

The Oct. 30 proxy statement suggests that Utah billionaire Matthew Prince is behind the Oasis Management plan to redirect Vail Resorts. Prince, whose software company Cloudflare has made him the richest person in Utah, has been vocal in calling out Vail Resorts’ recent struggles and wants the company to sell him its flagship Park City Mountain Resort, where he lives and once worked as a ski instructor. 

The proxy statement says Prince introduced Oasis Management to its board candidates as part of a plan to break up Vail Resorts’ network of 42 ski areas so he can acquire Park City. 

“These connections to Mr. Prince present a clear conflict and call into question the judgment of Oasis Management, the independence of their nominees, and the true motive of their campaign,” reads the company’s letter to shareholders setting up the Dec. 14 company meeting and proxy vote. 

Oasis Management, in its proxy statement, said Vail Resorts “has sought to distract shareholders by fabricating a theory” that it is collaborating with Prince. The company said its two nominees — Robert Chapek, the former CEO of The Walt Disney Company, and M. Ashton Hudson, a corporate attorney and financier — have never spoken with Prince and the Oasis plan does not jibe with Prince’s call to break the company up. 

Prince, in an email to The Sun, said “I am amused I live rent free in Rob Katz’s head.”

He said he talked to the Oasis team a few times as they studied his personal perspective that Vail Resorts should sell resorts and become more of an “asset-light” management company that licenses its Epic Pass to privately held ski areas. 

“While I think it makes a ton of sense for Vail to sell resorts like Park City to local operators like myself, I have no deal or agreement with Oasis and have no idea what strategy they’d pursue if they were to gain control of Vail’s board,” he said, adding that he does not own Vail Resorts stock and has no financial relationship with Oasis. “The one thing I do know is that it would be hard to execute a strategy worse than the current management of Vail’s. They’ve alienated customers, mismanaged their mountains, pissed off local communities, and proven themselves terrible capital allocators. Worst of all, they’ve taken away the magic of skiing. Any change would be an improvement.”

A shareholder named Gregory S. Meyer, an executive with experience running several high-profile businesses, also is pursuing a board seat independent of the Oasis Management candidates. Meyer’s self-nominated proxy statement offers a detailed, blistering critique of Vail Resorts’ financial performance in the last five years. 

Meyer notes that $100 invested in Vail Resorts stock in October 2021 is worth $52.30 today, compared with $118.30 for travel and leisure stocks tracked by the Dow Jones index. He shows the company spending $1.4 billion since 2022 with earnings down 11% in those years. He writes that the company’s return on invested capital has fallen while the gap between Vail Resorts’ debt, which is $2.92 billion, and cash flow, at $248 million in 2026, has nearly quadrupled since 2022. 

Where Oasis Management is promising to adjust Vail Resorts’ strategy, Meyer says he wants to expand it, with more offerings from the My Epic app. He suggests an upgraded “digital ecosystem” — that could, for example, allow skiers to connect with each other, gamify ski statistics and even order food for pick up from chairlifts — could increase the company’s value.  

Meyer also is critical of the company’s acquisition of two Swiss ski areas in 2022 and 2023, saying it overpaid and access to the European ski areas “adds little value for North American Epic Pass holders.”

Meyer also notes that only one board member in the last 10 years has purchased Vail Resorts stock and none has bought stock since 2021, when the stock peaked at more than $370 and has since fallen to around $150 a share. Meyer owns 3,052.6 shares of Vail Resorts stock, which, he said, is 13 times the number of shares purchased by all the company’s independent directors combined in the last 10 years. 

“The goal is not change for its own sake,” reads Meyer’s proxy statement. “It is to ensure that Vail’s considerable competitive advantages translate more consistently into stronger financial performance, a more resilient business and sustainable long-term stockholder value.”