You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: In addition, on the call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures.
Investors can find, both a detailed discussion of business risks and reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures in the company's annual reports, quarterly reports and other forms filed or furnished with the SEC.
This past year has been exceptionally challenging as the world contends with a pandemic that has upended all of our lives.
We are grateful for the first responders who keep us safe and for those who provide the services we all count on every day.
I am proud that Six Flags has been able to make a difference in the communities we serve by hosting vaccination sites and testing locations and by donating food banks for those in need.
They have continued to amaze me with their dedication, perseverance and resilience as we found innovative ways to safely entertain nearly 7 million guests as a preferred entertainment choice.
We established the highest standards of cleanliness and safety protocol as validated by local health officials and our guest feedback.
We strengthened our liquidity position, significantly reduced our operating and capital expenditures and continue to innovate to safely and successfully reopen our parks.
I've never been more proud of our company or more confident in our future.
In the fourth quarter, we continued to make significant progress on our transformation plan, which focuses on strengthening our core business.
This plan is in full action and will fuel our new strategy to drive long-term profitable growth.
Our new strategy is evolutionary, not revolutionary.
We are going to do many of the same things we did in the past.
We are going to do them better.
Specifically, we will modernize all aspects of the guest experience and we will operate more efficiently as an organization.
As I stressed on our last call, our guests still love our roller coasters and funnel cakes.
They just want a more seamless experience and we can provide them that through technology.
We have divided our call into three parts.
First, I will provide an overview of our recent operating performance and the strong demand trends we are seeing.
Second, Sandeep will go into more detail about our financial results and give an update on the progress of our transformation plan.
Finally, I will return to discuss our new strategy in more detail and review our three strategic focus areas.
We are pleased that our attendance has consistently improved since we first reopened our parks last year in the second quarter.
I'd like to highlight a few reasons why we're so optimistic about the upcoming season despite the challenging operating environment.
First, on a comparable period basis, attendance trends in open parks have increased from 20% to 25% of 2019 levels in the second quarter to 35% in the third quarter to 51% in the fourth quarter.
We have continued to see strong signs so far this year with attendance in open parks trending at consistent levels as the fourth quarter despite extreme weather conditions in Texas over the past couple of weeks.
Our guest surveys indicate that there is extraordinary pent-up demand for outdoor entertainment options close to home.
And we believe that this widespread desire will drive attendance in the coming quarters.
Second, we are encouraged by the resiliency of our Active Pass Base which was approximately flat between the third quarter and fourth quarter of 2020.
Even more encouraging, the number of members who retained their memberships after their initial 12-month commitment period, our most valuable guests, is actually up versus this time last year.
We see the strong retention of our members even in the midst of a pandemic as a testament to our unique offering and our loyal following.
Once our parks are back up and running at full capacity, we expect that our Active Pass Base will quickly ramp back up to previous levels and beyond.
Third, the pandemic encourage us to think creatively about how to maximize use of our parks.
Both the creative solutions we found and the underlying dynamism of our team will continue to drive growth well past COVID.
Demand was so high that we will operate the drive-through safari again starting in March 2021 creating the longest season in the Animal Parks history.
In the fourth quarter, we also offered drive-through or walk-through holiday experiences with our rides at four of our theme parks giving our guests the opportunity to celebrate the season with lights, beloved characters and festivities.
These events proved so popular that we extended them into January.
Going forward, we expect to continue many of these events, which will allow us to extend our operating season and give guests even more reasons to visit our parks throughout the year.
So while the environment remains fluid, we are encouraged by recent trends and are optimistic about both the short and long-term prospects of our business.
Results for the fourth quarter and full-year are not comparable to prior year because of temporary park closures, modified operations and attendance limitations.
Total attendance for the quarter was 2.2 million guests, 338,000 of which came from the four parks that offered modified Holiday in the Park lights without rides and our drive-through safari in New Jersey.
Revenue in the quarter was down $152 million or 58% to $109 million as a result of a 65% decline in attendance.
Sponsorship, international and accommodations revenue in the fourth quarter declined by $8 million due to the deferral of most sponsorship revenue and the suspension of the majority of our accommodations operations.
Guest spending per capita in the quarter increased 17% driven by a 16% increase in admissions spending per capita and a 19% increase in in-park spending per capita.
The increase in admissions spending per capita was driven primarily by recurring monthly membership revenue from members who retained their memberships after their initial 12-month commitment period, as well as an increase in the mix of single-day guests.
The increase in in-park spending per capita was primarily driven by a higher mix of single-day guests who tend to spend more per visit.
In addition, revenue from recurring monthly all-season membership products such as the all-season dining pass contributed to the increase.
Attendance from our Active Pass Base in the fourth quarter represented 55% of total attendance versus 71% for the fourth quarter of 2019 demonstrating our success in attracting visitation of single-day guests.
On the cost side, cash, operating and SG&A expenses decreased by $30 million or 18%, primarily due to the following: first, cost saving measures, primarily related to reduced salaries and wages and lower Fright Fest and Holiday in the Park related costs due to the restricted operating environment and our organization redesign completed in October; second, lower advertising costs; third, savings in utilities and other costs related to the fact that several of our parks were not operating or were operating with a reduced product offering.
These cost savings were offset by a charge of $19 million due to an increase in legal reserves.
The total amount recorded reflects managements estimate of the probable outcome of a legacy class action lawsuit.
Excluding the litigation charge, cash costs decreased by $49 million or 29%.
While we have taken measures to reduce our variable costs, we retained 90% of our full-time members and maintained their benefits in order to position ourselves to reopen parks as safely and as soon as possible.
We reduced salaries of all employees by 25% during 2020 in order to preserve cash and our Directors also deferred their compensation for the last three quarters of 2020.
Several of them, including our retiring and new Chairman, opted to take that compensation in the form of stock.
Due to the improving outlook, we have restored all our employees to full salaries, with the exception of our CEO who opted to be restored in March.
Although these actions offset our cost reduction efforts somewhat, we believe they were the right decisions for both the short and long-term.
By keeping our parks in a state of readiness, we were able to maximize the number of days we could operate.
We also were able to keep our guests engaged, our employees motivated and our parks prepared for 2021.
Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was a loss of $39 million which included a $19 million increase in legal reserves compared to income of $72 million in the prior year period.
Moving to full year performance.
Attendance of 6.8 million guests was down 79% from prior year.
Total revenue of $357 million was down 76% driven by lower attendance due to park closures, limited operations.
Total guest spending per capita increased more than $6 or 14% due to a higher percentage of single-day guests and the positive revenue impact from members who have remained past their initial 12-month commitment period.
Attendance from our Active Pass Base for the full year represented 56% of total attendance versus 63% for full year 2019.
Cash, operating and SG&A expenses were down 35% for the year due to cost savings measures taken immediately after we suspended operations.
This cost reduction offset a portion of the revenue decline resulting in an adjusted EBITDA loss of $231 million.
Fully diluted GAAP loss per share was $4.99, a decline of $7.10 primarily due to the lower attendance in our parks.
We are making significant efforts to ensure the continued loyalty of our Active Pass Base.
We extended the use of all 2020 season passes through the end of 2021.
For our members, we added an additional month to their membership for every month they paid when their home park was closed.
We are also rolling out a gift card option in the second quarter that members can choose to use in our parks in lieu of adding additional months to their membership.
Finally, all members have the option to pause their membership payments at any time through spring 2021.
However, we have offered a menu of benefits including upgrades to higher membership tiers if they elect to continue on their normal payment schedule.
As of today, only about 20% of current members have chosen to pause their membership.
We anticipate that most of these paused members will return to active paying members once we reopen our remaining parks.
We are pleased with the retention of our very large Active Pass Base, which included 1.7 million members and 2.1 million season pass holders at the end of 2020.
Our Active Pass Base was approximately flat compared to the end of the third quarter 2020 when we had 1.9 million members and 1.9 million season pass holders.
Our Active Pass Base at the end of 2020 is down 51% compared to the end of 2019.
While this is a significant decline, it is important to assess this in proper context.
This decline is almost entirely due to lower sales of new season passes and memberships during 2020 as they were difficult to sell with so much uncertainty during the pandemic.
We also did not hold our usual pass sales events including our flash sale in September, which contribute significantly to our year-end Active Pass Base.
That being said, because we extended our 2020 season passes through the end of 2021, our Active Pass Base, as of today, is down less than 10% versus the same day last year, which preceded the pandemic's impact.
We believe this represents a more meaningful comparison for our Active Pass Base heading into the 2021 operating season as we believe the season pass holders and members who were extended will visit our parks in 2021.
Looking ahead, we expect the Active Pass Base trends to continue to improve as we start selling more new passes and memberships.
Deferred revenue as of December 31, 2020 was $205 million, up $61 million or 42% to prior year as we expect to recognize most of this deferred revenue in 2021.
The increase was primarily due to the deferral of revenue from members and season pass holders whose benefits were extended through 2021, partially offset by lower new season pass and membership sales.
Total capital expenditures for the year were $98 million, a reduction of 30% from 2019.
We expect our 2021 capital spend to be slightly lower than 2020 due to the carryover of new rides that were delivered and paid for, but not commissioned in 2020.
Our liquidity position, as of December 31, was $618 million.
This included $460 million of available revolver capacity, net of $21 million of letters of credit and $158 billion of cash.
This compares to a liquidity position of $673 million as of September 30, 2020.
Net cash outflow for the quarter was $56 million, representing an average of $19 million per month.
As a reminder, our net cash outflow in the fourth quarter included partnership park distributions that represented an average of $7 million per month.
Our fourth quarter cash flow benefited by $8 million from the sale of some excess land in New Jersey, which was not in our prior estimates.
Without the landfill, our net cash outflow was $21 million per month, an improvement from our prior estimates of $25 million to $30 million.
We historically experienced significant cash outflow in the first quarter of the year as the majority of our parks are closed, yet, we incurred an elevated operating and capital expenditures to prepare for our parks opening in the spring.
We estimate that our net cash outflow in the first quarter of 2021 will be higher than normal or approximately $53 million to $58 million per month.
This is primarily due to three things.
First, the normal seasonality of our business.
Second, the timing of interest payments on our newly issued $725 million of senior secured debt.
And, third, the pandemic-related limitations on our parks, including our California and Mexico parks that typically have year round operations.
We are striving to be cash flow positive for the balance of the year but this is largely dependent upon all our parks opening and attendance levels continuing to normalize.
I would now like to give you an update on the progress of our transformation plan.
The headline is this.
We are on track with our plan and we are highly confident in our ability to achieve our objectives.
Executing the transformation plan will require one-time cost of approximately $70 million through 2021, including $60 million of cash and $10 million of non-cash write-offs.
So far, $35 million has been incurred through the end of 2020, including the non-cash write-offs of $10 million.
We expect to incur the remaining $35 million by the end of 2021.
Approximately two-thirds of the spending in 2021 is related to investments in technology, beginning with the implementation of a state-of-the art CRM system.
We expect the transformation plan to unlock $80 million to $110 million in incremental annual run rate EBITDA once fully implemented and the company is now operating in a normal business environment.
In 2021, we expect to achieve $30 million to $35 million from our organization redesign and other fixed cost reductions.
In January alone, we realized more than $2 million of fixed cost value due to transformation, so we are well on track to achieve our estimated savings for 2021.
We expect to ramp up to the full amount of benefits as attendance grows to 2019 levels.
We have already completed significant portions of the work that will benefit us in 2021 starting with our three cost initiatives.
First, as we announced last fall, we reduced our full time headcount costs by approximately 10%.
We are piloting new approaches to recruiting and training and moving to centralize some of our back office operations, such as finance, human resources and IT.
Second, from a non-headcount cost perspective, we closed offices in New York City and West Hollywood and are in the midst of driving savings through centralized negotiations with a number of our vendors.
Initial results are validating the projected value opportunities of these initiatives.
Third, from a variable labor perspective, we are piloting our park level labor model, which will allow us to dynamically match stuffing with attendance levels throughout the day.
We are conducting this pilot in our Texas parks and plan to roll it out to our remaining parks once we validate that the model is working effectively.
We will realize the benefits of the model as attendance levels rise and we will keep you updated as our parks continue to open.
We are also making excellent progress on our revenue initiatives.
Specifically, we are testing our new and improved menu assortment, pricing and merchandising strategy in Over Texas and Fiesta Texas.
We expect to expand these initiatives to all other parks once they reopen.
Our marketing team and media agency have incorporated the use of our media ROI tool and we plan to measure our ROI by park in the future.
We continue to improve our website, which we rolled out last fall.
We will soon make it available for our parks in Mexico and Canada.
Finally, we continue to make progress with our initiative to bring back single-day visitors, particularly those living far away enough from our parks where a season pass is not an attractive option.
While we always prefer to sell a season pass or a membership because of the highest full season revenue, we believe there is a significant opportunity to capture additional attendance by targeting single-day visitors.
We are already seeing a positive impact on our attendance and per caps as a result of this initiative.
As we announced last December, we are changing our method of determining our fiscal quarters and fiscal years, such that each fiscal quarter shall consist of 13 consecutive weeks ending on a Sunday.
Each fiscal year shall consist of 52 weeks or 53 weeks and shall end on the Sunday closest to December 31.
During the years when there are 53 weeks, the fourth quarter shall consist of 14 weeks.
Because of this change, our first fiscal quarter of 2021 will end on April 4 instead of March 31 and the current fiscal year will end on January 2, 2022.
The purpose of this change is to align our reporting calendar with how we operate our business and to improve comparability across periods.
Looking ahead, the operating environment remains unpredictable.
So it's difficult to project beyond the next three months.
For that reason, we are not providing annual guidance at this time.
We have announced opening dates for all our parks that are not already open with start dates beginning in March.
That being said, we will remain flexible and we'll be cautious to commit our capital, media and labor dollars only when we believe there will be a strong ROI.
We are extremely encouraged by the improvements in our attendance trends in the face of the pandemic, and we are very excited about the value creation that will come from implementing our transformation plan.
We have more work to do, but I'm pleased by our progress so far.
The whole company is intently focused on executing the transformation plan over the coming quarters.
Now, I will pass the call back over to Mike who will tell you more about our strategy.
Our strategy is to drive profit from our core business because this will create sustainable value over time.
We can grow our business from its core because we operate in a healthy industry that is benefiting from long-term secular trends as consumers increasingly choose to spend on experiences over objects.
Even within out-of-home entertainment, regional theme parks are a compelling sector because they enjoy high recurring cash flow that has proven to be extremely resilient during downturns.
These attributes have enabled our industry and our company to deliver strong revenue and earnings growth over time.
However, over the past few years, we did not evolve at the same pace as our guest expectations.
As a result, we underperformed the industry from both a top-line and bottom-line perspective.
To reinvigorate profitable growth, our team has reassessed every aspect of our business.
We have developed an updated strategy to ensure that we constantly evolve so we not only meet but exceed our guests' expectations, both now and for many years to come.
So here it is.
Our strategy is to create thrilling memorable experiences at our regional parks delivered by a diverse and empowered team through industry-leading innovation and technology.
Our vision is to be the preferred regional destination for entertainment and our mission is to create fun and thrilling memories for all.
Our core values prioritize safety and the guest experience and drive accountability throughout the organization.
Our values will result in a guest-centric culture; a commitment to prioritize the guest at every decision point.
Looking to the future, three key long-term focus areas will drive our strategy.
First, modernizing the guest experience through technology; second, continuously improving operational efficiency; and third, driving financial excellence.
For each of these focus areas, we will measure our progress based on certain key performance indicators.
For our first focus area, modernizing the guest experience through technology, our goal is to create a seamless and improved in-park experience with new applications of technology.
First, we will provide opportunities for our guests to tailor the in-park experience to each of their individual preferences.
Second, we will decrease wait times wherever possible, especially for our roller coasters where we are testing several virtual queuing and reservation systems.
Third, we will facilitate our guests' ability and desire to share their experience on social media.
Finally, we will improve food and beverage quality and the overall appearance of our parks.
In everything we do, we will prioritize the guest experience.
Here are a few highlights of our progress on this focus area thus far.
Website redesign; our new simplified website has made it easier than ever for guests to find information about our offerings and to purchase tickets.
This has led to higher sales conversion rates and higher per caps.
Customer relationship management; we are in the midst of developing a new CRM platform that will allow us to understand and predict our guests' preferences from the moment they visit our website to the moment they leave the park.
Based on this consumer data, we will begin tailoring our offerings to their preferences and customize their experiences so they get exactly what they want when they want it.
Contactless security; our guests no longer have to wait in long lines or have their bags searched to enter our parks.
They now walk seamlessly through our contactless security systems which scans them for anything unsafe and also measures their temperature to ensure safe environment.
Cash card kiosks; our domestic parks that opened for normal operations in the fourth quarter have offered any guests who only have cash the ability to obtain cash cards from kiosks throughout the parks in order to facilitate electronic transactions.
This improves hygiene within our parks, while also speeding up transactions and eliminating cash handling costs.
Mobile dining; our guests no longer have to wait in long lines to order food.
Instead they can choose to order on their smartphones and pick up their food when it is ready.
Mobile dining has also led to higher average checks.
For this first focus area of modernizing the guest experience through technology, the key performance indicators will be attendance and revenue.
Moving on to our second focus area; continuously improving operational efficiency, we will deliver products and services in a more cost-efficient manner, including effectively deploying park-level labor, leveraging our scale of increased purchasing power and optimizing our ride portfolio.
We are also focused on increased guest throughput on our rides, as well as our food and beverage locations.
As Sandeep mentioned, we have moved quickly to streamline our organization and reduced other fixed costs and we expect to realize $30 million to $35 million of fixed cost savings in 2021.
For the second focus area; continuously improving operational efficiency, the key performance indicator will be operating expense ratio, which is the ratio of our operating expenses relative to our revenue.
We will begin to measure this ratio once we return to a more normal business environment.
Finally, our third focus area is driving financial excellence.
We expect our transformation initiatives to create a new adjusted EBITDA baseline of $530 million to $560 million once our plan is implemented and we are operating in a more normal business environment.
After we achieve this baseline, we believe our strategy will allow us to grow revenue at low-to-mid single-digits, in line with the overall out-of-home entertainment industry.
Combined with our annual productivity initiatives, we will continue to invest back in our parks and improve margins to accelerate annual adjusted EBITDA growth to a range of mid-to-high single-digits.
In addition, we will be disciplined in the way we allocate capital to ensure we deliver sustainable earnings growth.
We have developed the following capital allocation priorities to guide our path toward financial excellence.
First, invest in our base business to facilitate profitable and sustainable growth.
this includes investments in our park infrastructure, in technology for our parks, and in systems that help us oversee our park operations.
This also includes investments in new rides and attractions, as well as other in-park offerings such as food and beverage.
We expect to maintain our annual capital expenditures at 9% to 10% of revenue.
Second, use free cash flow to pay down debt and return our net leverage ratio to between 3 and 4 times.
Third, once we are within our targeted leverage range, consider strategic acquisition opportunities to further build our regional network of parks.
Finally, if there are no acquisition opportunities that meet our strategic and financial return thresholds, we will return excess cash flow to shareholders via dividends or share repurchases.
For this third focus area of driving financial excellence, the key performance indicator will be adjusted EBITDA.
We have a resilient team and a resilient business.
Our team's focus for 2021 is to safely open all of our parks and ensure that we successfully execute our transformation plan.
I look forward to updating you on our continued progress in the months ahead.
Catherine, at this point, can you please open the call for any questions?

user
q4 revenue $109 million.
provides update on transformation plan.
confident that we will see significant benefits beginning in 2021.
six flags entertainment - estimates that net cash outflow in q1 of 2021 will be, on average, $53 to $58 million per month.
striving to become cash flow positive for last nine months of 2021.
six flags entertainment - believes has sufficient liquidity to meet cash obligations through end of 2021 even if all its parks are unable to open.

assistant