Overview
We analyze the performance of Swiss mountain ropeway companies over the time period from 2011 to 2016. Our sample includes 194 observations from 43 companies which cover about 90% of the market. We consider firm-specific characteristics, meteorological data, infrastructure information as well as market-specific factors in order to explain the cash flow return, the degree of self-financement and revenue growth of the ropeway companies. Our results based on general method of moments estimations point out that a high equity ratio and consistent capital expenditures are important for performance. Also, the market environment such as the exchange rate as well as ski areas’ brand recognition in Europe and Asia are important for firm performance. Overall, the Swiss market represents a unique country for this type of analysis, given that the required data of mountain ropeway companies in other countries are either not available or the markets are dominated by few rather large companies.
