Ohio Teachers & SeaWorld

By Robert F. Abbott, author of Big Macs & Our Pensions: Who Gets McDonald's Profits? the book that explains the connection between the retirement income of the middle class and the profits of big business

Friday, March 14, 2014

Ohio may not be near any salt-water seas, but its teachers are big owners of SeaWorld Entertainment, the theme park company. So, when SeaWorld (SEAS) announced its fourth quarter and full year 2013 results yesterday, teachers would have been interested.

Here's how the CEO summed up the results for the year, in a press release,

"Driven by record fourth quarter total attendance at our SeaWorld-branded parks in Orlando,  San Diego, and San Antonio, I am pleased to report our third consecutive year of record revenue and Adjusted EBITDA," Jim Atchison, President and Chief Executive Officer of SeaWorld Entertainment, Inc. said.  "We ended the year with Adjusted EBITDA of $439.1 million, at the high end of our previously provided guidance range.  We are pleased to deliver on the financial and operating commitments we made in our first year as a public company. Delivering these results in a challenging operating environment is a testament to the strength of our brands, company, management team and, most importantly, our team members."

State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio owned just under 133,000 shares of SeaWorld Entertainment on December 31st, according to nasdaq.com. The pension fund describes itself this way on its website,

"...one of the nation’s premier retirement systems, serving nearly 480,500 active, inactive and retired Ohio public educators. With investment assets of $69.9 billion (including short-term investments) as of June 30, 2013, STRS Ohio is one of the largest public pension funds in the country."

For more connections between working, middle class people and the world's biggest corporations, please visit our archives.

The Bigger Picture:

Will Profits from Big Macs Add to Your Retirement Income?

In 1948, the McDonald brothers redesigned and remodelled their drive-in restaurant in San Bernardino, California. Taking inspiration from Henry Ford's assembly-line, they created the fast food revolution, with the quick service and low prices we now take for granted.

In that same year, the U.S. National Labor Relations Board ruled unions could include pension issues in contract negotiations. That ignited a massive expansion of pension plans.

In the 1950s, pension funds started buying stocks, rather than just bonds or their equivalents; in addition mutual funds came of age. With these two developments working, middle class people became owners of big business. At first, their stakes were modest, but steadily growing.

And in just a few decades, they gained controlling interests in many large corporations through their funds. Management guru Peter Drucker has called it, "...one of the most startling power shifts in economic history."

Now, working people reap the benefits of those investments, collecting much of the profit distributed by McDonald's and other big corporations.

Discover how the pieces fit together. In Big Macs & Our Pensions: Who Gets McDonald's Profits? - a new booklet -(about 25-pages), you will:

• learn more about the McDonald's transformation and its implications for the future
  
• find out how McDonald's makes its profits (and it involves more than selling Quarter Pounders)
  
• meet some of the working people who get McDonald's profits through their pension and mutual funds
  
• find out how low wages became embedded in the fast food industry
  
• hear accusations from critics of McDonald's wages, and
  
• learn who has the ultimate say on fast food wages (the answer may surprise you).

You may not be among the owners of McDonald's. But if you belong to any pension plan, or contribute to a mutual fund or whole life insurance policy, you likely own pieces of some big corporations.

More importantly, though, your retirement income will be bigger and grow more dependably than you would otherwise expect.

Big Macs & Our Pensions: Who Gets McDonald's Profits? is now available at Amazon.com