Q: Reinstate Dividend, At Least In Part

[The Interpreter]

...Cedar Fair's largest shareholder on Wednesday urged the Sandusky-based amusement park company to reinstate the dividend that it stopped paying out to investors at the beginning of this year.

Cedar Fair announced in November that it would eliminate its dividend in order to help pay down more than $1.6 billion in debt. At the time, the company was distributing a dividend of $1 per year, per share to investors.

Q Investments, the Texas-based hedge fund manager that owns 18 percent of Cedar Fair, said in a letter to the company's board of directors on Wednesday that it believes Cedar Fair can afford to pay at least half of that - 50 cents per share, per year - to investors beginning this year....

http://www.cleveland...ividend_la.html

[CoastersRZ]

Well, technically, as the article terms it correctly in the last paragraph, they are cash distributions and not dividends. And people own units and not shares of Cedar Fair.

As a unit holder myself, I would like to see the cash distribution return. However, would it be better for them long term to pay a modest cash distribution of 50 cents a year, or would it be better long term to use that money to pay down their debt?

And wasn`t the whole reason they suspended the cash distributions in the first place is that they violated some covenants in the first place? I seem to remember some ratio that they fell below that necessitated the lapse in the cash distribution payments.

So is this Qs true motive? Were they looking to buy units cheaply and then try and force Cedar Fair to reintroduce the cash distributions? Or are Qs true motives still unknown?

[The Interpreter]

I do not believe Q has tipped its hand yet.

I do believe there is a plan.

I doubt Mr. Kinzel will find such plan to be satisfying.

I would not be surprised if Mr. Shapiro's recent departure from another company is somehow related to Q. Not at all.

[CoastersRZ]

So do you think that Q might be tapping him to be their nomination for Cedar Fair`s board? Or do you think that they are positioning him to be their nomination for the upper management team to replace Kinzel and Co.?

[The Interpreter]

So do you think that Q might be tapping him to be their nomination for Cedar Fair`s board? Or do you think that they are positioning him to be their nomination for the upper management team to replace Kinzel and Co.?

Yes.

Terpy, not being evasive this time...honest.

[CoastersRZ]

Either way, I think Q would be smart to bring him on board. He seemed to work wonders over at Six Flags, and I think he would do a lot of good at Cedar Fair as well. To use Q`s words, "fresh blood" would do some good for Cedar Fair in my opinion.

[KIfan1980]

With the push for reinstatement of the cash distribution, it is my belief that Q is looking to build unit-holder support for it's objectives - one of which is fresh blood on the board, the remainder of which are still to be shared publicly.