(Quebec) Nearly a year after publicly announcing that it was looking for an investor for its next phase of development, Le Massif de Charlevoix still has not found one. The ski resort swears, however, that it is not for sale.
Published at 6:00 a.m.
Two sources told The Press in the last days that the Le Massif Group would be open to an acquisition. Friday, The Sun indicated that it had obtained a mandate given to CIBC to “market an acquisition opportunity”.
The company immediately denied this in a statement to the media. “Le Massif de Charlevoix is not for sale,” assured Claude Choquette, president of the Le Massif Group.
The mandate at CIBC was not to sell the mountain, assured the president, but rather sought to “identify the ideal partner”. “This strategic approach never meant an intention to sell the company, and this reality remains unchanged,” indicates Claude Choquette.
In December 2023, the group announced that it had an investment plan of 400 million to increase the ski area by 50% and install new lifts to access the Mont à Liguori sector.
But to do this, the Charlevoix station was looking for a partner. However, almost a year later, Le Massif is still looking.
“Although the steps [de la CIBC] were not successful, the senior management of the Massif de Charlevoix took up the torch last September to actively pursue this research,” the group announced on Friday.
Sources told The Press that Le Massif had held meetings with important players in the ski industry. A meeting even reportedly took place with Alterra, which owns Mont-Tremblant.
The Press wrote to Alterra, an American company, but had not received a response at the time of publishing this text. Le Massif was also stingy with comments.
“We are not commenting on the current discussions,” replied Pierre-Thomas Choquette, from the Arsenal Conseils firm, which takes care of communications for the Massif.
It is in this context of uncertainty that the Quebec government decided to restructure the Massif’s debt, giving it a boost. The State revealed this week that Investissement Québec (IQ) reconverted a $36 million loan to Le Massif into preferred shares. The loan was granted in 2017. It will no longer have to be repaid.
IQ already held, before this addition of preferred shares, 22.9% of the shares of the Le Massif Group, according to the Ministry of the Economy, Innovation and Energy.
An imminent agreement in Mont-Sainte-Anne?
The transformation of the 36 million loan to Le Massif into preferred shares will probably not be the only intervention by the State in the ski industry of the Capitale-Nationale this year.
A government source assures that a major financing agreement will be announced before the end of 2024 with the manager of Mont-Sainte-Anne, Resorts of the Canadian Rockies (RCR).
The Alberta company has been the target of numerous criticisms from skiers and even elected officials, who denounce the underinvestment for years in the mountains. Criticism resumed with a vengeance after the fall of a gondola in December 2022.
Faced with these criticisms, RCR presented to the government a major reinvestment plan in Mont-Sainte-Anne, conditional on participation from Quebec.
Former Minister of the Economy Pierre Fitzgibbon had received the project coolly, declaring in October 2023: “in the economic context, I am not sure that it is a good idea for the government to invest in ski centers, all ski centers combined.”
