SeaWorld Entertainment shares surged almost 10 percent on Wednesday in the wake of a report that the owner of Legoland had approached the troubled water park operator about a sale.
In response to the news, shares of SeaWorld spiked at much as 14% in post-market trading.
Merlin, which runs Legoland parks worldwide and owns Madame Tussauds, has made a bid for part of SeaWorld, but SeaWorld’s preference is to sell itself whole, the source said.
According to the TEA/AECOM Theme Index, Merlin Entertainments is the world’s second-largest theme park company by attendance, following Disney. Merlin now has a market value of about US$6.1 billion, while SeaWorld is valued at $1.3 billion.
SeaWorld’s shares have lost a quarter of their value this year, hitting an all-time low in August of just over $11. In order to combat this, SeaWorld announced it would no longer breed its orcas and would phase out shows featuring the whales.
In August, the company’s chief financial officer, Anne-Francoise Nesmes, said: “It takes two parties to do a deal so we do not know what SeaWorld’s intentions are but we do believe that those assets [Busch Gardens] are interesting”.