Park City Mountain Resort: Canyons Photo: TownLift // Kevin Cody.

PARK CITY, Utah — Vail Resorts has hired takeover-defense bankers to assess its exposure to threats including labor groups, weather, and pressure from Park City resident Matthew Prince, Semafor reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

No activist investor has made a formal move on the company, according to the report. Vail’s shares are down 14% over the past year. The bankers were hired to evaluate vulnerabilities, not in response to a specific bid.

Semafor pointed to signs the company is preparing for a possible activist push, including the May 2025 return of Rob Katz as CEO, replacing the successor he had chosen.

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Semafor reported that some of Vail’s talks with its advisers have focused on Prince, the Cloudflare CEO who has pushed for more than a year to buy Park City Mountain Resort. That his interest has come up in those discussions suggests the company is treating it as a factor worth planning around, even as it publicly maintains the resort is not for sale. Katz addressed the sale rumors directly during the company’s earnings call saying

“No. That’s not something that we’re looking at. And we don’t think that that ultimately is in the right long-term interest of our company.” – Rob Katz, CEO of Vail Resorts

Prince has said he would invest about $500 million in the resort under local ownership, including lift upgrades, expanded snowmaking, and employee profit sharing.

According to Semafor, Prince told a Colorado newspaper this month that he had received calls from activist investors about Vail and that the company should adopt an asset-light model. CEO Rob Katz said in May he does not favor that approach for the company.

A representative for Vail did not respond to Semafor’s request for comment.

Semafor is an American news website founded in 2022 by Ben Smith, a former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News and media columnist at The New York Times, and Justin B. Smith, the former CEO of Bloomberg Media Group. This story is based on reporting first published by Semafor.