Lee on fuel costs, ferry deficit, and corporate sponsorship
Lee asks about fuel hedging, the $15M operating deficit, and corporate sponsorship efforts. Peck describes a fuel hedging strategy, confirms the ferry is subsidized by EDC rental revenue, and says sponsorship submissions didn't offer sufficient value.
Yeah, we do have a fuel hedging strategy.
So some of that we've...
Hedged and mitigated, but I will have to get back to you on exactly the impact.
One of the questions I have is, I believe in fiscal year 2025, there was an operating deficit of roughly 15 million.
Is that correct?
An operating?
Or the operating deficit of the ferry.
So the ferry,
technically runs at a deficit and it's subsidized by other revenue and that is some of our rental revenue that we get for some of the assets that we manage at EDC directly goes to subsidize that ferry.
I don't know if that's what you're referring to.
There's not a deficit because we subsidize it.
The deficit prior to tapping into EDC's cash reserves.
No, I'm not sure what you're referring to, but again, this subsidy is there as a...
As a staple source of revenue.
And again, it's part of our maritime assets and our 42nd Street assets that subsidize the revenue that we get from those rental properties, subsidize the ferry.
So the deficit is basically the subsidy, but we don't have an additional deficit over that.
Okay.
And is there an effort to look at increasing New York City ferry revenues to try to help that decrease that subsidy?
We're always looking to increase the financial efficiency of NYC Ferry.
I think the increased ridership, the other...
Ways of like Wi-Fi sponsorship, et cetera, that other ways for us to increase the ferry revenue.
Ultimately, it is going to be all transit is subsidized.
And so we are realistic in understanding that it's such a beloved form of transit for New Yorkers that it will require a subsidy.
Earlier this year, I know there were efforts to acquire a corporate sponsor.
Did EDC receive any submissions or proposals for private entities to be a corporate sponsor and sort of help with that revenue?
Yeah, so we are always looking for partnerships to help NYC Ferry.
We did receive some...
Submissions that did not like have a maximum benefit for for what they were offering and so we decided not to go with
with this with any of the submissions and have you received revenue from ferry sponsors in the past and if so how much
We've read some, like, inside the ferries, et cetera, and it's about 300,000.
And in 2025, it was about 300,000.
And is that continuing?
Yes.