The Weak Cluster in the Portfolio: The Five Camps That Still Need to Prove Themselves

What This Follow-up Is Isolating

The main article argued that SIMAD's key test has shifted from camp demand to capital structure. This follow-up isolates the weaker operating edge of that same picture: the five camps the company itself highlighted as assets with negative EBITDA or EBITDA below 5% in 2025.

The first number to put on the table is actually reassuring. Greenville Land, Med-O-Lark, Mesorah, New England Golf & Tennis and Waukeela account for just $23.8 million of value, only 5.1% of the total appraised camp portfolio value of $466.6 million on a 100% basis. This is not the cluster that can break the whole portfolio story on its own.

The second number is less reassuring. Those same five camps ended 2025 with combined actual NOI and EBITDA of negative $1.472 million, while the appraisal attributes value to them on the basis of represented NOI of $2.464 million. In other words, a $3.936 million bridge already sits inside the appraisal between what these camps actually did in 2025 and what the valuation assumes they can do once stabilized.

That is the core issue. The risk is not that the weak five will sink SIMAD. The risk is that the weakest slice of the portfolio is already being valued off a recovery that has not yet been proven. So the right question is not whether these camps are big enough to change the entire thesis, but whether the recovery assumptions behind them are conservative, reasonable, or already too generous.

For clarity, I use both NOI and EBITDA in this piece. For these five camps, the 2025 numbers shown in the appraisal's actual NOI table are the same numbers that appear in the company's EBITDA table.

What matters immediately:

• First finding: the weak cluster is small in value terms, but not small in terms of appraisal credibility.
• Second finding: 82.7% of the gap between actual NOI and represented NOI is concentrated in just three camps: Greenville, Mesorah and New England Golf.
• Third finding: in Greenville and New England Golf, the appraisal is clearly leaning much more on a future operating case than on 2025 economics.

How Much This Really Matters

At the level of current earnings, this group is limited. The weak five together reduced 2025 camp NOI and EBITDA by $1.472 million, while total EBITDA from day camps and overnight camps reached $40.03 million. Put differently, even if all five camps merely got back to break-even and nothing more, total camp EBITDA would rise by only about 3.7%. This is not a portfolio-breaking problem.

But in value terms the cluster still matters, not because it is large in absolute dollars, but because of the gap between current run-rate and the earnings base already embedded in the appraisal. Of the $23.8 million of value, Greenville alone carries $10.8 million, or 45.4% of the weak cluster. Mesorah adds another $6.1 million, or 25.6%. Together, those two camps account for more than 71% of the weak-cluster value.

That changes the way the issue should be read. If Med-O-Lark keeps underperforming, that is frustrating but not a major portfolio event. If Greenville or Mesorah fail to move materially toward the path assumed in the appraisal, the first thing that gets hit is the credibility of the value assigned to them, and only after that the broader earnings read.

The Real Issue: The Appraisal Is Not Valuing 2025, It Is Valuing Improvement

The right way to read this cluster is not to ask how much money it made in 2025, but how much has to improve before the assigned value makes sense. In aggregate, Greenville, Med-O-Lark, Mesorah, New England Golf and Waukeela need to move from negative $1.472 million of NOI to represented NOI of $2.464 million. That is a $3.936 million improvement bridge.

That gap is not evenly distributed. Mesorah alone needs $1.389 million of improvement. Greenville needs $1.043 million. New England Golf needs another $823 thousand. Those three camps, as noted, account for 82.7% of the implied uplift. So while there are five names on the list, the real sensitivity is concentrated in three.

This means the weak cluster matters more for the question of appraisal conservatism than for the question of portfolio earning power. If 2026 delivers only partial improvement, the broader SIMAD thesis can still hold. But in that case it will be harder to describe the $23.8 million weak-cluster value as a conservative cushion. It will look more like value pulled forward.

Who Looks Reasonable and Who Already Looks Stretched

Greenville / Malka: the largest value sits on economics that did not exist in 2025

Greenville is the biggest camp inside the weak cluster, which makes it the most sensitive. But the story here is especially sharp. The company decided in 2024 to stop operating the camp and lease out the land instead. In 2025 that shift produced positive EBITDA of $91 thousand, and the annual report states that the lease runs for five camp seasons through October 2029 at $1 million of rent per season, with the tenant bearing the camp's operating costs.

In other words, 2025 was not an operating comeback year for Greenville. It was a transition year into a lease model. That is why the real question is not whether $91 thousand is good or bad. It is why a $10.8 million value is still built on represented NOI of $1.134 million, with projected revenue of $5.67 million and an 80% expense ratio.

That is not necessarily wrong over a longer horizon. The camp has land, history and replacement barriers. But it is clearly not a conservative near-term assumption, because it is not capitalizing the current lease economics. It is valuing a stabilized operating-camp case that has not yet returned.

Med-O-Lark: less a revenue problem, more a discipline test

Med-O-Lark is the milder case in the group. Revenue fell only 1.4% to $2.171 million, and the appraisal asks for just 2% growth to $2.215 million. The real move is on the cost side: the operating expense ratio jumped to 107.6% in 2025, and the appraisal assumes a reduction to 85%, even after including a recurring $175 thousand operator incentive.

That is still demanding, but it sounds more like an execution and cost-control story than an implausible demand recovery. The company's own wording supports that read: management was replaced in 2024, and the company expects improvement to begin showing from the 2026 season. So Med-O-Lark looks like a case where the appraisal requires good execution, but not an especially heroic top-line assumption.

Mesorah: the appraisal is already running at the fast end of the timeline

Mesorah is the heavy test. On the positive side, there was real progress in 2025: revenue rose 13.9% to $4.06 million, and the annual loss narrowed. On the negative side, even after that progress, the operating expense ratio still sat at an extreme 119.2%, and actual NOI remained negative at $780 thousand.

Here the appraisal does not need more revenue. It simply holds 2026 revenue at the 2025 level and cuts the expense ratio to 85%, producing represented NOI of $609 thousand. That is a $1.389 million swing without any additional top-line help.

The issue is that this sits at the fast end of the company's own timeline. The annual report says there was some progress in 2025, but that the camp will likely need another one to two seasons to reach break-even and profitability. A positive $609 thousand NOI already in 2026 therefore reads more like an optimistic target case than a cautious base case.

New England Golf: this is where the appraisal is already too optimistic

If one assumption deserves the most skepticism, it is New England Golf. Revenue collapsed to just $376 thousand in 2025 from $615 thousand in 2024, and actual NOI deteriorated to negative $514 thousand. The operating expense ratio jumped to 236.9%.

Against that backdrop, the appraisal effectively restores the camp to the market-derived framework used in the prior valuation: $1.543 million of revenue, which is more than four times the 2025 actual level, and an 80% expense ratio. That yields represented NOI of $309 thousand and a value of $2.9 million.

This no longer looks like a cautious recovery case. It looks like a near-full reset to a path the camp is still far away from. The company's own language is more restrained: an additional co-manager was appointed in 2025 to improve the physical plant and sales strategy, and management still thinks the camp needs another one to two seasons to reach profitability. In that context, full value on a stabilized-profit basis looks generous.

Waukeela: small in value, but still unproven

Waukeela is smaller in value, but not clean. The company describes a girls-only camp whose physical condition requires upgrades, with those upgrades delayed in recent years and no full-time manager yet in place at the reporting date. Actual 2025 NOI was negative $105 thousand.

The appraisal assumes revenue of $1.274 million versus actual revenue of $1.113 million, and an expense-ratio decline from 109.6% to 80%, which produces represented NOI of $255 thousand and a value of $2.4 million. That is not as stretched as New England Golf, but it still depends on management, upgrades and stabilization arriving together.

There is also a small technical detail worth noting. In Waukeela's capitalization page, the narrative says a market capitalization rate of 11.00% was concluded, while the valuation formula and the summary table use 10.50%. That is probably an editing inconsistency, not the center of the thesis. Even so, in an asset the appraiser itself describes as already priced toward the top of the tuition range and with little room for growth beyond natural year-over-year improvement, the mismatch is a reminder that the value still rests on stabilized NOI, not on 2025 economics.

What Has to Happen Next

For the weak cluster to remain only a weak cluster and not become a broader warning sign, 2026 has to deliver proof across several separate layers.

First, Med-O-Lark has to show that the issue really was expense discipline and managerial transition, not a structurally weak demand profile. Partial improvement is enough there, as long as the expense ratio comes down meaningfully.

Second, Mesorah has to prove that 2025 revenue was not a one-off and that the camp can finally convert that revenue into a workable cost structure. Without that, the $6.1 million value starts to look aggressive.

Third, New England Golf needs a real revenue recovery before its appraisal can be read as conservative. This is where the gap between 2025 actuals and the value case is largest both operationally and economically.

Fourth, Waukeela needs a full-time manager, basic upgrades and a return to stable operations. Nothing more. But also nothing less.

And finally, Greenville needs conceptual clarity. If it remains a lease story through October 2029, readers should remember that its current value is not built by capitalizing the lease itself. If it is supposed to return to a full operating-camp model later on, that is a longer-term operating option, not a 2025 fact.

Conclusion

Bottom line: the weak five are not large enough to change the SIMAD story on their own, but they are large enough to test whether the appraisal is built conservatively or whether it is already pulling forward proof that has not arrived yet.

That distinction matters. If all five camps remain weak in 2026, the broader portfolio can probably still hold, but the $23.8 million assigned to them will start to look too generous. If some of them improve and others merely approach break-even, that is already enough to keep the weak cluster contained. So this is not a survival test for SIMAD. It is a credibility test for the value currently sitting on the weakest edge of the portfolio.

The thesis in this continuation is therefore simple: the weak cluster is not a hole that sinks the platform. It is the part of the portfolio where the appraisal has already moved one or two steps ahead of operating proof.