Good morning everyone, and a warm welcome to our second quarter of 2024/25 presentation. The presentation will be held by myself and my new colleague Sara here, who is our new CFO starting officially from...

1st of January.

Correct. Warm welcome, Sara, and we will try to guide you through this presentation today.

We have an agenda where we will take you through the quarter, and then we will I will start with some highlights, Sara will continue with the numbers, and then we will also end up with an outlook of the rest of the season, but also a little bit about next year then. Let's start about a short introduction, and we have a strong position, and most of you know about this, I take us through our financial targets which we are which guiding us throughout both short and long term.

We have an organic growth of 6%, 18% operating margin, we have a leverage of net debt/EBITDA of less than 2.5, and then a dividend 40% to 60%. Our sustainability targets is connecting to activity and recreation.

We want to reach 7 million skier and activity days. We really would like to go for 50% climate reduction.

Then also it's important for us to have a dialogue and interaction with partners and like, for example, railway companies, governments, etc., about regulations. We are happy to follow this important targets.

Of course, we work with strategic initiatives, and for us we have five guiding initiatives who is something we striving after, and you will see during this presentation that we are following those five ones continuously. Important to development of the all-year all-year-round operations, we continue to work to strengthening our margin and also continuing our growth journey, important to increase the number of commercial beds, and also secure the sustainable future mountain experiences as well as normalize investments over time.

Let's go through this quarter, and some of you maybe have seen our report this morning, and we are really, really glad to report our best second quarter ever. Of course, this is the quarter where we should deliver a strong result.

However, we have a very strong result driven by a high interest for skiing holidays. Of course, this calendar effect we had during the Christmas holidays where a lot of bank holidays supported this long-term stay for our guests.

We can also see that this holiday is prioritized among Swedish and international guests. Also we are really lucky to have the guests spending the time at us at SkiStar.

We also could see that since we are really striving after not only developing SkiStar as a brand, also our all-year-round operation, we can see that there is a strong interest also both from ourselves, of course, but also from others to bring more beds into this popular resorts, because those are the largest ones, and this is the places where you want to stay and where you want to be. We are really glad to actually have 27 all-time high days during this first quarter, which is exceptional, and it has been throughout all destinations.

Extra happy, actually, to have this SkiStar all-record day, the 30th of December, where we actually had almost or close to 80,000 guests within our system. A tremendous good day, when normally we have these record days during Easter, but now we had it already before New Year.

What's really happy this quarter is also that we're increasing all revenue streams. We will come back to that later on.

Also, since we have been a little bit shy or or, I will not say defense, but but since we have had a a challenging market within cost of construction, we have made some decisions to start build BRF projects in Sälen and Trysil, and we will do that in the company or joint venture company called Skiab, and this is the first new construction since 2023 2023. That's very good.

Then the other very positive thing is that we also have decided to add 500 new beds within Sälen on a new land plot, and that is sold to Skiab. That capital gain effect will come into the third quarter, next next quarter.

Decision to start construction has been made, and the construction will start as soon as the snow and and the tjäle, we say in Swedish, I don't know that word in English actually, but the the ground when it's possible to start the groundwork. Then of course, our sustainability development activities continues, and we were also a participator of the conference in Åre called NUSAT two weeks ago, stands for Nordic Sustainability Arena, where we're really aiming to continue and develop the white winters.

We a quarter like this, like like I started, there is high expectations for us to deliver on this quarter, of course. We are very satisfied to show an organic growth of 5% within increased operating margin of of to 23.8%.

We have an if if we clean out the exploitation exploitation income, the underlying growth in the ski operation business is even higher. It's actually 8% with an increased operating margin.

That's, of course, very positive to show these numbers. We will try to also be even more transparent going forward to to try to separate the the property gains and versus the the ski operations for you all to to see this in a more open way.

We continue with our digitalization, and we see that the new investments we have made in this queue system, where customers can see on screens or in the app, is extremely positively recognized by our by our guests, and and that's why it's important to continue the the the drive of improve the digital experience for our customers. We have a very solid customer base from Swedish guests, and they continue to to come and visit us, but also there is a high interest of Danish guests, as well as British, German, and Netherlands guests coming to our destination.

That together support this record in ski in ski days where we ending up in 4.6 million ski days, which is a tremendous number, and also put us into one of the largest operators in the world then. Like I said, we increased all revenue streams, and one important highlight I think is also supporting the ski days, of course, is this transformation to longer stay.

This 6 to 8 days ski pass has increased to 53% from 50% the year before. I think that is something very important for us, and those international guests have a tendency to stay longer, which is, of course, extremely positive for us.

Retail is an very interesting market for us, and since we started this a couple of years ago, we have had a strong growth. It has slowed down a bit, mainly connected to weather, I must say.

If we look into this industry, we are actually take market shares, and it is the EQPE brand, our own brand EQPE, who stands for the largest growth, actually, in this quarter. This international guests, they continue to drive average spend, and I think it's important for us to show this graph for all of you to see that the average spend is strong, but the international average spend is even stronger.

That is due to that international guests buy more products, versus a Swedish customer who puts in two products into the basket, Danish or British guests put in three products into the basket. That's, of course, is the difference if we look into the revenues.

I mentioned shortly about the retail growth, and I think it's important for all of you to understand that this has become an important part of our growth journey. We will continue this growth journey, and the last couple of years we have strengthening our operations, we have strengthening our presence, and strengthening also the way we marketing our retail operation, and it's an important area of our business, and it will continue to be an important area of our business going forward.

I mentioned digital engagement, and if we look into this graph, we can see there there is a high digital engagement in the second quarter, where we increase 13% visitation our digital platforms. However, we can see that we have a slower or slow down in the conversion rate, and that is due to two things.

One is that there is a challenge for us to fill up the Easter, the the the end of this season, as well that the the SkiStarshop has been a little bit less visitors, or less conversion rate due to this warmer weather, to say. If we then look into next slide, I will hand over to Sara, who will guide you through the numbers now.

Yes, and hello. I will guide you through net sales development followed by net sales per category and then operating profit development.

If we start with net sales development, as Stefan mentioned, we had a good calendar effect that implied three weeks for our holiday guests, and in comparison with last year, it was two weeks. One additional week make a huge difference.

However, we had one day less in February in comparison with last year, but in total, the calendar effect was a positive one. All-time high during Christmas, 9 out of 15 days, and the occupancy rate was high, almost touched 100 100% at several destinations during Christmas.

The occupancy rates was solid during the winter sport holiday as well. Number of ski days was up 3% year on year, 4.6 million, which is a high number.

As Stefan mentioned, we continue to be an attractive choice for our international guests, and they spend more money. Even if the SEK has been stronger, it's still a quite high margin in comparison with travelling, for example, to the Alps.

If we look at the graph, the net sales development, and last 12 months, we almost touched 5 billion in net sales. If we continue with net sales per category, and this is actually going from 2,850 million to 3 billion.

This is for the first half year, the first and the second quarter. If we start with the major uplift, which is related to ski passes, we had a revenue growth of 10%.

It's a combination of volume and price. Number of sold ski days, as I mentioned on the previous slide, was up 3% year on year.

If we continue with accommodation, it has a revenue growth of 6%, and it's a combination of price, but number of objects is actually down 3%, but we have an impact, a positive impact from the mediated accommodation business, which is a fairly large part of the accommodation. Ski rental and ski school continue to increase, 13 and 7 million up, and also the retail business is up 22 million, and it's online that drives the uplift by 7%.

The revenue growth in our physical stores is more or less flat, and it's primarily related to a lower demand for weather-related products due to the warm weather. We have still high demand for ski-related assortment, skis and shoes, etc.

Restaurants is up quite a lot, and it's driven by increased capacity. We have added new restaurants, for example, at Hundfjället in Sälen, but we have also improved our concept related to restaurants, and that is important.

Property development is down 69%, but that is related to capital income and gains in comparison with last year, and this is included in our net sales. Last year, we had an income, and this year, we have less income, but in total, we have a capital gain in comparison with last year, we actually had a capital loss.

If you just look at the income side, it was a negative effect. In total, we had 3 billion in net sales, which was 5% up, and if we exclude the exploitation income or the capital income, it was actually 8% up in our underlying business, and that is important to understand that 8% is a significant uplift.

If we continue with operating profit per segment, we have, and this is also the half year, starting with 601 moving to 718, and the majority is related to our ski operations. Of course, we had a solid performance.

It was a combination of price and volume, and we had an increase revenues from all our revenue streams. The property development is up 37%, and that is, as I mentioned on the previous slide, that is impacted by the capital loss last year and a capital gain this year, and that is more or less the development that has happened this year.

The operation of hotels benefits from new capacity, the restaurants, but also higher prices. During the second quarter, if I just look at the second quarter, the operating profit amounted to 1.2 billion in comparison with 1.1 last year, and that is an improvement with 13%.

If I exclude the capital gains, the underlying performance or improvement was 10%. For the first half year, the underlying performance was up 15%, and including the capital gain, that the improvement was 20%.

Operating profit development, as you can see in the graph, last year we ended up with 740 million, and that included a capital gain of 67, and an operating profit from our operations with 674. If we look at the number for last 12 months, we have 851 million in total, and that includes a capital gain of 85, and operating profit from our operations with 766.

That implies a operating margin of 7.2%. As I said before, we have had challenging weather conditions especially in January and February, and that has implied that we had to prepare our slopes more than usually during this time of year, and that has led to higher costs for electricity and also higher costs for staff.

If we take a look at the last 12-month graph of 851, we also need to understand that moving forward, the third quarter, we have a late Easter this year, and that will have a negative impact in comparison with last year. This picture, the seasonality, I included this I guess you are all familiar with our seasonality impact, but it's important to understand that the second quarter followed by the third quarter, we should make money in those quarters, and we have done that, and we've had a quite strong performance in the second quarter.

The first quarter followed by the fourth quarter are loss-making. We have a huge impact from seasonality.

If we take a look at the cash flow situation, and obviously, as we've had a solid performance in the operating profit, we have had a strong cash flow from operating activities during the second quarter. That amounted to 1.

1.4 billion SEK, and that was an improvement in comparison with last year. If we take a look at the first half year, the cash flow from operating activities amounted to just a little more than 1.7, which was also an improvement in comparison with last year.

During the quarter, CapEx was fairly low. It amounted to 72 million, and accumulated, the CapEx amounted to 209.

We made a decision early January to invest in a gondola in Trysil, and that is a quite important investment, but also quite expensive. The investment is expected to be around 200 million NOK, Norwegian kroner.

We estimate the CapEx for the total year to amount to approximately 550, and that CapEx also include approximately 50 million that is related to acquisition. In total, it will be 500 to 550 for the year.

Then the debt structure, we had now the ratio, the net debt situation in comparison with EBITDA is fairly low. It's 0.6.

That is, of course, impacted by operating cash flow that has been strong, and we have also been able to reduce our net debt. Interest-bearing debt amounts to 704, which is significant lower in comparison with last year.

We need to understand that due to seasonality, etc., and that we will add more investments or more CapEx moving forward, the net debt or the capital structure will increase, and it will not continue to be 0.6. It's a fairly stable or a solid number now.

If we continue to the summary slide, and as I mentioned, we have had a positive calendar effect during Christmas and New Year, and that has contributed to a high customer demand. All-time high 9 out of 15 days during Christmas holiday, and solid and very high occupancy rates.

The warmer weather has had an impact on higher costs for preparation of snow and staffing. The organic growth was strong, underlying 9% for the first half year, and if we exclude capital gains, but we have improved the operating margin quite high even with and without capital gains, and strong operating cash flow driven by increased net sales.

The equity-to-asset ratio was also high, 60%, when we exclude the effects from IFRS 16, and low financial net debt due to lower investments, but also and most importantly, strong cash flow.

Thank you, Sara, and I think it's important for all of us to just highlight the importance of sustainability. We have, of course, we are continuing our strong focus within the field of sustainability.

We have now improved our suppliers, and securing that now 25% of our suppliers has a climate target, and we will continue that journey. I think it's also important to continue our development within SkiStar's operation of how to become CO2 negative, and the area of improvement is continuously seeing.

I'm really proud of our investment we have made in electrical vehicles, electrical groomers, and also battery charging, etc., all the way to fulfill our idea of this, say, map of illustrating our impact on the total society within our SkiStar destination. Something also very promising is that we're not alone in this, and we are now joining forces within Global Sustainability Ski Alliance.

Together with other ski operators like Compagnie des Alpes in France or Kitzbühel in Austria, etc., we're joining forces to put in a strong sustainability agenda among other ski resorts to really support the development of how to become even more sustainable together, and also put more larger projects in place to also challenge our suppliers within the supply chain. Just as a reminder, we really happy to continue the work as an enabler of Together for White Winters, and this conference in Åre was a great start for that two weeks ago.

Now, my friends, I will give you a little bit the flavor of our outlook, and just a reminder of our strategic initiatives, and those are the ones we are following. If we then look at the outlook or take a look at the outlook, I'm really proud to continue our 50 years anniversary.

It is actually 50 years ago Erik and Mats took the car up to Sälen, and instead of buying one cabin, they went back with one slope and 37 cabins. That was the starting point of SkiStar.

The date, the official date for celebrating that is in October. That means that we have used this part of the year 2024/25 to celebrate, and we will continue to celebrate even more during the start of next season, to say, winter season.

Just to give you a little bit flavor of how does the rest of the winter season look like, how will our calendar look like, and we are struggling a little bit with take up the fight with the warm weather, like I have outside today here in Stockholm, where we have plus 12 degrees and people start to look like the opening for summer houses, they would like to go play golf, and they would like to do gardening, and all that compete, of course, with the skiing. If I just look into our ski resorts, they are very well prepared for the Easter, actually.

We came home late night yesterday from Trysil, which there was super nice condition: a lot of snow in the slopes, sun was shining, and that's why we really would like to see how we could continue to push the Easter. Week 16 is the Easter period this year.

It's the latest period we have Easter, and we are struggling to fill up week 14 and 15, for example. 16 is quite full and good, but 14 and 15 is a challenge for us, and that's why we are a little bit behind the bookings versus last year.

What's really positive then if we take a look beyond this winter is that we have went out with an investment in a new gondola in Trysil, and that will be ready for next winter season, exactly like Sara mentioned. The price for that is high, but it will also give a very fairly and good customer experience.

Åre, it's an area where we have struggle sometimes with the weather, and also demanding situations with our chairlifts to open them up because they are very weather sensitive. With this new ski lifts in Genvägen and in Åre Björnen/Sadeln will be a tremendous lift for that whole area, actually, because that means that we all days can operate this area to take you into the large ski system into Åre.

We will also spicing that up even with more investment in lighting facilities, which will increase opening times. Today, during the dark period of the year, we opened up the ski lifts 9:30, we closed them 4:00.

Now, we can open them up 8:00 in the morning and have them open the full day to 5:30, 6:00. That's, of course, a big improvement for all the guests living in that area, and that could also support rent out for cabins in that area, which normally is not the easiest during that time of year.

Lastly, but not least, a completely new ski area in Vemdalen, and Hovde Syd, which will be launched next year. We are so glad because this has taken four years for us to work with authorities, and to get this approval, and we got everything in place a couple of months ago, and now we are so glad to be able to open this area up for next winter season.

That means that we are really open up for some good news, and of course, we continue also to invest in snow-making systems to secure the white winters. Then if I look into the construction projects, we are also have decided to do the 500 new warm beds, we're calling them.

That means that that is 500 new beds in Sälen, which has been an area where we have had lacking of beds. Now we open up that, so that will be very good for us.

However, we see we have guide you with the capital gains to be in the range of 75 to 100 million SEK per year, but now we see that we have some delayed in this plan from the municipalities, and also that there is a little bit slower in the market. We will for this year, we have a what to say, a timing effect, and will mean that we will not reach those 75 this year.

We will be below that, just so we are guiding you correctly in that sense. Retail, we continue with the retail development, and we have had some competitions in Trysil, and since there was a generation shift in Juls Sportshop, we have decided to make an acquisition of that, so that means that we're really strengthening our presence in Trysil within the retail segment as well.

Really glad to also again highlight our taking over the operations from Högfjällshotellet in Sälen. We will do that from May.

Thommy Backner has been running this hotel for 35 years, and it's big shoes to fill after Thommy's great performance over this period of time, but we will do our best to continue, and also by having all those international guests coming in to us, we also see that this is an excellent place to also do some extra booking and opportunities for the international guests providing Högfjällshotellet, actually. That will lead us up to next winter bookings.

We are up 5% for next winter season, and that's, of course, something super exciting to present to you. That means that 15% of the next winter season is already locked in, more or less, already at this time of the year, actually.

Just to give you a flavor of what we are doing within the development of our destinations. The Trysil gondola in the up left.

In the middle, we open up this is a picture from Sälen, and a fantastic part of Timmerbyn where you see some trees in the lower part of this picture where we will open up for new BRF project. The right corner with the map with a red dotted line showing the new area Hovde Syd, which will be the new ski area in Vemdalen opening up for in December next winter.

Down to the left, we have Trysil Suites, where we open up for sale of apartment, and 60% of the BRFs are already sold, actually. It's just 100 meters above the new gondola entrance, of course, it's a great location, ski-in/ski-out.

Then the last two pictures down to the right is showing Sörskogsnäs, where we have got now permission to start construction if we would like to, but still we have not decided how we would like to develop those areas, but of course, we have great plans, as you see on the pictures, for that area as well. The development of our destinations continues.

I think it's important to show you about this with the how does it looks like week by week in the bookings in our system, to say. Here you can see the challenges.

We have week 13, 14, and 15, especially week 15, the week before Easter, and that's why we are down 5%. If you look into the week 16, compared to last year's spring season, Easter week, we are in the same range, you can say, but it's this the week before really take us down, and that is, of course, challenging since we are sitting with the costs for running our ski lifts, etc., and really are in the need of filling the beds.

We will do our best to continue fill our beds as well. Actually, we have a lot of private beds, of course, like we had during Christmas, who will be filled during Easter, and that's normally how it will look like.

Just as a picture, we are extremely proud, of course, to have this unmatchable position within Scandinavia, running the five largest ski destinations, and despite focusing in a year-round operation with strengthening the willingness for others also to invest in this five ski destination, the willingness of our restaurants to have open, and also people who have their own cabins to continue to come and stay at our resorts. I have already mentioned the 50-year love story, and we continue this, and we are also taking up a nostalgia collection, and I have seen during this week a lot of nice hats with our co-workers, and how proud they are if you come to Lindvallen and they're wearing a Lindvallen hat, or yesterday they wear a Trysil hat, and the proudness of our staff wearing this collection is super nice, and of course, we will continue to focus with that for our customers and consumers as well.

Lastly, but not least, mountain holidays in Scandinavia continues to be an obvious choice for many, and I think this quarter result has proven that, and also the bookings for next winter is also showing that. We end up that we say Together for White Winters, we join forces, and we open up for questions by that.

Thank you so much for listening to us.

Yes, good morning Stefan and Sara. Congratulations to a very solid quarter and strong development.

Just a couple of questions on the CapEx outlook, the 500 million if you're looking at the pure CapEx. How much of Trysil and the gondola there is included in that, and how much is sliding into next year?

This actually I can answer quickly. It is Trysil gondola is into that range as well, as well as the Hovde Syd, as well as Genvägen.

All these investments are there, Carl

Johan.

This is this year's investment. I think we have been much better by prioritizing our investments actually than we have been the last 3 years, to say.

The projection is much better, and the prioritization is much better within our company.

Exactly. Yes.

Then

if you look into, say, next year and the coming year, what would you talk about as a maintenance CapEx level going forward? It's still, is around 350 a good proxy if you don't do these kind of extra investments?

Yes, the maintenance CapEx is approximately just about 300, 350. Then if you add new capacity, then yeah, well, approximately 500 in total.

We believe that we will stay in the range of 500, 550. That is what we say, but...

Yes.

We want to include new capacity as well, but the maintenance level is about 300.

I understand as a part of the gondola project in Trysil, you are able to develop new areas. Are those the ones that you already now is targeting together with Skiab, or is that a additional kind of things coming later?

That is actually additional income later. We have not spoken so much about that.

We were a little bit shy maybe in this report, but we have made a very great agreement with the landowners in Trysil, and that means that we will continue development of a joint venture with Utmarkslaget in Trysil, who is the owner of the land within the ski lifts operation. We have also made a joint venture with them to develop the area which is called Eventyr area in Trysil, where the new gondola will start.

There, we will start up with new facilities like toilet, ski shop, but also apartments, actually. Then there will be some other areas of development together with them, which we will come back to later.

It is a very strong and solid collaboration with them to develop also more beds, actually, in that area.

Sounds very promising. Looking at the Högfjällshotellet acquisition, could you give us some idea as what that will mean for your hotel operation in maybe in some sort of financial terms?

We own the hotel since before, we actually have had the ownership of the hotel since a very long time in our books. Now, top line, we say around 100 million SEK in top line, roughly, but very limited profit.

It's more top-line related rather than the bottom line. We have to work hard to improve our margins.

Mhm.

Sounds like a good task. One final, if I look at those project that you're now starting in the exploitation activities, are those ready to come into sales process ahead of next season, or is that the season after where we should look for it?

Which one do you relate to, Skiab or...

The ones highlight in Sälen and Trysil, as the one that comes in the...

That will come in, yeah, Sälen and Trysil, that will come into Skiab's books, meaning that we have 50% gains of that since it is in Skiab's books. We see that Trysil will come in next year, actually, and then the Timmerbyn Sälen next year and the year after, I must say,

because

that's why we haven't started to sell yet, but it's going tremendously fast actually to sell out that BRFs.

I can imagine. Thank you very much, and all the best out there.

Thank you.

If there is no more questions to us, we would like to say a warm thank you for listening to us. I wish you all a great end of this winter season, and I hope to see you in the slopes, because me and Sara, we will join the nice weather and snow conditions in the Easter.

Absolutely. Warm thanks everyone.

Thank you.