Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the AEVIS VICTORIA SA publication half-year result 2026. The conference will be recorded.
At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation.
Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Fabrice Zumbrunnen.
Fabrice Zumbrunnen
Yes, good morning everyone. I'm very pleased with my colleague Michel Keusch, CIO and CFO of AEVIS VICTORIA, to briefly comment our half-year results.
Let's start with an overview of our most important investments. As you can see here, around 60% of our investment are in the healthcare area, and we are two of our very important areas, hospitality and lifestyle, 20%, and a bit more for infrastructure.
I would like to highlight the new ventures that we have in the healthcare area. Viva is the company which enables the development of integrated care.
We have Genolier Innovation Hub, which enables us to be very well-positioned in the innovation segment with a very interesting collaboration with the industry. Nescens is a company focused on longevity.
Let's start maybe with the key figures for an investment company. That these figures are maybe not the most relevant, but let's say that we are on a very good track with a strong increase in net profit with a very good EBITDA.
As I've said, maybe are these facts and figures not the most important one for an investment company. That's the reason why I'll hand over to my colleague Michel Keusch for the analysis of the detailed financial facts and figures.
Michel.
Michel Keusch
Thank you, Fabrice. I will quickly run you through the figures, but also just a couple of highlights on the equity story and actually why to invest in AEVIS VICTORIA, just to summarize a little bit the four investment pillars that you see in blue of our investment case.
First, very focused investment approach: everything we do is related to services to people, nothing else. The second one, we are invested in hard-to-replicate businesses.
This is the case in healthcare and also in hospitality. In healthcare, we are the leading care provider and accountable care organization in Switzerland, not only the leader, but the only one actually.
On the hospitality side, we are the leading Swiss luxury hotel group. It's always key leading positions in businesses which would take years to replicate.
The third one, the strong track record of value creation: as you see, over the past 15 years, our shares have returned more than 10% per annum in average versus 8% for the SPI. This is really a proof of value creation.
Last point, the historically high discount, which is now reaching a level of 50% or slightly more than 50%, which is unprecedented in the history of the group. These are the four pillars.
As we all know, obviously, a discount is an interesting entry point for an investor, but only if there are reasons to believe that this discount can be narrowed in the future. For this, we need catalysts, and we think there are three catalysts currently.
The first one is a next phase of value crystallization. This is very important because, in our portfolio, we are going to sell some stakes in companies to strategic shareholders.
We are looking at different solutions in all segments. Obviously, Swiss Medical Network, that's the key segment where we have already officially announced that we are looking for strategic investors and to have a big stake in the company.
All this would help crystallize the value. Second point, the enhanced investor relations: we're doing a lot more in terms of roadshows, Capital Markets Day, and we have a much higher transparency in our financial communication.
The last point, which is resulting from the second one, is that the average daily liquidity has nearly quintupled over the past 2 years. This is a key point.
2, 3 years ago, it was maybe difficult to invest in AEVIS. I think, today, the liquidity has been improving very much, and it's a key point to make the stock more attractive.
Now, I will quickly go through the H1 performance, not in every detail, but I will try to give you the highlights. First, and this is our key indicator at the AEVIS group level, the NAV.
The NAV for H1 '26 is 26.75 Swiss francs. This is an increase of almost 7% versus last year.
If we compare it to the last year-end level, it's plus 2.3%. The discount to NAV, as you see on the right side, is now more than 50%.
These are the consolidated figures. As you see, it's going in the right direction, with improvements in margins and on the EBITDAR and EBITDA level.
As Fabrice said before, for an investment company, it's not the best indicator. It's much better to look at the different segments, which are showing the true operating performance.
On the healthcare side, you see Swiss Medical Network, very good performance. First, resilient growth, but also a strong improvement in margins from 18.6 to 21.6% EBITDAR margin.
This is obviously achieved in a difficult environment for the industry. The key driver for this is the ramping up of unprofitable hospitals in our group.
We were also having the costs very much under control, material costs, also personnel costs. This is the reason why for this performance.
One point to mention quickly: if we split the healthcare between hospitals on the upper side of the slide and ambulatory services on the lower side, you see that margins were improving in all segments. What is to be noted is the strong improvement in ambulatory services for EBITDAR, which is moving up strongly from 7.1% to 11.8%, but also the fact that on the EBITDA level for ambulatory, we are for the first time in the black figures.
This is not an EBITDA loss business anymore. As this is a strategic segment for us, ambulatory.
We need that for the integrated care. It's diluting margin on the first hand, but we still see the possibility to make this business profitable, and this big improvement is, I think, one of the key highlights of this set of figures.
Hospitality, there's not much to say. It's a challenging environment with what we saw with the tensions in the Middle East.
Nevertheless, we had a very resilient performance on the growth side, 1% growth. EBITDAR margin stable.
What you see on the EBITDA margin is not a reason for concern. You see a decrease of EBITDA margin.
This is simply related to the fact that we increased the rent for several hotels. As the hotels are owned by Swiss Hotel Properties, which is 100% owned by AEVIS.
It's going from one pocket to the other. There is absolutely no impact.
The fact that we're increasing rent is absolutely normal from time to time. Whenever one hotel is at the end of a CapEx cycle—this was, for example, for the Victoria-Jungfrau after 8 years of CapEx cycle—then we have the arguments to increase the rent, you have some adjustments from time to time.
Real estate, this is the Swiss Hotel Properties business. Here again, you see optically a decline in revenues and EBITDA, but this is only due to the fact that the gray part you see last year, we had sale of properties in Zermatt, apartments.
We had 10 million extraordinary profits, which is not recurring this year, and that's why optically you have a decline. However, on an underlying business, it's growing, and the margins are always at a level of 90, 91%.
This is a cash cow which is not without any variation. Also, on that real estate segment, you see the improvement of the market value.
The debt has been reduced, and LTV has been reduced as well. We have now a 45% loan-to-value ratio, which is very, very conservative for this business.
We are benefiting from the decline in interest rates as well and the decline of the debt. Basically, I forgot to mention on the previous slide, in terms of interest expenses, we saw a decline of 43% year on year.
Last segment, the others segment, this is where we put all our ventures, all our startups. It's mainly the Genolier Innovation Hub and Nescens.
As you see, these are still loss-making businesses, obviously, for the time being. However, the loss is narrowing, it's going in the right direction.
Fabrice will tell you more about the evolution of Nescens later on. Just to finish on the financial framework point of view, this is the slide we show now every quarter since 2 years.
You see that the debt situation is improving year after year. The point which is important in this slide is that out of the 846 million net debt at the consolidated level, you see that the bulk of this debt is under SHP, which is purely mortgage-based and with an LTV of 45%, it's very solid.
If you look at the debt on the Swiss Medical Network side on the left side, you see that this is now relating to a net debt to EBITDA of around 2.2, 2.3 times, you see at the bottom of the chart. We are in very good hands now in terms of financial framework.
After the deleveraging of the past 2 years, we are in a very sound situation. Finally, this is the sum of the parts where you see that the NAV is now, as indicated initially, 26.75, which shows a discount of about 50% currently.
Last slide on my side is the historical perspective on this sum-of-the-parts evolution, where you see a factor of 19 times over the past 15 years from 2011 to 2026. Now, I pass to Fabrice, who will talk you about the outlook and the initiatives.
Fabrice Zumbrunnen
Thank you, Michel. I would like to conclude this short presentation with an update on our value creation journey.
We have here three of our most important initiatives: healthcare, in this business, we would like to further improve profitability. You've seen we are on very good track, but there is still room for improvement.
Integrated care, maybe the most relevant initiative in the long run with very encouraging results. Last, but not least, hospitality: we have iconic hotels in iconic destination, and there is a very resilient business, but there is even more potential that many maybes think.
Let's start with the healthcare with the improvement of our profitability. Here, you can see the pillars or the leverage possibility that we could reach, activated, and will help us to improve the profitability in the next years.
I think the most important are the cost optimization programs, the fact that we can ramp up our recent acquisitions, and of course, we will have in the long run, but even now—that's the good news—a very positive effect of our integrated care initiative. You see from 16% to more than 20%, and the goal that we have to reach 23% margin.
This with an organic growth of 2 to 3% a year. That's an overview of our different hospitals.
You see three categories: we have mature hospitals, more than 50% of our hospitals could and can reach more than the 25%, 26% EBITDAR margin; and we have the so-called ramp-up hospitals with a very good progress in the last 6 months. Here, we are around an EBITDAR of 10 to 20%, as I've said, with an already good improvement; and we have the new acquisitions or the turnaround hospitals.
You can see, if I take the example of Lindberg, that we have taken very important decision to cease, to stop our activities. We could have a very good deal with the hospital Winterthur, and it will automatically improve our financial performance in the next months.
Obviously, next year, we will see all the positive effects. We have a very, very clear program to follow that path to prove a profitability.
As I've said, we are on a good track, but we are working very hard to improve in the future and to have all our acquisition or our hospital in the right area of this rentability chart here. Second initiative, integrated care: we would like to scale our very unique capitation model in Switzerland.
This is our country, and we have already three integrated care regions, and we will open next year in the Bern area a new region, integrated care region. We are very pleased with this experience, and we could reach the first results.
We are very proud of this: second year, 16% cost improvement, a very, very good performance, best in class in the market. Our goals are very clear on a medium term: 15 to 20%, we have already reached these figures; and in the long run, we think that we have the potential to reach 25 to 30% depending on the different realities of the regions.
Our aim is to double the amount of members every year. Here are absolutely on track with our business plan, in fact, even better, and we see this as a transformation project, but also as a new source of revenues, which will improve the whole performance of our healthcare business.
Last, but not least, hospitality: we have the extreme privilege to have iconic destination, iconic hotels, but we still believe that we can reach more than this. We have existing land reserves, we have the possibility to make acquisitions, and improving also the profitability of our commercial retail areas.
There is something very interesting here happening. As this year was not so easy.
We had a very strong decline in turnover of our guests coming from Asia and Middle East, but we could compensate this with more guests from USA and Europe. In fact, we are better than the market, than the whole industry, and it shows that our iconic hotels are very, very resilient, are beloved destinations, and we are working hard to reinforce, even in the future years, the attractiveness of our hotels.
I come now to the conclusion. These are really our main goals, as Michel already mentioned, this strong focus on crystallizing value across the portfolio.
I think that the recent IPO of Infracore was a very good project. We are very proud to make it happened, and there is a very, very, very big potential for Infracore.
In the other business areas, I think of healthcare, we are absolutely convinced that we will have new investor. Who will help us to reach our strategic goals.
We are very happy with Visana, but we think that there is room for other key partners for us. I can also speak of Nescens, longevity: there is a very strong interest for many investors to be part of it.
On, innovation could be also another option for us. We have this very, very important goal to crystallizing value across the portfolio.
As I've said, even if you are the best in class in Switzerland, there is still room for improvement to improve the profitability in healthcare. The scaling up of our capitation model is absolute key, key for us, key, I think, for the whole industry.
We are market leaders. We inspire many, many of our competitors, but we are still ahead, and we have a very unique capitation model.
For the rest, we continue to focus on our value creation themes. If it's about new opportunities and options, I think we have plenty of them.
To conclude, we are very pleased that we could reach good results in this first half of 2026, but I hope that I could convince you that there is room for improvement, and it's only the beginning of our very long track to improve profitability, to grow. I would like to thank to all my colleagues for achieving these very good results in the first year of 2026.
I think that was our idea, a short presentation, and we are very happy to answer your questions, and I'll hand over to the organizer for the Q&A.
Operator
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press *9 and # key on your telephone keypad.
If you would like to revoke your question, press *3 and # key. You can also use the dial-in function in the webcast and raise your hand if you would like to ask a question by phone.
I repeat: to ask a question, please press *9 and # key on your telephone keypad. The first question is from Arthur Kuntz from AlphaValue.
The floor is yours.
Arthur Kuntz
Hi. Thank you for your presentation, and congratulation on your first-half results.
I had two questions, if I may. It's regarding the slide 25 on the hospitals and ramp-ups and turnarounds.
Comparing to the slide you presented in May in the turnaround buckets, we saw that it's moving the right way regarding mature hospitals and that EBITDAR margin is improving. On the turnaround hospitals, it's moving from 5.4 to 4.4%.
I'd like to know if you could break out what's driving that. Is it some residual drag from Lindberg before the transfer, or is it Zofingen or Siloah, and which stay in the turnaround?
I can add a question: I'd like to point out that Réseau de l'Arc is now in the lower point of the slope in the investments part, and I would like to know if you could give us more color on this investment specifically for Réseau de l'Arc. Finally, I had another question regarding your hotels, and it was on slide 30.
You mentioned that further opportunities to reduce seasonal pricing gaps are engaged, and I'd like to know if you could be a bit more specific about it. Thank you very much.
Fabrice Zumbrunnen
Okay. Thank you for your question.
To your first question, you are perfectly right. We could improve, in fact, the rentability if you see all the hotels.
You're also perfectly right that there was a decrease of profitability by Montbrillant and Lindberg. The reason is very simple: we decided to stop our activities, and from the moment that you communicate this, you have a very strong decrease of your activities.
It's a very short-term effect. As I've mentioned, next year, you will see that there were very good decisions which will improve the profitability.
The reason is the decision. The case of Réseau de l'Arc is a very particular one.
It's because of the change of the canton from Canton Bern to Canton Jura, and there are other realities, and we perfectly knew that, and we have to face a decrease of profitability without having the problem of decreasing numbers of patients, etc. That's not a topic.
It's the pleasure to have a confederation with different realities in canton, and obviously, Canton Jura is the poorest canton in Switzerland, and it's our job now to improve the profitability. In fact, I can say that in July and August, we could make very strong progress, but it's not something you can reach or the kind of improvement you can reach on the short term.
We had decided to improve our efficiency, and I think that Réseau de l'Arc will be in a positive field at the end of this year. Yes, that it was not such an easy step for us to go from Canton Bern to Canton Jura.
I think that's well, your questions. About the hotels, yes, I think seasonality is something very important.
In fact, I've mentioned Interlaken and Zermatt. Interlaken, the high season is summer, and in winter, it's not exactly at the same level.
Obviously, you have the other situation, the opposite situation with Zermatt. It's very interesting because we see a very strong increase of the attractiveness of the destinations, not only because of us, in the low seasons.
I think that our initiative, for example, gastronomy, to our spa are very attractive points to stay in our hotels, and the other aspect is to focus on individuals. We, as I mentioned, we could compensate the loss of many, many guests from Asia and the Middle East with very, very interesting guests from the USA.
We see that these guests are very pleased to stay in our hotels. We are working very hard to compensate, but you will even in the future have always a very high season and a low season, but we are very confident that the gap will be smaller.
It's already smaller than 2 years ago, we are on a very good track.
Arthur Kuntz
Thank you very much.
Fabrice Zumbrunnen
You're welcome.
Operator
At the moment, there seems to be no more question, and I repeat, if you would like to ask a question, please press *9 and # key on your telephone keypad. You could also use the dial-in function in the webcast and raise your hand if you would like to ask a question by phone.
Mr. Collins is back on the line, AlphaValue.
Please, go ahead.
Arthur Kuntz
Thank you. If I may, maybe I have another question also related to hotels.
In this improvement and you say you don't plan on expanding that much in the hotel and focusing, as you mentioned, on individuals, and we saw it with the numbers that the pricing is improving. I'd like to know if there's an occupancy target attached to this.
I know that the occupancy is roughly flat towards roughly 55%, and I'd like to know if there is a target that will be attached to this improvement in the seasonality mix. Thank you.
Oh,
Michel Keusch
yeah. No, no.
There is no occupancy target. Obviously, it's always a trade-off between occupancy and pricing.
We think in terms of RevPAR. We want to increase the RevPAR.
Obviously, the main component because of this pricing gap will be the pricing, but we have to be careful. It's never at the expense of the occupancy.
Typically, if we can keep occupancy levels as they are currently and improve the pricing, it's good. In some cases, we can even improve both.
We do it very carefully and step-by-step. We have to check what the local competition is doing and so on.
We are in a very good position strategically in those two destinations because we are very strong in the two destinations. We cannot only manage our hotels, but also shape the future of the destination in a way, like in Zermatt, where we control most of the retail store, for example.
Actually, they're renting to us, in a way. We can upgrade the shopping experience, and this is attracting a new clientele for the summer.
It helps us improve the pricing of the hotels in the summer because of this new clientele. The same in Interlaken, where we're so strong that we can also shape a bit the winter destination, or do partnerships locally.
It's a long game, but in both destinations, we can certainly improve this pricing for summer and winter. Let's say pricing is more important than occupancy at this stage.
Arthur Kuntz
Okay. Thank you very much.
Maybe if there's place for one last question, it's on a totally different end, it's concerning Viva. Are you confident toward reaching the break-even point of 10,000 members by the end of 2026 or early 2027?
Fabrice Zumbrunnen
Yes, we are, because of the new region and because of the potential in all four regions. We are very confident that we will double our members population.
Bern area is a very interesting one, and we already feel a very strong interest in Ticino. In fact, without knowing the new premiums, they are already many people who have already chosen to be part of our venture, to be part of Viva.
I think it's a new offer, and it's absolutely logical that you need time. As I've said, it was exactly what we had in mind as we talked about our business plan.
In fact, we are even better than we thought. I would like to highlight the very good performance not only on the efficiency, etc., but also on the quality.
We have very, very positive feedbacks of, for example, people suffering from chronic disease who told us it's the best product, the best service that we dreamed of this level of service. I think that it will help us to reach new heights and absolutely combining both effects, efficiency on one side and the fact that with certainly I hope more than double our members population, we will certainly reach the goal that we have always set for the fourth year.
Arthur Kuntz
Thank you very much.
Fabrice Zumbrunnen
You're welcome.
Operator
Seems to be no further questions. I would repeat, if you would like to ask a question, you could press *9 and # key on your telephone keypad, or use the dial-in function in the webcast and raise your hand.
I wait a little bit to see if anyone has any questions. Yes, Matthias Huber from Vontobel AG, the floor is yours.
Matthias Huber
Yes, hello. I hope you can hear me.
I have a question to the sum-of-the-parts valuation and specifically for the Swiss Medical Network. You showed 1.5 billion.
Can you elaborate a little bit what are the underlying multiples and EBITDA assumptions you used for this calculation?
Michel Keusch
Sure. This was made on the Swiss Medical Network side, it was made on the previous transactions.
We took the existing transactions, when Visana took a stake in Swiss Medical Network, when the Cantonsspital Aarau paid how much they paid, and so on. We took the real transaction, and this is how we calculated that.
I can elaborate more directly if you want to give you the details of the amount that was paid and so on separately, yeah. This is the approach.
Typically for the sum of the part for each segment, it's rather related to the balance sheets, like an accounting NAV, if you want, or in the case of the hotels, the operating part, it's based on DCF. For the SMN part, it's based on this transaction.
Now, obviously, you can relate it indirectly to multiples looking at the EBITDA, and somebody could check what would be the implied EBITDA or EV/EBITDA multiples for this. This is something that can be derived indirectly, if you want.
It was not the starting point. Doing this, obviously, you would see multiples which are certainly high because it's capturing also the growth, the strong growth we expect looking forward in the next couple of years in EBITDA.
Also the growth which is coming from the Viva project, which, as was costing money until now and now is turning break-even, and from now on will be scalable, actually, and highly profitable. This, in itself, has also a big value.
Matthias Huber
Does that mean that you expect for the second half of the year a better result in Swiss Medical Network in respect to EBITDA than in the first half year and the coming years as well?
Fabrice Zumbrunnen
Why do you say that, a better H2 than H1?
Matthias Huber
No, last year, the result was weaker in half two than in half one in the Swiss Medical Network. In this year, you expect a better result than in half one?
Fabrice Zumbrunnen
I think we can't say so. In fact, the second part of the year is a bit weaker, but we are very confident that we will improve our performance comparing it with the second half-year of 2025.
Per se, I don't think that it would be better than the first half of the year, but we are, as I've mentioned, on the right track, and we are very confident there is no reason that we would stop the improvement. In this way, yes, we are confident, but there is also a certain seasonality not so obvious than in the hospitality business, but there is also a small seasonality effect here in the healthcare business.
We will certainly improve our performance comparing to the second half-year of last year.
Matthias Huber
Okay. Thank you.
Fabrice Zumbrunnen
You're welcome.
Operator
There could be no further questions. With that, I would like to hand over to your host for the closing remarks.
Fabrice Zumbrunnen
I would like to thank you for your interest in our company. I was very pleased that you ask us questions.
That's also shows that you are very interested in what we are doing. As I've said, we are on good track.
We are looking forward to the next steps, and we are always pleased to answer your questions in one-to-one. Please, don't hesitate to contact us if you need more information.
Thank you very much for this very interesting session today. Bye.
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