Sats ASA (SATS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Yes. Good morning -- or hello, everyone. It's great to see that so many could join us for this Q&A meeting. Now it's slowing down with the incoming participants, and the clock is there, so I think we'll get started. We'll focus today's session on the Q&A. We have Cecilie, CFO; Martin, our contact on IR; and Sondre, the CEO, present here in SATS -- from the SATS side. We will not spend time now on going through the presentation. We will spend all the time for Q&A. So I think we'll just say that the floor is open, and then we'll try to give the words to -- and hopefully cover all the questions you might have.

Yes, I can see we have one question here from Eirik in Carnegie.

Yes, I got a couple. I assume others have questions as well so I'll limit myself to 3 questions. I guess 2 first ones are for you, Cecilie, just kind of looking at that adjusted yield year-over-year, up 3%. Also, as you mentioned in the presentation, the contractual price looks fairly flat, at least over the last 6 months, but still kind of up 4% over a 2-year time or so. But is it then fair to assume kind of considering that the contractual price is fairly flattish last 6 months, that, that kind of effect on adjusted yield is primarily positive mix effect? So members kind of opting for more clubs and/or more GX members? And also, on the annual price optimization process, can you be a bit more specific in terms of those price hikes? For instance, how much you anticipate to lift the list prices? And what's the size of the inflation adjustment? And lastly, for you, Sondre, could you give any color on the competitive landscape that you're going to have a feel across the geographies on members returning? And then how they are returning to your competitors?

Sure, I can start. And you're right, the yield increase compared to 2019 is sort of a result of everything we've done on pricing over the last 2 years. And as you can see from the contractual price, it is flattening. And we have a pricing strategy where we increase prices every year, both for list price for new members, inflation adjustment for existing members, and then also some selective adjustments for those who are lowest priced compared to the list price. So we lift those. And that is what you see sort of in the middle curve that we did that throughout 2019, which has given us sort of the hike in the underlying price. But what we've seen during this year where we haven't sold that many memberships that we normally do. And the ones that we have sold, they have not, to the sort of the normal extent, chosen GX or chosen region memberships giving access to the full cluster due to the restrictions, both on group training and sort of the mobility in the society. And that's really what we see now that now the habits are returning. People are choosing GX again -- or group training memberships again. And they are choosing sort of a broader geographical multi-club access to the memberships. So that's why we are confident that we will see a lift in the prices going forward just by sort of getting back to those habits. And in addition, we will, of course, continue with our pricing strategy. We will have an inflation adjustment now in January with the -- on average, around 2%. It varies across the countries what the underlying inflation is. And that will affect not the full base because some of these members are still sort of in their first 12-year contractual period, but just below half of the member base will be affected by that inflation adjustments, and it will be around 2% as well on the list prices. So we do expect sort of the increase in the underlying prices to sort of pick up again and yes.

Yes. And when it comes to the competitive landscape, as we know, it's different in the different countries. But overall, we are -- we don't have detailed market data or market shares, et cetera. But overall, we are satisfied, so to say, with our development compared to what we see in the market, and we are also -- I think what is important for us is that we have also gained the member growth throughout the quarter without giving continued discounts on the membership price and without giving too high tactical campaign offering. So basically, the average offering, we have had this fall in Q3, has been lower than the offering, for example, we had last year after the reopening. So -- and we've also seen some competitors that has been not so much above the line, but below the line, giving away a lot of free training and a lot of discounts. And for us, it's important to continue to price our offering in a good way. So that will also be our strategy going forward. And then when it comes to expansion, et cetera, of course, we see increased incoming contracts also from locations operated by competitors. So we are, so to say, satisfied as far as we can judge from our competitive strength during the fall.

Any other questions? Petter from ABG.

Yes. So if I look at the membership recovery, the Q-o-Q percentage growth is lower in Denmark versus your other markets. You want to share some light on this one? Why we see a solid rebound in Denmark? That's the first one.

Yes, it was higher. If you look at -- after the reopening last year, it was relatively higher. I also think so. So we are -- the recovery in Denmark is -- we are very satisfied with the recovery in Denmark in terms of the member recovery. What is though somewhat different in Denmark, which is not fully displayed in the visit numbers is that the visit recovery in the Danish market has been somewhat slower. And that, in the beginning, was driven by the fact that you need Corona passport early in the quarter to access fitness clubs. Well, we did not see that in the other countries. So basically, the recovery was kicking off somewhat slower in the Danish market. We -- based on our insights, we don't think this is specifically at all to us. I think we have a pretty good recovery compared to the market overall. But the visit recovery has been somewhat slower in Denmark. But the member recovery, we are satisfied with the development.

Okay. And then regarding the number of members you need in Denmark to go, call it, breakeven here, is that still around 90,000?

I think in general, what we said last year on the second quarter presentation was that we would have been breakeven in the second quarter if it hadn't been for the club closures. So sort of the member base at that level would have been enough. So a bit lower than 90,000.

At 90,000, we are -- we have a good development.

Yes.

Perfect. Final for me. You also highlight that you will ramp up group training. I mean how does this affect profitability short term? Are you able to lift the memberships up to a group level fee here? Or you will -- or will you get some higher cost initially?

So of course, there are higher costs when we ramp up the offering, but that is also reflected in the cost development as we see now in the quarter. And of course, the ambition is also to increase the GX share when we do this and to get more GX visit. So it will not be, so to say, ramped up in a way that will significantly change the operating margin on club level. I don't know if you have any other comments.

No, no, you're right. But I think this is sort of an investment in the future as well because we know that members who train group training, they are more often are more satisfied and stay longer. So this is an important sort of lever to reduce future churn as well.

Do we have any other questions?

Okay.

We still have time. If there are any other questions, please go ahead.

If there are no other questions, we will not keep you there. Then I think it's the final summary from our side is the -- is that we are happy to conclude that we are back on -- in terms of member base. And then -- but we're not stopping there. We will continue, of course, to focus going forward and develop our business. And then here, we got a final question, so let's do that before we summarize and wrap up.

This is [ Janine ] from [ TDN ]. I was just wondering that if you could make a few comments for us regarding inflation cost that you've seen increased by 5.9%. How do you see that going forward? And if you could also make some comments about -- that you don't see any lockdown coming. And if you may shed some light on SATS being a competitive preferred partner for landlords in new developing areas?

Sure.

So I can start with sort of the question regarding costs. The 5.9% increase that you see in the quarter is not only related to inflation, which, of course, is unavoidable increase, especially on our sort of fixed cost, lease cost and salaries continue to increase, but it's mainly driven sort of by the additional 10 clubs that we have now compared to 2019. So if you look at the like-for-like development, the increase in cost is lower. It's lower than general inflation over the last 2 years. So we have done significant efforts in trying to sort of reduce cost according to the activity level. But if you think about sort of the cost level now and going forward, I would say that the cost level that you see in the quarter is representative for what you can expect going forward as well. So moving from Q3 '19 into Q3 -- Q4 '19, sort of the difference between those 2 quarters, the seasonality in those 2 quarters, are also representative for what you can expect for Q4. So the cost base is sort of stabilized now. You just have to keep in mind that, of course, in July and August, we have lower cost in general since we have lower staffing cost.

Then your second question regarding potential for future lockdowns. I think first of all, it's important to state that we proved during the pandemic that we could operate our clubs in a safe way and with no infection risk higher than the normal, so to say, infection risk in society within our clubs. And I think over time, this was also accepted by the public and by the government. And our lockdown back then was also then more linked to the complete lockdown of the society. And I think also this -- the visit numbers we now see and the quick recovery is a proof of that, that our members, the -- it's not like the population in general thinks it's dangerous to go to fitness clubs these days. It's purely the opposite. So -- and then looking ahead, of course, the infection levels are increasing, especially in Norway compared to some of the European countries. But I think based also on the dialogue we have with the government, the way we see it now is that it's very low likelihood to have a national lockdown like this or so in the past of the pandemic. There might be, which we already see in some areas, smaller local restrictions on, for example, social distancing, wearing face masks, test regimes at schools, et cetera. But these are restrictions we live very fine with and where we have good routines in operation to handle. And the level of restrictions that we're now seeing in some areas are restrictions that we will continue to run our business in a good way and have good visit levels. And lastly, just the Norwegian government has been, throughout the pandemic, looking a lot to Denmark to [indiscernible] in Denmark and their considerations, which is the same as the Norwegian [indiscernible]. And they -- as you might have seen those following Danish politics, the parliament when they introduced now corona certificate again for some businesses, it was clearly stated that fitness club would not be included due to the track record we have seen during the pandemic. So it was introduced corona passport for restaurants and bars, but not to fitness industry. But again, even a potential introduction of corona passport control in our clubs would work fine for us because we have staffed clubs and we have already controlled -- or access control systems in place. So that we also handled in an easy way, which we did in the beginning of the reopening in Denmark. So I think the way we see it that, yes, there might be some local restrictions coming in some areas and that we will handle fine in operations. And then your last question is regarding landlords and new opportunities. I think in general, there are 2 or 3 things we see, which has also been a part of the increased club expansion we have done and planned for going forward. So number one, we see that we are being contacted by landlords with competitors operating in the premises asking if we want to take over because they want to have a more stable and better operator. Some of those cases might be interesting for us, but absolutely not all. Secondly, we see a lot of new real estate development where given the whole increased focus on health and lifestyle in the society, they want to have a fitness and health operator as part of the projects. And then we -- then our experience is that we are the first go-to operator. And then lastly, of course, we see some new interesting real estate opportunities coming out within our trenches in the retail landscape, et cetera. Traditionally, this has been then smaller -- this has -- this is smaller locations, not the typical 2,000-square meter plus where we have been establishing clubs earlier. But it might be interesting for us to open also somewhat smaller clubs in our clusters as fill-in, in white spots in the clusters. Since we know our members are visiting many different clubs, we don't need to have all products available in all clubs, so we could easily open and operate a club in a very good way in the clusters, as long as it's not stand-alone, like 800-square meter instead of 2,000, 2,250. And those opportunities are interesting and it's something we will look more into going forward.

Any new questions coming up during the last session there now? Okay. It doesn't seem to be so. Then thanks to all of you for joining, and we will continue to develop both the member base, the activation level and our club and digital footprint. And then looking forward to meet you all again either in investor meetings coming up or in the next Q&A after Q4.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.