Scandic Hotels Group AB (publ) (SHOT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. And welcome, everyone, to Scandic Hotels' Capital Markets Day. We are here in Central Stockholm, a chilly but sunny day; and very happy to have you join us here on site or via the live stream as well. My name is Emelie Lundgren. I am a Director at Fogel & Partners. And my background is as a financial journalist previously at Daily Industry, or Dagens industri as we say in Swedish, Sweden's leading business media. I started covering the financial markets as a journalist maybe 2 years before Scandic's previous -- sorry, current CEO came into his position. That was barely a year before the pandemic paralyzed societies. A lot happened since then, which gives us a full schedule for today. Today's agenda is as follows. We'll start with an introduction to Scandic, followed by the market conditions. Thereafter, there will be a deep dive into the portfolio and growth initiatives per brand; after that, short Q&A to the speakers of the first segment before we have a coffee break, or fika as we also say in Sweden. Around 3:00, we'll start with the commercial side instead and specifically how Scandic can unleash its commercial potentials, followed by operations. And concluding presentations for today is financials; then some closing remarks; and then extended, full Q&A, where we open up the floor to you in the room as well as you online to ask questions directly to the speakers. So who are the speakers? They are, in order, CEO Jens Mathiesen; Isabelle Elmqvist, Head of Strategy and Sustainability, then Thérèse Cedercreutz, Chief Commercial Officer; Peter Jangbratt, Chief Operational Officer of Sweden and Denmark; and CFO Par Christiansen. To ask questions, from you in the audience. [Operator Instructions] And for the extended Q&A at the end, you in the room, you can just raise your hand. And a microphone will be brought to you, and you ask the questions directly to the speakers. Otherwise, you can do as well as those online and post your questions digitally, for me to bring up for you. You do that by scanning the QR code on your badge which you received at the registration. And I see a lot of them around the necks, so you're all set there. And I think that kind of concludes the order matters of today. We think presentations will end around just after 4:00. And at the latest, we'll end the Q&A at 5:00. Crystal clear? Crystal clear, good. With that being out of the way, it's high time to start. So to introduce today's first speaker: He has been with Scandic since 2008, so over 16 years, and became CEO in 2019. That means he navigated Scandic through the pandemic. That also means that he has delivered the best and the worst quarterly report earnings for Scandic in the group's history. Please welcome CEO Jens Mathiesen.

Thank you so much, Emelie. A nice introduction, "the best and the worst." Very, very nice to be here on such a sunny day together with all of you, so thank you so much for joining us; and that you're willing to spend the next many hours with us here at Scandic Continental, which is a classic Scandic in the heart of Stockholm. Also want to welcome everybody that are joining us via the webcast. As you can see from this morning and maybe I dare to say, we delivered a good result. And of course, we will come back with that as well a bit but not too much. It's talking about the future, today, but it's good with a tailwind when you open up for a CMD like this with all of you in the room. I really hope that you're enjoying being here, hope you have a good afternoon. And for those of you staying at the hotel here, which I know some of you are doing, I hope that you have a very pleasant stay with Scandic. I also think it's very great to see, when I look around, so many familiar faces; almost intimidated with all the owners. And we even have presence from the Board of Directors. And I have all my management team here as well, which means that there will be enough time for all of you to mingle later on and elaborate a bit on everything we are having, cooking in the company. And today, we are actually very excited. We are very excited to provide you with a clear update on the future of Scandic and, of course, the very -- looking forward to the mingle afterwards as well. At our last Capital Market Day, which was held in Stockholm actually 5 year ago -- 5 years ago, we have a Capital Market Day and just before the pandemic hit. Since then, a lot happened. You know that, to say the least. We have delivered new financial records. We have invested in capabilities for the future, and we are well positioned in markets with very good growth potential. And today, it is about the future. I'm sure that's why you came as well. You don't want to hear too much about the history, but we will take it through and talk about how we will take Scandic to new heights, with focus on the strategic opportunities which lies ahead of us and, of course, the next chapter of our journey, but before we move into all of that, I want to share a short film highlighting Scandic, so start looking a bit with this. [Presentation]

So as you can see, I can definitely tell you this makes me really proud to look at such a film. And I think it clearly demonstrates the passion we have for hospitality. With over 60 years in this industry, we have constantly evolved and fine-tuned our ways of working to benefit our guests; our team members; and all of you, our owners. That is what defines our journey and how we have established our market-leading position in the Nordics. Today, we are a multi-brand operator. We have a well-invested portfolio and over 58,000 rooms in 280 hotels, including our pipeline. With a unique footprint in around 130 unique destinations, we have a solid platform to build upon. I'm also proud to have announced this morning, as I mentioned in the beginning, a very strong fourth quarter and also a full year report with a turnover of SEK 22 billion and margins that are above our financial targets. Some of you and, hopefully, many of you know the strategy of Scandic. Our vision is to be a world-class Nordic hotel company. Rooted in the Nordics and the Nordic values in our culture and the way we work, we are focusing on delivering great experience for the guests. And every day, we go to work with that single mind in our goal. That is to create an amazing hotel experience for the many people. As you see in the bottom, we have a foundation; and that is built on 5 cornerstones. If I start with the portfolio excellence: That's ensuring a competitive hotel portfolio for the long run. We have a commercial excellence making every part of our guest journey exceed expectations. We have operational excellence running our hotels efficiently while maximizing guest satisfaction and team member engagement. And of course, there's a sustainable approach and engaged team members that are the foundation of our strategy. These cornerstones, they guide us both in our strategy but also in our business decisions. And together with our financial targets that you see, we want to optimize the value through a combination of good growth and profitability as well as financial stability. So what makes Scandic stand out from the rest of the market? We actually know that it is a fact that it's our culture. It's the team member engagement and the guest satisfaction, all combined with industry-leading efficiency known as the Scandic operating model. This is what drives our long-term success. And it allows us to reinvest to step-by-step improve our position, but we're not stopping here. Today, we are going to show you how we are going to take all of these areas to the next level, sometimes from good to great and sometimes from great to world class. For all I know, the proof is in the pudding. Apart from the pandemic years, we have consistently delivered on our financial commitments. Since the IPO back in 2015, we have grown revenues from SEK 12 billion to SEK 22 billion while improving the profitability to levels well above the financial target. We're also generating a lot more cash than we did before, and we have a clear view on how we will allocate the capital. Our financial position is strong with close to no debt at all. And these enable us to execute on our strategy and to grow the business at lower risk than ever. Simply put, Scandic has never been in a better shape. We successfully navigated the challenges of the pandemic. We seized the market rebound, invested in building an even better Scandic. And we have delivered 3 record-breaking years in a row. Looking back at the pandemic, which we don't want to do too much, but it was unlike any crisis we had faced before. The number of sold room nights dropped by nearly 50%. And if you compare that to the financial downturn in 2008, '09: The drop at that time was 5%. Out of every challenge always comes an opportunity. And from the very start of that pandemic, we were determined to not only handle the crisis but to emerge from it even stronger. We promised ourselves that we would make the most out of the situation, and I'm proud to say that we did. We have become more agile and efficient, able to adapt quicker; and this is now really embedded in our DNA. The market rebounded quickly, and today, we sell more rooms than ever. This also underscores the power of our industry; and the fundamental need for people to travel, whether it's for business or for leisure. And to capitalize on the growing demand, we have made significant investments in our team members and culture during the last years. After pandemic, we hired more than 10,000 team members. Quite a lot of those, approximately 7,000, were new to Scandic, so we have invested a lot to ensure that they could come back into this company, understand the culture; and also ensure that we quickly could regain momentum and continue delivering high guest satisfaction with high efficiency. And also, to ensure a long-term competitive offering, we have invested and optimized our hotel portfolio, something I will come back to later on today. We have also strengthened our commercial and operational capabilities. This includes implementing a cloud-based enterprise platform. I'm sure you have heard of that. We have been launching our new brand, Scandic Go. We have introduced a new loyalty program. And now we are preparing for the upcoming release of our new web and a new app, which comes in second quarter this year. All of this, we have done while delivering record results. Altogether, these investments, they mark a shift towards an even more commercial, competitive and efficient Scandic. And now we have the tools to attract more guests, to increase loyalty and also to drive profitability, so again I dare to say we are in the best shape ever. We have a strong commercial foundation that we build this upon. We have a world-class operating model that we are redefining. We have also a strong financial position that allows us to execute on this strategy. Altogether, we are well positioned to turn up the pace, with a clear path for higher growth. Today, I say it again, we are a [ well-trained ] company. We deliver good guest satisfaction. We have engaged team members, and I'm extremely confident in how we are running our business. Now it's time to build on this strength and to take Scandic to new heights. In the coming years, our focus on growth combined with continuous improvements to gradually improve profitability will drive good results. And for that, we have an ambitious and also clear plan. Then of course, we will all share with you here today. Our multi-brand growth in attractive markets, that's the first. It targets large and growing segments in solid markets. And we are going to tell you exactly how and where we are going to drive growth. We will also outline how we will gain market shares in the Nordics while continuing to expand selectively in Germany. We also think that we can unleash the commercial potential in the company, maybe a bit bold, but I've been working in this industry for some 23 years now. And I still believe we can learn from other sectors and industries because in this industry we still, if you look at [ year round ], have too many of our rooms, too much of the capacity that sits unsold. That means, for me, there is still a huge untapped potential. And I think now it's time to unleash the potential. We have a strong commercial foundation to build upon. And we have a clear plan on how to attract more guests and improve loyalty. And Tess will, of course, walk you through all of that in her section later on today. We're also constantly redefining operational excellence. We're investing in our capabilities and digitalization to drive even higher guest satisfaction, engagement and efficiency in our operations. Our world-class operating model is at the core of Scandic, and you know that, but Peter will come into this and walk you through what sets us apart and also what we focus on to drive even further operational excellence. And then maybe a section that you're all longing for, some of the financials, et cetera, but with a clear portfolio and commercial strategy to drive revenue and empowered by our operating model, we are positioned for strong value creation. We will continue to generate good cash flow and generate higher profits. And in combination with ordinary dividends and share buybacks, we are focused to create a lot of value. Later on, Par will go through this in his section and give you, of course, much more on how we will allocate all the capital. So everything we discuss today is focused on building an even stronger Scandic step by step. At the same time, we remain deeply committed to our team members. Fostering a workplace where engagement, well-being and personal growth is also prioritized because we know, as I said earlier, that highly motivated team members is essential to our success. As market leaders, we also take our responsibility when it comes to sustainability. This is an important part of Scandic, constantly pushing boundaries to reduce our environmental impact and to set new standards in the industry. Scandic has always been a frontrunner within this area and you know that. And we have an ambition to stay on that route. By staying committed to these priorities you have heard me talking about, we are creating real value not just for today but also for years and generations to come. With that, I would like to hand it back to you, Emelie. Thank you.

Thank you for that, Jens, and for starting us off today. So you will be back for a second section just before the break, so we'll save some follow-up questions after that. Okay, the next segment after that introduction. The next speaker, she will talk about the market conditions; and she calls them favorable. She is responsible for both strategy and sustainability since Scandic has integrated the two to have sustainability as a natural part of business strategy as well as daily operations. According to her colleagues and maybe because she is a former [ McKinsey ] consultant, she loves numbers. So please welcome Isabelle Elmqvist, Head of Strategy and Sustainability.

Thank you, Emelie. Yes, I do love numbers. You will hear many presentations about Scandic today, but now we're going to spend some time reflecting on market development and trends. And I will share our perspective on market outlook ahead. We are at an interesting point in time, partly still in a recovery phase from the pandemic, for some segments at least, and partly in a recovering and improving economy, so we need to find new ways of looking and analyzing the market. Overall, we do expect favorable market conditions towards 2030. And what you will see throughout this presentation is a solid performance expected in the Nordics. You will also see attractive growth opportunities in Germany as well as a number of market trends where Scandic is well positioned and that we believe will boost our growth and performance ahead. Let's start by looking at our key market, the Nordics. And this is not only our main home market today. It will also continue to be an important market for future growth. It's a market where we have a leading position, a high brand awareness and in general a strong market position. First of all, by looking at G development -- GDP development going forward. The Nordic economies are stabilizing and improving. During the last couple of years, we have experienced a slowdown, but GDP growth is expected to normalize already this year, returning to more sustainable levels in line with long-term growth. In fact, the forecast for the Nordics is well above the Eurozone as well as the OECD as a whole, so Nordics are doing well, comparing to other economies. This is also reflected in consumer confidence, especially in Sweden where the current index is just above 100. Consumer confidence experienced a historical low point during 2022, the year which, of course, marked the beginning of the war in Ukraine, rising inflation rates as well as interest rates. And since then, consumer confidence has been improving steadily, except from a slight setback towards the end of 2024, as you can see in the graph, explained by yet again increasing uncertainty in the world, in particular with regards to the U.S. election and the potential effects on world trade and dynamics, but all in all, confidence is moving in the right direction. Now we will move on to the hotel market. And we will look at performance over the last 5 years, yes, by looking at KPIs indexed to the corresponding month in 2019. And despite everything that the market has been through, RevPAR levels have increased by 16% since 2019. This has been fully driven by price development, with average room rates increasing by 20% during this time. This is roughly in line with Nordic combined inflation and, I will say, a sign of a strong pricing power despite market fluctuations during this time. Meanwhile, occupancy index have been falling by 4%. And this translates to roughly 2 percentage points on absolute occupancy level. Important to remember, however, when it comes to occupancy is that this is not a sign of a falling demand. Demand has actually increased by 13% since 2019 in terms of sold room nights, so it's significantly above pre-pandemic levels. This demonstrates, as Jens were saying as well, a high resilience in our market and the strong underlying demand for hotel rooms. Even in tougher economic times, travel spend has been prioritized. There are some gaps still, however, mainly to some of the Asian sourcing markets as well as to Russia obviously, but most segments are well above 2019 levels. The slight decline in occupancy, that is explained by an even faster growing supply. Supply has been growing by 17% since 2019. Supply growth is naturally lagging changes in demand due to lead times in construction and business development, so this is not surprising. Let's look ahead. And going forward, we do expect stable growth of Nordic demand, driven by improving economy as well as additional segments recovering. And these, I would say, are quite realistic, cautious maybe even, predictions. Before the pandemic, market demand was growing at 4% to 5% per year. The average growth rate between 2019 and 2024 was around 2% per year, again despite all of the disruptions happening during this time. And in the upcoming years as economies are improving and segments are returning, we expect market growth beyond these levels but maybe slightly below pre-pandemic rates still. Meanwhile, we will see a slowdown in supply development. This is partly a delayed effect of a general slowdown during the pandemic as well as an effect of increasing financing costs in the last couple of years, so all in all, this means that demand will outgrow supply in the upcoming years, translating to a positive development in occupancy. The exact impact will, of course, depend on what demand and supply scenario that do play out but likely add somewhere in between 2 to 8 percentage points to current occupancy levels, quite a broad range but even more likely ending up somewhere in the middle of that. So occupancy is expected to grow, if you looked at it in line with pre-pandemic levels. Finally, staying with the Nordics for a little bit, we will look at the Nordic market divided by different segments. And we will be looking at estimated growth, estimated absolute growth, between 2024 and 2030, so in other words, regardless of segment size or growth rate, this should give you a sense of what is driving growth towards 2030. And first of all, let's look at segment split by guest origin. As you can see, domestic travel will continue to be the main driver of demand towards 2030. And you can almost look at it together with intra-Nordic travel since these markets are so strongly linked together. For European travel, the largest sourcing market will be Germany, partly also U.K., France and Netherlands but mainly Germany; for intercontinental travel, U.S. And to mention something about intercontinental travel. As you can see, it's quite a small growth segment towards 2030 but an important segment to be in. Some of the sourcing markets here were growing at double-digit rates prior to the pandemic, and we believe this to be an important segment long term. The outlook for some sourcing markets such as China and Russia is more uncertain towards 2030, but we have to remember as well that they make up a relatively small share of market volume: Russia slightly above 1% of market volume; and China around the same level, roughly above 1%. Let's now look at the split with business and leisure. And as we know, leisure is outgrowing business. Leisure also proved more resilient as a segment during the pandemic, and it will also be slightly larger as a growth driver towards 2030. Although, as we can see, business continues to be a really important growth driver as well for the market. In terms of hotel class, mid-market hotels will continue to be the main volume driver. And economy and upscale growing at decent rates, we believe that the Nordic economy segment is particularly promising since it's relatively under-established versus the rest of Europe. And then finally looking at Nordic destinations, where Denmark, Sweden and Norway will be the main volume drivers towards 2030, while Finland will continue to grow at a slightly lower pace in the upcoming years. Being more challenged by its guest mix and, of course, more impacted by the war in Ukraine, this could also change quickly. So despite a few challenging years, the Nordic hotel market is doing pretty well. And the outlook is solid in terms of an improving economy, consumer confidence and demand outgrowing supply. And finally, if I had to pick, the winning segments are domestic, leisure and mid-market. Let's also have a quick look at Germany. This represent a smaller share of our business today, but it's an important market for future growth. And first of all, as we know, the economic slowdown is and has been tougher in Germany for multiple reasons, including higher energy prices as well as challenges in the larger German industries. Going forward, the economy is expected to heal gradually but at a slowly pace than other markets. And unsurprisingly, this is also reflected in market recovery. RevPAR levels have increased by 10% since 2019; again to compare with the Nordics, plus 16%. ARR have increased by 18% and occupancy index have dropped by 6%, so slightly lower performance or recovery than the Nordics. However, what we should remember is that Germany has a strong performance to begin with that is actually structurally higher than the Nordics. Looking at 2024 data, for example, in absolute terms now instead, RevPAR levels in Germany are 13% above the Nordics, and rates 6% above and occupancy levels 7% above. And also, while these figures reflect the German market as a whole, we are only present and growing in selected highly attractive cities. So take Berlin for example: The performance is higher than what you would see here, yes. And the size of the Berlin market is larger than all of the Nordic capital cities combined. Finally, Germany is highly fragmented, with top 10 players making up about 1/4 of the whole market. And the largest player has a market share of around 5% to 6%, to be compared with the Scandic market share of around 16%. And another comparison is the Nordic market, where top 10 players make about -- make up about 50% of the total market, so less fragmented. Together with a strong link between Germany and the Nordics, this presents good opportunities to take a position in the market. So all in all for Germany, despite recent challenges, it's a high-performing hotel market with many attractive growth opportunities for us and the possibility to take a position. Finally, I will mention some of the larger trends that we believe will boost our growth and performance ahead. And you will hear more about them during the day, but I will mention them quickly now. First of all, new technologies. Despite being a physical- and human interaction-heavy industry, there is a large potential in leveraging available technology in the best way. And this is a key enabler in our strategy ahead both to improve interactions with our customers but also to ensure smooth operational processes. Secondly, loyalty programs, which have become one of the top priorities for many hotel companies worldwide, especially following the pandemic, where working with customer retention was key. And there is a large opportunity to grab in making sure that we build the right loyalty structures and partner with the right organizations, making us more attractive as a choice both for the leisure and for the corporate customer. Thirdly, growth in leisure. As we noticed in the segment analysis as well, this trend started many years back and it continues as far as we are able to see into the future. Building brands and offerings that are relevant towards the leisure customer is therefore very important. Fourth trend, distribution landscape evolving, because travel platforms, including [ the OTA ], they continue to have a strong grip of the market. And this makes management of own and alternative distribution channels key in order to maintain cost advantage. And then finally, increased stakeholder engagement on sustainability. We experience more attention than ever in this area. And as a company, ensuring that we have the right capabilities and structure in place to meet stakeholder expectations in this area is therefore very important. And before I round off, since this is one of the key trends and since I happen to be heading this area within Scandic, I would like to say a few words on our work with sustainability. We drive sustainability as an integrated part of our strategy, and I think you will recognize that throughout the day as well. As you can see on this time line, Scandic has a long history of working with sustainability. And you mentioned it as well, Jens. We pioneered "hang up your towel" in 1993. That's more than 30 years ago, a bold initiative then, common industry practice today. And since then, we have taken several important steps. For example, we started to serve bottled water -- or water in refillable bottles in 2008, again a bold initiative then, common industry practice today. And for those of you who are with us in the room, you will actually get one of these bottles later today. Perhaps we can nudge you to use this instead of buying bottled water at home. And this year, I'm also happy to announce that we are committing to science-based targets through the Science Based Targets initiative. We believe this is a necessary step to align our business with global climate goals, but we actually started to measure and work with carbon emissions almost 30 years ago. And since then, we have reduced our emissions per guest by almost 60%. During the same time, we have reduced our energy use by 39% -- 34% and water use by 34% as well, also of course contributing in a positive way to our financial results, but there is so much more that could be mentioned in this area, so to end this presentation, let's look at a short film summarizing our work with sustainability. [Presentation]

Thank you for that, Isabelle, and for illustrating the work too. I have to ask you, before I let you go off stage, about this initiative you said with the time line and that you were first with, hanging up the towel in 1993. I find that quite mind-blowing, to be honest. I didn't know it was that long ago, and it's everywhere by now. Have you copyrighted that initiative?

That's a good question. I don't know if we could have. Maybe we should have and -- but when it comes to sustainability, we're quite happy to see the industry follow. We're, for example, part of an organization called the World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, where one of the purposes is to share best practices and ideas across the industry. And I think, learning from each other and coping, each other, that's how we achieve impacts in sustainability.

Thank you so much, Isabelle -- and maybe copyrighting for the future.

Thank you.

We'll save further questions for you. A round of applause, please...

Thank you.

Because Isabelle will be back for the short Q&A, which is after this following segment. So after an introduction and elaboration, maybe education for many of us, including me, on the market conditions for Scandic, it's time to dive a bit deeper into the portfolio of Scandic and how to optimize that one. For that, we bring up CEO Jens Mathiesen again to guide you through this segment. And to illustrate both the past initiatives to optimize the portfolio as well as current or future initiatives, we'll illustrate this too with a video. [Presentation]

So as you see, a lot has happened and is still happening in this company. And I hope you're okay with seeing some movies today because you will see some films during the day, but it's always a good way of understanding and seeing yourself what is cooking in our company. And I truly believe that this actually captures the journey that we are on, how we have expanded and strengthened our position across the Nordics. It also reflects the transformation we have made from a single-brand to a multi-brand operator with a unique footprint in approximately 130 key destinations in the Nordics, Germany and Poland. At our last Capital Market Day, we shared our portfolio strategy with all of you, introducing Scandic Go, outlining our focus on growing the pipeline and emphasizing our commitment to optimizing the portfolio. Then as we all know, the world changed. Today, with the pandemic behind us, I'm proud to say that we delivered on those promises. Scandic Go is off to a good start. We have successfully optimized our portfolio. And while it naturally took some time to prepare for future growth, we are now turning up the volume. And the confidence we have is built on several factors: our powerful multi-brand portfolio that are targeting large and growing segments, the attractive market dynamics and trends that Isabelle just presented and, of course, also the financial strength that we have. Today, I will walk you through the growth strategy for 2030, where we see the largest opportunities, why these markets are key to our expansion and how much we aim to grow, but before we dive into all of that, it's also important to take a step back maybe and have a look at the foundation, which we call it our business model. We have a strong business model that are based on long-term revenue leases. This is the dominant model in the Nordics but also in Germany. And this model actually gives us full control over the operation, over the brand and distribution. And it comes with several key advantages: margin stability, ensuring financial resilience; full control of the customer offering; economies of scale, maximizing efficiency in both operation and distribution; time to market, allowing us to act quickly on new opportunities; and then, of course, also a shared interest with all the landlords whom like us are incentivized with this model and how we grow together. This model is a key enabler for us in how we are growing our strategy, providing both stability and flexibility as we expand. And if we look at this. You have seen it before. That's kind of the portfolio by agreement types. More than 90% of our hotels, they operate under lease agreements. Of these lease agreements, 20% are fully variable, so fully turnover-based leases. We have 68% that are turnover-based leases with a fixed guarantee. And we have 12% that are fixed. This represents a well-diversified mix which we like. And our multi-brand portfolio, it targets attractive segments, like Isabelle also told you about. And Scandic's world-class operating model supports the entire portfolio, ensuring high guest satisfaction, team member engagement and efficiency. And now as we increase the focus also on franchising, we will further complement our growth in new destinations across the Nordics. It is clear, though, that our operating model with the lease contracts, et cetera is the absolute core, so see this as an add-on. And we have a quite ambitious yet balanced growth strategy for 2030. First, we will focus on strengthening our #1 position in the Nordics. Second, we will continue expanding into attractive destinations in Germany. Third, we have high ambitions for Scandic Go, as you know and have heard, aiming to become the market leader in the economy segment across the Nordics. And lastly, in addition to expanding on our lease portfolio, we will focus a bit more on franchise, with the ambition of creating the best franchise program in the Nordics. And with a clear strategy, we also have clear targets. For our leasing portfolio, we aim to sign around 10,000 new rooms by 2030. These translate to roughly 8 to 10 hotels or new signings per year, totaling some 40 to 50 new hotels. As I mentioned, we are very confident in Scandic Go, so that, we expect to account for approximately 50% of the new signings. For the franchise portfolio, we expect to sign around 5,000 new rooms by 2030, which means around some 30 to 40 new hotels. And if we take a closer look on how our growth will be distributed across our key markets. As Isabelle also outlined in the previous presentation, the market dynamics in the Nordics are good. And today, that's also why we will continue, as we say here today, that we will continue to focus on this region. It's our home turf. This is where we are extremely strong, so we expect 70% of the signings to be in the Nordics or maybe an -- approximately some 35 new hotels by 2030. This is actually largely in line with the targets we had pre pandemic, and it will further strengthen our position as the market leader in the Nordics. And while the Nordics remain our core, Germany is also an important part of our strategy. And it is a key market for Scandic, but we will continue to grow selectively, focusing on destinations with clear potential. And our ambition is to sign roughly 3,000 new rooms in Germany's largest locations and cities. That equates to some 15 hotels or roughly 3 new signings in average per year until 2030. By taking a balanced and strategic approach, we will assure that all our expansion in Germany contributes to the overall margin,, with good return on invested capital. And actually the rationale behind our growth in Germany is pretty clear. The market dynamics are attractive, which you saw. While the economy is facing some temporary challenges right now, we remain confident in Germany's long-term potential. It is the largest country in Europe. It has a population of more than 80 million people. And it presents good opportunities for us, especially in these key destinations within the largest cities where we are focusing our expansion. Beyond the market potential, we can also say that we have the right concept. Our existing portfolio of hotels is performing well. Moreover, across our entire portfolio, we operate with high efficiency and good cost control that are ensuring our German hotels contribute positively to our overall margins. Now let's try to go back to Scandic Go a bit. For many of you here today, I don't think this ambition that we have is new. However, I want to reassure you that we remain highly confident in our growth plans for the coming years. I believe also here that the rationale is simple. We are tapping into a rapidly growing segment with a strong potential, a segment that roughly accounts for 15% of the European market but just below 5% of the Nordics. And this model is also highly profitable and capital efficient, thanks to its lean and optimized design allowing for more rooms compared to our traditional hotels. With higher expected margins and lower CapEx than the rest of our portfolio, the return on investment is stronger. We estimate that the return on investment is approximately 1.5x higher than for a core Scandic. And here we are off to a good start. As you know, we have 2 hotels here in the heart of Stockholm. And the feedback from guests are very positive, as well as from financial perspectives. As the overall also, we see that very good and in line with own expectations, so far. We also note a strong interest from the property owners. We can offer very commercial, good and also lean concept with very limited back offices and support areas and no kitchen, et cetera. And I believe that the numbers also show that as well as that Scandic Go amounts already today to around 50% of the signed pipeline we have in number of hotels. All in all, with Scandic Go, we can grow faster, at higher margins and with relatively low investment needs. Moving on to the franchise which I also have mentioned. Also here I think the logic is extremely simple because, in the past, Scandic's presence was maybe primarily outside the major cities. And today, our -- majority of our hotels are located in the larger cities. And also when you look at pipeline, we have a tendency now to grow much more in the larger locations. And naturally we still want to capitalize on the growth opportunities that lies ahead, but we also want to do it at low risk, selected in the destinations across the Nordics where we currently have no presence. Today, we have 18 franchise hotels, so this is not a new area to us. We have worked with franchise for many years, but now we are stepping a bit up. And our goal is to add around 30 to 40 new hotels by 2030. With a strong commercial platform and the efficient operating model that we have, we offer a highly competitive concept that will be attractive for the partners. We can also support with lower prices, due to size, in sourcing and OTA commissions, et cetera. And these new franchises, hotel, they will secure a broad Nordic coverage at low risk and also high profitability. Before I hand it back to you, Emelie, and the following break, I want to close the presentation with a follow-up on our portfolio optimization. We have a very structured framework also for this, how we optimize our portfolio, always evaluating and classifying all our hotels based on their performance and their potential. Our goal is also here very clear. It is to improve the portfolio by leaving hotels with low performance and limited potential while investing in those with the highest expected returns. At the last Capital Day, we provided an overview of our portfolio and outlined how we intend to improve the overall margin through strategic portfolio adjustments. Since then, we have exited 22 hotels, with just about 3,000 rooms. This has been a key part of our strategy to strengthen competitiveness, improve margins and also the overall offering. While leaving hotels, we have also kept a good pace in signing new, larger and more profitable hotels. And looking back since the last Capital Market Day, I'm proud to say that we have increased the overall profitability in the hotel portfolio from around 15% to 16%. This slide slows -- shows clearly how many hotels we had at year-end 2019, how many we have as today. And it's categorized in adjusted EBITDA margin. To put it simple: We have more hotels delivering higher margins today. And in the 5% bracket, the majority of our hotels, not all but majority, is actually in Finland, where we have more hotels with higher average fixed rent for the -- than we have in the rest of the portfolio. And you also know that the Finnish market is facing some challenges locally in the economic situation in Finland. Of course, with the war, as you also mentioned, Isabelle, in Europe, the borders to Russia and [ the lacking ] long-haul traffic to Asia -- hope to see that, that war would end. That would not only be good for Scandic but also for all of us. During the last year, we have optimized the organization in Finland. And Laura has done a great job, and we actually show good profitability. And we are confident that we will be in a very, very good position once this market bounce back. And I know I've said it many times before, but you have to live with it and bear with me because we are in a very good position. We have executed on our strategy. We have optimized our portfolio, strengthened our foundation for future growth. We have a high-performing portfolio, stronger and more optimized. We have a powerful multi-brand strategy that expands our reach across the Nordics and Germany, Poland, supported by attractive market dynamics and the financial firepower we have to execute on our strategy, so all in all, I think, in Scandic, we have really built a strong momentum. And now we are picking up the pace. With that, I hand it back to you, Emelie. Thank you.

Thank you, Jens. And you're not off the hook yet. You need to stand on stage to have some short Q&A session. Let's bring Isabelle up as well to help us answer some questions. Okay. So thank you both for your presentations.

Jens, let me start with you. You say that Scandic is in best shape ever. You are a company with a long history. Does that mean best shape since 1963?

Yes.

Please elaborate.

No, but it absolutely does for many reasons. If -- you heard some of the numbers in our presentation. Just by -- since the IPO, we have grown from SEK 12 billion to SEK 22 billion. We have higher margins than we had before. We deliver 20% more EBITDA now than we did pre pandemic. We have very high guest satisfaction, very high team member satisfaction indexes. So I'm a happy CEO because I look into a lot of good numbers. And then the -- absolutely, Scandic is very strong right now, especially also looking into the fact that we have almost no debt, which means that we have a lot of firepower which we also push back to the owners, which deserve that. And then we have enough also to grow the company a bit faster.

And Isabelle, as you said in your presentation, even though Scandic is its best shape ever, the market conditions, they're good but not best ever.

Perhaps not, yes, but they are improving. And as I mentioned in my presentation, demand is outgrowing supply in the upcoming years, resulting in an occupancy development which is actually in line with what we saw historically before the pandemic. And I think, in combination with a sustained pricing power, that is quite favorable market conditions right there.

And let me continue with you then because, meanwhile, regarding market conditions, you have the target of growing 5% per year. How does growth look like in the hotel and hospitality sector? What is good? What is a lot?

Well, what is good to us is reaching the target of 5%, yes, but that's probably not the answer you were looking for. And successful growth in the hotel industry, I would say that's about a couple of things. So making sure that we not only add capacity to the market but that we grow in the right locations, the right micro locations, of course, with the right properties, the right concepts and brands and with the right contracts. So making sure that we contribute in a positive way to our margins. And the second thing is probably that, whenever we put a new hotel into the market, we know that we're going to stay there for at least 15 to 20 years, so also having that long-term mindset, definitely beyond 2030.

And Jens then, speaking of micro locations. Scandic is well established, especially in Sweden, with hotels in a wide range of sizes, of communities and municipalities. Given the urbanization trend, which I'm no expert but I'm guessing it's still a thing, is presence in those smaller areas still strategically profitable and sensible?

But I think -- a good question. And I'll also elaborate a bit on what Isabelle was saying. We need to look at this on a very long perspective. And looking into the fact that leisure is growing faster than corporate, we put that into account, but we have a lot of hotels that are in minor locations that are doing extremely well and serve their purpose. And we also have a long -- believe in a lot of these, but there will definitely be some locations where we used to be present in and no longer are. And that's also why we open up for partnering up with some in the franchise segment, so -- but yes, we will still be covering the Nordics also, with own operation, as you see, extremely strong.

And speaking of the different initiatives, Scandic Go, as you say, franchise. Why not luxury?

Yes. Simply put, and this is the right audience to say that, it's a lot of buzz and less money. And it's nice to have very nice hotels, et cetera, but that's not really where we make the most out of it. Scandic is a strong, and the strongest in the Nordic, mid-market operator. We have a very good platform where we operate hotels very efficiently. And we think that we want to operate hotels where we can make that happen as well, so to keep in our comfort zone and where we actually make a difference, we stay in the mid-market. And we go a bit below into the economy segment but not, as you hear now, into budget. We also have upscale hotels with our Signature Collection, but we are really not tapping up to the luxury. There's a lot of interest in luxury. And that's also a growing segment but not profitable-wise.

You're the opposite to an extremist, neither extremely high or extremely low...

I'd like to stay where we are good.

And speaking of that. Scandic Go, as you also said, off to a good start. How has that concept been received by property owners? Because it seems like it's quite crucial for both guests and them to be onboard.

Yes, but I think we have a very good cooperation with more than 100 different property owners that we work with. And it's pretty clear from their side as well: This is low risk, safe returns. [ Room site ] will always develop also in the long run. There's maybe other areas that are less predictable, how will meeting market in -- improve in 20 years from now, et cetera, when you set a new building, so I would say, for property owners, there's a lot of reason also for them to tap into this with us. And that's what we see. And that's why we have more than 50% of the hotels in the pipeline that are in Scandic Go, and approximately 40% of the rooms. So a lot of interest.

So you have so many initiatives. I have to kind of just go through them. One of your initiatives then, increased focus on franchise. How will you balance growth per brand in order to not cannibalize on each other?

No, but right now we will only franchise with our core brand, Scandic. We are creating a very clear franchise program, also meaning that for our partners it will be very clear. It's not just putting up a sign and delivering some guests in our booking systems, et cetera. It's also deciding what kind of access, what kind of support, what kind of IT support. How can we help them? How can they benefit from our size and sourcing, et cetera? So we are making a very strong program which, I think, will bring a lot of value to them but, for sure, also for us because it adds more hotels at low or almost nothing in the risks side. And I would say the only risk is that they don't deliver on the brand promises, but that's also part of the program, to secure that we have a good follow-up on that. And I think we have that today, but we can do it even better.

And then the timing for franchise. Because you said so: You've had franchise for quite a long time. It's nothing new within the group, but why increase now?

I've been in Scandic for, as you heard, for, and you also mentioned in the beginning, 17 years now, almost, in June. And when I joined, we had hotels in some locations which we are not present in any longer. Not to mention them all, but looking back at Denmark, where I come from, there are a few quite large cities where we are not present anymore because we don't see the same, let's say, benefit in building a new property in one of these hotels or operating it, versus the expansion that you heard about and where we prioritize to be right now, but there's a lot of good hotels, local operators where we can partner up. So it makes sense for us now more than it did 15 years ago.

And Isabelle then, the distribution between leisure versus business and, as Jens said, leisure growing faster. Do you target leisure more now than before?

Yes, I would say definitely we do. We have a larger focus on leisure. You can see that by our updates, the updates we're doing in our loyalty program, for examples; the new partnerships that we're developing; Scandic Go, as you've been talking about. So plenty of initiatives. And Tess will talk more about them later in her commercial presentation, but that being said, I would say that our strategy ahead remains quite balanced. And business is still a very important segment to Scandic.

And some of your markets then instead. I would like to start with Finland, as you said, Jens, still haven't recovered since not just the pandemic, since it's been prolonged by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but reading in your earnings report published today, you have strong margins in Finland. So how have you worked with that, those market conditions that has been there? And what do you see for Finland going forward?

First of all, I think Laura, who is heading up the operation in Germany, deserves a big applause because she has done a great job also with the organization and trimming the operation and securing that we come out of this quarter, if you look at the fourth quarter, with margins that were, in Finland, growing from 10.1% to 13.3%. So a strong development. And that is mainly driven by, I will say, the operational efficiencies and how we operate and prioritize. And now I also see that Finland, not only by Scandic but also the market, is starting to pick up a little pace, starting to invest more in growing the [ company ] within tourism. The government has seen that they need to do more, so I'm more positive to that today than I was just a few months ago, because I know now that the government actually understands that they need to invest in the country and support all the businesses because they are struggling, yes. So I think there's a lot of opportunities for us, when we regain momentum and recover after also pandemic, really to do that with strong numbers. Because we are extremely efficient in our operation in Finland.

Do you see that too with Finland, Isabelle, for the market conditions and the recovery pace?

Yes. I think you described it really well. In our market outlook, we are being a bit cautious in terms of estimating growth from Finland, but as you said, Jens, that can change quickly. And the signs that we're seeing are cautiously positive.

Okay, final market question. I have to ask about Germany as well, to both of you. Why Germany instead of any other comparable European country?

Well, I'm Danish. And it's one of our neighbors and we like them.

So nepotism...

They are quite efficient. Germans are quite efficient. We like that. They do what we also ask them to do in terms of efficiency and focus, et cetera. So no, I like working in -- me as a person but also Scandic, we like working in Germany. There's a lot of potential. I mentioned it is the largest country in Europe. And yes, they might face some short-term challenges, but they always step up when they need to do. And they have a lot of power, so I think all of Europe needs Germany to be fairly strong. And we definitely see a lot of opportunities. And we have a good track record. The operation we have are doing well and they are not marginal diluting for our business. Actually, they deliver solid margins and with very high guest satisfaction, so if they can add another percentage point or 2, that's very interesting for us.

Isabelle, do you have anything to add on Germany? Are you a fan as well?

I'm a fan, but as you saw in my presentation, the hotel market performance is good in Germany despite the challenges that they are facing. So good performance, plenty growth opportunities, especially attractive cities where we're targeting and -- yes.

Okay, just final question, again with the -- I'm still on the sustainability time line as you showed, Isabelle. We've come a long way, when it comes to sustainability, to integrate any sector and any business really; takes it a lot more seriously, so what does sustainability work looks like today when the bar is already higher?

That's a good question. And as you said, we have a long history of working with sustainability. We have been frontrunners and we intend to maintain that position going forward. Today, it runs through everything we do within Scandic, operations. It's part of every concept development, property development, even finance. It's really part of all parts of Scandic, so it's much more integrated. I would say our strategy as well is much more holistic. We have a sustainability strategy covering all of our material areas, with targets in each; and we work systematically to achieve those, yes. So that's a difference. And one of the more ambitious targets, of course, is the science-based targets to be approved by the Science Based Targets initiative, but that's definitely a big focus for us going forward.

I see you nodding, Jens. Do you want to add something?

No, just happy about all the things we are doing. And I was wondering a bit. The more demand that are putting -- the governments, et cetera are putting on the industries, the better for us because then we can prove in numbers that we are ahead of the market. And we actually intended, as Isabelle said, to stay that lead versus the market.

The proof is in the pudding...

It is.

I think we'll stop there for now. I think everybody is dying for some coffee. Thank you so much, Isabelle and Jens.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And yes, it is high time for fika. Let me see what the time is. It's very generous, to have presenters that are actually ahead of time. That's not very common. So let's take a break for about 33 minutes. We'll be back again with -- 14:55, I think, will be a good time to start again. For you in the room, refreshments outside, just outside here where you registered with yourself when you came in. And for you at home, I hope you have a good cup of coffee as well. And see you in a bit. Thank you. [Break]

[ Again ] thank you for finding your seat quickly. And thank you for being with us at home as well. I hope you all feel refreshed and ready for the information about -- the next part of today. And the second part, we'll start with commercial, with the target and the promise to unleash Scandic's commercial potential; followed by operations, getting into nitty-gritty; and then financials, before closing remarks and the extended Q&A. So let's start with the commercial focus without further ado. Presenter for this segment joined Scandic in 2023. However, she had been on the Board prior to that. Outside of Scandic, she has a wide experience of international organizations, in various roles, amongst them Ballingslöv, and UNICEF Finland. Her name is Thérèse but everyone calls her Tess, so please welcome Tess Cedercreutz, Chief Commercial Officer.

Nice to be here today. And like Emelie said, I've been here now for 2 years. And I have to say thank you, Jens, for giving me this opportunity. I think it's been the most interesting 2 years in my almost 30 years working career. So a lot of things have been cooking, but as Jens said earlier, Scandic is in its best shape ever today. And in the last few years, specifically in commercial, we have focused on further kind of strengthening our foundation and also understanding where we should focus to make the most impact for Scandic. And I feel now is the time to unleash the potential in commercial, both in our team members, in our new digital platforms but also in our ability to drive and optimize our business. So commercial is now, I can say it with my hand on my heart, in best shape ever to support Scandic on its growth ahead. And we have a solid foundation to build upon, and I will highlight a few of those areas. We have the leading brand and loyalty program in the Nordic hotel industry. Our brand is well known and has stood for pioneering in the hotel industry for more than 60 years. We're also the #1 hotel brand with a recognition of 94%, which gives us a great position to also be the preferred choice when guests book a hotel. We have more than 20 million guests per year in our hotels. And we have also 3 million Scandic Friends members in our program. The second area is that we have strong distribution. We control 66% of all bookings in our own channels, meaning in our web channel, through our app and also through our own booking centers. This means that we have a broad customer base with a low cost of sales and an enormous potential for selling ancillaries. 12% of our bookings comes from the corporate travel agencies, and out of this 12%, 85% comes from our corporate contracted customers. And then the remaining 22% comes from what we call OTAs, the online travel agencies. And we have strong partnership with the likes of Booking and Expedia. And they deliver volumes from source markets where we don't have a presence ourselves. Our focus will always be on driving business through our own channels, but the OTAs represent an important part for us where we can capture international guests from markets in Asia, the U.S. and Europe. We also have a large base of contracted business. We have more than 10,000 corporate contracts, also including aircrew and leisure groups. With this, we can secure a steady baseline business and also fill our hotels not just during the weekends but during the weeknights. And this also ensures a good flow of guests to our restaurants, our meetings and our bars. And the last area. We have also fundamentally renewed our commercial tech backbone. This makes us faster, more flexible; and allows us to capture new commercial opportunities in digital guest experiences, in digitalizing our hotel operations and maximizing sales in our own channels. We have already made significant progress in many areas. We have renewed our data platforms and analytical capabilities to have even better insights into our business and our customers. We have also rolled out a cloud-based hospitality management system, OPERA Cloud, enabling us to holistically optimize our business across all of our hotels and all the functions. We were actually the first hotel company in the world to roll out this new cloud-based system for all central functions. And we did it in 6 months and also below budget. And I think this demonstrates our ability to execute very fast and efficiently if needed. And we have also renewed our platforms both for the web and the app and the loyalty program. So we have a very strong foundation to build upon, but winning in the long term means giving our current customers and guests and also new customers a reason to choose Scandic again and again. And looking ahead, we have identified commercial growth drivers which we will focus on. And those are: We will use our brands to capture market opportunities. We will build digital guest experiences to drive additional revenues. And we will leverage our Scandic Friends and partnerships to strengthen loyalty. So how will we then grow with our brands? We have a strong brand portfolio, which allows us to attract guests with different needs; and compete in markets in various areas, from economy to mid-market and upscale. We are also not sitting back and riding on the position as being the #1 brand in the Nordics. We will invest in further strengthening our brand and our position in the Nordics and also in Germany. With Scandic Go, we have entered the fast-growing economy segment, which both Isabelle and Jens talked about, where we see a lot of growth potential in the future and where we also want to take a leading position in the Nordics. Scandic Go offers value for money in urban locations with providing the essentials and leaving the rest up to the guests to buy if they choose. We have seen the strength of this new concept and brand attracting both a new, younger audience; and also on international travelers from OTA channels. And it's important for us overall to work and engage with new, younger target audiences to Scandic, as these will be our future loyal guests. Our master brand is the #1 brand in the Nordics that appeals, of course, both to business and leisure travelers. Scandic stands for consistent, efficient and sustainable hotel operations. We will further build our strong brand to drive preference and differentiation also in the home markets. To stay relevant over time, we cannot stagnate, but we need to continuously develop our brand to stay relevant now and in the future for our guests. In German market, we believe that our promise of Nordic hospitality, values, culture and sustainability is new to the market and gives us a good and strong competitive advantage. In the Signature Collection, it's a small part of our hotels but have been very important part of our overall portfolio. These are our endorsed brands that offer premium lifestyle experiences where each hotel is a unique brand. We have, for example, in Stockholm Downtown Camper by Scandic. We have in Finland Marski by Scandic. And then we also have in Central Oslo Grand Hotel. We have in Finland, Marski by Scandic, and then we also have in Central Oslo, Grand Hotel. With Signature Hotels, we enter locations and capture customers in selected destinations with demand for upscale. And now we also have a new hotel in Tromsø, where we will be able to cater for this upscale demand, The Dock, which we are launching now next summer or opening. And by franchising our Scandic brand, we extend our footprint in many new locations where we otherwise would not have a Scandic hotel. Here, we want to offer our guests an opportunity to choose Scandic in even more locations. And for those hotels, our franchise hotels, to take advantage of the Scandic brand and our ability to drive good business. And also the second kind of growth driver, build digital guest experience to drive additional revenues. We want to inspire you by looking at a film, which portrays what a digital guest experience might look like in a Scandic hotel. [Presentation]

So I hope this inspired you to stay with Scandic. With these, of course, digital experiences, we wanted to be as seamless as possible and as personal as possible for all our guests. But we're already well on our way to achieving what we just saw in the film. But we want to be smart about it on how we develop, innovate and launch new services, digital services. We carefully pilot, we evaluate, and develop before we roll out. This is because we want to create lasting new solutions and services that serve our guests and Scandic in the long term. We also have some examples of what we already have achieved. In Go hotels and also in some Scandic hotels, you probably saw it, or hopefully saw it downstairs when you arrived to Continental, we have digital check-in and checkout. You can do it in the kiosks downstairs or you can actually do it also on your mobile. We have also drafted a new kind of phase in the customer journey, which we call the pre-stay. And that is where we can do personalized communication based on the data we have collected about our customers. So we can actually offer more services, upgrades, we can offer early check-in, late checkout, or access to the spa already before you come and stay in the hotel. And we also have a new app, which we will be launching in second quarter now. And that app will be, among other things, your stay companion when you visited our hotels, with relevant information and an ability to further personalize your stay. So as Jens already said, we're launching our new web and our app in second quarter this year. And this is more than just a visual update. It's a big step forward for us in our digital capabilities, allowing us to work much faster with channels, driving conversions, personalization and ancillary sales. In time, we expect higher conversions and higher revenue per customer. And then the final growth driver, leverage Scandic Friends and partnerships to strengthen loyalty. Going forward, the importance of loyalty will just intensify and play a much bigger role. Scandic Friends has been totally rebuilt from the ground up, and we launched the first version of our new program in September this year -- last year, sorry, '24, where you can basically earn and burn, collect points and use point on all the spend and all the different areas in Scandic. We have also introduced 7 levels in the program instead of 5, because we want to give every member a quicker start in the program and also more incentive to move up the levels. When we launched and redesigned our new program, we benchmarked around 20 different loyalty programs in the world, not in the hospitality industry, but in other industries, just to understand what makes some programs successful and others not. And we arrived at 3 different things. It's about personalization, it's about gamification and integration. So our new program basically is built around these 3 topics. Personalized in that you can choose, in the new program, your own rewards and basically tailor the program to your own needs. Gamified in that we can give you nudges to act and unlock new levels and also have a reason to interact with you not just when you book, but in between. And integrated. With this, we mean that we can recognize that you are a member, on the web, in our reception, in our restaurant, or even in our spa. So you can use the membership seamlessly when booking and staying at Scandic. We will continue to optimize the program and bring out new features and functionalities over the years. But in the end, like with any loyalty program, the perceived value of the program, it's up to each and every member. We have set ourselves high targets for the loyalty program. Of course, we need to drive activation in the program among our members and also higher spend per member, but we also need to grow the program in itself. So we have set ourselves for 2030 a target of doubling the members in the program. The program also needs an ecosystem. All loyalty programs today is basically an ecosystem where you partner up with other brands to build even more value into the program. We already have a lot of different partners, but our ambition is, of course, to carefully choose and select certain partners in different industries to add even further value to our program. And when it comes to our strategic partnership with SAS, we basically signed the agreement in October '24. And our ambition with SAS is, of course, that we're reforming the Nordic travel and hospitality landscape by combining the strength of 2 market leaders. The collaboration is designed to both enhance the customer experience for both program members and also drive revenues and growth for both parties. We have launched, last Friday, on Valentine's Day, since we are friends with benefits, we launched the Scandic breakfast in the new SAS Lounge at Arlanda. We have also -- now in April, we will launch tier matching between the 2 programs. And then further on in the second, third quarter, there is more to come. So this is just the beginning. So what is the opportunity then together with SAS? Together, we can offer even more value to a total addressable member base of 11 million members. And there is also a very clear fit between these 2 companies. We target both the mid-market and premium segments in leisure and business, we are both aiming to be the top choice for Nordic travelers, and both brands are also built around a strong emotional positioning, making travel as easy and pleasant as possible. So to summarize, going forward towards 2030, we will focus on our growth drivers, use our brands to capture market opportunities, build digital guest experiences to drive additional revenues, and leverage our Scandic Friends program and partnerships to strengthen even further loyalty. But while we're keeping the eyes on 2030, we're also constantly every day making sure that we're building commercial excellence. And there, as we know, and Peter will talk about more when we come to the everyday operations, we need to drive occupancy every single day. We need to fill our hotels. Jens said that there is unfilled capacity, and that's what we need to do. We also need to increase guest spend, meaning that we need to drive rates and we need to sell more to every single customer. And we need to build loyalty, giving guests a reason to come back to Scandic. Thank you.

Thank you, Tess. A few questions for you to follow up. The launch of the loyalty program in September, first version, as you said, how has that been received?

It has been received really well among the members, and it has actually lived up to our expectations. We have seen, so far -- it's quite a short period, but we have seen higher inflow of new members and also more activation in the program. But I think with our new web and app and also the partnership with SAS, the real impact is still to come.

Because that's, of course, my natural follow-up question if you have received new customers.

Yes.

And it sounds like you expect that in this step rather?

Absolutely.

And I also want to ask about the additional sales. You have gone through how you work, but just -- I don't know, maybe I'm an amateur, but I'm thinking it's easier said than done. So could you be even more concrete about how you drive these additional sales?

Yes. Well, as I said, 66% of the bookings, we control through our own channels. And that means that we're also all the time collecting information about these customers. So we know basically what they want and so forth. We know quite a lot about them. And this gives us tremendous opportunity to sell more, both when they book in the new web, it's designed so you can kind of add more services to your stay and personalize it. We can do it before they arrive at the hotel, in the pre kind of stay phase. And then I think that what we sometimes forget is that we're in the volume business. So if we have 20 million guests coming to our hotels every year, if we would be able to -- even to 10% of those 2 million, we would be able to sell something more, let's say, SEK 100, that becomes a lot of money. That's already SEK 200 million, and Par would be very happy. So I think that we have tremendous opportunity, and we need to start harvesting all of these opportunities we have. And we can do that now also because we have better data and analytics. So we know when to sell something and what you're willing to pay for.

It sounds like a reminder that we're in the golden age of data and how important that is. Thank you so much, Tess.

Thank you.

And from the commercial side to the operations and the hands-on business. As you will hear from the next speaker, Scandic is ranked as one of the best hotel operators in the world. Why is that? And how can one improve if already among one of the best? The speaker who will answer those questions and more is a group veteran. Possibly his achievements with the highest bragging rights is that he co-created the Scandic logo back in 2003. So please welcome Peter Jangbratt, Chief Operational Officer of Sweden and Denmark.

Thank you, Emelie. So going from seamless customer journeys and market growth and expansion plans, it's now time for some really hands-on stuff. Operational excellence, or as we say at Scandic, beds, burgers and beers. Today, I will share some examples how we work today and of course, some inspiring thoughts about the future. But before we embark on that journey, I would like to share with you a film that we show for all team members how we want the customers to feel when they stay at Scandic. It's based on 4 areas: always welcoming, a good night's sleep, a great start of the day, and for a better tomorrow. So let's roll the film and see what we can achieve. [Presentation]

So at Scandic, we talk a lot about this operational model. And I would like to share and guide you through how we work with our 280 hotels on a daily matter. It's a lot about taking a lot of small steps 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. So we base it on 3 areas: the guest, the team members and of course, you, the owners and our profits. I think it's very important that these 3 are balanced over time to create the most profitable and long-term sustainable result. I think that we also have a clear blueprint that is ready for a scalable rollout. So fantastic to hear about expansion plans. This model is supporting all our brands, of course, as you said, Tess, we have Scandic Go, we have Scandic, and we have the Signature Collection. And we have a very large number of well-developed KPIs that we use to guide direction and seek for inspiration and also to drive change and improvements. We measure a lot at Scandic. We measure sales per working hour, we measure GOP conversion, we measure clean room per working hour, et cetera, et cetera. All our leaders, and I actually see you there, Peter, fantastic. They start the workday by analyzing what happened yesterday, how was our sales, how was our manning, what can we change and how can we contribute tomorrow and learn from that. And maybe more important, what about the upcoming weekend. So we think that we have constant improvements. And after 60 years, this is very important, after 60 years of experience, I think that we have found something that works in all our markets. Let me share 3 interesting examples. One important area that you touched upon, Isabelle, is our sustainable footprint, where we can drive change and at the same time contribute to a better world and save some money. Every year, this is an impressive number. Every year, 20 million people enter our hotels. And a few years ago, we did a strategic effort of what we call EcoStay. It's for customers staying more than 2 nights that we don't, per default, clean the room. So if you stay 2 nights or more, you need to inform us if you want a regular cleaning or if you want us to just go into a room and do a security check, take out the waste and then leave the room as it is. So how many people use this strategic effort? Yes, if you look at this hotel as an example, last year, more than 50,000 guests stayed 2 nights or more. That's like 150 per day. 30%, 50 people, asked for normal cleaning and 66% asked for EcoStay. So I think that's a fantastic example how you can save some money by saving working hours, but also do some good for the environment, combine smartness, reducing water and chemical consumptions. Today, we have 7 million check-ins. When I need energy, I look at this number. Every afternoon, 20,000 customers come through our doors. What a fantastic opportunity to drive change. That means that we have like 75 per hotel. So here's a great opportunity to do some upsell. Upsell is nice because that's clear money going directly to your pocket. And last year, we did an upsell activity here in Sweden, as an example, during a campaign period. We managed to upsell to take a room category and sell it to the next level to 68,000 times, adding a value of SEK 17 million. And that goes directly into the bottom line probably. And then again, if you take this hotel as an example, we managed to sell 3,417 rooms, upsell, looking forward towards with a sea view, and that created a value of SEK 940,000, close to SEK 1 million. I mean, it's impressive. Then as a market leader, of course, we have significant economies of scale and especially within procurement. And that's sort of the solid base for creating a good and stable margin. And we oversee these costs all the time for sure. But it's not about making good agreements when you're at the table. It's also about looking into the future, trying to identify what is happening in the world around us and how can we drive change if we have something that is not good for our products, so that we buy stuff where the prices are going severely up, we need to act and try to find different alternatives to still keep our margins. And here, I know, Jens, that you always share this fantastic example. A few years ago, there was a severe cost increase in bacon. You know that you take bacon from the belly. And we thought the prices went up so far. So we need to find another solution. What can we do? And then our purchasing department in combination with F&B found that you can actually take pork. You can take bacon from the neck. So by going from taking belly bacon to neck bacon, we managed to save, only in Sweden, SEK 10 million. because we buy a lot of bacon. It's 180 tonnes per year, which is fantastic. And the GM here, Peter, he saved SEK 254,000 last year just by transferring from belly bacon to neck. And there's another upside as well. There is a surplus of neck bacon and it's actually also less fat and less salt, which is good for the health. So we say that we have a world-class leading operating model. How do we then achieve this? We have a strong operational backbone, most probably you feel that already now, where we strive to improve and drive change and optimize all the processes all the day. This to achieve the highest guest satisfaction. And of course, our key members are the team member engagement. So we implement a lot of practices. We minimize waste. We drive loyalty, and it's all about creating a maximum value for both customers and Scandic. And Jens, I think that you said something important. The proof is in the pudding. So let me show you some examples that I started with in the beginning. Our first area, our profits, we measure hotel efficiency through GOP margin. We take total sales, reduce the salaries and the cost of goods sold. And I think that's one of the most important KPIs that you can have when you work at the hotel. And why is that? Because it's a KPI that you, as a leader, can influence every day. So I often tell the general managers, don't get carried away and think about the electricity situation in Europe or the election in U.S. or the war in Ukraine, think about your circular influence, stuff that you can change here and now every day. It's boiling down to smart manning, purchasing loyalty and, of course, things like upsell. And ladies and gentlemen, we get better day by day. I think you had a fantastic start, Jens. We really feel energized now. We have improved our margins to very high levels. And to quote one of my fellow friends at Scandic, there is a lot of money between good and great. So if you look at independent researches conducted by global advisory firms, I believe that we are one of the most efficient global operators in the world. Guest satisfaction. We measure guest satisfaction through NPS, Net Promoter Score. We do it on a daily basis, and we have improved, during the last 10 years, 10 points, which is very strong. And it's maybe the most important investment we've ever done. It is through well-planned renovations, extended digital service offerings, but also the extensive trainings that you mentioned in the beginning, Jens, regarding training our team members. We are now at record levels, and we have the highest engagement and the score among our team members. And we see great improvements in breakfast and in value for money. So the third area, the team member engagement then, the key to drive customer satisfaction. We believe that we have valued and engaged team members that support our vision and that go above and beyond. And we also know that experienced and well-trained team members, they build trust and loyalty over time. So I think we all are very proud that we have high team member engagement in all countries that also has been consistent for a while. So we have a plug-and-play operating model and the key success factors are we have a strong corporate culture that we combine with high team member engagement. We have standardized and well-defined concepts and a consistent and detailed follow-up. And this effectiveness is shown in our achievement over time. You see that we have a tangible improved result. So I dare to say, with 60 years of experience, we can now offer an innovative and scalable well-proven blueprint. It's easy to seamlessly grow out and to integrate more hotels. So that was the past. Let's look forward. We are proud, but never satisfied. There's always room for improvement, and that's the key working at Scandic, the consistent movement every day, all the time. We now strive for even higher guest satisfaction and even higher efficiency. And we do this through investing in new digital tools, of course. So let's look into the future of Scandic 2030. Tess, you mentioned that we are rolling out OPERA Cloud at our hotels, providing a fantastic commercial guest experience and the commercial upside. For us in operations, it's boiling down to a smoother personalized space, of course, for our guests, but also a streamlined and well-organized, well-thought-through process of one way of working. We have one platform that we connect all our operations. It's a streamlined process where we have solutions and all of these connections will make more efficient workflows. The system that will be linked together will have built-in AI capabilities and learn for the future. But one of the most important connection is the one from the top line one and the manning system that will create huge benefits for us going forward. We will get recommendation how we will staff our hotels in the future. So what is the upside then for our guests? Well-improved customer services and personalized guest experiences. And for us, behind the scenes, all team members now can use the same tools, creating a consistent and efficient way of working. That was some benefits from OPERA Cloud. Let me now share with you one fantastic interesting thing. We would like to harvest how we can man our hotels in the future. Today, we have 5 different manning systems at Scandic. Just before summer, we will launch one called Quinyx. It's a fantastic workforce management system that will optimize our workforce planning even more. It will be one system for all our markets. It's a fully automated labor forecasting system and a platform that we can use throughout the company. And just to give you some examples how this works or will work in the future, I can actually swap shifts with you during the weekend. If you want the weekend free, I can take your shift just by entering that into the system. And finally, we have the right people at the right place at the hotels. We, as an employer, we can also see that when we have market changes, we get the sports activity into a city, for example, then we can push out that if we have a new top line and the system will automatically put the right man in there. And that creates, of course, a great flexibility. And then maybe even more important, if you work part-time at the hotel, you have the opportunity to get more shifts at one of the other 27 hotels that we have around in the city. So Jens, it's a win-win for all team members and Scandic. And I dare to say, with this enhanced flexibility, we will get significant improvements in working hours. So it's boiling down to the right people at the right time, at the right place, at the right skill sets, smart manning. It's small details that are very important to drive and optimize our business every day. All our hotels have different occupancy levels. We all have a normal stable customer base, except when new capacity is added on. The challenge and the opportunity, of course, is to manage the events that occur occasionally. It can be sports event, it can be onetime affairs and that kind of stuff. We would like to have a manning system that mirror the occupancy levels no matter what happens in the market. This new tool will support us in a more professional way and the salary cost at Scandic nowadays, we are up at SEK 6 billion. Just imagine that we can save 3 to 4 hours per hotel per day, and you will have another SEK 100 million. So it's all boiling down to our capabilities to drive an even more commercially and efficient Scandic through a one world-class operating model. We do that in combination with one hospitality enterprise platform and workforce management solution. So we are in a very interesting phase. I've now been with Scandic for more than 20 years. I think that the upcoming 2, 3 years, more stuff, more interesting changes will come than we have experienced during the last 10 years. So how do we then create this long-term sustainable result? It is not about building a rocket or going to the moon. It's by making the organization continue, as we have been doing during the last 60 years, take all these steps every day to make that movement, and that would create the best result ever. It is a little bit like running fast with a bathrobe, if you ever have tried that. So it's boiling down to beds, burgers and beers. Thank you.

Thank you, Peter, for the real hands-on stuff. I just have to ask you because you say you're one of the best, most efficient hotel operators in the world, but you're very open with how you work and how you operate. Why doesn't your competitors just copy you?

Exactly. It's a very good question, because it boils down to consistency. You need to do it over a very long time. It is about high team member engagement and that you have this strong corporate culture to drive it over every day, all the small details.

You also talked about procurement. I'm still stuck on the belly bacon, neck bacon thing and how much you can save on that and how much you import or buy?

180 tonnes.

Yes, right.

In Sweden only.

In Sweden only.

We like bacon.

So is that a unique example? Like can you work with procurement everywhere? Or how does it work?

Yes, we work with it every day. That's actually the key. I had a fantastic experience a few months ago. I'm sitting in the office next to the food and beverage team. And then we flew up in the chair and say, okay, Peter, here we go again and say, what's the challenge? Yes. For some reason, orange prices are going up. Okay? Why is that? There is some sort of disease called citrus greening effect bacteria coming to all citrus products. And there is something called yellow dragon or something. So they had to take the orange trees down and replace them. You can't treat the trees. It takes time to make them grow up again. That combined with the hurricanes that we had put us in a different situation. We had a very high price increase on orange juice. So what we did then was trying to balance the consumption of orange juice by adding a new product. So we put in lingonberry next to the orange juice. And that took down the orange juice consumption by 5% to 10%. And then after a while, we managed to identify and find some nectar replacing the orange juice all over the company. And that saved us another 45%. So [Foreign Language] every day trying to identify what's happening around the corner and act. That's the key, that you act. Don't wait.

Also I have to ask you then since you said you have a plug-and-play operating model. You're looking at Germany, for example. Could you then just plug and play your operational model into Germany, and theoretically, what I'm after, any market?

Yes, for sure. And that's -- I never feel worried when -- we get happy when we can read a press release. Now there's a hotel coming there, hotel coming there, that's fantastic. We just use the same tools that we normally do. It's a plug-and-play model, that if a hotel like we did in Germany needs refurbishment, then we have this circular room concept, then we start immediately to renovate according to that, something that has been pre-identified and developed by Tess and her commercial team in conjunction with purchasing and the technical department. So we go directly from signing into renovation, and then it just takes for us in operation a few weeks to establish the cloud-based systems and do the trainings. And the best example that we actually have, a few years ago in Sweden, we managed from signing to open the doors as a Scandic, it took 8 weeks, but 2 weeks for Christmas holidays. So I normally say 6 weeks.

I'm a little bit amazed about that pace. But thank you so much, Peter, for now. You're off the hook.

Thank you.

Okay. We're closing in on our final presentation of today and maybe the one that most people in this forum or room looks forward to, financials, the numbers, understanding how all these initiatives or what the initiatives and plans can give Scandic. So the next speaker is, according to his colleagues, a very curious person, which is reflected in his background. He has worked for domestic and international organizations over several sectors, transportation and retail being some of them of both large and smaller sizes. So please welcome Par Christiansen, Chief Financial Officer.

Thank you, Emelie. Good afternoon, everyone. Happy to be presenting it to you today. It's time to start to wrap up, to talk a little bit what all this means for our financials. And I want to give you a clear picture of the investment levels going forward and also how we see that we can create shareholder value. As you can see, we are on a journey for continued growth and very strong margins. There we have the slide. Scandic, as you know, has a very long history of growth and margin improvements. Excluding the years of the pandemic, we have performed in line with our targets. We have also shown strong results in the recent years, even if the Nordics has been in a downturn and Finland being impacted by the war in Ukraine. That shows our track record that we have a resilient business model, because of our strong cost control, because of our flexibility in our rents and workforce, and our ability to handling market dynamics. And as consumer and business confidence return, we see growth opportunities in rates, in occupancy as well as in more events and meetings. We also see, as you heard before, many opportunities to add new hotels to our portfolio. Next slide. We have grown some 16% since 2019. The portfolio in itself have supported by 9%, which means that we have also grown like-for-like. And by looking at like-for-like, it's important to see that in 2019, we had a 66% occupancy rate. But last year, '24, we had a 62% occupancy rate. So there's a huge growth opportunity. And as you heard from Isabelle, the market trends support this growth opportunity going forward. And also mentioned by Jens, we will work on the tail. We will exit some hotels, but do not expect the same exit rate, rather expect new hotels added that will then add to the net portfolio. Looking at our margins. Our EBITDA margin has improved 25% since 2019. Main contributor is from the portfolio, high efficiency in operations, as you heard from Peter, and very good cost control. We have also improved our profitability in terms of return on capital employed. We've improved by 8% since 2019, of course, by adjusting the total assets returning from the pandemic, but mainly from improved profitability with disciplined investments, hotel portfolio optimization, commercial excellence, cost control and workforce management. And going forward, we want to protect this level, both by improving our profitability, but also by having a balanced view and using capital in an efficient way. And these improvements have ensured that we can have a strong cash generation, allowing for dividends and investments in our future business to very attractive returns. The strong return from the pandemic, the convertible bond maturing, coupled with the strong result in the recent years has resulted in a net debt on historical low levels. We plan to maintain a controlled net debt position demonstrated by our updated financial targets. In addition, we have since last year, our new sustainable-linked financing solution in place that will support our growth and investment agenda as well as seasonality in cash flow. Scandic in its best shape ever. You just heard my colleagues talk about some areas. Tess talking about sales in our own channels, opportunities with the web, with the app and the loyalty. You heard Peter talking about the strong operating model, but also new workforce management solution coming supporting even more. We have a strong financial position, low debt, strong cash flow with a clear path for healthy growth with strong margins. And I think this truly marks a strong position and a shift to a more commercial and efficient Scandic. We have communicated financial targets until '27. But today, you heard my colleagues spoken about a time beyond that, looking at 2030. And as you hear, we see a strong future even after our financial target period. If I now explain our midterm financial targets, we start with very low debt, balancing risk, growth and margins. Our target is to grow at healthy levels of at least 5%. We have a target ratio of a margin above 11%, with a balanced risk demonstrated by a target leverage ratio below 1x. In addition, dividends and distribution to shareholders will be the main focus for the coming years, and we have taken numerous measures in line with that. We are now positioned for continued performance. Within the portfolio, as you heard, to grow with Scandic Go and in selected cities in Germany. In commercial, with the new commercial capabilities business and consumer confidence returning, we are really set up to grow. And we did operations, we have a long history of good cost control and exceptional operational efficiency. And you hear from Peter that we have more to add in this area. We are a high cash-generative business. As you can see, we generated some strong cash flow, SEK 2.3 billion in '23 and now SEK 2.0 billion, '24. This is some 9% to 11% of our revenues. We now see low debt in interest rate that we have had in the past years that also support our cash flow. We also see the continued growth and profitability, generating even more cash. This means that we will see strong cash flow going forward and earnings per share improving further. We will use our cash in a very, very structured way. Firstly, we will secure a strong financial position. We will also secure a high financial flexibility. Secondly, we will use our CapEx for expansion, grow in the Nordics and Germany. Maintenance CapEx, we have to ensure attractive product and a commercial offering. IT and digitalization, we need to improve our commercial and operational capabilities as we go on. And not last, but thirdly, dividends, at least a 50% of net results, and we'll also come back with recurring buybacks dependent on our cash position. A little bit looking back between 2017 and 2019, a part of the cash went to growth in hotel maintenance and also IT digitalization. This level was 6.5%. Looking forward, we believe that this level will be for a financial target period, '25 to '27, be around 5% to 6%. And as you saw my colleagues show, there's a lot of growth behind these numbers. So we need this CapEx to be able to deliver on our strategy. And also bear in mind, when you look at timings, that CapEx from signing a new hotel occurs some 2 years after. For Scandic Go, may be faster and for a takeover, also faster. But from a completely new greenfield development, it will take longer. And I want you to see these CapEx levels as a representation of our normalized levels for Scandic and serve as an important pillar for our strategy. We will deliver our dividend policy and optimize shareholder value. With our cash flow and CapEx explained, we would then have a position for distribution to shareholders. We will optimize shareholder value with our dividend policy as well as when we have strong cash position, use recurring buyback programs. We did, as we said last quarter, we paid an extra dividend. We also started a SEK 300 million buyback program that will run until March '23 -- '25, sorry. The Board now announced that they will propose an ordinary dividend of SEK 2.6 per share, that amount to SEK 570 million. The Board also have an intention to start a new buyback program of SEK 500 million that will run -- start after the coming AGM. This means that since we launched our new financial targets and capital allocation principles, would have distributed nearly SEK 2 billion until Q1 '26 to our shareholders. To a little bit to summarize what drives our attractive value creation. Within the revenue growth area, we will add new hotels and capacity. We will have the improved digital capabilities, the loyalty and partnership programs. Within profitability and margins, we will combine commercial excellence of operational excellence with optimizing our hotel portfolio. We will have a strong cash flow and disciplined capital allocation principles with clear focus in our hotel expansion, maintenance and IT investments. We will optimize shareholder value with balanced risk financial flexibility. And we would, as I said before, have distributed nearly SEK 2 billion within 16 months from the extra dividend in December. We believe we have more well equipped -- we are more well equipped into an exciting future. Strong cash generation and lower number of shares as a result from buybacks, meaning a strong capacity to pay dividends and attractive earnings per share development. And I can reflect after 1 year in the company that I'm confident that we are on the right track, making the best out of Scandic, building on our strength as well as continue to develop where we can improve. So thank you, and I want to hand back to you, Jens, for some concluding remarks.

Thank you, Par. You almost summarized it -- all of it in a very good way. First of all, thank you for hanging in there with us. You have been here now for 3 hours. I'm sure you're longing either for the Q&A or for the break afterwards. But thank you for hanging in with us the last 3 hours. I hope that today gave you a very good picture of Scandic, both where we stand and also where we want to head with this company, also how we can take a fantastic and great company like Scandic to an even higher level. We have all the possibilities ahead of us. We have created a fantastic momentum and also foundation that we now want to really capitalize on. So I think I'm so proud of what we, as a team, deliver throughout these last couple of years after pandemic. But I'm also looking very much forward to what lies ahead of us. So I tried in the beginning to tell you a bit of that, our ambitions. Isabelle gave very good insight to how the market is expected to react, which I think gave a lot of flavor into this. You have heard me also talking a lot about how we aim to grow, also how we can grow even with more hotels and some of them at a lower cost per key due to the Scandic Go concepts. That also is reflected in what Par showed us when we look at the CapEx -- expected CapEx levels going forward. So I know we are promising quite a lot here today, but that's because we have a great belief in what we are doing. You heard Tess talking about all our commercial capabilities and focus areas and a lot of opportunities within everything that happens within digitalization and partnerships, hopefully much more to come in that field. You heard Peter talking about how we exactly [indiscernible] baked on deals and orange juice, et cetera, are actually working on a day-to-day detailed manner. And that's actually what we are doing. We do it all over, that's 20,000 team members when we are at the highest in the summer season, where everybody is fighting for the last little penny in the way we operate and to secure efficiency and good cost control. So we're doing that extremely well. And Par, you have been with us for a year and then I understand why you are satisfied CFO because we are doing a lot of good stuff, and we have a lot yet to come. So all in all, I want to just thank you all for at least spending 3 hours with us and listening in before I hand it back now to you, Emelie, and we can open the Q&A. Thank you.

Thank you, Jens. Yes, enough good presentations for today. Thank you for summarizing it. Let's bring Par up again to have you on stage for the Q&A. I was thinking I was going to start the Q&A off, but I think that people are eager now to maybe post their questions because you've been very patient today. So I'll look out for the floor, you on the floor, you can have -- a microphone will be brought to you if you want to just raise your hand and ask your question. And yes, we have one over here.

Karl-Johan Bonnevier from DNB Markets. Thank you for a lot of good data points and lots of good new kind of initiatives. And looking at the room growth ambition of adding 10,000 rooms now up to 2030, could you break down that on maybe KPIs, what you see investment level per room? You've given a little indication but maybe good to hear what number you would think there and also maybe the EBITDA contribution when it's fully ramped?

Yes, it's a good question. I know that you as an analyst would like us to disclose all the ambitions in the smallest detail, Karl-Johan. But I think it's obvious that per key, we invest less in a hotel when it comes to the Scandic Go where we aim to grow of our portfolio growth. And that also brings down, you could say, the average CapEx per key because we don't invest in the [indiscernible] restaurants and then in the kitchens and the meeting areas and spas and gyms and what have you. So that is part of the reason why we think this is very controlled. They also contribute to a very good margin, and they will definitely support us down the road. Right now, they don't support a lot because it's 2 hotels and you wouldn't see it out of the whole portfolio. But once we have opened and you can say until 2030, of course, they make a greater, greater impact on our profits on that one. And I think we have a very clear way of dealing with CapEx in general and control it. I think we are much better today than we were 5, 6 years ago. At that time, we controlled and did a lot of stuff in the different markets, decided by them. And today, we do much more decided from a group level and you can call it more top-down, but we secure also that we bring our well-proven concepts and the best bets and the best look and feel and the best designs and what have you. And then we change it down the road, so you don't have all the hotels look alike, but we do a lot of that. And I don't know, Par, if you want to add something to the...

But I think, Karl, food for thought, you can look at the disclosed numbers on the CapEx for the current portfolio. And if you divide the CapEx number by the number of rooms, you will probably be around SEK 300,000 per room. So that is probably a good number. And as Jens says, it's probably a little bit cheaper to have Scandic Go room and a little bit more expensive with the normal Scandic. And maybe if we expand in Germany, we sometimes get some key money. So you need to generate a little bit of a new mix of that, but it's just an easy number, if you want that.

Did you have a second question? You don't have to, but if you want to.

No, no. I have a lot of questions, I can keep you going. But continuing on the CapEx per room, I think the SEK 300,000 you have per room for now is much higher than it has been historically to be fair. And I think historically, you talked about SEK 220,000, SEK 230,000 per room or something like that. So is the new level what you think is more prudent for the future? Because I guess that would get you closer to the 2% you talked about in your chart rather than 1%.

And I think if you go a couple of years back, it was probably pre-inflation. So some of these numbers are also because of inflation numbers on building costs and whatnot. So -- and I think the mix right now is not the same mix that we have now with the Scandic Go. So it's probably maybe a little bit on the high side, but it's a good proxy.

So continuing on that, I think historically, you talked about SEK 55,000 to SEK 60,000 in contribution per new room on EBITDA level. So in a similar kind of way, should we expect that to be higher going forward then to compensate for the high CapEx?

No, but it has grown, prices has increased. So prices are definitely higher than SEK 50,000, SEK 60,000, SEK 70,000 for a room renovation. When we do renovations on a room isolated, today, the price is maybe between SEK 100,000 and SEK 120,000 or so. Then it depends on whether we have responsibilities also for bathrooms or not or whether we have to do a lot in the other areas of the hotel. And that's what brings this average up. And as I said, I hope that we can really grow with a lot of Scandic Go hotels. That will be good for us. But I also think that we actually work a lot with minimizing the cost per key in what we already renovate. We've also seen that we keep it down a bit when we see and face a hotel that is in a lot of CapEx need, but don't deliver over time, et cetera, then we eventually don't exceed it or let's say, we don't stay in the hotel, we actually leave it. And you've seen leaving more hotels, which is also in average benefiting CapEx.

Sorry, if I was a little unclear there. I meant SEK 50,000 in EBITDA contribution per room. That was some sort of old rule times. Is that too low going forward as well then?

It's a number you can calculate when you look at the EBITDA numbers versus -- we have 58,000 keys and then we do like [ 2.5 ] and you can calculate it kind of from that how much we will bring. We don't think that any of the new hotels will dilute the marginal, say, targets that we have. We have been very good at adding stronghold sales that actually contributed to the margins and result per key. And we have also been good at leaving the low performing and the problems that we have.

Okay. We started with the easy questions. Anyone else? Yes, we've one over there.

I have 2 questions. My first question is you're #1 in the Nordics, but you're not #1 in Sweden and Norway. Is this a problem?

Well, it depends on what you look at. We earn much more money than #2. We don't measure this on the turnover. We measure this on result and we are by far #1.

The franchise, will that make you bigger in Sweden and Norway? Or is it in Denmark or other? And what -- please explain more about this franchise and how it will work?

But franchise is a good add-on. And I mentioned earlier that as you know, also that before my CEO job here, I was heading up Denmark for more than 10 years. And actually, there are quite some cities where we used to be present and where we are no longer present. And I think there are a lot of good partnerships out there that we can benefit from. And that is not only in Denmark. That's also in Sweden, Norway and then Finland. If you look at the 18 franchise hotels we have today, they are all in Sweden and Norway. So today, we have none in Finland and Denmark. So of course, there is a potential in those countries, but still to add more in both Sweden and Norway.

Okay. Before continuing with the floor, I'm going to online. One person wants to know why are hotel prices in Nordic capital still only about 50% of those in London and Paris, for example? Is there still potential for repricing? I think I heard you've talked about this morning.

Yes, but I think they are -- I would love that they were 50% of the average in London and Paris because when you travel to London today, you easily pay between SEK 7,000 and SEK 8,000 for, I would say, a Scandic kind of hotel. So prices have really gone up in those markets. And of course, there's a potential, but we kind of sit on approximately 60% of the market in the Nordics, which means that we need the whole market to follow, but driving prices is very important.

Okay. A question from Yuan. How is Scandic positioning its capital strategy to effectively navigate potential market uncertainties in the coming years? Do you want to start, Par?

Yes, I can start. I mean we have the financial target and have a net debt below [ 1. ] And I think that's one start. And as I said, we will continue to invest in the company, but start, as I showed on the slide, on the left side with the financial position and high flexibility is super important. And on top of our own cash, we sit on SEK 3.7 billion financing agreement that could support us if things vary in different ways. So I think that's our strength, and we will try to have that strength all the time.

Do you want to add something, Jens?

No, I think that's fine.

Okay. Then we go to the room again. Yes, you will get -- if no one else has a question for...

I'll be quick then because it ties on to the answer to the question you just had. If you look at -- a lot of good KPIs today comparing you to 2019. But if you look at the breakeven point of the operation today compared to 2019, how much have you been able to lower it? How much flexibility is your cost structure today when you are looking at it? You have talked about renegotiating lease agreements and similar kind of things to have clauses that, say, doesn't make you end up in the problems that you had during the pandemic.

No, but you heard several things and it deserves more than actually a bit more fragmented answer because in certain markets, a breakeven level is higher. We need more occupancy and guests through in order to breakeven, for instance, Germany market or even the Danish market. And some of the hotels in Finland with high guarantee leases also have another breakeven level. If you look at Norway and Sweden, we have a much lower breakeven level. And we have seen definitely that Norway is the country where we breakeven, you can say, at the lowest point because we have a lot of turnover-based leases and a very, very strong control of those, let's say, year-around changes in the market conditions where we have some hotels that are having extremely high occupancy in certain periods and very, very low in other. And they're very good at working with this seasonality. So Norway, by far, the lowest and Denmark, Germany and some of the Finnish on a higher breakeven level.

We have some questions over there, I think, in the back, yes?

Maybe ladies first, but okay -- good, Raymond.

Raymond from Nordea. Two questions from me. First, regarding franchising. Is it -- have I understood it correctly that you're maybe more focusing on established independent hotels and trying to convert them under the -- sorry, the Scandic brand rather than, say, maybe outsourcing the whole construction and new projects into franchises?

No, no. You can say the franchise for us is actually -- it's an add-on to what we're already doing, and you saw us having quite ambitious growth plans for the lease portfolio. And the franchise partnerships, we are extremely selective also with whom to partner up with. We already have some good partners, but we also find that there are a few potentials here and there where we can bring a Scandic flag, and we can work with these. So it is not converting any of existing hotels or that it is to really selectively work with some hotels in destinations where we are not present. I think it's also to add value to our guests that we want to, as the largest operator, cover the Nordics the best we can. And I think that's the way of doing it. And you can say, things have changed. If you look 20 years back and look at today, if you look at all our, let's say, look at the pipeline, look at the growth of Scandic, most of the growth lies in bigger markets with a lot of hotels already and where we grow because we know these markets, we have a full year round business, which is extremely strong. So we like that predictability, you could say, in these markets. So whether it's strong leisure markets or corporate markets or the combination, so we have less, you can say, growth trends in what was the seventh, eighth and ninth city in Denmark, for instance, than we did before. And that's why it makes -- it brings value to us to add franchise -- potential franchise. But we don't think we should convert and think it will be an add-on to what we already do. I hope that answered.

Yes. Very clear. Makes sense. And just on sort of these digital investments that you made here that should drive sort of more upselling, better planning, lower OpEx. In terms of timing, like when have these efforts launched? And could you provide us a bit more color maybe on when we should expect that to hit the P&L?

Yes. But we can discuss also in the break afterwards, and you can discuss with Rasmus if he's cautious in guiding in the best way we can. I think we did a lot of stuff, and we have invested quite a lot during the last 1.5 years in creating capabilities. We have done the most of the investments in the loyalty program for launching it. We have launched the OPERA cloud that's fully done. We did it in 6 months. We did it even faster than we anticipated and at lower costs versus planned, as Tess was telling about. When we are cautious in telling about the future, it's because I think the world is changing all the time. And of course, there's a lot of solutions that we want to benefit from into our systems as well, whether it's to build a chat box for the booking departments or new solution for something that will add new features and also some new expected investments. But we are already now starting to cannibalize or sorry, to get benefit out of the investments we have done. Tess already told you that our loyalty program is starting to pick up well. We have a good inflow of new guests. The average spend per guest is going up. Now we launched the web and the app in Q2 this year. We expect that to be a benefit right away. But of course, we don't want you to expect that we will go through the roof in a quarter. But day by day, we are building a stronger and stronger Scandic. And we don't think that investments will go skyrocketing. We think we have done a lot during the last years, but adding more features all the time, of course, we will.

Before going to the lady in the back, a quick question from online. Question's on the timing of capital allocation. SEK 570 million in dividends, when will it be paid? SEK 500 million buyback program, when will it be launched? When will it end?

Yes, the dividend is dependent on the AGM that will be held on the 6th of March. And usually, we pay it in 2 installments. So you have to wait for that.

6th of May.

Yes, 6th of May. And for the buyback program, we also will seek the approval at AGM to be able to buy back shares. And then it will be launched directly after and run until March '26.

Good. Please.

Adela Dashian from Jefferies. Just a quick follow-up on what you said earlier about the average spend per guest going up. We see good growth in the leisure segment. Should we expect that to be a higher profitability segment for you as well? And are you also meeting more competition there, given that it's not really your core?

Well, first of all, yes, we expect definitely that future growth will come even more from leisure than it will from corporate. We expect corporate to continue to grow but at a lower pace than the leisure segment. So we are very focused on that. When that is said, of course, I don't agree with you that we are not in the leisure segment. I think most hotels that operate like we do with multiple and a lot of hotels need to be very strong in those segments. Scandic is known for being the best when we serve all the families and people traveling around and spend a lot of time with us during the leisure season. So if you look at Scandic's mix today, we are maybe at a 55% or so corporate and 45% leisure. And for many, many years, leisure has been a huge part of our business. So we are extremely good at that. A business hotel can be a business hotel on a Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday. And then come on a Friday, you will see that you have kids buffets and you have a lot of stuff that you didn't have on Tuesday. So we are good at steering around a lot of our hotels.

Anyone else in the room? Of course. But give me a second to see if everyone else wants to question. If you're good in the room, I'll get to you. I'll get to online first then. Okay. So Andre wants to know, you talked about organic growth. Could you consider M&A? And if yes, what could be an attractive target size segment, et cetera?

I would say we are a good businessman at Scandic and women...

Never closing any doors.

And no, no. But of course, I can't tell you whether we always look for all opportunities around us. And of course, we always look if there's something out there, which we should look at and grab if it makes sense. We would never do an M&A if it didn't bring a lot of value to Scandic. So -- but we don't have something that we, at least, today wanted to disclose. But all the time, we're looking. But as you see with our targets, et cetera, now we have a lot of focus on securing what we can deliver upon with our own force and what we can control kind of 100%. That is how we grow the company from where we stand.

This is probably the same answer to Alexander's questions, if acquisitions will be relative achieving your growth targets or if the plan is exclusively focused on organic growth. So the answer is it depends on opportunities.

Of course, it is -- we don't talk about M&As and until we talk about it. And that's the way it has to be. We -- it's not that you should expect me tomorrow morning to come with something about that, then we would talked to you about it today. So -- but of course, we look Scandic has a good position. I had a question a lot with also analysts in the room. Why do we have a target of a maximum of onetime EBITDA in terms of debt level? And it has to be because everybody can read the numbers. We create a lot of cash. We have sufficient cash both to handle this growth plan to deliver a lot of dividends and even do buybacks. So if I made it 2x or we decided to take, let's say, 2x, then everybody would have asked, okay, what are you buying tomorrow? And if we need to relook at the financial targets, we will.

And a question from Thomas. How does Scandic plan to optimize its commercial partnerships to drive revenue growth in the next 12 to 18 months? So the short [ sprint. ]

Yes, I don't know. Tess is nodding. Do you want to maybe to answer it or -- I don't know, but maybe you can come with the question again.

Yes. Okay. So the question, it felt like a Tess question. How does Scandic plan to optimize its commercial partnerships to drive revenue growth in the next 12 to 18 months, so near future?

Yes. I think that I partly answered hopefully that question already because we have just kind of started our partnership. We're actually launching now in April, the first kind of real kind of things together, for example, the tier matching together with SaaS. We have not talked about future other partnerships, and I think there is room for that probably in the next 18 months. But I think that we need to kind of wait for the impact. We're sure that there is going to be impact because we are together with SaaS, for example, now jointly targeting 11 million members in the joint programs. And of course, together with SaaS, we're working very closely to strategic partnerships and work together with them innovating all the time new areas where we can collaborate. So I think we will see a lot of impact going forward.

Hope that answers the question. And going back to Artem who asked quite a few questions on your portfolio. So the first one, 7,000 new rooms in the Nordics, 3,000 new rooms in Germany, 2025, 2030, it's at all via leasing?

Yes. That's via leasing, all of it, yes. And then we add franchise, especially in the Nordics, where we think there are some locations where we can do that. But the 10,000 rooms in total, whereas 7,000 was in the Nordics and 3,000 that will not be totally correct in the last, let's say, column. It might be 7,500 or 2,500 or vice-versa, but this is kind of the target we have, and we want to grow with these 8 to 10 hotels a year.

And format question. 2025 to 2030, are they included in the '25 to '30, meaning is there 6 years period?

We have like 2 things which you need to look into, of course. We have a lot of financial targets. We have the promises when it comes to these financial targets that are until '27. And of course, as some of them, they change fairly fast. I think we even in the autumn talked about -- we talked how much we would expect to pay back to shareholders. And I think at that time, it was like SEK 2.2 billion or so in total to shareholders. And now we have paid almost SEK 2 billion if the board and the AGM decides in May, which we hope and expect. So of course, we need to overlook that we might disclose our -- another, let's say, expectation for at least how much we bring back to the shareholders. That's our intention to secure. But for the long run, there's a lot of what we have spoken about today, that is when it comes to the growth, et cetera, that are until the 2030. So you have to look at these 2. I hope it brings value, we can also elaborate on the side of it if they want to.

Artem question number three, is Scandic going to manage the franchised hotels?

No. Franchised hotels is not managed and operated by us, but that's also why we have a very good, let's say, a very good process right now in creating the best program in franchise because there's a lot of things that we demand in order to become a Scandic. They need to deliver on our promises when it comes to breakfast and service level, et cetera. But we also bring a lot of value into them. And a lot of these hotels might pay the fees to us through all the upside they get. So we are creating a very clear program, but we do not operate the daily operation. But this is well known from all operators in the world that are big that has a lot of franchise, they have the same. They have a lot of follow-up processes in order to achieve what they want to achieve.

And the last one, what are the requirements for new hotels profitability in terms of EBITDA margin, if you have a level at least?

I think you can imagine that it's a bit above what you see that we delivered last year, 11.4% and in between what a hotel delivers and this result, there's all the head office and support offices cost and how much we spend on digitalization and distribution costs and et cetera, what have you. So there's a gab in between that. And of course, we always aim to lift the bar of it when it comes to new hotels. So we always aim to push that a bit and also to be a bit more efficient in overhead. That's what drives the overall EBITDA margin. So -- but we don't disclose a specific number, but you can almost calculate it if you look into the numbers.

You're giving some hints there...

I think I gave you a lot of hints [ of the ] markets a lot...

Yes. Anyone else one the floor? I know, sir, I just want to check if anyone else has one. No, go ahead.

I'll take a chance. But for every question you ask, that's the new ones popping up. So to run those additional questions that...

You know we can also talk in the bar...

If you go back to 2019 again on the Capital Markets Day, you alluded to then to be able to do the expansion in Germany that you might be looking to also take property ownership or in partnership with somebody to get involved with size. Is that ruled out now? Have your strengths in Germany, so you don't really need to have that kind of property angles to get the objects you want to?

I don't think that -- if you look at Scandic today, we have extremely good partnerships. We work with some very, very partners that we have a long relationship with, and I think we have a very good way of finding the right balance between that. So we focus totally on what we are best at, operating hotels. And then there are some very landlords out there, which we love to work with and do even more with. So no, we don't have that on the plate. The good thing is that we have some financial power. So you can say, I was part of this company when we were owned by [ EQT ] as well. And of course, there were some opportunities in the market that we could have grabbed somehow and maybe transfer them back to one of our partners or done it together with somebody and then -- but we don't want to sit on the facilities. We want to do that in the buildings, we want to work with partners like we do.

Good answer. And my original question was more towards the loyalty program. You've now painted quite a rosy picture for where you want to take it, so to say. And could you give us some KPI how much of the REM revenues did it represent during last year? And how profitable is a loyal client compared to one you have to get through the, say, normal kind of booking systems and so on?

We don't want to, again, talk about whether a loyalty customer is paying less or more or we get more or less out of a very loyal client. For us, it's about creating a loyalty with the client that brings them and the guests to bring them back, preferable to Scandic again and again. You have heard the numbers in the past that more than 1/3 of our turnover comes through the loyalty program, it's still the case. We have 2 clear targets, we disclosed one here. We want to grow the base from 3 million to 6 million. members. We think we have good opportunities because we now work with SAS as one partner and maybe more to come, which also enables us to grab customers into our loyalty program in a better way. And we have a clear ambition to grow turnover through the loyalty program. So if you look at the total Scandic numbers, yes, we expect that size, you can say, which is more than 1/3 of the turnover going through the loyalty program, that will definitely increase. Otherwise, we don't see it the way we want to. We want to give them a lot of advantages and make it easier when you are a loyal guest. And I don't say we want to make it complicated if you're not. But eventually, if you want to unlock your door or you want to have features that are easy on your mobile, we need some data from you and the easiest stay is to be part of the program.

That was the last one for you today, sir. I think you will continue at the bar. And if no one else is in the room has -- yes, yes, I know. I'm just checking if anyone else is also -- we know everybody wants to go to the bar, so last question, please.

Sorry. The loyalty program, SaaS loyalty program is like a religion. Men come to me and ask me about how they get benefits. Will you, in your gamification, move to the same model? Or will you give this SaaS to be the religion loyalty?

I don't know if it's a religion, but I think if you look at Scandic's loyal friends, I can tell you it's almost religion as well. We have a lot of members where this is highly, highly important. And it might not be somebody dressed in a suit like I'm right now. It's a lot of workers that are staying because they work in the windmill industry, oil industry or whatever they're sitting in one of our hotels kind of 5 days a week or even maybe 2 or 3 weeks in a row. So a lot of the most loyal guests are extremely loyal to Scandic and has been that for many, many years. So I think it's also maybe religion also. But like Tess was showing, it is the 2 largest programs, the largest in the airline industry, largest in the hospitality industry in the Nordics that are joining forces, you can say strategically, but it's also important to say that it is 2 different programs. So we bring a lot of value to each other, but we own our guests, they own their guests and data, et cetera. So our loyal guest is within us and theirs -- we don't mix up that, but we, of course, want to give a lot of benefits to each other.

Okay. I think there's enough questions for today. I have a last one. Okay, Jens. What is -- or Par, also for that matter. What is the one thing you want anyone listening in today to take with them?

For me, it's -- that Scandic is, like I've said so many times and I know you get tired of listening to this, but we are in the best shape ever and I'm very proud of that. But also I hope you got a hint of all that is cooking in this company. We are very proud but never satisfied. We always have a lot of ambitions. And I see quite a bright future for our industry and also for Scandic going forward. And I hope you also saw that today in everything you heard from us.

Par, Do you have any?

I think we're very good at what we do, and we generate a lot of cash.

Mic drop.

Thank you so much.

That was a very good final word. I think we asked a lot of questions for now, at least in this forum, time to wrap up. And on behalf of myself as a moderator, thank you, the speakers, all of you and all the audience for your engagement, either on-site and online. So Jens, please have the floor to close this off today.

Thank you so much, and thank you for taking us through and taking this day. We actually have some flowers, of course, because you did such a good job. So I'm on this, and then a Danish [indiscernible].

Thank you.

So thank you so much.