SkiStar AB (publ) (SKIS-B.ST) Q1 FY2026 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good Morning, everyone, and welcome to SkiStar's First quarter presentation of 2025 and '26 and really happy to be here today with our CFO, Sara Uggelberg and also our Retail responsible, Anders Aspgard, as we will today have a little bit of a deep dive in our Retail segment. So we will have a short introduction. We will go through our financials, and we will have an outlook, of course, and short repetition of where we are in our strategy and then also talk a bit about the upcoming winter and about the booking situation, which I understand, which is a very important part of this quarter since the quarter is not so big from a financial perspective. So let's spend some time on that to bring some clarity for all of us. So a short introduction. For you who haven't been with us, we are the leading holiday operator for Scandinavia and really glad to have a high satisfaction from our guests, 80% of our guests are highly satisfied with our hospitality. We are really glad to have satisfied employees and also our digital improvement the last couple of years has been significant, and I will soon take you through that as well. Really glad to see that Sälen has stepped up from place #15 to place #13 as -- on the list of the world's largest ski resort from ski days sold. And many of us maybe doesn't recognize Sälen as one of the largest, the biggest ski resort, but that is a fact. And it's really happy to see our improvement and also to have Åre on the top list as well as Trysil, which has bumped up a couple of steps up on this list. So we are working on some strategic initiatives to reach our financial targets. You can read about them in our annual report, but they are, of course, our guideline, and we work with them and to help us every day, we work with our integrated business model. And of course, the integrated business model built on digitalization and our close to 40 million visits. And we have decided to also show you, for the first time, maybe a breakdown of our integrated business model to really show the strength of this business model and how we work with it. And both from a booking situation where the customers book the accommodation. And then the second part is how we work with the guest pre-arrival. And then we are all the time in interaction with our guests from a CRM perspective. And then when the guests arrive, we also work with the guest with the point of sales. So this picture illustrates the different revenue streams and the split with the different revenue streams and the importance of work with our different revenue streams and also develop our revenue streams. And that's why I'm really glad to have Anders here today talking about the revenue stream retail later on in this section. We changed our strategic direction 5 years ago, and it has been a very important change for us since we focus really both on this picture, the top line as well as this one, where we show the EBIT situation. And the EBIT has had a significant improvement from an operational perspective, which is very important for us to talk about and get less importance out of our sales of land or property development, so to say. So here, we guide the market with SEK 70 million to SEK 100 million per year. And last year, it was a little bit lower. But we are proud to improve our EBIT in the operating part of our business. So Sara, should we talk a little bit about our financials.

Thank you, Stefan . And I will start to show you this picture that has been presented before, but it is to point out that we do put our efforts on the guest experience, obviously, together with cost optimization and exploitation opportunities. And I do believe that those together will improve our profitability, increase revenue and improve our operating margin. And the goal is -- or the target is set at 18%. And the financial targets, I mean, the quarter itself, the first quarter, we do have limited business, but the revenue growth in last 12-month perspective has increased from 3.3% to 4.2%. And the operating margin is on par with last year, 17.1%. The debt structure, net debt to EBITDA is still at a very satisfactory level. We do have a low net debt at 1.6x and the headroom to the target of 2.1x is quite high. And that enables us to invest -- further invest in Mountain operations. The dividend at the AGM last week, it was a decision to pay a dividend on SEK 3 per share. And to summarize the quarter -- sorry, I would like to inform you that we have made a reclassification when it comes to property exploitation that used to be included in net sales. As from the 1st of September, property exploitation will be recognized as a net amount in the profit and loss statement. That will impact revenue growth and operating margin. And I would like to -- I will get back to the net sales and operating profit later on, but I would like to address that the equity asset ratio is at a very high level. So it's 50% when excluding IFRS 16. And the net debt, as I said, is fairly low, and that is, of course, during this quarter due to quite high amount of customer advance payments. And net sales is stable. We do have a stable growth during the quarter, corresponding to 12%, primarily driven by Retail and SkiPass All Year, and we will get back to the Retail part later on in this presentation. Net sales by category. And the revenue growth is related to SkiPass and rental income together with sports shops. And even if we have a limited operation during the quarter, retail is an operation that is going on every day and during the hour as well, especially online and at our physical sports shops. And that has led to a net sales development during the quarter of 11%. The operating profit development is, as I said, on par in terms of last 12 months, 17.1%. And so I would say that the underlying operation is very solid during the quarter. And looking ahead or even during this quarter, but we do have diversified revenue streams, and we have increased our share from international guests. The calendar going forward is very favorable. And we also have not just during Christmas and New Year, but also during -- for the Easter, which is earlier this year in comparison with last year. And operating profit per segment, so in total, the operating profit has improved by 1% and the profit has been improved by operating -- from the operation of mounting resource together with Property Development. The impact -- or the negative impact within hotels is due to the acquisition of Topeja, which is Högfjällshotellet operation from Högfjällshotellet. We have had a positive impact when it comes to sales. But in total, the operating profit from the acquisition is negative during the quarter, but that will improve quite significant later on from -- we start from the second and the third quarter. Cash flow and CapEx. If we start with cash flow situation, we have a fairly high cash flow from operating activities, and that has continued during this quarter. And the last 12-month situation is high, more than SEK 1 billion in operating cash flow, which is good. The CapEx has increased, and that has been mentioned before, and that is due to significant investments ahead of the winter season that has been paid to -- during the first quarter. So the CapEx during the quarter amounted to SEK 274 million, which is an increase in comparison with the corresponding quarter last year. The net debt structure is satisfactory, and we do have a financial preparedness, which has increased quite significantly in comparison with last year. So the financial preparedness amounts to more than SEK 1 billion and the increase is due to the refinancing that was agreed in June. And the net debt to EBITDA was 1.6x -- or 1.55x to be exact. And that is -- give us a huge or quite significant headroom to the target, which is good, of course. And that enabled us to put even further focus and invest even further in our Mountain operation, which is, of course, both important and important for us to be able to do that. So Stefan on the outlook.

Yes. Thank you, Sara. And just sort of an update of where we are with our business plan and how do we continue to focus and what we continue to focus on to deliver on our targets. So I will give you some brief update about that. And of course, like I said before, this integrated business model is the core of everything we do. And also how we improve in each of the revenue streams and really put focus on each of the revenue streams to deliver according to our strategy. And Sara mentioned our financial stability, and we have a fantastic stable financial situation, which also allow us to continue to invest. We will continue to invest in snow, and we will continue to invest in water. And in the bottom of this picture, you see a picture of something called Kalvåsdam and why should we invest in water, yes, because water is an important source for us to produce now. And that's why we will invest in a large water reservoir. And we will continue to invest in our hotels, in our rooms, in our lift and in our equipped platform, et cetera. So that's why it's important to deliver to our guests. We also see that the decision we took a couple of years ago to go even more with international guests is helping us to drive the average spend and also drive top line. As the international guests, they spend much more than Swedish and Norwegian guests. So the average spend for SkiStar is SEK 20,000 per booking, but the international guests like British, German, Netherlands people, they spend more than SEK 30,000 which means 50% more than guests from Sweden or Norway. We also decide or have made decisions to continue our ESG initiatives. And that's quite important for us since we have signed-up for the science-based target, and we don't give up anything around ESG initiatives. I would say that we increase and also speed up as well as focus on our ESG initiatives. So for this quarter, I'm really glad, for example, that we have launched a huge partnership with OKQ8, which is a chain, which is working with both that you could charge your cars, of course, but you could also fuel up. And if you fill up with HVO100, we support our guests with SEK 1 and OKQ8 supports with SEK 1 meaning that price for normal diesel and HVO100 will be the same. And that's, of course, an important part since the impact from our guests on the environment is quite high. So that's one initiatives we take to reduce that part. I'm also very glad that we continue to drive new revenue by focusing on those streams. And Anders will take you through the Retail part, which is shown on this one, where EQPE, of course, stands for the most important or maybe the largest impact on this growth pattern. However, we also have other revenue streams like we are running now 30 restaurants. So that means also it's a new revenue stream for us, which is both supporting top line as well as the guest experience as well as the EBIT. Many of you which have followed us for a while have seen this type of picture and also how we work with Property Development. Two years ago, we invested in a ski lift. This is an area of Söderåsen in Lindvallen, Sälen. And the area in the bottom here, close to the ski lift is showing -- or showing a way of how we would like to develop the area going forward. And we are now in the middle of exactly how that should happen. And also in what pace we will develop the area, because we see possibility to do everything in a very short period of time. And that's why also how we have taken deeply discussions right now with our partnership with Skiab, for example, of how we will develop this area. We will also develop new launching and concepts around beds. And this is a picture from Åre. This is land sports. We have just next to the ski-lift [indiscernible], and we are really happy to now having a detailed plan sent out to the neighbors at this area. Very happy to launch a new ski area in Vemdalen this year, Hovde Syd, which opened up 2 weeks ago. And we have the possibility to open up the next step next year. But before we do both of these areas, we have said, let's see how the customer flow or guest flow will look like in Vemdalen before we do that second part. The right side of this picture show that we have bought a huge part of land from Holmen, which is now on the detailed plan level together with the municipality. SkiStar have an enormous strength. One of our enormous strength is that we are running the 5 largest ski resorts in Scandinavia. And how can we take advantage of that? Yes, we can take a large advantage, both by SkiStar All that you can buy a SkiPass meaning that you could visit all our resorts. But if you just want to, for example, visit two of them, you could go to Sälen and buy a SkiPass. And if you buy a weekly SkiPass, we give you the opportunity to visit Trysil in the same SkiPass for two days of visit as an example. The other part is that we also have decided to launch the lowest price SkiPass in the ski mountains. So here we could give the opportunity for more people to try to ski in our areas or our ski destinations. So that was a bit of update of how we are focusing on the business plan. And if I then take deep dive on the Winter '25, '26, which is then for the upcoming winter, which I think many of you are curious about. So I must say, we are really proud that we have a very solid situation, both with bookings as well as snow conditions at all SkiStar destinations. Then something which has a big impact on us is, of course, the calendar effect. So this holiday period, which starts from actually Saturday now. We have a lot of guests coming in this Saturday, the 18th of December -- sorry, the 20th of December. And then the early Easter will, of course, help us very much this year. And this calendar effect drives both volume and profitability. And what we mean with this is that, of course, we have three full weeks as a starting point. That week 2 gives an extra opportunity, and I will take a deep dive in that further on. But that's a very important week for us to show extra growth. As well as the early Easter will help us to secure a good conditions for the guest, but also that we could close down our resorts, some of our resorts and areas within the resorts earlier, which means that we could have a better cost control as well, which we haven't last year where we had a very late Easter where the Easter went through week 16 and 17. Then we can see a very changed behavior in the customer say, customer booking pattern. And that means that we have made some adaptation change in our marketing. So we are much more aggressive, so to say, in the areas where we see that we need to focus on. So when we do that focus and also when we produce snow, we can see that we have a much higher digital engagement. So for example, when we put in some pressure or push on marketing, we can see, for example, in quarter 1, we have increased our digital engagement with 21% and we also increased the number of individual users with 6%. So the digital engagement is very important for us. Even though we see a small change in the conversion rate from 2.2% to 2%, we see that we still have a high conversion rate, but this is very much connected to that you are a little bit more hesitant, should I book or should I not book. But you are out looking, you're out searching and that's, of course, important for us that customers are doing that. And we will, this winter, have our strongest news launch ever, ever, ever. And it's a very important part, of course, how we will drive this launch for this season. And also, we have a very favorable calendar, as I said, not only Christmas, also early Easter. And what I think is important, which I missed in the first slide, which I will then talk a little bit more about on this picture where I truly believe that there is a lot of interest in Easter. We have booked 80% of our beds for the season. 90% of our bookable beds are booked actually up to week 10, meaning that we have a very strong booking situation. That means we are plus 2% from week 52 up to week 10, which means that probably the most important part of our season, as you can see on the pattern here. And it also shows that the three first weeks will be very important for us, and we are actually very satisfied with the booking situation at these three weeks. We're also very satisfied with the breaks -- the February breaks, which also including the week 7, 8, 9, which has a very strong situation. We are also increasing the number of international guests. So we're increasing the international guests with 6%. That means that we are going from last year, 39%, up to 41%. And the increase is coming from Denmark with plus 5%, Netherlands 13%, Germany 14% and the British one with 12%. And of course, this is very important for us, and the Belgium one is a new line with TUI. And we can see that our collaboration with easyJet and TUI has been very important for our airport and Scandinavian Mountain airports in Sälen will increase the number of passengers this year from 25,000 to 50,000 passengers. So a very important number then. And I will stop my part of the presentation here and hand over to Anders, who will take the deep dive in Ski's Retail, and then we will take the Q&As after that. Welcome, Anders.

Thank you, Stefan. So I'm going to take you through our Retail business. Here we go. So our Retail business goes under the name SkiStarshop. I'm going to kick off with showing the same picture as Stefan showed you earlier and tell you how we are integrated within SkiStar's business model. So looking on the pre-arrival part of our business model. We target our customer database and the customer during the customer journey with prebookings of rental business, but also digital retail. And this stands for about 55% of our total revenue in the business area. During the stay in the point of sales period, we target customer with drop-in rental business, but also with our physical sports retail doors on the destination, which stands then for the rest of 45% of our total turnover. Looking at our concept, we have a DNA that says, we are mountain sports, and we divide the business area within three different segments. So the first one is our Rental and Service business, which consists of 33 units. These are mainly ski and bike rentals, but we also do have point of sales of sporting goods in these stores. Here, we have weather-related products that has a high margin. We also work with a long-life product range to reduce risk in stock. It's also self-service assortment. Looking on the next segment, which is our Concept Stores, consists of 12 units. These are fully-scaled sport retail stores with a curated selection of leading brands, including EQPE, which is our private-owned brand. We want shopping to be a part of the mountain experience. We also believe in high expertise in our staff in these stores, and we also work with demo equipment, which is quite unique compared to other retailers that our customers can try out before they buy. And then we have our growth engine, the Digital Retail, which has 2 storefronts, skistarshop.com, which is available in 3 different markets: Sweden, Norway and Denmark. And then we have eqpestore.com, which is available in 14 European countries. So we cover in total, 15 markets with our Digital Retail. We have a wide range of well-known brands, and of course, eqpestore.com with a full focus on EQPE as a brand. Looking at our revenue, we have had a stable growth over the last years with a total turnover of SEK 724 million in '24, '25. If we take this down to each segment, our Rental business, which then includes both prebooking and drop-in rental, stands for SEK 251 million and has had a CAGR at 6% over the last 6 years. Looking at Physical Retail, we have a turnover of SEK 214 million with a CAGR of 10%. And then our Digital Retail with a CAGR of 32% over the 6 last years with SEK 242 million in turnover, and this is our growth engine. Looking forward, we believe that we have a strong setup to continue growth. We have a business model with a really strong OMNI-Retail and Rental offering, combined with circular business models as SkiStarshop Preused, which has been a success of reselling old skis and also we see opportunities in new categories within rental. Assortment and our own brands are a key to continued growth and we want to significantly increase the share of sales from our own brands and combine this with a reduced and refined external assortment to drive growth and profitability. We see that we can continue to expand our distribution with the continued fast growth within digital retail, but we also see further potential to establish or acquire additional physical stores. SkiStar's customer database and marketing is key to continued growth. And we have quite a unique opportunity and situation in the market because we know when the customer are going skiing, where they are going, with whom they are going and for how long. This is quite unique data for a retailer to have. Looking at our organization, we have secured the right skill sets to continue to grow, and we also enhance processes and systems support related purchase and analysis. As Stefan mentioned, we also updated and invested in a new platform. So now we have one platform that is very modern, with two different storefronts, one for skistarshop.com and one for eqpestore.com. And then we have EQPE which is our private owned brand. EQPE was launched in 2019 and has been a success story since then. EQPE is created based on customer data and no need of the SkiStar customer for a wide range of skiers. Last year EQPE represented 28% of our total revenue within Retail and takes a biggest share for every year. The organization is driven by an EQPE-first mentality, which means that we prioritize to sell EQPE first and we front EQPE in our stores at the best spots. External brands are totally chosen to enhance and complement EQPE. We see a strength in placing EQPE side-by-side with well-established brands in our stores.

So thank you, Anders, for that deep dive and I think for -- as we get a lot of questions around our Retail Operation, I was very glad to have this presentation for you, Anders. So now we will hand over from some Q&A to the audience.

[Operator Instructions] This is from Alice Beer from ABG Sundal Collier.

Firstly, I will just start with, when did you open the resorts last year? Because you said that you were able to open the resorts one week earlier than planned, but bookings for the pre-season is around 17%. So could you just please help us understand this.

Thank you, Alice, for that question. I mean this 17% down is a very limited amount since those numbers are very low, so to say. So they doesn't stand for any big amount of beds during that period of time. As you probably can see in our graph, they are very limited from a bed perspective. Those weeks are mainly used by locals and also gives the opportunity to sell SkiStar All Year or SkiPass for the -- seasonal SkiPass so to say. So that's why the importance of open up early is good for us to both have good snow conditions at our slopes, but also get the rumors out in the market that we are open up actually. That's why it's very important from a marketing perspective that we open up one week earlier, sorry.

All right. Great. Just following up on that, 2 I guess sub-questions. Norway is experiencing very warm December weather now. Has this affected you? I mean -- and just to get a clear answer on that, your did you open the slopes earlier or later than you did last year?

We'd opened up 1 week earlier in Trysil this year than we did last year. And Hemsedal, I think it is roughly the same. To be honest, I'm not 100% sure. Hemsedal is probably the resort we have the most -- best snow conditions at the moment actually. We have got more snow, natural snow and cold degrees so far this year than we had the whole last year actually. So Hemsedal looks fairly strong at this moment. Trysil little bit warmer, but in the same way as we were last year at this time.

Okay. Great. And then moving on, last spring was, of course, terrible in terms of weather for skiing. And I guess could be that this is contributing to guests booking later. However, do you think that there is a risk that guests will not risk going on ski trips later in the season at all due to previous negative experiences?

You should always be worried, of course, but we are not, in this case, and we have decided to also use some marketing activities to secure that we will have a very strong bookings between week 11 and 18. So we are not worried in this building. We are very calm, very -- and we think this is a very solid situation. So we will continue to do what we have planned, and we are not in any worries at all. Actually, the opposite. We see this as great potential for us to actually improve where we ended last year.

Okay. Great. What would you say would be your biggest challenge in Q2 regarding keeping costs up? Are you doing anything differently this year?

From -- in the second quarter, we are working much more with our cost situation from staffing perspective, we are working with our new AI developed scheduling tool, which is now happening within the organization. And we are putting a lot of effort to secure that we keep our cost on a good level. And then I don't know, Sara, would you like to say something on our cost control?

Yes, sure. I mean we have several initiatives that relates to cost optimization, I would say. The staff scheduling, of course, is key in terms of securing that the resource scheduling is optimized. And then, of course, together with combined duties, the investment and purchase process has been improved, both in terms of process systems and capabilities. And we are working heavily with ensuring that our destinations, we do have economies of scale that we need to take advantage of. And then inventory spare parts, of course, it's quite huge costs and that has -- we see a potential to further improve that one. And that is processes or initiatives that already are taking place, but important ones, of course. So we do quite a lot of initiatives to improve our focus on cost optimization.

Okay. Great. Just it's a final question for me. On the reclassification of the property exploitation sales, could you comment or do you know by heart or say how much that will effect in terms of comps, how much was in net sales last year?

I didn't hear your question, Alice. I'm sorry.

The line is bit poor, Alice. See if you can go to a better place.

Yes. I'm sorry. On the reclassifications of the property exploitation in terms of comps, how much of that was in net sales last year?

Property exploitations, how much was included in net sales last year?

Yes.

Oh, sorry. I need to check that because I don't have the number at hand, but I can get it to you. The capital gain was SEK 51 million last year, but I can get back to you on the revenue side. That is now excluded in net sales. And we have also restated previous year number, of course, to be able to compare -- to make an even -- fairly comparison. But I can get back to you.

We will now take our next question. This is from Stefan Stjernholm from Handelsbanken.

Stefan here, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you, Stefan.

Yes, I hope my line is better. I'll start off with a question for Anders and EQPE. How do you see the potential to expand into new categories?

Thanks for the question. We look into new categories all the time, and we've been growing the assortment into new categories and wider product lines for each year during this growth period.

And what's the last category you entered?

We added on more cross-country skiing in this year, some more soft goods for like the cabin time during the visit. We expanded into to new categories within skiing clothes as well. We added on cross-country, a new cross-country line with Charlotte Kalla this year. So looking into new categories all the time.

A lot going on, obviously. And then -- yes, good. And regarding the Property segment, new transaction this quarter. Can you give us an update on the pipeline? What's ongoing or if you are about to start up any new projects?

Yes. I think it's a very fairly good question, Stefan, because we have said that we are not in hurry with our product. For us, it's more important to make them right. And the Söderasen project is starting to come -- become quite big. That's why we have decided not to stress that project. But that is the one -- first in pipeline together with some other areas in Sälen where we see some important pipeline. So we are in the ballpark of the SEK 70 million to SEK 100 million for sure this year. And we have no -- say no idea to change that direction at this moment of time. So we keep what we have said in the guidance of the SEK 70 million to SEK 100 million this year as well.

Yes. So short term, it's focused on Sälen. Is that due to problem with a permission on other destinations or is it just...

No, no, absolutely. No, absolutely not because we are really digging into where do we need more beds. And for example, in Sälen, we have a huge need for beds because it's the largest destinations right now. And we also see that, that is the destination for where the international guests are looking at connected to the airport, together with Trysil. Trysil, we now have the agreement with Utmarkslaget, and that's where we will start to build the first beds close to the Gondola lift. And then we have the second part with the camping part, but that will be a little bit further ahead then. And closer in time, it will be Sälen. Åre, there is a huge project with this new launch, but that will probably also take some little bit more of time before we have get that detailed plan from the municipalities. We could also start to build in Hemsedal, but we have said that Sälen is for now the most important part.

Thank you for the update. And last question from my side, what's the right -- 90% of beds booked up until week 10. How far can you get? Is it fair to assume 95% or I think you are targeting 100%, but I think that's a tricky one.

Yes, exactly. I mean 90% is a very good situation, of course, up to week 10. But what I think is quite interesting to see already this week, we can see that week 52 one is also still booking quite the last beds we have there, actually, which is quite interesting. So I think that the week 7, 8, 9 will come up to 100%. This 52 one too will come up to 100% and then week 3 to - I could see, when I looked into week 3 and 4 deep dive, I could see that we were in roughly around 80%. So we will continue to book as we normally do, so maybe 95%. Now I'm taking a wild guess, but I'm very happy to see that we continue to have a strong booking situation on those weeks actually. And it looks favorable, good for us quarter 2 here. Since we had a very strong quarter 2 last year and since this quarter looks even better, both from a booking perspective as well from an international guest perspective. And since we know that international guests are spending more, we are very confident about the second quarter. Then about the third quarter, like I said to Alice previously is that we see a huge potential for us to improve how we ended last year in the third quarter. So where we lost a lot during Easter, due to the weather conditions. But now we see a really big upside in that period of time, both on top line as well to reduce our costs actually.

Just to answer Alice's question, sorry, the revenue from expectations Property was SEK 66.5 million last year, and the net result, the capital gain was SEK 51 million, as I mentioned. It's a fairly low number, SEK 66.5 million.

We'll now take our next question. This is from Linus Alentun from Nordea.

Just a quick couple of questions here for me. Just first of all, if the bookings after week 11 to 18 don't pick up, at what point would you suggest or at what point would you reduce prices to gain more demand?

I mean, we don't see any reason to reduce prices in that sense. We rather have other plans for our market, which I don't want to share on this call, but we have a very aggressive plan actually for that period of time. It could include more than pricing activities, Linus. So bear with us, trust what we are doing to fill up that period of time. But we will, for sure, launch an attractive Easter package for our guests, actually.

That sounds super. I guess that it's mostly domestic guests at this point during the late season. Is that correct?

Normally, it is most domestic people, and we will continue, of course, to push the domestic market since we see that there is a potential in the market, that the interest rate is on a low level. We see also that net debt of -- our customers also have the opportunity to invest the savings on a good level. So we see that holidays are on the top list and also to do it in the Scandinavian Mountains. So we see a push there. But we will also continue to push a little bit in Denmark actually since we see a potential for Danish guests and also that the flights will continue from Denmark to Scandinavian Mountains airport. So we will try to push some Danish guests as well actually.

Okay. Could you give a number on how much the domestic bookings are down?

That was a good question. They are down around 4% down the domestic. And that's much related to the late part end of the season, as you mentioned, actually, earlier Linus about what to do with that period of time. And that is where the domestic market stands for the significant part of that.

Okay. Another question here on the SkiPass sales that increased quite much by over 30%, much driven by the all-year passes. And I just have a question here. Do you have an ambition here to move more towards a subscription-based model? I know Vail in the U.S. has built their model around that big pass, and how are your thoughts there?

Yes, we see a very important -- a very good question, Linus, because since we are now also shifting the company into a more year-round business, we could see that this summer, for example, that we have a very high usage of this SkiStar All Year passes from our guests. And that's why we see this as an important part of drive-the-year-around business. And it is also a quite interesting model to have this subscription model for splitting up the cost for 12 months and so on. And that's why we're really glad to launch this pass. This is now the third year we're going in, and we increased the number of users and prescriptors every year actually.

Okay. That's super interesting. And just one last question here on the margin target. Now that you have -- with the new accounting, you will have an artificially higher margin. How are you thinking about the target there?

The financial targets, you mean?

Yes, yes.

We have discussed that internally, of course. And the financial targets, they will stay unchanged. And then of course, the picture that I presented on the initiatives to reach our financial targets, we do have an ambition to exceed 18%. And then, of course, we will think about new targets in later on. But, for the moment, they will stay unchanged.

And we also feel comfortable about this year right now that we're moving in the right direction towards the financial target.

Yes.

We will now take the next question. This is from Karl-Johan Bonnevier from DNB Carnegie.

Just a couple of follow-ups. Just to get a feel, how do you feel about the product that you now look to be able to deliver for Christmas and New Year? Started off very nice with cold weather in November, you were all have already started, but I understand that a lot of rain of late has maybe made the slopes quite restricted in quite a few of the resorts. And given the booking pattern coming up to Christmas with a lot of people joining you, do you feel that you can deliver a good product?

Thank you for the question, Karl-Johan. And we will deliver a product almost like we did last Christmas period. And you are completely right that it's been mild weather mainly in Sälen and Trysil. However, I really glad that we have 5 of the resorts, which is less, but should say impacted from a weather perspective. And our slopes, I was there by myself on Saturday, 5 days ago -- 6 days ago, and they were in a very good shape and nothing to complain about. Then, of course, I would love to have even more slopes open, but it's not less or more slopes than we had last year on a total level. So that's why I think it is important to say that. So the conditions, like I said previously with Alice is that Hemsedal, Vemdalen are Åre are actually in a better shape than we had last year, and it looks fairly good. And right now, I saw pictures from Hemsedal, it's snowing there. And in Trysil and Sälen, right now today is a little bit milder. However, tomorrow, it's going to snow there. So I'm not so worried about the product we're going to deliver to our guests actually. But then, of course, I would like to see some white on the trees, et cetera. And today, it's not white on the trees. Hopefully, after tomorrow, it will be white on the trees there as well.

Sounds lovely. And when you look at the importance of, say, a strong Christmas, New Year season for them creating maybe repeat demand to drive Easter and the post-season, so to say, is that a big factor in bridging that gap that you have for the moment?

We believe that the most important right now is to open up and show our guests that we have a good product to deliver. And also we will then start to do some, let's say, marketing activities to build upon what we have delivered during Christmas after the Christmas period. So of course, it's an important part for us to have a good product to launch the season with right now, which I'm fairly comfortable with. And it will also give us a good season. Normally, I'm not so loud in my words about the season, what we will deliver. But this year, I'm fairly confident in that we will deliver a record season actually due to both the conditions we have, the destinations we have, the news we have launched and not at least the calendar. The calendar will help us to have a very strong year.

I like your confidence. I heard you mention, Stefan, you reiterated the contribution of SEK 70 million to SEK 100 million from the Property and Exploration operation. How do you see that in current year's perspective? Because I heard also your comments to Stefan's earlier question about how the pipeline looks for the moment. Is it logical to still believe that this year will be more in line with what we have seen for the last 2 years?

It's a very good question. It depends on -- I'm laughing here a little bit for myself because everything is connected to the pace we will have and the agreement we will make and when will we make the agreement, so to say. So everything is about timing, Karl-Johan here. And I think I need to be honest in that question, say, we will stay in the line of SEK 70 million to SEK 100 million for now. And I don't see that it will be -- yes, let me just say, you asked the question was, if we could see it in the same range as the last 2 years. And yes, maybe a little bit up actually rather than the last 2 years. So that's what I would say. So more in the higher range rather than the lower range.

And Sara, you talked about the CapEx levels and what you're going through for the Mountain. Is this still a good proxy for this year ending up around SEK 650 million in CapEx?

Yes, I would say that is a fairly good estimate, yes.

Anders on EQPE, you mentioned how you feature your own products in the store and similar kind of thing. Could you mention how you try to work with the pricing strategy against, say, the top brands?

Sorry, I didn't hear the last. Did you ask about the pricing strategy?

Your pricing strategy compared to other top brands that you feature them against, so.

So we really pick with the level of quality in the products we produce at EQPE. So what we first look at is the quality level that we can compare our products with these established brands. And then we work through this direct-to-consumer model where we distribute EQPE through SkiStar's retail channels, but also then eqpestore.com to new market, which makes us able to put a much lower price point for the end consumer than compared to the external high-quality, high-level brands. So we can deliver good pricing for a very high quality.

And just walking around in Stockholm, I noticed a lot of youngsters wearing EQPE gear also in downtown Stockholm, so to say. Is that a good kind of entry to get the brand working, so to say, to catch the youngters and then maybe also getting the olders involved that might just use it at the ski resort?

Absolutely. I mean the youth business comes from the family customer. I mean that's the SkiStar customers. So we're really happy that we sell a lot to women, a lot to men, a lot to kids. I mean looking at the kids, we produce the products to work both in the ski slopes and at the school yards. So when I see a EQPE product when I leave my kids at school, then I'm really satisfied.

[Operator Instructions] Since there are no further questions coming through, so I will now hand back to the speakers for any closing comments. Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening to us. And by that, we would like to wish you happy holidays, and also hope to see you in the slopes because we are going there. So take care, everyone, and happy holidays.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.