SkiStar AB (publ) (SKISB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the SkiStar Q2 report. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers CEO, Stefan Sjostrand; CFO Anders Ornulf. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and a warm welcome to SkiStar's second quarter presentation for the season '22/'23. My name is Stefan Sjostrand and I'm sitting here together with my CFO, Anders Ornulf, and we will guide you through the presentation here today. And before we start the presentation, I would also like to highlight that this is the last quarter presentation for my CFO, Anders Ornulf, who have decided to take other opportunities outside SkiStar. And we will welcome his replacement, Martin Almgren in a couple of weeks from now on. So let's continue with the presentation, and we will try to guide you through a short introduction. And then Anders will take you through a little bit of the quarter summary, and I will guide you through a little bit of an outlook, how it looks going forward. So first introduction, most of you on this call have been with us before, but we are just as a repetition, we are running the 5 largest destinations in Scandinavia our resorts. And also this special destination here in SkiStar, Stockholm, where we also use as an innovation hub for our business development. If we then look into the position, we are really the leading holiday organizer for Scandinavia. And the vision is very simple. It is to create memorable mountain experiences and we do it all year around. And if we then look to what the customers are saying that actually 8 out of 10 are saying that we are fulfilling that position, which is, of course, extremely great to have a year like this. So also 8 out of 10 of our employees say that they like to come to work every day, which is, of course, very important. We continue our digital transformation. And we can see that close to 80% have purchased and downloaded the SkiPass digitally and 95% of our customers or visitors have checked in digitally as well to the accommodation, which is, of course, extremely strong when you try to -- or into this transformation to digitalization. And we continue to work on this transformation journey, where we are really into these 4 areas of digitalization of sustainability of the all-year round and also that we are really ready for growth, and we will take you through that in the next coming slides. So let's start with the highlights of the quarter. Of course, Anders will take you through the numbers specific, but we are extremely glad that we are presenting the highest and best quarter ever for SkiStar. In connection to the turnover, we have a growth of 8%. And we are also showing our EBIT before tax, which is the highest result ever. And that is very much connected to that. We had a very good start, early start of the winter season with fantastic ski conditions. And we could also see that there is a very strong underlying demand for travel to SkiStar's 5 destinations in Scandinavia and to also spend your holiday there. We can also see that there is a new customer behavior coming up. And that behavior is connected very much to -- many of people having their cabins at our destinations have decided to rent out them themselves outside SkiStar systems. So when you link that connected to SkiStar's booking numbers, you can see quite heavy or much more interest from visitors to come and visit us and spend the time at our destinations. So those 2 together are very important factors where we now present our quarter results because as some of you listened to our previous report in the first quarter, could hear that we have minus 13 in bookings. And there was also a bit slow booking situation both over Christmas period but also over the weeks 2 to 6. However, since the pattern of booking closer to your state as well, this pattern, which I just described with people renting out their cabins outside SkiStar system is showing and helping us to deliver this amazing result actually. So we are very glad for that. We can also see that we have a strong growth in our retail sector. We hear many retailers are actually telling that it's difficult in the market. They are slowing down in sales of sports activities, but we are actually showing the opposite. We have a very strong sales in our retail sector. We have a very strong sales of our own brand equipped, and that is, of course, helping us to create this growth momentum in our -- at our destinations. We can also see that we have many more international guests coming back. It's very easy to forget quickly. But for us who have all a good memory, saying that actually in -- up to week 6 last year, we have a lot of restrictions in Norway. And since those restrictions now are away, we can see that the international guests are back into our Norwegian destinations, both from U.K., Netherlands, Germany, but also a lot of Danish visitors are coming back as well as the Swedes. And that's why we can also see a big movement from the Swedish destinations into the Norwegian destinations, and this has now more been flattened out compared to how it was in the pandemic. So lastly, but not least, maybe we can see that this is our biggest quarter. It's most important quarter, and we can also show that we have stabilized our EBIT levels on a completely new level than it was before the pandemic, which I think is very important for all of you to see when I now hand over to Anders. No, sorry, I will just also show. I had 1 slide, which I also showed last presentation, sorry, which we decided to show again because it was appreciated to show the digital activities to SkiStar. And we can see that there is a very high interest still to visit skistar.com. We have a little slower visitation to skistar.com while we have an increased visitation to the app, and this is very natural. And we can also see that we have an increased conversion to the skistar.com site. We could also see that we have an increased conversion into SkiStarshop, and that is also why we have this increased sales within the retail side as well. And lastly but not least, we are increasing the SkiStar members from 1.5 million to 1.7 million members in quarter 2 this year compared to last year. So that is, of course, helping us also to own the customer data and controlling the customer data compared to many other companies working in this digital world. And now I'm handing over to Anders, who will take you through and guide you through our fantastic numbers this quarter.

Thank you, Stefan, especially for the introduction. Before commenting the first half year results, we would like to give a perspective on the financial development. It's important to understand that SkiStar has had a strong financial growth before the pandemic but also shows that we hope to continue to build on completely new profit levels. Here, you can see a graph that shows historical development of EBIT and EBIT margin, ending with a figure with 12-month rolling. Main reason behind the historical profit development are great effect of underlying volume increase and smarter and differentiated pricing of, especially SkiPass. But it's also important to highlight that in the previous full year results, a substantial part has come from capital gains in the property development, division at around SEK 150 million, SEK 190 million, and the current development is significantly more sustainable. The 2 financial years '19/'20, '20/'21 are, of course, affected by the pandemic. We cannot fully [ parry ] the loss of revenue, but we did maintain a strong profit, which gave us peace of mind in a very stressful time. But you can also see how special the previous year was. A good economy in Scandinavia, a suppressed need to travel and partial travel restriction gave us a fantastic '21/'22 that we now face and compare against. So when you look at the numbers, you have to -- yes, I have some perspective to it and look at the current 12-month rolling. It's easy to be impressed of the SEK-763-million number, especially when we know that with Q3, we have half of the winter season to come. It's undeniable that it looks like the EBIT levels are at the whole new level. Diving into the second quarter or the first half year then. As you can understand, the first quarter is very quiet for SkiStar and this is where it happens. It is, of course, gratifying to see the continued growth, as Stefan mentioned, about 8% comparing to a record year, which is, of course, very important for the future. 4 takeaways on the revenue side. On the left side, the first 4 blocks, you will find our core business, and we managed to be on par with the previous year, which is better than we had to believe. Continued strong development, as Stefan mentioned, in the retail business, and we reported record sales for the entire business area, an increase of 21% compared to last year. Growth came -- come from primarily online sales, 45% but also in physical stores at a positive development. We also now run a hotel lounge division, which is contributing SEK 227 million which joined the top line for the first half year with a continued high operational focus with additional hotels in the portfolio, such as the hotel in Vemdalen. And fourth, the income in the property development is more linked to the structure of the project. This is primarily a project in Norway and the private market where we have had the completion of the first out of total 4 stages in the second quarter. EBIT development by segment. As we mentioned earlier, we'd like to highlight the second quarter in isolation. We were in line with the previous year record numbers. Looking at the first half year, the story is somewhat different, minus SEK 122 million versus last year. You can see -- you see the effect of our first quarter, which was worse partly due to higher activities before the winter, but also a timing effect of certain types of costs. I will come back to that. So we have some profit to make up for when the lifts opened, but of course, we already knew that. We would like to highlight our hotel and lounge divisions continue to grow, partly explained by a full year effect of 3 additional hotels; SkiStar Lodge Hundfjallet, Ski Lodge Skalspasset, and hotel in Vemdalen. Grateful to goes on integrating the business in SkiStar, but we also see an effect of higher depreciation due to investments and also an indirect effect of inflation with an increased rent for the hotel and lounge division. So the financial summary. To round things up, for me, a very strong result for the first half of the year, driven primarily by revenue growth. Costs are higher than last year. As always, there are several reasons behind it, but partly because we have a higher activity in advertising and maintenance, but we also suffered from inflation cost pressure, increased prices in all types of consumption. For example, few higher depreciation due to new investment levels is also behind the loss of margin. Then you should not forget that with our business module, we had a huge effect of figures last year, where we had a 100% margin on the last [indiscernible], but we take the cost pressure seriously, and we have several activities in the short and long term to counter it. And of course, with our structure, personnel planning becomes very crucial. The decline in cash flow from operating activities compared with previous years is primarily linked to the sale of shares in subsidiaries in Johanner Bergbahnen of EUR 15 million, and, of course, partly due to the slightly decreased operating profit. Our balance sheet is extremely strong, I would say, with an equity asset ratio of 51%, excluding IFRS 16. Net debt, excluding IFRS 16, is SEK 1.2 billion, and the liquidity forecast is good, partly due to responsible actions in the pandemic but also a record year when it comes to sales and profit last year. SkiStar is financially strong, both in the short and long term that is. We have invested more than SEK 600 million for this season, and we financed the high CapEx levels from our own generated cash flow, and we show that our business model works and the guest will benefit from all the modernizations and upgrades in our -- at our resorts. And of course, Stefan will talk about more about our plans and outlook later on. I will finish off with a short update on an important topic for the season, for the winter season, the energy and electricity prices. We have had an internal project during the year to reduce consumption. It has been both educational and very successful as we reduced consumption in the first half year by almost 20%. Together with our portfolio management of purchases, the costs are in line with last year despite the high spot prices. And we have now passed the big peak of this year's consumption, so we can state that this went well, even if we have respect for the coming winter and winter seasons. With that ending, I will leave it back to Stefan to focus on the future and of course, also our sustainability results for the second quarter.

Thank you, Anders. And just shortly about our sustainability results. Of course, our goal is to activate and have 7 million activity days. That's 1 of our very important goals. And we can clearly state and see that we are really in line with this goal. We have had also increasing now the activity with both a stronger connection with the municipalities to have much more connection with schools and that type of activities. We can see that, that increased. And also, we continue to deliver free SkiPasses for persons under 16 years of age, which is, of course, something very strong and something we're very glad at. And also this transformation into the year-round business is also helping us to create more activity and activity days, not only ski days actually. If I then look into the mid part here, where we're also saying that we should reduce and half our climate pressure, and that is something we are really in line with as well. And we can see that we do a lot of activities. We are working with the municipalities on the ways up to the mountains and for example, the largest destination, Salen, together with the municipalities along the way up to Salen, we have created something called a Green Road, where it will be many more charging stations. And for example, also this year, we used our mobile charging station together with Audi and Jamtkraft. And that is, of course, paying off directly with 700 cars -- is loading for free -- or charging the cars for free at our station. So clearly, a good activity. We also increased the partnership with Soderberg and Partners who have decided to invest in us actually, and we are doing a very interesting focus on putting the focus on biodiversity and that's something we are really proud of that someone external also decide to invest and create projects together with us in this important area. And then lastly but not least, we continue the dialogue in interaction. And I must say, it was really interesting to have also the Minister of -- what you call it, [indiscernible] in English. I don't know that, but who is responsible for creating living municipalities. And he was visiting us in Salen this year, and it was great to having there and also showing the important dialogues we have with the government as well. So really glad for that. And also we can see that we have very important discussions. And we dare to also discuss the climate change. And we have had several -- we have this report we have created together with [indiscernible] in Norway and Sweden to look at how does SkiStar's destinations, how will they look like the next coming 100 years or 50 to 100 years from today's perspective. And luckily, our 5 destinations have the placement of where we also dare to go out and talk about this climate change in a much more fancy way compared to how it is [indiscernible], for example. And we can clearly see and state that the 5 destinations we are running, they will be impacted like all destinations or the whole society, but it will rather be in the next coming 50 to 100 years rather than the next coming 25, which is, of course, extremely helpful. And that's why it's so important that we also have all these activities within sustainability and focus. And we are very glad to also be out and take the debate in this important area. Okay. Some outlook, how does it looks like now going forward? And if we just look into where we have just presenting our quarter, we have had a fantastic ski and snow conditions at our destinations. We haven't seen these great snow conditions for many, many years, and maybe that's also connected to what I just spoke about this climate change that we can see that the winter is becoming longer and later, and we will see very strong destinations and conditions for us. And when we look into the last quarter, we presented minus 13 in our booking. And now we are presenting minus 10. And -- so here, I would like to say a couple of minutes because we still have these minus numbers, and we have to remind ourselves that we had the last year, which was insane, more or less about people couldn't travel abroad. It was restrictions. And now when we are coming back, we are still -- so we are facing a slowdown. However, we can also see an increase of this pattern that people are handing out their cabins for rent out in systems like Airbnb, like Facebook, like Blocket, like Fin, et cetera. And that, of course, help us to fill our destinations. So I think we should not look too much on the minus 10 figure actually. And we don't have any better figure right now to show you guys more than we feel very good about the situation, even though that we see a later booking pattern, but since it is a pattern and it continues, and we see it latest this morning when I checked the numbers, we could clearly see that there is a lot of bookings for the Eastern still. So good conditions, good forward-looking and so on. Also, the investments, we continue to invest even though that we have tough times, and we can do it because we have a very good financial situation. And we can see that when we are doing that, we also create state-of-the-art level of our destinations, which meaning also that we could continue with the pricing power within our destinations. So we see an underlying strong interest for an active holiday in the Scandinavian mountains, not only for the next coming Easter weeks, also actually for the summer period. And we will also have big competition going on in Are this summer, which will help us to increase the number of bookings for summer in Are as well. So that will be helpful for us. We also continue to develop with business innovation, and we do it with all-year round activities. You have seen this skiing on the graphs and that works very good in Hammarbybacken and that we now will take to a destination in Salon and in Trysil. We have had this [indiscernible]. We will also invest in that in Salon and Trysil. These climbing parts, we will invest in that in Vemdalen as well as biking and trails for biking. So that's something continues, and we also see high interest in -- have this actually sustainable holiday as well in your home country this summer, especially since the Swedish krona and Norwegian krona is in a position that will be very helpful for us. Then, the slide you have or the picture you have with the lady in red there stars within service and the way to take care of people. It's actually a new booking site where we will start one of our business development project, where -- since we are very good in recruiting people, we have said that this could create a great business opportunity for SkiStar to also be a company working within the area of manpower that we could actually both support others to recruit at our destinations but also support, for example, summer destinations and hotels with our people we have recruited for the winter period to help them to also get the job in the summer period and really take advantage of our large base of applications for work at SkiStar. So it's a new business development, and we will continue to develop that, and we will also give you some more interesting development further on over the year. But we continuously to work with the year-round and also new business activities and income streams. Lastly, then we are ready for growth. Like Anders said, we have a very strong balance sheet. We have a net debt of SEK 1.2 billion, excluding the IFRS and this is, of course, extremely helpful in these tough times we are coming into. So I must say, we are really proud of the work we have been doing the last 3 years of restructuring the company and also get this ready for growth. We are also offer these activities year round, and that is also helpful. Like I said, when we now have tough times, people maybe look into the cost in a different way they have done before. And our way of offering holiday where you could stay in the cabin, you cook your food yourself, sometimes, maybe people even shop at home before they travel to us and also cook themselves and put it into the ski box and bring it with them. And that's, of course, a very good type of holiday. Then when we look into this inflation and the cost period, I must say, we are good at this. We have shown during the pandemic that we can handle this situation, and we could handle it both take our costs down. A lot of our cost from staff is flexible costs. And of course, we also show now during this quarter that we have been very cautious and we will also be cautious going forward to make sure that we have a good control of our costs. And I'm also very glad that we have also stated a very clear vision about our future plans for 2030, both from a sustainability point of view, but also from an expansion and also an investment point of view in our existing resorts as skiing is a very important part of the Scandinavian's DNA and that also helped us to create the demand for the active holidays, both winter and summer. So I end up there and say thank you for listening, and we will now start with Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Fredrik Lithell from Handelsbanken.

I have several questions, but I say at 2 questions, and then I go back into the line and see if there are others as well. You have talked -- with the quarter that you now closed, you talked earlier about that last year, you had Trysil was difficult for Swedes to travel due to the COVID restrictions. So that was a positive this year. But you also had a negative this year if we look year-over-year, and that was the fact that New Year and epiphany was in the same week. So you didn't really have 3, 2 vacation week. What would you say the net is between these 2, if you now can elaborate on the numbers would be interesting to hear. So that's the first question. And the second is in your report, you state that this year's calendar provides 2 holiday weeks, both before and after the Easter holiday. I have kids myself, and I'm used to the fact that schools are closed over 2 weeks over Easter. So could you elaborate a little bit on what you see here?

I can start with the easy one. So your second part of the question, Fredrik. I live in Stockholm and my kids are -- their school is closed after the Easter holiday this year. But I know another part of Sweden the week before the Easter weekend or the school holiday. It will mean that we will be able to sell full Easter weeks before and after the Easter holiday. And, yes.

Yes. So some people go for holidays before, meaning Friday around the first of -- sorry, the third of April will be the first day of school holidays, and they will benefit from the Monday off versus your kids here in Stockholm, they will benefit from the Thursday of in school and have the week after. So that's what we mean with the 2 weeks of Eastern, so to say. So we will be able to have 2 full weeks of holiday. And it's in a very good period of time this year as well. So that's good.

Last year, the Eastern holiday was very late. So all the Swedish schools were off the week before.

Okay. That clarifies it. All right.

And the second question was comparing the bad calendar for New Year's versus the Trysil in Norway, the restrictions in pandemic, I have not any figures. I can just maybe just confirm what you're saying that, yes, the upside of having open Norway, you can see that in this report, because if you look at the Page 19 and the turnover by segment, you see that Norway is behind the growth year-on-year when it comes to the first half year. But then -- well, I don't have the correct -- or you can never have the correct fact regarding it. But I will say that that's a more positive effect than the calendar effect for New Year. But maybe, Stefan, you want to elaborate on...

I can just elaborate a bit on what's happening actually is that while we have been the pandemic and the same with the restrictions up to week 6 last year, it was more challenging to travel to Norway. So a lot of Swedes decided to stay in maybe Vemdalen and in Are. And this year, we have less visitors in our booking systems to Vemdalen and Are and those guests have then traveled to Trysil and Hemsedal instead. So if I balance that out, that means that we now are back on the levels we had before the pandemic in Trysil and Hemsedal , and we are slightly above that in Sweden since we have increased the total. So that's what we're also saying that we are in a new total level of both visitation to our 5 destinations in Scandinavia versus how it was before the pandemic in '18, '19. So we are actually above that in number of skiing days, which I think is very important to show that we are on a very good path then. And so that's one thing I really would like to highlight because sometimes we compare too much to the pandemic in itself. So if we then look into '18, '19, which was the last year, we had the full year, so to say, in a normal way, we are quite far above that actually in number of ski days. And since we also have managed to have our pricing power, that has also been helpful, of course, for us to create this strong result. So -- and also the EBIT now, like Anders, when he explained the numbers, we have gained a bit more, '16/'17, '17, '18 on property gains. But now we are on a -- since we created a new strategy to not be dependent on that, to have a much more per se, sustainable development in that way. We're also very glad to see that underlying ski days, our, say, core product is much more profitable and much more -- was stronger today than it was before, actually. So we are very glad that this transition has been good. So Fredrik, it was long answer a question, but I think more to guide you through what's actually happening here, which I think is very important.

That part was very clear, Stefan. Just to follow up on the calendar effect. And is that -- would you say that the calendar effect this year, is that a bigger negative than what the -- getting sort of Trysil back for the Swedes was a positive? What would your...

No, I must say no. I think we actually -- what I think has been very interesting here was that when we were sitting here 3 months ago and had this report and discussed, we had a lot of -- yes, butterflies, how should it be, et cetera. But we could clearly see actually that; 2 impacts, 1 that the customer behavior is booking later is here to stay, and I think that's important that we also take that into consideration. And the second part is that more and more have decided to rent out their own cabin, which is outside our system, which has been actually the main -- I would say, main reason why we are developing so strong between week 2 and 6, actually. So week 2 and 6, are we making record versus in the holiday weeks, we are slightly, slightly below last year, which is also impressive connected to that many traveled abroad last year.

The next question comes from Karl-Johan Bonnevier from DNB Markets. Please go ahead.

Stefan, Anders. Just to continue where you ended there on the importance or lack of importance of this prebooking number, I noticed that the accommodation sales, including hotels is up 10% year-on-year. And in the market where you then said that you had a prebooking at the start of this quarter, that was minus 13. Is that the kind of numbers we should be looking at, so to say, that the real number is much more stable than growing, whereas as you say, your mix in the prebooking and use of alternative sites for booking is becoming more important?

I think it is -- I can start and Anders can support me. And I think this is the best we can show, I must say, because we are looking to, if we could look more into our colleagues in the market as well. But since there is so many new beds coming in for rental, I think this is the best we can get so far and still it is a good indicator of where we are, I must say. And also, we see a high interest of booking for the rest of the season is still there. So it has not ended. I must say it's actually coming in new bookings every day in a good pace as well. So I don't know, Anders, if we should elaborate more on this.

I think it's a good question, but it's impossible to answer like yes or no. If you look at it how it is today that the current situation that Stefan described is not disrupting our own accommodation division. So now it's just adding -- it's icing on the cake. But of course, we follow with the monitor. So I mean, turning cold beds into semi-warm, nothing wrong with that, and it's a big explanation behind our great result. But we will, of course, monitor and see if it's an underlying consumer behavior, is it recession or we follow it, but the upsides are bigger than the downside, I would say.

Yes. And I can just elaborate one more thing. KJ, I think you are one of the ones which are really following the consumer confidence also and looking into digital activities. That's why I really wanted to show the slide about digital activities because that's also showing the interest in visiting us. So even though that you're not booking your accommodation, you are booking your SkiPass from us. And that's what I think is showing a high interest in that. So that's why we also could see that we still have a higher conversion versus last year, which I think is also showing some interest from the consumers to go traveling with us. Even though if you not book your accommodations, you book your SkiPass or maybe a ski rent or something else.

That almost answered my next question directly, I guess, because I think the risk, I guess, a lot people would see with your controlling less of the booking is that maybe the skistar.com platform is losing a little of its strength, but maybe that's totally wrong, looking at your reasoning.

Yes, because if you look into skistar.com and SkiStar app, we are actually increasing the number of visits versus last year. We are increasing the conversion as well and we're also increasing the number of SkiStar members. So that digital journey continues and actually being strengthened throughout here. So -- and that means that I think if you just look at the reasoning around the minus 10 than in bookings, that people still then book the SkiPass and they still book ski rental from us. And that's why the platform are still extremely valid.

And I guess that's where you have the margins as well. So those are the kind of revenues you really want to control, isn't it?

Yes, correct.

Looking at the hotel operation as well, it looks like you are better back on track. Do you feel that, that is also what you see now going into Q3, Q4?

Yes. I think if I just start at the -- we have worked -- first of all, in these numbers, like Anders said, we have added 3 new hotels, Hundfjallet, which wasn't part of the full year last year and then 2 new -- which one has been purchased by [indiscernible] and one is acquired by ourselves, [indiscernible] Hotel. So that's just so we know that it's 3 more hotels. Then we are really working hard into the restructuring of how to operate our hotel business. And I mean, this is not a quick fix since we are building up for long term here. And we're also transforming now one of the Trysil hotels. [indiscernible] Mountain Resort into a SkiStar Lodge concept as well and take that out of the Radisson booking platform to also control our own booking via skistar.com booking. So I think we are into a transformation journey. We are actually becoming more efficient. We are looking to staff -- what staff do we need to have, can we be better in purchasing in the restaurant area, et cetera. Could we be better in purchasing everything from sheets to bedlinen to small stuff, so we are into a journey here. And hopefully, we will become slightly better and better every quarter. But I don't know if that's the answer of your question, KJ.

No, it is. And I guess the -- it's easier to see that you should be breakeven in this operation after Q2 than it was after Q1.

Sorry, once again.

No. Looking at the full year, I guess it's easier to see that you should be around breakeven for this year than it was having the same kind of thesis after you showed in Q1. So I guess the seasonality is now playing in your favor?

Yes.

You're absolutely right.

And then what I think is important here is that, of course, the inflation is not supporting us in the rental cost here for the hotel. So I think if you look at the group result or which we normally work within in hotel operations, which means that the result before the interest rate and depreciation and rental costs, we are running a much more efficient operation this year than we did last year. And then, of course, we have a higher cost of our rent -- of our rental costs. So of course, that will hit us harder this year than it did last year. But I think this is the same for everyone in this hotel business, not only us.

And just one final for me. Looking at the turbulence in the Swedish private residential property market, have you adjusted your own plans looking at development projects, exploration projects and similar kind of things?

Not in our books, so to say, but of course, with our priorities in ski, the joint venture we have -- it's fair to say that it will be a bit slower development when it comes to private housing this year and next year, but there are other projects that are worked on in ski app that we hope to come back on. But nothing substantially [indiscernible].

No, I think also we have had projects, which was this quarter, for example, it came in some money from projects we started before 1.5 years ago, and they were now handed out, and that gives us some good revenues. We have started some projects which is ongoing, and then when you look into new projects, we also have the benefit that we could build, and we could also rent the objects out instead of sell them. So I think that's one of our strong, say, advantages we have in our business model, if the market isn't there, we can at least rent the objects out. So that's a positive for us then. But still, we haven't revised any areas more than we are working very hard also together with each municipality with plans and zoning plans to be ready also when everything takes off.

The next question comes from Fredrik Lithell from Handelsbanken.

Thank you. Just a few follow-ups. I think you described the property development revenues for the quarter, correct, and that has sort of a long historic duration behind it before it shows up in the P&L here? Or is there something else in the property revenue for this quarter that I should be aware of? So that's one of the things. And then I just want to confirm that you are now up and running with all the hotels you should be. So quarter-on-quarter, it's the same type of number of beds at the hotels. It sounded like Hotel Vemdalen was coming up to stream or was that something I missed there?

If I start with the last question then. We acquired Vemdalen in August. So it is not like-for-like until next quarter 4 -- no, actually, first quarter next year, it will be like-for-like. And [indiscernible] Hotel, we took over now in the mid of...

Just before the winter season.

Yes. So it will still not be like-for-like in the hotels there. So that's -- but we are...

But quarter-over-quarter, it will be similar. So Q3 will have the same number of beds that you had [ in '22 ], is it...

Yes, that's correct.

Okay. And then on the property development and the revenues, if -- maybe you are repeating them, but if you could sort of explain a little bit the revenue boost you have there?

Exactly for this current quarter and the first half year, the income in the profit exploration is very much linked to the project in Hemsedal that I think Stefan mentioned briefly. So there are 4 different stages of -- yes, you complete the project in 4 different stages and now stage 1 with the first property owners have moved in, in the quarter. So then we have the income and also the cost of operation in the quarter. That's behind a bit inflated number compared to last year. And then also, we have some Vacation Club sales and that may continue in all quarters. So that's the...

Okay. So can I come with a follow-up on Hemsedal? 4 different stages, and the first stage was now complete and that triggered a revenue in the property development. Would -- the other 3 stages, are they coming on the back of this quarter or...

Yes, they are all sold, and they will be handed over in...

Next quarter. Next quarter will be stage 2 and then stage 3 and 4 will be as Stefan said.

July, August.

Okay, and they are similar size as the first stage, just so we know how to...

Yes. Yes, I would think so. Nothing material for you to...[indiscernible] booked and paid for. So...

[Operator Instructions] There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Warm thanks for participating in the conference, and a warm thanks for also the questions which maybe also helped others on this call to get some clarification on where we are. And we are really glad for the results we have presented for this quarter and also for the outlook we have coming forward. So I wish you all good week and also Happy Easter. And I hope you will spend the time at SkiStar resorts. Thank you.

Thanks and goodbye.