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

Welcome to the SkiStar Q3 Report 2022 -- or 2023. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers. CEO, Stefan Sjöstrand; and CFO, Martin Almgren. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and a warm welcome to our Q3 report and especially a warm welcome to our new CFO, Martin Almgren, who will soon take over from my start of the presentation. So today, we have a short agenda. We will give you a short introduction, many of you who normally listen to this call will recognize the slides. And then I will go into a summary of the quarter. And then Martin will continue to give you a deep analysis of the numbers, and I will give you an outlook and then we will have an open Q&A session. So a short introduction. We are running the 5 largest ski resorts in Scandinavia, and we're also having very great opportunity in Hammarby, Stockholm where we are now transforming to a year-round business as well as the rest of our destinations. This is numbers from last year, and I really would like to highlight that we are -- continue to have high grade of satisfied employees, 8 out of 10 are very satisfied to come to work every day and also 8 out of 10 of our guests are satisfied with we offer them. And now we will go into a summary of the quarter, and we are really focusing on the 4 areas within our transformation. And as you have read in the report this morning, we can see that we have, overall, a strong winter season. However, we have a slower pace in the last quarter. And you will listen to our Q2 presentation, you could see that we were 10% behind our bookings for the rest of the year when we presented that in March. And we could see that we actually never managed to catch up where we were. We were -- continue to have a slower pace. And even though that we had some good weather conditions, it was -- the bookings we could see in the week 2 to 6 never came actually in the end of the season. Then we could also see that we have a higher cost situation, and we have had that during the whole year actually, However, in the quarter, we are stabilizing our cost situation in a very good manner. The big part which is increasing in cost in the quarter is related to repair and maintenance costs, and that has been high in the whole year. And we have made a decision that we will continue to do that since we both were lower during the pandemic years. As well, that we've taken a strategic decision to do this maintenance work to keep up and keep an attractive destination in focus. And that we're doing both with high maintenance cost as well investments. And we are in the peak of that right now, but I think it's important to highlight that. Then we, of course, also have less real estate transactions in this quarter. Martin will go deeper into that as well. When we now have seen the cost increase during the year, we decided early in the year to focusing in the cost saving program. And as you can see, taking part of -- in the quarter, quarter 3, but we will really go into the big savings effective from September 1. And that will be -- consist of different things. One is a big reorganization with fewer levels, as well as also focus on purchasing and also restructuring of how we are operating the organization. I assume you have a lot of questions around that in the number of savings and so on, but we have decided that since we are in the middle of this or in the end of this, we have decided not to communicate in a specific number just to give you trust that this is a highly focus from our side right now. We can still see that there is a high interest in skiing in Scandinavia. We also have got questions as something happening now in the end of the season, could we see that this is a pattern. However, we will actually see that this year we have behind us is the second best ever. We are only losing 300,000 ski days, which is a very low number in relation to many other things. So we are in a good situation. And that could also the outlook show that actually. And we will come back to that in the end of this presentation as well. So I will now hand over to Martin, who will take us through actually the presentation of the EBIT. Martin?

Thank you. And as you all can see in this slide, we try to separate between the operational EBIT and the capital gains. And as you see, as Stefan just mentioned, the SEK 561 million EBIT from the operation is still -- for the rolling 12 months, I should say, is still the second best year so far. And you also see that the capital gains from real estate is much lower than the previous years. So only SEK 8 million from capital gains. So that has had an effect. And you probably know that the capital gains will vary a lot between different quarters and different years. Going to next slide and talk a little bit about the revenue and the different income categories that we have. And then as I just mentioned, the property development, you still see here in the quarter that we lose SEK 54 million from property development. And this is due to that in this quarter last year, we had real estate sales that we don't have in this quarter. If we then look at the more operational cost or income, we see that we have a loss in SkiPass of SEK 43 million and accommodation. And the accommodation is related to rental part, so not our own accommodation, the rental accommodation. So that's the 3 parameters that explains the lower sales. What is really good to see and I'm glad to see is that the retail business, the SkiStar Shop and the Web, continue to grow, which is good. And in this quarter, the growth is 13%, and it's the web that grows a little bit faster than the shops. I also want to highlight that we have a growth in the hotel and lodge business, but this should be seen together with the other costs here, because there is a reclassification between those 2 income categories. But in total, the sales in the quarter is down with 8%, mainly due to SkiPass, Accommodation and Retail. Looking at the sales for the year-end, which is an increase of 2% or SEK 68 million. Most of the -- this income still come from the retail business. And here, you see that we have positive effects from the sales of properties, and also the hotel and lodge. And the growth that we have in hotel and lodge here, comes both from acquisitions but also from the fact that the restaurants have been opened a whole year in Norway this year, which was not the case last year. And you see also that in the accumulated figures, the SkiPass sales and the accommodation sales is more or less the same as in the quarter. So the whole effect from lower SkiPass sales and accommodation is in the third quarter. Looking at EBIT per segment. Here, we see the clear effect of the lower sales in SkiPass and accommodation in the operation of the ski resorts. And if we look at the property development part here, in this quarter, as we have said, the capital gain is SEK 50 million, but we also have some one-off costs or costs that are not common, and that's a write-down in our Vacation and Club business. Some of our sales week has been reclassified to service weeks for maintenance. And we also see that we have a lower result from our associated companies. The majority of the lower EBIT result from associated companies comes from Skiab, our joint venture, and is related to a write-down in their property -- properties that they have had. And just to be clear on this, they have classified their properties as investment properties, meaning that they are -- sometimes they are increasing in value and sometimes it's decreasing. And in this quarter, we have a write-down of SEK 20 million. And other things that comes from Skiab are reclassification or valuation of currency effect and derivatives. Looking at the EBIT for the year-to-date, the 9-month period, we still see the effect from the higher cost that we talked about a little bit in the beginning, related to maintenance, but also related to---

Marketing.

Marketing, sorry. Related to marketing, and that is an effect of the transformation to an all-year-round business and not only a winter company that we see. So we have taken a decision in the first -- mainly in the first 2 quarters to have more resources into the marketing business. What's really good to see is in the last quarter, the cost has been under control in a better way than in the first 2 quarters. Still a little bit higher maintenance costs, but other costs have been in line with previous years. So a short summary here. I think we have commented on all the bullet points here, and we can just say that the operating cash flow, as you see here, is SEK 300 million lower for the first 3 months. And if we look at that, the operating cash flow in the quarter was minus [ SEK 50 million ]. So part of this -- the main part of the lower operating cash flow comes from the first 2 quarters. And the financial net debt has increased with SEK 600 million related to the investments that we are doing at the moment.

So thank you, Martin, and I will then do a bridge over from the sustainability results in the quarter into the outlook for the next quarter as well next season. So I think just to highlight, sustainability is one of our main focus areas during this transformation, and we're doing a lot of positive things. First of all, we can see that we have many, both children but also adults, engaged in our ski school. And I must say, I'm really proud that we are actually, the world's largest ski school. We are reaching more than 100,000, if I say, actively engaged people in this ski school. And we are increasing with a very high numbers compared to last year, and I think it is great to see because this will also help us building this for the future. If I look into the Valle Winter Weeks, it was a bit lower this year. However, I think it's still a number. I think this -- what we are doing as a -- really make joint forces about to have clean resorts. I think it is [indiscernible] , we actually managed to collect 8 tonnes of waste, unfortunately. But I think it is a good activity both for us to do it as a togetherness activity with our teams, but also show that we take this as a seriosity, to make sure we have really great mountains in the future. We also continue to purchase electricity. And this quarter, we managed to make a really good deal with Jämtkraft, and we have done with wind power electricity. That will, of course, support our electricity cost for the next winter season. We continue to have an active dialogue and in the society, this quarter, we have been very strong pushing actually about how can we address new regulations for staff accommodation and do it in the same way you do with like universities, et cetera. And we do that together with the municipalities we are into. And we also have other activities together with interaction. We also have a strong dialogue with the Swedish Railway SG, for example, to secure we continue to develop transportation in a more sustainable way. So I think this is a highlight then. And now I will go into the outlook going forward. And I would like to start with this slide. Because I've showed it before and I have had it in the beginning, and now I felt it's better to put it in this context because it's actually showing -- if we look into the last column on the right side, where we are talking about change Q3 year-on-year, we can see that we have high increase of visitation on skistar.com. We have a lower conversion. However, it's in a very small number, actually, on -- even if we have a slower conversion on a high-level conversion, it still show that we are on top of this. And this is also helping us to create the bookings we are showing. And if you look into the SkiStar app, we have a very high increase of both visitation, 16%, and conversion increase of 25%. If you look into the SkiStar Shop, it's also actually -- that's why we are increasing in sales. We have a 33% increase in volume visitation and also 25% increase in conversion. So of course, [ this ] numbers is helping us not only in the quarter, but it's showing that we are strong in digitalization and we have a very strong booking site, and this is helping us. And you can also see SkiStar members, now we are actually coming closer to 2 million members here. We have an increase of 14% up compared to how it was a year ago, which I think is a sustainable strong number. So just for us to have an outlook of what is actually going on in this situation, and it's actually very positive. So I must say, glad to show this slide. And then if I look into -- we are maybe talking too little about what it actually requires from a company to make this transformation into a year-round business. We have managed to operate ski resort in the last 45 years and done it in a good manner. And now we are into this year-round business. And I must say, it takes -- it has taken longer time than I anticipated, but we are on a good path. And now we have invested in all our destinations, and that means that we are fully open with summer activities to mid-summer. And I'm really glad to see our destination manager from Trysil now updating her profile picture going into coaster in Trysil. We are investing in Sälen in the summer ski, as we have here in the picture for Hammarbybacken. And we are now also opened up in Vemdalen with the climbing park and also biking paths, et cetera. So we now are up with attractions at all destinations. And in combination with that, we also updated our pricing model for the summer activities, and that is building very much on the same as we are doing for the winter. It's built on volume, and that's also supporting our guests to rent bikes to take the lift up and bike on the mountains, hike on the mountains and also stay a day extra and do activities then. We're also launching this Summer Pass, which including all activities beside the time booked ones. And that means that you can go as much as you want in the coaster or skiing or take a swim, et cetera, when you have this Summer Pass. So in combination with many events. This weekend, we had Tjejmilen in Sälen. We soon have O-ringen in Åre, et cetera, and that also supports us to bring more people to come to the destination. If I then take on the seriousity here, if I look into the outlook for upcoming winter, I must really underlying the cost saving focus we have. As you have seen, and Martin explained, the quarter is showing that when we start to hit the brakes, it really pays off. And now we are into program where we will both reorganize and also changing the ways of working. And we have experience from how we could do this during the pandemic, and that's why I feel very comfortable in that way. And that means also that we will launch a new organization effective from September 1. And that means also that we will take some positions away and we will add some new ones, and we will really focus on them having an effective and efficient organization. If I then look into top line then, I must say that the weak currency we have in Sweden and Norway, it actually have led us to a strong demand from both foreigners, if I say like that, or international guests coming to our resorts. If I call Danish International, they have increased extremely much from around 22% of the number of customers up to 28% of the volume. And of course, that is a sustainable volume now from Danish guests. We could also see that German, British and Netherlands are increasing. And we can also see that weeks, like week 7, starts to be fully booked already, and that's, of course, very positive. And we also have a positive calendar effect this year, both with a more, say, bank holidays days during Christmas and New Year, as well as earlier Easter. And that, of course, helps us. We should not underestimate there is a challenge with the consumer share of wallet. We know that a lot of -- if I take in the Danes have a different interest rate situation compared to Swedes, for example. We know that a lot of Swedes are needs to change the loans and how it will look like during this upcoming fall. However, we can see that the prices on groceries are trending down, et cetera. So I think we can see there will be also fight of the share of wallet, and I am absolutely sure that our modest price increase in SkiPass for next winter as well like keeping down with external price for booking will help us to really get a strong demand in booking for 5% up, as it looks right now. Last year, at the same time, we had minus 8%. So I think we are strong here right now. And as we have seen, Martin showed also that we have increased our net debt a bit. However, I think it's important that all of you on this call actually look into what was the strategy we put up 3 years ago. And it was a very clear strategy about keep up investments to create attractive destinations, so we can keep up our strong flow of visitors. Because if we have strong destinations in a high level, then we know that the customer will book at SkiStar and not at any other destination. And also the investment in snow systems will secure that we will have snow the whole winter. And that is, of course, a very important investment going forward, both from a sustainability point of view, as well as also making sure we have snow for Christmas, et cetera. So by that, I open up now for Q&A to me and Martin. So thank you very much for taking the time to listening to us.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Adela Dashian from Jefferies.

A couple of questions from my side. If we could start on the top line development, would you be able to provide us with some color on what the volume versus price mix was this quarter? And also, if we should expect any more price increases to be made this year?

Martin, you [ all right ]?

Start and I can fill.

Yes. So I think if you look into, we have a slower pace of number of ski days this year with 6%. And if you look into the price increases were up, in average, I think we reached -- on SkiPass is around 5-ish. So that is the mix, so to say. I think to give you a flavor on the top line also is that I think one of the colleagues have clearly stated that in the analytics how we are performing this year. We are going into a year where we compare to the best year ever in the history with a pandemic where there was no possibility to travel, et cetera. So week 2 to 6, we have many late bookings coming in and that surprised us in the Q2 report more or less. And that we may be anticipated that we should have late bookings coming in the Q3 as well, but we could see a slower pace actually starting in week 10, where we had very high comparison to the year before. So we started to lose, I think, SEK 10 million, SEK 15 million in SkiPass revenues in week 10, and that follow up with week 11 as well. So actually, those 2 were the biggest drops we had. And then there were only minor drops in week 9 and week 12, 13, 14. So I think we should not expect that it was a very deep dive of less SkiPass revenues. But I think we could see that the week 10 and 11 was the main part of the drop in SkiPass sales. Then if we look into the -- our own -- the bookings, skistar.com booking, you can see that we have all the year had less booking throughout our channel in external bookings. And we have seen that others have booked by Facebook or Airbnb and that channels, and that have helped us of course. But even there, there was probably less bookings during the last weeks of the season. We could also see a shift from 8 days SkiPass down to more 4 and 5 days SkiPass. And of course, that has an impact on our revenues as well. So a long answer. I don't know, Martin, is there any else I think just to give all of us in the call some flavor of what's happening in the top line.

Yes. Okay. But it's more late bookings that you expected would materialize -- that didn't materialize, rather, than the cancellation.

Yes, yes. We didn't have any cancellations. And I think that is one of our actually strong [ guessed ] areas. If you look into, even though throughout the pandemic, all of you on this call asked us will there be cancellations, et cetera, and we managed to show there was very low number of cancellations. And this year, we haven't had any cancellation. Of course, we have had a few, but nothing to talk about in big numbers at all. So I think that's important. All of us, that's one of the company's strengths actually that you priorities -- prioritize this type of holidays.

So I'm just trying to wrap my head around what could be the underlying factor that's driving this slower pace. Do you attribute it to the weakening macroeconomic conditions? Or do you see any other reason why demand slowed versus the beginning of the winter season?

I think we have to put it in the context of previous years. So if you look into the number of ski days is the second best ever, meaning that the best year ever was the last year, which was 6 million. And if I compare it to the best year before that was 5.5 million and that was the season '17, '18. So again, we are on a very stable high level of ski days. So I think we have to look into that context, actually. So many of you, of course, and us as well, of course, follow the macroeconomics. But we could still see that the restaurants at our resorts, they made all-time high ever actually, so they haven't got any drop this year. So I think it's important to say that as well.

So do you expect the number of ski days to stabilize or normalize on these levels? Or do we expect a drop next year?

We have actually -- we calculate to have an increase of number of ski days next year since we have a better calendar effect. We have more days during Christmas and we have more days better during Easter.

Got it. Okay. And then also on the property development business, you talked about the capital gains being quite choppy during quarters and also years. Do you expect any progression to be made there this year that could support growth? Or should we expect it to be pre-muted for the remainder this year?

We are looking into different projects. So the pipeline with new property development projects, we have that. And then if it will come this quarter in quarter 4 or quarter 1 or quarter 2, that's difficult to say. But there are absolutely projects that will -- that we are aiming to capitalize on going forward.

And I think to build on what Martin is saying also, I really would like to underline again what is our strategy, and that is that we will build a much stronger base business and in our core operations and be less dependent on the, you can say, the property development numbers. And we have also been clear that we should not expect to be in that high numbers of property development going forward that we have been in the past. Then in this year, we have had 2 high cost and we haven't managed to take out that cost during the year, especially in staff and also in others. And that is what we are focusing on now. So we are all clear about what are we doing for the situation. If we could balance that cost out, I think we have a very solid business and a solid business model.

But the weakness that's driving the results in the property development business today, it's that purely related to the macroeconomic factors?

No, no. It's just a timing effect, I would say. That's how we should see it over time because there are projects in our pipeline. And the message is that this will come in 1 quarter or another quarter. It will come going forward, but we don't really exactly know when.

Because that's also depending on the municipalities and how they are handling the plans in the municipality. And that -- what should we say, the time for projects has increased, the time you're handling this type of processes. And that means that maybe in some quarters it could be higher than we had the year before. And in some quarters, like now, it will be lower. And I think that is very much related to also municipalities and nothing we can really control rather than it is a macroeconomic factor, actually.

All right. And then just a clarification on your outlook comments. Is the 5-plus on bookings related to the upcoming winter season? Or does it also include the summer months?

It's actually only the winter, the summer month, it's slightly below last year. However, it's nothing we are worried about at all because we see that these big events like Tjejmilen, we had last week, was driving a normal traffic to our retail business, et cetera. We have O-ringen coming up. So we see that many more people are coming up not booking in our system. They are more doing activities in place, and that could be day tourism as well. So we are not so worried about the summer actually. And the winter is then the plus 5. So it's related to next winter season. And the next winter season is then starting from week 4, the 8 or something like that. I think we -- the booking starts to come. So that is how we have those plus 5%. And that is compared to minus 8% how it was a year ago.

And for Q4, since you said that the restructuring effect will start from September 1, we shouldn't expect any real contribution to the fourth quarter, correct, on profitability?

No, I think we are -- I mean, like we are -- we start with cost control in a much higher manner in Q3. And that hopefully will spill over also in Q4, but I think we will rather see the full effect from next fiscal year, actually starting from September 1, because then we have all persons in place in new roles, et cetera, and new organizational structure. So we have planned this very thoroughly. We hope to not impact the daily work during winter season. We learned that from the pandemic actually when we should start. So we started doing interviews and all that stuff in week 8, and we make the large announcements in week 14. And from there on, we have actually accelerated the process, which have also helped us to be much more efficient in the outline of how we should finalize this reorganization. But we're in the middle of it, and that's maybe why we're also not super clear of the savings, et cetera. But trust us, we have a tie on the agenda.

Got it. And then just finally on the lower rental accommodations in this quarter. Should we view this as a structural change in the way customers behave, that they use other types of platforms than your own website for their rentals? Or do you think this is just specific to this winter season?

It's a good question. We have seen that those platforms have started to increase, and we see people, maybe in a larger manner, rent out to friends and family. What we will do is that since we have the connection with skistar.com, we will also -- if you don't rent an accommodation from us, maybe you will not get the discount on SkiPass, et cetera. So we will rather -- what you will say, we will make our closer connection with the purchase at skistar.com with the membership and also how you can get the discounts, et cetera. If you rent an accommodation outside our system, that means that you maybe will not get the good deals, if I say like that. So -- and it's difficult to anticipate, but we will also try to be a little bit more flexible in the way we are pricing our bets as well.

The next question comes from Stefan Stjernholm from Nordea.

Stefan and Martin. Stefan here. Many like question has already been asked, but I have a few detailed ones. If I start with the change in payroll tax in Sweden for young employees. Can you say anything about what -- how much that will impact you?

In this quarter, the quarter 3, we see that we have an impact of about SEK 4 million higher costs related to the social cost.

So if you give a full year figure, it's some SEK 25 million, SEK 30 million or...

Yes, around. I can say it's around that number. And I think it is -- you mentioned that in your report also in your pre-report, Stefan. I think it was very good you mentioned that, because it will impact us. And I think it will be around the numbers you just mentioned. And depending also how many employees we are -- how many employees we will employ in the upcoming winter as well connected to the reorganization. So it could also be that we make it choose to have more experienced people rather than only youngsters as well in connection to this.

Yes, I understand. And regarding your CapEx, you increased that by SEK 120 million due to this Express Lift in Lindvallen. Just to get to the right total figure, can you give a total figure for next year?

Yes. total figure is around SEK 600 million that we have communicated. What we have done is that we have invested in the new Express Lift in Lindvallen, and then we also took the decision to move some of the investments that we had for this year to move it to '23, '24. So there is not the full SEK 120 million effect in increased investments in this year.

Good. And the final question from my side. Regarding the hotel segment, I guess you had targeted breakeven for this fiscal year. But given that the end of the winter season was a bit slower than expected, I guess that will be tough, or what you see?

Depending on how the bookings will continue to develop during the summer period and what kind of customers that come by resorts because we have some hotels open this summer, so there is possibilities for it. I don't know if you have anything that we can...

No, I think don't -- Stefan, we don't give any forecast. But I think it's very much like Martin is saying, of course, we have the same number of hotels open as we had last summer. But we also -- what we also are doing, which I think is -- could be important for all of you on this call to know is that during the summer period, we also have decided to put out some of our hotels on Booking.com since we could see that the guests for summer are booking differently, and that is not actually hit us in the same way as it do during wintertime. So we are differentiated now a bit. And I think this is part of also that we've learned of how to work in the winter and how do we need to work in the summer to just -- to understand a bit of -- yes, that this is a learning phase for us as well to transform into a year-round business.

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

Lots of good questions already, just a couple more from me, if I may. Looking at the plus 5% in bookings, obviously, a good number compared to last year as you put it. How much of the capacity in your system would be booked at this time?

Thanks, Stefan -- Karl. I think this is we used to say that, for example, 1st of December, we would like to have 80% booked. And now we are glad that we have 30% booked roughly. So this is good number. We are, like I said, 5% above last year, and it feels good that we also have a large increase of foreigners coming into our booking systems right now as well.

And when you book -- when you look at your booking systems compared to what you now find on Airbnb and Facebook and similar kind of things, how has the number of listings that you have in your system developed?

Do you mean the number of beds, you mean, if that...

Exactly how much of the capacity [ basically ] controlled?

Yes. I think we increased -- I'm not I'm not 100% now right now [ caliber ]. But we have seen a slightly increase in the number of beds coming into our systems. And I would like to maybe give a pass on that question on an exactly manner. But what we could see that we increased around 5% in the end of the season, but I am not sure exactly how it looks like. But we are in the ballpark of roughly the same number of beds as before.

That's good to hear. This is a growing number. Again, that's fine. I just want to hear that it's a growing number. So you are not losing out of your insight into what's available at the different resorts.

Also [indiscernible] the same number.

Yes. And when you look at the listing, how is the pricing looking for those, if you compare to last year? Are the owners looking for price hikes or aggressive price hikes? Or are they more modest?

I think we should differentiate between the different type of beds. If we are looking at beds close to the slopes, beds at our hotels, we are increasing that prices. Because we can see that the those beds are flying out, if I say like that, or they have booked in a very early stage. And that's a very high competition about to get those beds. So there, we will increase prices. Then the beds where you have a little bit, if I say, you have AAA accommodation and you have A accommodation and B accommodation, and I must say the beds where you are a little bit longer, further distance from the slopes, there we will probably lower the prices a bit. So we will work much more in the differentiated prices versus how it has been previously. We have been good in trading prices, but we will be even better of how we trade prices. And I think since last year, many owners could see that the weeks didn't be rented up due to competition from lower prices from people who maybe forget to tell the tax authorities about it. They will accept to have a little bit lower revenue. But we can still see that we have very high booking pattern on the high weeks, like week 7, 8, 9 on the Christmas period, et cetera. So that is -- I must say, actually, we are higher on almost each week during the winter season next year. So that, of course, will help to get higher prices out for that accommodations as well. But let's see, right now, we have decided, we increased the ones which are hotels and the beds close to slopes and lower prices a little bit further away from slopes to get that price distance down.

Sounds very reasonable. And you mentioned the international components in this prebooking, is there any meaningful change in it? Or is it say, more stable looking at your, say, your recurring clients in both phases coming at this stage?

I think it's interesting to see that all of a sudden Germans and people from Netherlands are coming to us, actually, that we haven't seen before. So it's actually a new pattern. Danish guests has been there for a long time, but they are, of course, increasing number. I mean it's almost for free for them to come to travel to Sweden with the currency we have. But I think it's interesting to see just Germans and Dutch people decide to go north instead of going south actually.

Is it changed compared to before that they are now early booking earlier than you might have seen previously, basically to lock in the currency, I guess?

Yes, I think so. But also what we know from previous is that people outside Swedes are earlier in the bookings since they need to secure transportations, ferries, flights, et cetera. That's why they are a little bit earlier in the booking. And that's why I was saying that the Swedes are a little bit slower right now in the booking, and that's very much related to the development we have seen in the last year actually that Swedes are slowing in the way they are booking they are booking closer to the stay. And that's good for us, and we have an upside.

Excellent. And just to be -- I understand how you do these days. The hotel operations, is that also including in this booking pattern? Or is that treated as a separate kind of thing? So this is just your, say, traded accommodations or what we should call it, where you do it for third parties?

I think, so you can say, all hotels are in here, besides the Radisson in Trysil, we are now transforming launch in Trysil from Radisson into SkiStar launch. So that numbers are into the trading system. And of course, that means that we get the number of more beds in our system due to that. So that will be into this booking numbers. So it's a very good detailed question, KJ.

No. But basically, what I'm after is that we should expect the same kind of positive pattern basically in what you separately report as hotel operation then as well, so...

Yes, yes, yes.

Good to know. Good to know. And very good comments about the calendar effect. And I guess when I look back at the comparison 2017, '18, as you remember, which was the last time you had that kind of really favorable seasonal pattern, I think I saw that ski days was up 6%, 7% or something like that. If you're looking at a no reimpact from consumer kind of trade downs or staying home or something, like would that be the kind of best guess for a seasonal impact moving into '23, '24 in ski days?

I would like to -- we -- you know we are not giving any forecast, KJ. So I will not. But if I -- if we try to look into what have we done in our resorts in the last years, we have invested and we expect to have higher visitation. And we have -- we know that it has been built more local, I'd say, holiday accommodations between 2017, '18 up to '23, '24 next year, we know there will be a number of more households for holiday stay at all our destinations. And now if you add that, my assumption is that if I compare to '17, '18, yes, we will increase, but I will not give any number. And I think like you could see the 5.6% we present now for last winter season is a very strong number and the second highest ever. And if we then can get a better calendar, I really trust and hope that we can get an increase in that number as well.

Excellent. Good to have calendar with you. And if anything, I guess...

Again, I think many, many. If we look into last year's minus 8% we have at this time of the year. Of course, if I use the bad calendar we had during Christmas, of course, had a huge impact on that because almost last 1 week actually. And now this year, we win that week back, more or less. So of course, we expect to have a good Christmas. And also Eastern since that comes very early this year, it also gives us 2 fully weeks. And that you can see in the booking pattern already that people start to book Easter already now. And normally, they don't do that. So I think we have an upside both at Christmas as well as Easter.

Excellent. Looking at -- you mentioned electricity, and it seems like you have been able to with your -- both your hedging and doing savings on the usage, mitigated extreme inflation we have seen in that cost item. Do you see that the deal you're now struck with Jämtkraft will allow you to basically mitigate it also '23, '24?

We have been able to reduce with the volume, decrease the volume or usage of electricity to compensate fully, I would say, all the cost increase in energy. We will continue to focus on the amount of electricity that we do, going forward. And then the price effect on -- I think it's a little bit early to answer the effect of that. But we will continue to focus on the electricity volume going forward.

And I think just to give some details, we stopped hedge actually during a period of time when it was extremely high prices, and now we have started to hedge again when the prices are down. So I think we have also become better in how we hedge prices. So I don't know if that's a good answer, KJ. But we really try to work on this and elaborate on the consumption as well. So we do a balance, both hedge and also try to reduce the consumption.

Sounds very logical and very straightforward. And Martin, if I understand you right, there are projects in the exploration project development portfolio that is coming into harvesting. So maybe if you take the next 12 months, you should -- we should have a, say, somewhat better kind of performance coming out of that than we have had over the last 2 or 3 quarters?

Exactly. There are projects in our pipeline. And then as Stefan said, some of those take a little bit longer time to get through the system. But I would be -- I would say, I would be surprised if we don't have any real estate business in the coming 12 months, yes.

And when we look at the cost you now took in the Q3 report related to these, what I understood was probably related to these kind of things, how does that say match? Is that -- was that things where you felt that you were sitting in the wrong kind of position? Or was it market price adjustments? Or what happened?

No, it was -- to be clear on this, the properties that we have are classified as investment properties, meaning that they will follow the market valuation. So in the previous years, we have had some positive effects from those in our results and in this quarter, we have a write-down of SEK 20 million from the properties. So it's a market valuation effect that we can see in other real estate business or companies as well.

If I look at the business area breakdown, the remaining SEK 28 million that you indicated, that nonrecurring item, where did those pop up?

Just so I follow you, you mean from from associated companies?

Yes. You highlighted the SEK 48 million as nonrecurring guidance. SEK 20 million was, I guess, these revaluation and the other [ SEK 28 million, ] where did that pop up?

And that's the write-down in the Vacation Club, SEK 13 million. As I said in the call earlier, we reclassified some of our sales week to service weeks in some of our Vacation Club units, you can say.

Yes.

Yes. And then you also have SEK 15 million as an extraordinary cost or a cost related to the restructuring program that we have initiated, and we don't see any further costs of -- only minor costs in quarter 4 related to restructuring program. Most of that cost has been taken already now in Q3.

So am I right to expect that the SEK 15 million are then in the ski operation and the -- let's say, the SEK 13 million and the SEK 20 million are in the project development exploration operation?

Yes. Correct.

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

Again, warm thanks for listening to our call today. I really hope that you -- I also to say thank you to Adela, Stefan and KJ for good questions because that's also helped others on this call to understand us better. So we hope that we have given you a good flavor of where we are at the moment. We are really looking forward actually -- forward into -- even though that, of course, as the CEO, we are not satisfied presenting results as we did this quarter. But I'm really looking forward for what we are looking into now since we have a good booking pattern and also this cost reduction program, where we have solid business as a foundation. So again, warm thanks and looking forward to talk later with you guys. Thanks.

Thank you.