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

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the SkiStar Q3 Report 1st of September 2024 to 31st of May 2025 Webcast and Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speakers today, Stefan Sjostrand, CEO; and Sara Jinnerot Uggelberg, CFO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Sharon, and nice to have you all here for the SkiStar Q3 presentation. It will be myself, Stefan Sjostrand; and our CFO, Sara Jinnerot Uggelberg, who will make the presentation today. And the agenda for today is actually that I will take you through a brief introduction with 10 slides roughly, and then, we will take you through the Q3 highlights and also with some numbers. And then after that, we will guide you through some outlook and how it looks forward for the upcoming next winter season as well as this summer season. So if I start with a short introduction, and there will be some of the slides some of you have seen before, but it's more to make a short introduction, like I said. So first of all, I'm truly happy to have this 50-year love story of SkiStar as a company. We have celebrated this 2025, and we will continue to celebrate in the beginning of next winter season as well. And the true anniversary is October 9. So it will be really positive to continue this 50-year celebration with a lot of activities together with our guests and customers. Our position is that we have a very strong position. We are the leading holiday organization for Scandinavia. And what's very important for us is that we would like to create a memorable mountain experience all year round for our customers. And we really try hard for that. And you will see later on what we have done this season to really make sure that this happened throughout the whole season. Again, we are one of the largest players in the world, and it's interesting to see that Sälen, what many think is a small destination, but it's actually the 16th largest destination in the world, and SkiStar have 3 destinations in this top -- actually, of the top 50 list in the world, which is amazing. Then if you look in and zoom into Scandinavia, we are the top leading company. We have 5 ski destinations -- winter destinations in the top 5. And we have not updated the numbers for this winter season since we are waiting for the rest of the market. So in Q4, you will see the full updated numbers for how it has looked this winter season. But again, I'm really glad that we will continue to work with our framework and the strategic framework where we will focus on Mountain operations and the property development. And so I will also take you through how our developments have looked through the both sides of mountain operations and the property development, also from the past 7 years. If we look into our integrated business model, this is one of our really strength within SkiStar. And we are really glad to have close to 40 million visits to skistar.com, where the customers come in and they book their holidays, and they also book all the activities. And this is something unique with our business model that we can continue to work with skistar.com as our distribution channel and our own UTV, which is, of course -- OTA, which is, of course, very important. We have our financial targets, and they consist of 6% growth, 18% margin. We have a net debt to EBITDA of 2.5x and dividend up to -- between 40% and 60%. So no changes there. The same with our sustainability targets. We really would like to continue to focus on creating activity and recreation by adding more customers for skier and activity days. We continue hard to work with the climate reduction and also to work with different type of collaborations to continue to both work with the climate reduction and activate more people in our resorts. What's very important for us to work with any -- in the strategic initiatives to reach our financial targets, and they are really the 5 strong from and to, and this development of the all-year-round operations continues, and the same as we strengthening the margin and growth. We continue to increase the number of commercial beds, both build new ones and also taking new ones in our booking systems. We continue to work with the sustainable future mountain experience as well normalize investments over time. So with these 5 strategic initiatives, I will start to focus on the Q3 summary. So if we look into the report, some of you have read it this morning. And of course, we can clearly see that our sales and profit declined, and it declined due to the late Easter. And from Good Friday, we could have -- really make -- yes, it happened with really poor weather conditions, and it starts to become really, really warm at our SkiStar destinations, mainly in Sälen and Trysil, later on also in Vemdalen, all maintained quite good as well as Hemsedal, but the 3, 1 in the beginning had really tough weather conditions. And then week 17, normally, we are closed in Sälen and Trysil, week 17. This year, we have decided to have it open due to spring holidays in -- or Easter holidays in the north part of Sweden. And unfortunately, we need to open up for the snow guarantee at the 3 destinations: Sälen, Trysil and Vemdalen. And what was very interesting was that media made a big thing out of this. And also media were announcing that this cost us a fortune lot of money. However, we would really like to make underlining that this week 17 was not the main reason or the snow guarantee or that we did not pay out money to our guests for canceling their bookings. What really happened was that due to the weather effect in week 16 and over Easter, guests didn't decide to come to the Scandinavian mountains. They decided to stay at home. That's the pure reason actually. And those guests who stayed at our destinations, I must say the coworkers or staff we have, they made so impressive work to make good conditions for our guests. They worked day and night. They closed some slopes, and they shuffled the snow to the slopes, where we had opened to really make as good experience as possible for our guests. So hats off again to all our employees making this happen actually. Then another highlight in the Q3 was that we have refined -- we have made some refinancing with improved commercial terms and limits. We have added SEK 700 million, which is, of course, very strong and in connection to our debt situation. So I will come into that later, but 1.15, we are in a very strong financial situation going forward as well. During the quarter, we have made -- we have sold a piece of land, Vasakölen to Skiab, and we also have made a long-term lease agreement with Skiab to rent that back, and that will be 600 new beds coming up for the season '26-'27. Then we also made a very important agreement with the landowner, Utmarkslaget. Utmarkslaget owns all land in Trysil. And previously, Utmarkslaget has been the one developed the land, and we have leased the ski part. But now we have actually made an agreement with them that we will, together with them, develop more property development within Trysil, which is completely new. So we will start up with the area around the gondola in Trysil, which is the AAA land around this gondola list. So a very positive agreement with the landowner, Utmarkslaget. Then we have made an acquisition of Högfjällshotellet operation, and we have been the owner of that building since many years back. But now since May 1, we take over the operation in Högfjällshotellet. And we are really glad that also [indiscernible], the big conference in January will continue to work with SkiStar also in January. Really proud that we have made a collaboration together with 7 other ski resorts for work with the sustainability part. And we have called it Global Sustainability Alliance, and this will support also the development to put some pressure on our suppliers to really work hard on new development within the area of sustainability. That could be of -- within the steels -- fossil-free steels. It could be more electrical development and also even more snow efficiency production. So really glad that we could make this collaboration. Also, we have done an even long-term collaboration with SJ and Snälltåget, and that also means that customers can today book for winter season -- the whole winter season next year, and that has not been possible before, and that will be very important, of course, but also something which has been a big requirement from our guests. Last but not least, OKQ8 have signed a strong partnership with us, and that means that we will, together with them, support each customer to fuel up with HVO. We will compensate the difference with normal diesel via HVO to create a more sustainable travel to our destinations. So I continue with some highlights of the Q3 -- sorry, not only Q3, also the winter season because now we can make a summary of that. And it is the second best result after the pandemic actually. And we make a very strong operational result. And I think pandemic was exceptional. And if we take that year out, we make the best year ever. And the main reason for that is that we -- of course, we lose some skier days due to this winter -- sorry, the weather effect in the quarter 3, but we open up with even more international guests. We increased 8%, and they now consist of more than 1/3 of our total number of guests. We can also see that we increased the Ski school, and Ski school is important for the future. And also, all these international guests or most of the international guests actually buy the Ski school as well. Retail for our ski shops continue to grow, and our own brand EQPE growth with 33%, but also this retail area is now close to SEK 700 million in turnover, which I think is quite important to look into as an even more important part of our revenues going forward. And last but not least, our coworkers are making a very strong work, and our guests actually really like what they are doing and give them high scores, 9 out of 10 actually, like what our coworkers are doing in the job when they meet them every day. Just a summary of the winter season. I said it briefly, we lose in the end of the season. Easter didn't match up to the year before when the Easter was week 14 and 15. Now we only got some numbers in week 16, but it was unfortunately too low numbers. And what's really interesting is, again, the importance of the international guests, they drive average spend, and they continue to do that. And that's why I'm also glad to later on talk about the new incoming flights to Sälen Airport. The digital engagement continues. And what we could see during this quarter was that we have even more digital engagement, and that was a result actually of many customers actually looked at the weather because we show the weather forecast updating every day and also the number of lifts and slopes, who was -- which was open. And unfortunately, that also led to less conversion. And now we also have made some updates in our My SkiStar members due to this GDPR. We decreased the numbers, but now we are starting to build it up again, and that's why we increased with 15%, and also, we are now up to 1.5 million members again. And then we have a retail growth of the retail growth is continued, like I said, and we are growth on growth. And this business had really challenging times within the area of sports. You have seen many challenges within the industry. For example, XXL have went into or close to bankruptcy, and they have now had really tough times and lost a lot of money, but we can continue to show both growth and profitability within this segment, which is, of course, important going forward. So by that, I hand over to you, Sara, who will talk a little bit about our numbers more in specific.

Thank you. And if we take a look at the graph that shows the net sales development. In comparison with last year, then you can see we've got a growth of 1.3% when you look at last 12 months numbers. And obviously, we had a very strong second quarter with a positive calendar effect. And the third quarter has been negatively impacted by late Easter and together with poor weather conditions. And that is obvious when you take a look at the revenue growth. The number of ski days was down 1.6%, but still it amounts to 6 million, which is a fairly high number. The occupancy rate in accommodation was low. It was 46%, which is down 3%, but if we take a look at the next winter season, the calendar effect will be very positive next year, and that is Christmas -- during Christmas and also during Easter, and that will have a positive impact on the net sales. And we continue, as Stefan mentioned, to be an attractive choice for our international guests that has increased by 8%, and their average spending is high. And we have a lot of exciting investments for our guests that will be effective from next winter season. And the net sales development per category, obviously, and this is from -- in comparison with last year, so the total period of September to May, and yes, we have an increase in SkiPasses that has a growth 3% -- 3.2%, which is volume, but it's more price. And as I said, number of ski days is down 1.6%. Accommodation, the revenue growth is actually flat. Price is 4%, and the number of objects is down 4%. And we have, as Stefan mentioned as well, the retail segment has improved and increased and that is both ski rental together with sports shops, that add up to a positive impact on the sales development. When it comes to lodging, which is the sum of hotels and mediated accommodation, we also see that we have added capacity in restaurants and that has also been a positive impact on net sales. Exploitation is down actually because last year we had a lot of property transaction in Hemsedal and that impacted net sales positive, but it actually had a net gain -- negative impact on net gain last year. And others, which is up 7%, it is actually events that has improved in comparison with last year. If we have a look at the operating profit per segment, then you can see that the development, and once again, this is the development from September to May, and operating of mountain Ski Resorts and operating Hotels, the development is more or less flat. So the development with that side comes from property development that was affected by a capital loss last year. And this year, we had a capital gain of SEK 50 million. We have also had a positive impact from joint venture that has improved year-on-year. And net sales -- sorry, net sales -- sorry, and operating profit by -- per business unit is more or less the same story, but it's up 7%, and it's a property development, as I mentioned. It is also SkiPass, of course. It's lodging that where Restaurant drives, as the new capacity, drives the improvement. Support functions, which is down SEK 18 million, that is related to sales activities, but also IT. And the seasonality impact, and this is more to describe that the seasonality impact is fairly high, and we do make money in the second and the third quarter. And then we lose money in the first and the fourth quarter. The seasonality impact is high within our operations. If we continue with the operating profit development year-on-year, then last 12 months graph shows that we should have in total SEK 816 million, but that includes a fairly high capital gain of SEK 126 million, and that is related to last year. The capital gain remaining of this year will not be -- that will be limited, and the margin is 17.1%, which is a fairly high number. And underlying business, the operating business is SEK 690 million. And as Stefan mentioned, it is a fairly high number. It is the best results ever if we exclude the peak year that was the year after the pandemic. So we have actually been able to double up our operating profit since -- well, during the years. If we take a look at the cash flow situation, the cash flow from operating activities amounts to SEK 1.2 billion in comparison with last year, that is down to some extent, and that is due to a repayment that was made last year. So if we compare the periods, that is related to working capital that had a positive impact last year. But still, the operating activities amounted to a fairly high number. Net -- or the net investment is SEK 295 million, which is lower than last year, and that is due to lower investments, but that is more a timing effect. So we will most probably have more investment in the first quarter. So during the year, the investment rate will be more or less SEK 550 million, as we've said before. Cash flow of -- from investing in activities -- sorry, cash flow from financing activities amounts to SEK 963 million, and that is a higher amount in comparison with last year, but that is due to that we've made a repayment of our existing debt to actually prepare for the refinancing that have been made in the recent days. To take a look at the debt structure and the EBITDA, so the leverage is 1.1x, which is a low number. And it has decreased in comparison with 31st of August last year. And the financial net debt amounts to SEK 1.3 billion, which is a decrease from last year, and together with an improved EBITDA, the leverage has improved. And the refinancing agreement was actually signed just the other day, and it's a new agreement with DNB, Handelsbanken and Nordea. The agreement has resulted in improved commercial terms together with an increased credit of SEK 700 million. And also all loans and facilities are linked to sustainability performance. So the quarter, in summary, yes, we had this quarter a temporary setback due to late Easter and poor weather conditions, and that impacted operating profit for the quarter that was down 10%, but we have a very strong balance sheet position and the equity/asset ratio is high. It's 64% when excluding IFRS 16. And as I said, we have a low financial debt, and we have a fairly solid investment ratio, which is good. So all in all, it looks good for the future. So that's the financial position, and the financial performance is solid.

Thank you, Sara, and it is like we all -- both of us are saying we have a temporary setback in the quarter. And again, we cannot control the weather, but we -- and we have limited possibilities to control the costs when you are in the peak of the middle of the season as well. So that's why the main reason. However, if we look into our sustainability activities, I think really proud to, like I mentioned, this -- say, leading the industry's transition and the way we are now collaborating within this 7 ski -- different ski resorts, I think it is amazing to be part of that collaboration. And since we have created this alliance, there is many more, actually, ski resorts who would like to join this collaboration. So it has been really good. I mentioned OKQ8. I mentioned also SJ. And now I will move forward, and I will talk about the outlook. And what we think is really important is that we continue to work with this strategic initiatives to reach our financial targets. And I really hope that you will see again that this temporary setback we had in the quarter, it's very challenging to mitigate. We have done our best. However, again, the winter season will be very strong. And if we look in now what is looking ahead of us then, and I think, Sara was in to talk a little bit about the calendar effect. We have both the Christmas holidays, where we also will gain week 2 next year as a full week of holidays. And of course, that will be very good for us. You could see how this winter season was for us this year, and it will be even better the winter '25-'26. Then when we will have Easter, week 14 and 15 next year, it will also be the best weeks of having Easter as well. So the calendar next year, super good. Then -- I mean this Scandinavian Mountains Airport is growing as Scandinavian Mountain Airport now will next year have 47,000 passengers coming into that airport. And that means that, that airport will be #7 in Sweden taking foreign guests. So within 5 years, this airport has grown from zero up to this position, which I think is very strong. And by now bringing more guests from U.K. with Easyjet. They are coming in from both Gatwick and Heathrow, and they will also come from Manchester. And the collaboration with TUI has been very strong, so we had TUI Netherlands. We have been working with them. And then this year, they invited actually on -- not from our side, it was TUI themselves who invited Germany and Belgium to come and visit us. And then immediately, they signed up for flights coming from Düsseldorf and also Brussels. So of course, this will be super positive for us having these guests in our system. And then what are we doing for our guests, yes, we will invest a lot. And when you do work with what we are working with, we have a lot of permission to take care of. And sometimes you have to wait, and all of a sudden everything happens at the same time. And therefore, I'm really happy that for this upcoming winter season, we will have the new gondola in Trysil. It will be a fantastic new investment, and it has been something our guests have been longing for in Trysil. In all, we have this area called Björnen-Stöten, where we have had some challenges when the weather conditions can be windy, et cetera. Now we will invest in a new ski lift as well as lighting. That means that the whole area could open up earlier, close later and also really make sure that the whole -- all the area is actually coming together as one, which is super important for the people having the houses in that area. And we believe that, that could also help us to get more bookings in Åre Björnen and Stöten during the period of time when it's dark outside. Vemdalen, we invest in a completely new ski area. And for those of you who have been visiting Vemdalen in the peak period, it has been very challenging, but now when we open up the whole new ski area, obviously, it will be completely -- actually amazing to have this new area. And then we will widen the slopes in Sälen relating to more the modern skiing actually, which is, of course, super good. Then we get a lot of critics about our pricing from media, especially. And now we will show that we will introduce the lowest price in the ski mountains actually, so in -- especially in Klövsjö, we will introduce this SkiPass for SEK 399 per day or SEK 1995 per week. And that area will be as big as or even bigger than many areas within the Scandinavia mountains actually, which is something super interesting to follow and see what that will -- how that will develop. We continue to do construction projects, like I've said, [indiscernible]. They are readying the beds, 500 new beds. Capital gains will be a bit delayed this year, and it will start up to come more into next year. We said it already during both Q1 and Q2, and now, it will be very sure that we will actually have challenges this year, but it's very open up for next year when we can see some really strong numbers. We have done an acquisition of – Juuls Sport in Trysil, and that will come into our books from September 1, and that will also mean that we will take a larger grip within the area of retail in Trysil. And then last, but not least, the winter bookings are now 30% of next year's season booked, and that is up 1%. And I think it's 1% high or low. I think we should look into that from a longer perspective. Last year, we have up 9%, and the year before that, we have 5%. So I think it is year-on-year on year. So this is the highest bookings we have had actually for the next winter season during this time of the year. So we are very glad for that, of course. But before we talk more of the winter, we really would like to also take a look at the summer season, we have just in front of us. We are up 2%, and we can see it's not the largest numbers, but we also see that the change into a year-round business continues and really glad to see that we have a plus number here. And what we have worked really hard with this year is actually to do work more with offerings since we made large investments between fiscal year '22 -- '21- '22 up to this year, where we invested close to SEK 200 million in summer activities. Now we have them in place. Now we work more with packages, marketing, to really get our customers to come up. And many of the visitors doesn't book only in our cabins and hotels, they also book their -- or take usage of their own cabins and utilize our packages we offer. I think very interesting for next summer season is that we will have a kickoff July 2 in Stockholm Hammarbybacken for a new soccer tournament. And this is going to be super cool. We're going to have 2 soccer pitches at the top of Hammarbybacken when we kick off this big soccer cup, and it will come to Sälen next summer. And what we really think is interesting here is that all soccer cups, I can tell it from myself as a father of a son who played a lot of soccer and we went through both Sweden and Norway to play soccer cups, and it was always challenging to stay over since there was a limited number of beds. What we can offer within SkiStar is a lot of beds during the summer period, and that was these companies have found out and why they really signed the agreement with us to start up with a big soccer tournament in Sälen for next summer, which is, of course, something we're looking forward to. Back to the winter, like I said, it looks really good when I look to the graphs. Again, week 2 is a week, which will be very strong for us. So we're going to have 52, 1 and 2 as the 3 main weeks around Christmas, where we have a lot of red days, which will be positive. And then, of course, we have Easter, which will come week 14, 15, which also will be very good for us next winter. And again, we developed the destinations with all these news I have told you about them. So I will not repeat myself. But what I could repeat is a little bit more. What we are doing is that we continue with this anniversary competition we have had with SkiStar ,50 years, and we have had close to 100,000 guests trying to make this slope. We also see that these snow parks is extremely positive and rewarding for the young generation, especially and also when we're lightening up and invest in lightening and do that in a professional way. We could also see that we can open up the product for even more guests to come and also take usage of these key passes they have paid for. So really positive development for next year. And lastly, but not least, I really would like to talk about these SkiPasses. So in Sälen Högfjället you could do it for SEK 295 per day and in Klövsjö-Storhogna for SEK 395 per day, extremely positive. And we will go out and talk a lot about this in media now and to really gain more and new families developing and coming to the Scandinavian mountains, where we're providing a fantastic guest experience. So last, but not least, we can see that this mountain holidays in Scandinavia is continuing to be an obvious choice for many, especially during these challenging times we have in the world, where we can see a lot of things happen, people really would like to stay home and spend the time in Scandinavia, where we could provide a lot of safety and a good environment. So by that, we would like to close our presentation or stop the presentation and open up for questions. Thank you so much.

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from the line of Alice Beer from ABG Sundal Collier.

Just a question about this 30% of accommodation booked. How much was booked last year? What could you say is like a normal booking rates at this point of the year? And also following up on that, the 600 new beds from Vasakölen, are they accounted for when you talk about 30%?

So first of all, thank you, Alice, for that question. So the 30% is according to our plan. It is 1% higher than last year. And last year, we had a record of plus 9%. So that's why I really like to highlight that the 1% and 30% booking is a little bit more than 30%, actually. It's on a very -- it's on a high level and on a historical high level. So that's why we believe it's very positive. And I can also see we have typo, the Vasakölen beds will not be ready for next year or this upcoming winter season, it is the winter season '26-'27. So I apologize for that mistake. However, we've got to get some new beds coming into our booking system with Högfjällshotellet, which we will not have had in our booking system for next year. So sorry for that typo actually. So correct, this winter '26-'27, Vasakölen; however, Högfjällshotellet's beds are coming into our system instead.

And then a question on the Q4 and the summer. We've had a pretty cold June so far. Does cold summer weather affect your summer sales or earnings?

No, actually, we had a very good start actually. On the opening, it was quite bad. We opened up the 6th of June, and then, we had also a lot of actually visitors coming now to mid-summer. And the first weekend, it was really good. We were surprised. Actually, we had so many visitors and quite good revenues even if it's on a very low level. So quite limited when the weather is less good, actually. People have learned that the clothing are more important than the weather, actually, so positive. Yes.

That's good to hear. And just a question on the margin target of 18%. How are you feeling about that for the full year? Could it be achievable? Or would it have to be a fantastic Q4 for that?

Do you mean this year of '23 -- sorry '24-'25? Or do you mean '25-'26?

No, this year.

No, but we will have challenges, of course, to meet up. We don't -- we normally don't give forecast, as you know, but since we are closing the winter season, we will most probably not reach up to the 18%, of course, since we are closing the winter season now.

Yes. Okay. Got it. And just a question on CapEx. As you mentioned so far this year, you've amounted to just under SEK 300 million. Do you have good visibility on CapEx for the projects that are supposed to be completed by Christmas? Or could it go up or down?

Obviously, it can always be a time differences when it comes to investments, but we have a fairly good view on the investment -- on the investments this year up to August, actually, and that's -- the amount will be approximately SEK 550 million. And then starting next year, we will most probably see not a peak, but the investment grade will have -- will be more than usually due to the gondola in Trysil, and obviously, this is not very much, but the first quarter will most probably have more investment in comparison with last year's. But this year, SEK 550 million approximately. So we have a fairly good view.

Okay. Great. And just 1 final question. This Juuls Sport shop acquisition, could you talk a bit more about that? And is making more retail acquisitions part of your plan to grow your retail leg?

I think what we have done previously is that we have worked with acquisition vertically to really strengthening our position within the area of different businesses to get to strengthening us. And during the years, we have made some small acquisitions. We did an acquisition in Trysil also 3 years ago within this segment since we had challenges to come into that segment since they were very limited number of locations in Trysil. And now we will actually -- since we are taking over Juuls, we will actually have a good -- fairly good control of the sport shops in Trysil. And in the same way we have done in Klövsjö. We did the same type of acquisition last year, even if it was a small one. And so when there is opportunities coming up, we will see if we can take them. If we are not seeing the opportunities that we can, continue to grow our own market share more or less. But we did the same acquisition in Trysil also last year with Trysilguidene, when we took the full control of the ski school as well. So again, vertical integration has been and will be continuously important for us to have at our destinations to continue to grow our revenue streams in more areas than only the ski lift operation more or less. Can I just add? Högfjällshotellet operation is also similar, also vertical, you can say, where we will take over the hotel, but also restaurants there. So that's also another way of showing the vertical integration for us and how we will continue to grow the business, both organic and with some minor acquisition vertically.

Your next question comes from the line of Fredrik Lithell from Handelsbanken.

Hope you're well. I just wanted to sort of follow up on Alice's question on the volumes for the next season '25-'26. You will have -- you have already now the Högfjällshotellet into the numbers. In percentage points, how much do that add to your volumes of beds? And on top of that, is there anything other that is coming in? That's the first one.

The number of beds in Högfjällshotellet, I think we need to come back to exactly how many beds it will be actually, to be honest, Fredrik. That was bad on me not fully prepared for that, but -- no -- but it is a hotel. And what I think is very good with that hotel is that when you have the tourists coming in from -- with TUI, we need to make blocks -- block bookings, et cetera, for that. And the tourists from U.K. mainly also love to stay at the hotel. So that's why we could really take advantage of Högfjällshotellet. And let us come back to the number of beds in Högfjällshotellet. And I can...

And maybe also in totality.

Yes.

Yes.

So we will come back to that. And it's not just hotel room, it's also mediated accommodations. It's a combination of both with which we'll add extra capacity. But we will get back to the total number.

Yes. That's perfect. So I continue then with my questions. If we could go back to -- it's always good to understand a little bit better the Q3 with warm weather in late Easter and what is what here. Did you early on -- I mean, you talked about the fact that Easter were positioned late in Q3 this year. So that was no surprise, but did you -- in order to fill up your volumes, your capacity, did you move around with your pricing more actively in order to fill it up, so you early on saw this? Or was it sort of when we stood there in the Easter, you saw that the usual volumes you do not control, i.e., private owners of houses or late decisions on going up skiing didn't show up and buy SkiPasses. So what is what in these weeks? Interesting thing.

I think it's a very good question, Fredrik. And during the Q2 report, we showed that we have, exactly like you said, weaker bookings week 13, 14 and 15. And week 16 looked fairly okay at that time of the bookings. But when we came closer and closer, like week 13, 14 and 15, we could see that the bookings didn't take off. We really tried to reduce the prices to people to come up, but we didn't manage to fill up. But then also all these private owners didn't come up neither to especially the Swedish mountains actually. And myself were up walking and hiking on the top of the mountain in Sälen, which I normally not can do. I normally go cross-country skiing on the top of the mountain. I did that on the Påskdagen, Easter Day there -- Påskafton, and I will -- and it was impossible to go skiing on the cross-country. And that, of course, means that a lot of private houseowners didn't come up since they looked at the weather conditions. So they just decided to stay home. And that came as a really surprise for us, of course, that the weather became so warm. It went very fast, actually. So in the beginning of the week, it was fairly good. But then during Good Friday, it really started to become warm actually. And when [Foreign Language], I don't know the word in English, but when the cold in the ground, the minus degrees in the ground start to open up and start to melt, it goes extremely fast, and that was what happened actually. And a lot of customers, unfortunately, did see. So again, that meant that we lost revenues in the hotel segment, people didn't come up, and the lodging. And we also lost SkiPass tremendously. So -- and that also led to -- we didn't sell any products of these cold products, which you need, like gloves or underwear, et cetera, in our sports shops, so all segments lost actually during the third quarter -- in the end of the third quarter versus the year before. And also what I also -- sorry, what I also could say to everyone is that to mitigate the staff cost, it's, of course, extremely hard when you have -- we are taking the staff costs down in week 13, 14, 15 and planning up and gearing up for a big Easter. And then you have giving the schedules for staff. And then you can, of course, not take that out. So that led to higher cost due to both scheduled for lifts, but also that our staff worked day and night to move and shuffle snow and make sure that the slopes were safe. So we had full amount of staff working 24/7 actually to create as good condition as possible for all those guests who were up visiting us. So I think that's also important from a cost perspective that it was very challenging to mitigate.

I have 2 questions on this topic, when things turn more warm than you expected. Have you -- what have your capacity in terms of water supply? How has that improved during the year? So how much more water capacity do you feel you have in order to produce now to safeguard a late season sort of? Has that changed?

No, but I think we have enough of water to provide our operation. So we don't feel any problems with that at all, to be honest. What we -- but what we have this year was that week 16, which is the one of the latest week in the season, had a combination of Easter this year, and that, of course, is the really bad combination that where you normally have the peak for Easter, and then, on top of that, the warm weather, it was impossible to mitigate.

And then, of course, due to the warm weather, we are not able to produce snow even if we got water capacity, but we cannot produce snow, and that is a problem -- it was a problem.

Yes. Sure. Sure. I understand that. Finally from me then, pricing for next season. You talk about the cheap key patterns for Högfjällshotellet, for example. But what have you sort of done in general on pricing? Is there anything we should keep in mind in price adjustments besides it being cheaper?

No, I think -- what I think is important is that we, as many other providers in this industry, work with the dynamic pricing. So if you book a holiday trip or a hotel today or in 3 months from now, it, of course, gives you higher prices as closer you come to the stay if you haven't booked, and there is potential for increased prices. And we have decided to stay calm in the beginning of the season like we are doing now. So if you go out looking at our prices right now, they are plus/minus 0, roughly. And then we will have a price increase during the year, like dynamic pricing, and let's see how that ends up, but we are becoming more and more professional in these, like also the hotel chains and air companies, et cetera. And I think this is one of our great benefits in the company to work with them. The other part with the 2 lower price SkiPasses is to really take this feedback we have got from guests and also media who are always telling that we are the most expensive, which is not correct, to be honest, when you do price surveys. And that's why I also want to show the market that we have the cheapest SkiPasses in the market. And that means also that we introduce a price ladder, you can say, clearly, within SkiPasses that we have the cheapest, but we will probably most -- have the most expensive as well. So for us, it's important to work with the dynamic pricing and also with the professional pricing and also continue to deliver a good product for our guests and make that in combination with the number of slopes we provide within the SkiPass. So take this [indiscernible] SkiPass, I think that will give many ski resorts in Scandinavia some competition when we provide that for SEK 1995 for a week, and that will be throughout the whole season. So that could also be in [indiscernible] and also a lot of customers in the neighborhood who travel for 1 day for SEK 395, also give us some volume. So that's also one of our decisions to really work with volume here.

[Operator Instructions] And your next question comes from the line of Karl-Johan Bonnevier from DNB Carnegie.

Stefan and Sara, just to continue on the answer to Fredrik here, looking at the dynamic pricing. When you look at the price increase you managed to achieve on the SkiPasses during this year, could you -- do you have any idea how much the dynamic pricing added to that for what you managed to realize in season, so to say?

Sara, could you support?

The dynamic pricing has actually -- it has -- it's quite a huge part of the price increase in total. I haven't got the number, but it has been fairly large part of the total increase.

We tried to communicate to our customers book and pay as soon as possible because it will be higher prices as closer you come to the buying period. And a lot of our customers or guests are actually buying very close to the visit. So that has, of course, helped the revenues a bit.

That makes total sense. And if you just could -- the 8% growth you've seen in international guests, but then I guess it's a fall in total number of guests. Could you just give us some flavor for where you see the growth coming from international at this stage? And then maybe what to do about, say, the -- maybe the falling domestic kind of percentage in this?

Yes. So the international guests, if I include Danes then in that, that means that we increased that with 8%. That means that they now consist of roughly 30-plus percent. And that starts to become a quite fairly good number, and we see also now in the booking of this season, the main part, actually. I don't know if you remember, but last year, when we had the bookings, a large proportion of the 9% we have up last year came from Danes, where we had, had a campaign in Denmark. And that is the same this year. We increased more in the international guests this year in the bookings than we do with domestic. And then now we have not actually worked so hard with any marketing activities for next winter season in Sweden, especially, yet, but we will increase actually our marketing activities this year to really speed up. And we would like to take back suites, and we really would like to work with our NPS factors to secure that the suites come back. And we will do a lot for Swedish families mainly, which is the largest target group. So marketing activities will start, and we will also talk much more about what is free in or -- at our destinations. For example, we will give children free meals if you stay at our hotels, and we continue with the free equipment, et cetera, et cetera, to really focus on the Swedish families with children since they are the largest target group. So we are putting in more marketing money for this upcoming winter. And we're also putting in more effort with the international guests since the international flights coming more to Scandinavian Mountains Airports.

And it sounds that it fits in very much with the pricing strategy that you elaborated on. And given that we have had such a weak consumer confidence, I guess, particularly among the Swedish results, so is that sort of the way you see it? That is your question of maybe lowering the price point to get the Swedish family back again that might have been missing during the season.

Maybe not only lowering the price, maybe giving more benefits. So really talking about what's free actually, so sometimes you're not needing to lowering the price. You maybe need to give benefits instead. And since our size of the company, we could manage actually to do that. And there is not so many maybe of competition who can do what we have since we also have this OTA with our booking platform and what we can offer for free. And also -- we also want to make sure that the cleaning is on a high level for next winter at our different cabins and hotels. So we will also provide cleaning in all, what we call, mandatory cleaning from our side in all beds as well within all cabins as well, which will be an important part as well.

Excellent. And just 1 final for me. The Trysil and the cooperation with Utmarkslaget, it sounds very interesting. What is your -- what is the plan for the area around the gondola? And how you can exploit it?

No, I think there is 3 important areas around in Trysil. You have first area around gondola. Then you have an area around -- its previous camping area. And then you have the big parking area, where there is today a parking. But since we opened up the gondola, the large parking and the new entrance to Trysil will actually be moved down to where the gondola is placed today. And that means that the parking, the big, big parking lots today in Trysil will be possible to make exploration on. And since we now have made this agreement with Utmarkslaget, that will also, of course, provide new opportunities also in Trysil, which not has been possible in the past. So I think we are strengthening the collaboration, both locally with this landowners as we have done at other places in -- at our ski resorts.

And when you look at timings of potential new beds, that's more a question of '26-'27 season then. Or is that something that could come into force already in the coming season?

The first part will be for the '25-'26 -- no, sorry, '26-'27. When we talk about the gondola, we will have some facilities like toilets, ski shop, and there will be some beds around that area. And then we will have -- the other large proportion will come a couple of years later. I think we need to come back to that since it's fairly new, actually.

[Operator Instructions] And your next question comes from the line of Linus Alentun from Nordea.

Stefan and Sara, just a couple of quick questions here from me. Back to volume, skier days were down roughly 13% if you reverse engineer the numbers you've given. I was just wondering if you could elaborate a little bit more on the volume drop here. What contributed mostly to this? Was it domestic volumes or international volumes? And also follow -- yes.

Yes. Sorry, Linus, continue.

Yes, and also just corporate volumes, how they have held up in the season?

What do you mean with corporate? Do you mean conferences, et cetera? Or what do you mean?

Yes, exactly.

Yes. Okay. Okay. Yes. No. So if I start with the last question, conference volume has actually been a little bit up, actually, so -- and also for next winter season, we can see that conference volumes are up. So that's positive. Then when you look at the ski days drop, it's mainly actually domestic drop since the international guest doesn't come so late in the season. They are dropping -- say, dropping -- started to drop out around week 12. And then the last couple of weeks is much more domestic. And since also many of the house owners come up visiting their own homes around this period of time, they didn't come this year since the weather conditions was fairly bad actually. Not only week 16, it started to be warm very early.

All right. All right. And just a quick other question. On the mountain segment, the EBIT margin dropped roughly 340 bps. Was this due to the operating leverage? Or was it due to cost specific factors as snowmaking, et cetera?

I would say it's a combination of both. I mean the majority of the negative impact was related to the drop in SkiPasses, of course, I mean, the net sales. And then the margin for a SkiPass is quite high. And then, of course, we had to put extra resources to prepare the slopes, as Stefan mentioned. That we have also been able to mitigate costs. The cost, for example, vehicles and electricity and maintenance. That has decreased to be able to mitigate the revenue loss that it was a combination of revenue drop or a net sale drop together with cost, extra staffing.

And I think -- so the topline loss is around, you can say, SEK 100 million roughly, and then, when you -- so normally, you can say Easter week, and we can sell revenue -- SkiPass for around SEK 150 million, and this year, we had a high drop. Of course, we didn't reach more than half of that number, of course, and then you get the drop. So it's maybe bad to say it's not more difficult than that, but it is actually exactly. We cannot change the weather, and that's how the weather affected us during this week 16. So that's why, again, next winter will be completely different, and we will not see this happen within the next coming 5 years at least when we have so late Easter again.

There are currently no further questions. I will hand the call back to you.

Yes. Thank you so much. And just answering Fredrik Lithell's question around the beds for Högfjällshotellet. This 220 beds, we will add each week. And then -- let's say, we have it for 15 weeks, it comes up to a couple of thousand beds. Of course, we're adding for the full season, Fredrik. So I hope that was answering your question as well then. So by that, I would like to say thank you very much for a lot of questions, and I could imagine there was a lot of questions due to the weak result for the quarter. And at the same time, we are very actually proud that we managed to deliver the second best result ever in SkiStar history, and we are really proud out of that. And I would -- really would like to give a big hand to all our staff, which have done a fantastic job. And I also very forward-leaning for the next -- both the summer season, of course, which are being very close to us right now, but also next winter season, which have everything in place to become a record season. So actually super positive for that. So thank you, everyone, for listening in, and I wish you everyone a happy mid-summer and celebrate a lot and enjoy the Swedish mid-summer. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

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