SkiStar AB (publ) ($SKISB)

Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the SkiStar Half Year Report Q2 1st of September 2025 to the 28th of February 2026 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 Uggelberg, CFO. Please go ahead.

Thank you so much, and a warm welcome, everyone, to this quarter presentation of the second quarter '25, '26. And we have an agenda for today, where we will talk about the performance. We will give a financial update, outlook and then a summary and before we open up for questions. So I will then start with the second quarter and the performance. And before that, I'll just start to talk a little bit about who we are. We have a vision to create memorable mountain experiences, and we are now operating 6 destinations in Sweden and Norway, where we have a market share of 42%. And really happy with our integrated business model where the digitalization is the driver and also an enabler actually to continue to secure long-term growth within our company. We also have a very significant land bank for the property development. If we then look into the second quarter, we are really happy to present an increase of 8% as well an operating profit with 6%. And if we adjust that from the exploitation gains we had last year, we actually have an 8% profit increase as well. And I'm really happy to have the margin with 17.9%, slightly below our goal of 18% and also the record we are setting within 4.3 million skier days sold, which is an increase of 2%. And Sara will take you through the numbers in a more detailed view later on, but really happy to present this result. And what is the drivers? Yes, we can see there is a really strong demand for mountain vacation. And the number of international guests continue to grow, and we are slightly below 40% now of international guests, and we see that they really like to come to our resorts where they can take advantage of all services we are offering. Really glad to have also most of our ski lifts and slopes open from January to March. And we had a slightly tough situation in Trysil and Salen in December when we opened up for the winter season. But then we had a lot of snow coming in around New Year, and the snow has actually stayed long, and we have very -- had very cold weather, and we have excellent actually views out of our ski resorts. We are now standing in aura looking out of the mountains and it's beautiful views with a lot of snow in the slopes. We also see that our guests like what they see and like what they experience when they come to our destinations. So we have increased the guest satisfaction as well actually, our coworkers, the guests actually likes what our coworkers does, which is, of course, very impressive. We can see growth in all revenue streams and also important is that we continue to invest at all our destinations. And then we see this strong demand for the mountain vacation. We see that we have a changing booking pattern, and that's very much depending on -- if we talk about foreign guests, they book much more long in advance. And then we talk about the domestic market or the Swedish population, they book much later than they have done before. But since we have a very strong business model with skistar.com, we could handle all this. We can also see that this mountain holiday, it is a prioritized among families with children, especially. We can also see that this experience economy where you really like to be outdoors, you would like to have an active holiday increase. And this is, of course, important for us running the ski destinations. And we can also see that staycation, tourcation also increased in levels. Then we have spoken a lot in the last couple of years about the international guests. And I think this is a very important picture to show that a guest from U.K. or Denmark or Germany, they spend 50% more than a Swedish guest or than our average. And of course, that is important now when we continue to increase the base of international guests and the international guests stay longer. And when they stay longer, they also spend more at our destination. And of course, what's very good with international guests is that they have other peak weeks than the, for example, domestic Swedish market, meaning that we can spreading out the international guests even weeks where we have a lot of capacity like week 3, 4, 5, 6, et cetera. So this is very important for us to have this stable capacity utilization then. Really glad to have this integrated business model because this is the engine, this is the power, so to say, where we can really see that this diversification of revenue streams we have conducted the last couple of years, where we have the digitalization as an enabler support us within our business model. And this is also a data-driven pricing model. And that's why it's so important, for example, when we had a lot of demand for the season, we could also drive prices up for the booking. And that has been clearly seen now when we increased the turnover also in that segment. But also when we see -- when we had lower demand for the Easter, we can also take down the prices. So this data-driven model is, of course, very important. We also have this multiple point of guest interaction, which is really helpful for us because that means also that the customers spend a lot before they arrive and then they arrive with a full wallet to our ski destinations, which is, of course, very important for us then. And all the time, we collect data. We are mentioning all -- an increase of all revenue streams within our report. And last quarter, we also have a deep dive within our Retail business. And it's quite impressive to see how we continue to grow. And if we are putting together our rental as well the retail side, we have a strong growth. And our own brand EQPE grew actually 37% in the second quarter. And if I just look at Retail in itself, pulling out the Rental business, we are increasing 19%. And I think that's a very strong number, especially when you can see that a lot of weak result is coming from these businesses at other competition for the moment. So I think this is a very strong signal from our perspective. And then if I look at the property development, we have this integrated real estate development model within our system. And we are focusing on the warm beds. And now we are making construction, for example, in Salen, where we are constructing 400 new beds. And of course, that will help us for next season, and they are already now bookable, and we can see that this will, of course, help us for the next winter season as well. And then the value creation through this side is, of course, very important. And we have now, since a couple of years back, decided to not sell out land when we don't need to do it. We are really cautious in how we treat this land bank. And I think if you look into the result in this quarter, really, last year, we showed sales of property and had property gains last quarter this year. This year, we have not. And this is a signal of we sell when we are ready to sell, and we wait until the right timing. So that is the most important for us. Lastly, before we go into the real numbers, I just would like to highlight our investments. And this is so important for us to continue enhancing this capacity and guest experience. And we can clearly see now, for example, that this year's guest satisfaction increase is very specific within, for example, in Are, where we added an extra lift, where we added an extra lighting, where we can see that the customer flow is completely different. Really glad to invest it in snow system and more snow, and that will be an important factor for us even going forward that we continue to invest in snow and systems for snow as well as lift capacity as well actually for lodge renovations to secure a strong guest experience. So by that, I hand over to you, Sara, to talk about the numbers.

Thank you, Stefan. And I would like to start with net sales development. So what are the drivers for growth, for revenue growth? And obviously, during the quarter, the weather has been good. We have had favorable weather conditions, and we still have on all our destinations. And revenue is also driven by that we have the pricing power. International share continued to grow and amounts to approximately 40% of the revenue for the quarter. And we have, as Stefan mentioned, diversified revenue streams. We do have attractive accommodation. We have improved our food and beverage concept. We have increased our sales related to Retail, both in our physical stores and online together with rental. And we do offer family-friendly products and services. And not the least, we have got the capability to guest experience. For example -- and that has led to a revenue growth due in the quarter that amounts to 8.2%. And if we take a look at the net sales development in more detail, Stefan -- that has increased 4%, and that's a combination of price, mix and volume. And the same for accommodation that has increased by nearly 10%, and that is also a combination of price and volume, but also the acquisition of Topeja, which is the operation at profits Hogfjallshotellet that took place in May last year. We see -- that has increased and that is driven by strong growth related to EQPE. And restaurants have also increased by quite significant number and that is also impacted by the acquisition of the operations at Hogfjallshotellet. We've had a negative currency effect related to revenue that amounts to nearly SEK 50 million. And if we exclude the currency effect, the revenue growth amounts to 10%. If I continue operating profit development that we have increased during the quarter with 6% and excluding expectation gains, the operating profit has increased by 3%. So the operating profit has been impacted by, of course, the revenue growth, but also mix. And when we increase our revenue streams, we have increased our direct costs related to accommodation and restaurants. We've also had higher costs related to electricity, and that's a combination of volume. The weather has been -- the temperature has been fairly cold during January and February -- price increase. During the quarter, we have had no property transactions. Operating profit has been impacted by the underlying operation -- CapEx and cash flow. If we start with cash flow, the cash flow from operating activities last 12 months was SEK 1.1 billion, and that has been positively impacted by the fact that the profit after financial items has improved. CapEx, as we have mentioned before, CapEx has increased due to several significant investments ahead of the winter season. And of course, we will continue to further invest to refine and improve our guest experience. And during the quarter, CapEx amounted to SEK 76 million. In comparison with last year, that is increased -- it's an increase. But last year, CapEx was impacted by the divestment of property or land by SEK 29 million. So the underlying CapEx in comparison with the quarter -- the second quarter last year was more or less on the same level. Net debt and EBITDA structure or the debt structure is fairly low. It amounts to 0.5. It's a very low number, and it should be during this time of the year. And starting with our financial preparedness, which I believe is a very important number. It's high. It amounts to SEK 2.2 billion. And in comparison with last year, it's a fairly high increase. Last year, it was SEK 900 million. And of course, it has been impacted by the refinancing that took place in June last year, but also, of course, that we have improved our profit. And the net debt is fairly low. It amounts to 0.6, the net debt -- interest-bearing net debt, which is also a fairly low number. So the debt situation is -- we have a very satisfactory level. And that will, of course, support us or enable us to further invest going forward. If I continue with other financial KPIs, starting with return on capital employed has improved during the quarter and the same for equity asset ratio that has improved to 46. If we exclude IFRS 16, the equity to asset ratio amounts to 59%. And the last one financial KPI, return on equity has also increased. So all financial KPI have improved during the quarter. And last but not the least, a summary of our financial targets. Revenue growth has increased and amounts to 8.2 during the quarter. Operating margin, if we -- during the quarter or this is actually last 12 months amounts to 17.9. The net debt structure is 0.5. So those are, of course, important measures for us, showing that we are on the right track. So Stefan?

So thank you, Sara. And I will then look into a little bit about what is actually our growth drivers. And if we look into these 4 boxes, I would like to start in the left one up to the left, and it's about international guests. And the international guests, we will continue to work very strongly with -- drive more international guests because they also drive higher profitability to us. And we can also see that they have a higher consumption per stay. We also see that they have the holiday weeks outside of the Sweden holidays weeks. So of course, the Danish week, week 7, but they also have other weeks within Denmark's spring holiday, which is, of course, helping us. And we can see that the direct flight from European markets is increasing, and we will continue to get even more flights to sell or Scandinavian Mountains Airport to drive actually that type of guest to us. And that also help us and support us to do the premium positioning. And I must say that the international guests also think it's very attractive from a pricing point of view to go to Scandinavia versus going south to the Alps, which I think is very important when we're talking about also pricing power from our perspective. And then if I go to the right and I look at Retail, and I'm really happy to see that the development continues. And we will continue to create growth, and we will do it by completing the core, the core business. And the great thing is that retail stand also on their own feet actually. And this is also helping us to increase the share of non-weather dependency and also the revenue margin mix with our own brand EQPE is supporting that enormous. So really good job by the people working in that business to continue to develop both online business as well as the physical store experience. If I go down to the left, this year-round destinations, we can see that we have this existing infrastructure where we have the accommodation, we have our lifts, we have our services. We have made the investments we need to do in the summer business, and now we can really work to make the packaging of their summer experience, and that is what we are working on right now. And maybe one of the reasons why we have an increase of 14% for the summer right now. And that would also help us, of course, to improve the ROCE KPI as well. And lastly, but not the least, accommodation, our own distribution, even though that we -- when we're talking about the booking number figure, we still talk about that we are not -- we are responsible for around 50% of the beds at our destinations. The rest is bookable by Airbnb or Facebook or other tools or friendly how you do it with your friends. But I think our control or distribution model through skistar.com will help us with the accommodation and also support our guests with a very strong offer to our guests. So if I then look at the summary then, we continue to have a very strong demand for mountain vacations. And I think it's an interesting debate around this because we can see that already now, we have 20% booked for next winter season. And if I go down to the Alps, they not even know how much they're going to sell next week actually, but we already now know how well it looks for us for the Easter period. So we know that we have an occupation rate for 75% for the Easter period, which is a very strong demand. And then we have not calculated all the beds outside our system. And we know that people will come up for Easter, especially when we have these great snow conditions. And they will help to continue with the strong performance. And then, of course, we have the high guest satisfaction, which we have reported now previously, and it will hopefully continue as well. And we have growth in all our revenue streams. So very short, looking ahead, I mentioned we have in line with last year, the booking, 20% is booked. We have also work and active work to optimize these high potential periods we have. And we will continue to invest in our resorts. And we see that snow production, lift capacity and slope development creates impact. And we also see that it creates demand, and we can fulfill that demand from the market. And I think our size we have and the pricing power we have as a company, we will continue to utilize that and maximize that and also secure that we continue to develop in the right direction. And also happy to see that the summer bookings is up 14%. So by that, we open up for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] And your first question today comes from the line of Stefan Stjernholm from Handelsbanken.

I'll start off with the bookings figure. As you highlighted, Stefan, your -- the figure doesn't give the full picture. But given the very good calendar with an early Easter and also perfect snow conditions, are you a bit surprised that it's actually down year-over-year for the remainder of the season?

Yes. I thought that there should be higher demand, yes. But we could also see that we probably suffer a bit from last year a bit. But however, I believe that we now need to also show this great snow condition, and that's what we are doing in social media. Actually, we are now, for example, in Somi going out, do you know how we measure how much snow we have in the slopes. We have improved our app, for example, where our guests can see how much snow do we have in the slopes versus in the terrain. And previously, we only showed the terrain. So we have tried to show how much or how good the winter conditions actually are in this area. So I think yes, a bit surprised in one hand. On the other hand, we also hear that a lot of people plan to go and visit their own cabin. And we know that they didn't do that last year, for example. So that will be very helpful for us that we have a lot of the owners of the homes, they will come and visit them during the Easter. So -- and that's connected to the good snow conditions we have.

Yes. So in total, it's fair to assume that volumes most likely will be up around Easter?

Yes.

And looking for the next winter, it's flat volumes, 20% booked. Can you -- how does it look for international guests? Is that continuing trading up or...

Yes, it's continued to trading up. And we will even increase our collaboration, especially with some Danish agencies for next year. So we believe that, that will continue to grow even more.

Good. And the summer, I know that figures are quite small still, but international guests, are they increasingly interesting in coming to your destination also during the summer?

To be honest, I don't know that actually. So I cannot answer properly in that question. So that we have to come back to you, Stefan.

Your next question today comes from the line of Alice Beer from ABG Sundal Collier.

Just continuing on bookings growth there. Is there any way to quantify what the booking growth looks like for international guests and domestic?

What do you mean for the rest of the season, you mean or...

Yes, say for Q3 there with 10.7...

I don't have that number actually in specific. But normally, that most domestic guests actually coming for that period of time. But I don't have that figure or that split between the countries, to be honest. And maybe I have to check that.

Okay. And then I mean, you showed us strong price increases on both SkiPass and accommodation. I mean looking at the margin, what needs to happen for the margin to increase more? Like what's holding the margin back since prices are up?

I would say I forgot actually to mention that we've had a negative currency impact during the quarter that has impacted, as I said, revenue, but also operating profit by approximately 16 or almost up to 20. And that, of course, if we can eliminate negative currency effects and then, of course, we've had impact from higher costs related to electricity, then margin will improve. And then as I also said that margin has been impacted by the revenue mix, but that's -- I don't think it's fair to say that it's a negative impact because that is more related to our capability to offer more -- to increase our revenue streams and to sort of broaden our offering. And that -- in absolute terms, that is a positive for us. But if we can decrease the cost related or negative impact related to currency and electricity, that will improve the margin.

As well that when we took over, for example, Hogfjallshotellet, we haven't optimized our -- how we are running that business for as example. So we still continue to work on our margin development where we will look over how we are organized and how we will secure that we have an optimized organization, of course. So the blended mix of course, of margin comes up like this right now when we add a top line of growth of, for example, this acquisition of Hogfjallshotellet, which is almost giving us no profit. But -- so of course, so the blend that takes out a bit of our margin there. So it, of course, help our top line, but with very low margin. And then we're also optimizing our restaurant concept right now very strongly where we are working more and more both within the value chain and optimize the pricing power we could have backwards within our value chain as well to optimize our margins within restaurants, which we haven't done fully yet. So there is different rooms of how we will improve our margin actually. And then lastly, but not least, we haven't had any property sales this margin neither. And normally, they go 100% down on margin. So as an example, last year, we had SEK 16 million who supported the bottom line, which we don't have this year. So if we take out the currency effect and the property gains, we can really see that our core operation delivers a very strong result in this quarter.

And I would like to add also, Stefan, that we, of course, have a potential to further improve or optimize the scheduling related to our employees. That will have a positive impact going forward. We have started, of course, but we can still do more related to scheduling.

Okay. And just also when we're on the subject, how confident are you in reaching the EBIT margin targets this year?

I think we are on the right direction right now. So it feels fairly good to show now rolling 12, 17.9%, and we are working very hard, like Sara said, with optimizing our schedules in the last part of the season. And I think this is a big difference versus last year when we had a late Easter, where we had to have all our seasonal coworkers employed up to week 17. But this year, we don't need to have that actually since the last week of Easter is 15, and we are closing our ski resorts, most of them week 15. So of course, that will have a huge impact also on the staff costs for this year. So that's how we are also optimizing more.

Perfect. Moving on then on CapEx. So you mentioned how should we interpret this CapEx increase due to significant investments. I mean, should we expect the CapEx to sales ratio to look more like 2022? Or what's a reasonable level to expect? Can you quantify in any way?

I would say a significant investment has already taken place related to the Gondola to the new slope area at Vemdalen, et cetera, et cetera. We will continue to further increase our snow production and related activities such as water, et cetera, et cetera. But I would say that the ratio will be maybe 15, but not more than 15 now.

And then apologies if you mentioned this, sorry, you cut out a bit earlier, but net financials increased quite a lot. Should we view this as a new run rate? Or is this just temporarily elevated?

Sorry, can you repeat that?

Net financials increased quite a lot. Was it SEK 38 million or something like that. Should we view this as a new run rate? Or is this temporary?

No. It's a very good question actually because if we sort of take a look at the details in financial items, the costs related to our external funding or loans, that has actually decreased. And net financial items have been impacted by negative currency effects and also hedging, for example, negative impact related to interest swaps. And that can also be -- if you take a look at the cash flow statement, we have a fairly high amount of cash of items that doesn't affect cash flow. And that's sort of more or less quite a huge number relates to the financial items. So it's not an increase actually, not going forward.

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

Just a quick couple of questions here from me. Starting, I'm just wondering how we should think about pricing here in Q3, I mean, given that your model -- or that your pricing model has, as you said, I think, adjusted prices due to lower demand here into Easter?

So for example, we have done a lot of offers to really bring people up to the mountains. So that's how we have priced accommodation, you can say, on a lower level. So probably we will be down a bit on accommodation. However, that has been our way to stimulate our guests to come and visit us during Easter and hopefully spend money at our retail stores or our restaurants or buy SkiPasses, et cetera. So that give a sort of a flavor of how we are thinking to bring a lot of people up to the mountains actually. That's what we want. We want to have full amount of guests to come here.

Yes, I understand. But I mean, looking purely at, I mean, average SkiPass sales. So I guess that it will be slightly unaffected if your offerings are more on accommodation?

Can you just take that question again. So I didn't follow it?

Yes. If the offerings are, I mean, directed to accommodations, the SkiPass prices are -- I mean, they are not the ones that have been subjected to...

No, no, no. So we will keep a good pricing and take advantage of our pricing power, and it works exactly as before. If you book long in advance, you get a better price. But as closer you come to stay, we have an increasing pricing model, and that will continue to be like that actually.

All right. Super. And I know that you couldn't give some flavor on the domestic and international split in the booking data, but if you perhaps have any insight in the data in the quarter, I mean, skier days grew 2% here in the quarter. If you could quantify it in international and domestic terms?

I think from -- I'm really glad to see that we increased the international percentage close to more 40% now actually this year. And if we're looking into the number of skier days in itself, I think it is extremely strong to show an increase of 2% within this quarter. And that is -- we have to be reminded of that we had 2 winter storms in Sweden. One was called Johannes and one was called Hannes. And if we take out those, it actually had almost 4 days of closed slopes due to the storm. And we should be remembered that last quarter -- last second quarter, '24, '25 quarter -- second quarter was an all-time high of skier days. And before that, the all-time high was set during the pandemic. So by even now doing a record in skier days like we are doing is a very strong number, I must say. We were very happy to see this number. And we had a record in all resorts, all-time high record several times actually. So this is -- 2% doesn't say so much maybe for you, but from a historical perspective, this is a huge number, I must say. And we continue to grow this within our international guests as well.

Okay. Super. Just one last question here. I mean everyone has noticed that flight prices have been rising recently amid higher fuel prices. And there's also been some articles out on flights being canceled. So I'm just wondering if you guys have any first take or if this could be a risk for the international demand here for the remainder of the season or how you think about it?

No, we have actually not heard anything about that from our collaborations where we have with TUI yet. So we trust that everything goes on as planned up to the rest of the season as well as next season.

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

Thank you so much for listening into this report, and we are really also happy to get these questions to clarify more about where we are standing. But we're really glad to present this second quarter, which is our record quarter ever actually. And like Sara has explained, if we take out these property gains or currency effect, it's even stronger though. So really happy for the numbers and also looking forward for the upcoming, say, Easter as well as the fifth season within this Scandinavian Mountain. So thank you so much.

Thank you.

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