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Basic-Fit N V Ord
7/29/2022
Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Basic FITS 2022 Half-Year Results Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will be facilitating a question and answer session after today's prepared remarks, at which time, if you would like to ask a question, you may do so by pressing star 1 on your telephone. At any time during the call, you require audio assistance feel free to press star zero and a conference coordinator will be happy to assist you. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Richard Pykar, Head of Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.
Well, thank you, Ellie, and good afternoon and welcome everyone to this conference call during which we will discuss our results over the first half of 2022. With me today are, as usual, René Moos, our CEO, and Hans van der Aar, our CFO. This call is being broadcast live on our website, and a recording of the call will be available shortly afterwards. And as usual, I would like to point out that safe harbor applies. We will start with René, who will discuss the highlights and the operational developments, followed by a more detailed look at the financial results from Hans. After these prepared remarks, we'll open the call for questions. This call will finish no later than 3 o'clock, and with that, René, I would like to hand over to you.
Thank you, Richard. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call. During our conference call in March, I mentioned that our company was in good shape and that we were at the start of a new era of higher club and membership growth. I'm happy to report today that we achieved both of these goals in the first half of 2022. In the first half, we added 107 clubs to our network to reach 1122 clubs. This July, we opened another 18, which lift our total to 1140 clubs. Following the end of the lockdown in the Netherlands on the 15th of January and the lifting of the health pass and all other COVID restrictions in the first months of the year, we experienced record membership growth. But also several months after all these restrictions were lifted, we are still experiencing strong membership growth trends, which I believe is a clear evidence of our strong go-to-market strategy and our favorable product and price proposition. At the end of the first half, we had almost 3 million memberships compared to the 2 million we had a year ago. Revenue for the first half of 2022 of 355 million was well above that of the first half of last year, when our clubs were closed for 81% of the time. Underlying EBITDA was a profit of 60 million compared to a loss of 12.5 million in the first half of last year. We ended the first half with 181 million of available liquidity, which allows us to execute our club growth plan. Let's go to the next slide on club openings. In France, we added a record of 80 clubs to our network in the first six months. Early in June, we celebrated the opening of club number 600 in France. At the end of the period, we operated 608 clubs in France. I understand that you might get used to these growth numbers, but for all of us at Basic Fit, we think this is an incredible achievement that makes us very proud. Think about it, we started 2016, the year of our IPO, with just 25 clubs in France and 337 clubs in total. As I said before, we are far from reaching saturation in France. I believe we can double the current number of clubs in the years ahead of us. In Spain, where our club growth acceleration plan is gaining momentum, we operated 67 clubs at the end of the first half year. We opened another two clubs in Barcelona and a fourth club in Valencia. In the coming years, these large metropolitan areas that become the second and third place after Madrid should turn orange, just like Madrid, where we are operating more than 40 clubs. Since the end of the first half, we opened another six clubs in Spain, of which a fifth in Valencia, which means that we currently operate 73 clubs in Spain. We remain confident that by the end of the year we will operate around 100 clubs in Spain. We expect our first clubs in Germany to open in October, depending on when we receive the permits and can start building. I expect that we will open between 5 and 10 clubs this year. In the first half of next year, we will further accelerate the number of club openings in Germany. Let's move to the next slide on membership growth. At the end of the first half, we recorded 2.92 million memberships, which is an increase of 45% compared to a year ago. Since the start of the year, our memberships went up by 32%. In March, we told you that we had a strong start of 2022, as we also benefited from the lifting of all the COVID-19 restrictions in all our countries. I'm happy to say that several months later, we are still witnessing strong joint growth trends in all countries, including the month of July. Our growth is broad-based and comes from newly opened clubs, in-growth at clubs that never experienced a normal in-growth period during the pandemic, and the further recovery of our mature clubs. All our countries recorded strong membership growth in the first half of the year. In the beginning of the year, the performance of France and the Netherlands were particularly noteworthy. The recovery in Belgium and Spain was a bit slower due to the more severe and long lasting COVID-19 related government measures. But these countries are now also starting to catch up. I'm happy with the strong momentum in all our countries, and that is also why for the full year, I expect we can grow our membership by 1.3 million to a total of 3.5 million memberships. We have affordable pricing in a market where many of our peers have raised their list prices this year by 20 or even 50%. We are planning to keep our list prices unchanged, but we will further optimize our membership structure in the second half of the year to increase the positive yield development. I will explain some elements on the next slide. We are continuously testing and optimizing our membership structure. In the coming months, we will roll out changes to our membership structure with the aim to further increase the uptake of the premium membership. We will broaden the value gap between the comfort and the premium memberships. This will be achieved by modifying both the perceived as well as the factual value of the memberships. The higher uptake of the premium membership will increase the average yield per member and has a positive impact on our revenue. We have seen premium membership as a percentage of the base grow from 23% at the start of the year to currently 27%. And the uptake of the premium for new members has increased already to over 35%. So more than 35% of the joiners recognize the added value of the premium membership and are willing to pay 10 euros more each period. I'm comfortable that the premium membership will grow to in between 30 and 35% of the base at the end of this year. Next to increasing the average yield per member, we also aim to make the membership structure more future-proof as we will add flexibility to our go-to-market strategy. In addition, it will pave the way for the addition of a new third membership in the second half of this year. I will be more specific about this in due course when we introduce the new structure. With the introduction of the new membership structure, we will also make the use of the QR code on mobile phones mandatory. Bionius will no longer automatically obtain a membership card, and as most people will not be sharing their phones with others, we believe this will reduce improper use of the membership card and should result in some incremental membership growth. Additional benefits for us are reduction in the use of plastic and higher usage of engagement of the Basic Fit app. That brings me to my last slide for now, the execution of our growth strategy. Last November we announced our plans to accelerate club openings to around 235 clubs for this year and between 200 and 300 clubs as from 2023. With our network growing by 125 clubs so far this year, our expansion process is well set to achieve these goals. We expect to grow our club network to around 1250 by the end of this year and towards 1500 by the end of 2023. I would also like to confirm our 2000 and 3000 plus targets for 2025 and 2030. With our strict site selection process and dedicated software system, we are in full control of the expansion process and continue to pick the right locations. We see this confirmed in the ramp up of memberships in our new clubs that we opened this, and last year after COVID-19, which are developing according to the expectation and are expected to reach a return on invested capital of at least 30% at maturity. In October, we will open our first clubs in Germany, with many more to follow in 2023. As you can see in the chart, we have a full pipeline for the group for this and next year. I now hand it over to Hans for the financial review.
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