10/18/2024

speaker
Laura
Event Coordinator

Hello and welcome to the Basic Fit third quarter trading update conference call and webcast. My name is Laura and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this call is being recorded and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen-only mode. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, Please press star zero and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Richard Pieker, to begin today's conference. Thank you.

speaker
Richard Pieker
Host

Well, thank you, Laura. And good afternoon and welcome to our conference call, everyone. With me today are, as usual, René Moos, our CEO, and Hans van der Aar, our CFO. Historically, we did not host investor calls with our trading updates for the first and third quarters. However, based on feedback from analysts, we have decided to host calls with our third quarter trading updates going forward. In this call, Rene will give a short introduction, after which both Rene and Hans will be available for questions. 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, and with that, Rene, I hand it over to you.

speaker
René Moos
CEO

Thank you, Richard, and welcome everyone to today's call. As stated in our press release this morning, we are pleased to report strong growth figures over the first nine months of this year, positioning as well to achieve the four-year target we outlined in our Q1 trading update. During the first nine months, we expanded our club network by 168 clubs, reaching a total of 1,570 clubs. In Q3, we added 33 clubs, and we expect to add around five more clubs to the network in Q4. Over the past nine months, we increased our club network in Spain by 70 clubs, including the 42 acquired clubs, bringing the total in Spain to 209 clubs. You'll recall that we finalized the acquisition of RSG Spain at the end of March, and we completed the sale of the five Holmes Place clubs in the second quarter of this year. Nearly all acquired clubs were rebranded to Basic Fit by the end of Q3, just in time for the important sales season September and October. Our team in Spain has done an excellent job and we believe these clubs are a valuable addition to the Basic Fit network in Spain. In the Benelux region, we increased the number of clubs by 11, bringing the total to 481. And in Germany, we added 16 clubs, reaching a total of 28 clubs. Our membership base grew to 4.2 million, representing a 13% increase year-on-year. All countries experienced growth, with Spain showing the strongest performance. Compared to last year, our revenue for the first nine months grew by 17% year-on-year, to 892 million. driven by strong club opening program, membership growth and a higher average revenue per membership. The average revenue per membership per month in the first nine months increased to €23.86 compared to €23.28 during the same period last year. Looking at France, the new management structure we implemented earlier this year is now fully operational and we continue to invest in enhancing the quality of our clubs following a successful trial of extended opening hours we will continue to further expand opening hours additionally we are introducing massage chairs in all clubs to further enhance the membership experience to highlight the affordability of our membership in france we have introduced weekly pricing a basic fit member a basic membership is now 4.99 per week while a comfort membership is 6.99 and a premium $7.99 per week, compared to $19.99, $24.99, and $29.99 per four weeks, respectively. This also reflects a slight price increase for the Comfort and Premium memberships, which will further support our revenue in France. These developments put us in an excellent position to achieve our main targets for the fall year, as outlined in our Q1 trading update. We are on track to expand our club network to around 1,575 clubs by year end, and to achieve the revenue between 1.2 and 1.25 billion for the full year. We reintroduced the basic membership in France this year, and we have continued offering this lower price membership over the past few quarters. We now expect the average revenue per member per month to be around 24-25, which is a bit less than the at least 2450 we communicated earlier. We maintain our outlook for underlying EBITDA less rent of between 305 million and 330 million, representing a growth of between 17% and 26% compared to last year. We also project a free cash flow before new club expansion of between €2.60 and €2.95 per share, which is 24% to 41% higher than in 2023, a big step forward. As always, we continue to target a return on invested capital of over 30% for our mature clubs. At the Capital Market Day in November last year, we presented our mid-term outlook and shared our plans with you. One of the topics we discussed was the potential for a franchise model. You may recall that we plan to explore three options, launching our own franchise business, acquiring an existing franchise platform, or partnering with an established franchise chain. We have now decided to move forward with starting our own franchise business and are in discussions with potential franchisees in new countries. We believe that we can leverage our scale, technology, and expertise in this franchise model. This approach requires limited capital and opens up the opportunity to expand into new countries. We expect the first Franchise Clubs to open in the course of 2025, at which time we will provide more details. With that, I conclude the presentation and Hans and I can now take your questions. Operator, please open the lines. Thank you.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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