Scandic Hotels Group AB (publ)

Thank you very much, Speaker, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our Q4 presentation here at Scandic. As the Speaker just said, my name is Jens Mathisen. I'm the CEO of Scandic, and I will, of course, together with Pierre Christiansen, our CFO, walk you through the quarter as we normally do. Let's start to dive into page two immediately. We are delivering a strong quarter with a significantly improved result compared to the same period last year. Net sales improved slightly and we sold more room nights than we did last year, despite significantly lower room capacity. During the last year, we have made strategic exits of several hotels to optimize the portfolio and we have returned to a more normalized renovation pace as well. The market situation is solid and occupancy levels and prices improved across all the markets. I will come back to that in the market development in this presentation later on. We keep also a good pace in the development of Scandi with several initiatives that will further strengthen us both commercially and operationally. At the same time, we maintain a sharp focus on our efficiency and our cost control. And that is also clearly delivered in the results you see in this last quarter. Our financial position is strong and we are committed to allocating capital in the way that best benefits our shareholders. We have a good momentum with portfolio development. And also, as mentioned in the last quarter, we signed two new ScandiGo hotels in Sweden and one new hotel in in Stuttgart. Last week we also signed a new hotel in Berlin, which will make a good contribution to our portfolio in Germany. And given the overall positive development and our strong financial position, The board of directors is proposing an ordinary dividend of 2.60 Swedish kronor per share. And additionally, we plan to launch a new share buyback program of around 500 million Swedish kronor during the year. We have a positive outlook also for the market development in this year for 2025. And based on the current booking situation, we expect a stable first quarter with a somewhat higher occupancy rate and price level compared to last year. Of course, I will come back to that and comment more on the outlook later on in this presentation. So all in all, it's a good strong quarter and a good full year performance. Please turn to page three. We delivered, as I mentioned, a strong result with an adjusted EBITDA of 544 million Swedish kronor compared to 451 million Swedish kronor in the same quarter last year. This corresponds to a margin of 9.9%, which is up from 8.3% the year before. We delivered strong results across all our markets, and we improved our margins in Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Germany compared to last year. This performance was mainly driven by the overall solid market situation and combined with high efficiency and good cost control. And Pierre will come back to that and some more insights in the financial performance later on. Please turn to page four. Here you can see the market occupancy rates in the fourth quarter for both this year and last year across the Nordic countries. Market demand was solid during the quarter, with higher occupancy levels for all countries in each month compared to the previous year. The average occupancy rate for the market was 59.1%, and Scandic's occupancy rate was 59.6% in the quarter. Please turn to page 5. This is market data showing average room rates for Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark indexed to the corresponding month in 2019. The market's average room rate continued to grow positively in the quarter with a year-on-year increase of 1.3%. This is more or less in line with Scandic's average room rate growth, which was 0.8%. Please turn to page 6. Here you can see the market REFPA development index to the corresponding month in 2019. REFPA developed positively compared with last year and is above 2019 levels on most markets. The market REFPA in the quarter grew by 5.2% year on year and Scandic's REFPA increased by 3.8%. Please turn to page seven where you here can see the pipeline. During the quarter, we signed agreements for a new Scandi Go in Helsingborg and in Sweden with 96 rooms and a new Scandi Go in Jönköping with 103 rooms. Both would plan openings during the first half of 2026. As mentioned in the last earnings call, we also signed an agreement for a new hotel with 175 rooms in Stuttgart. And by the end of the quarter, we had 2,972 rooms in the net pipeline, corresponding to around 5.5% of our portfolio. ScandiGo is off to a good start and now corresponds to more than 50% of the signed pipeline in number of hotels and 40% in number of rooms. Please turn to page 8. We continue to grow in selected destinations in Germany. Last week, we announced a new hotel with 240 rooms in Berlin. We are planning to open in Q3 next year, so 2026, following a renovation in collaboration with the owners, AXA Investment Managers. The hotel is strategically located near Kursfürstendamm, Berlin's most famous shopping street. And Berlin is an important market for Scandic. And with this signing, we will operate three hotels with close to 1,000 rooms in the city. Following the takeover, we will operate nine hotels in Germany with close to 3,000 rooms. And with that, I hand it over to Per, please.

Thank you, Jens. Good morning, everyone. I will now go through the queue for financials. So if you turn to slide six, please. So one more page. Thank you. The four quarter ended strong. We saw revenue slightly higher than the same quarter last year. Organic growth of 1.5%, like for like 3%. We had fewer rooms due exit of hotels and reservations. In total, we had 1.7 fewer rooms nights available in the quarter. An overall strong result with adjusted EBITDA of 544 million compared to 451 million last year. The margin came in at 9.9%, an improvement from 8.3%. And if you exclude one-offs, margin ended at 9.6% versus 8.7% last year. We saw good performance in all markets. Very happy to see Finland improving and ending the year in a strong way. And also the segment of Europe improved the most. Our operations did an extremely good job. We saw very good efficiency in revenue per working hour. So well done, everyone. If you turn to page 11. For the full year, we saw revenues in line with last year's record year. Organic growth of 0.9% and like-for-like of 2.3%. Also for the full year, we had fewer rooms to exit of hotels and renovations. Adjusted EBITDA came in of 2,495 million SEK and a margin of 11.4. This means a margin well above our financial targets. Please turn to page 12. Operational cash flow came in around 2 billion on a rolling 12 basis. We had increased investments in line with our plan in expansions, in maintenance and in IT. In total, maintenance capex came in at 3.5% for the full year. Please turn to page 13. We ended the year with a very strong financial position, net debt of 128 million and an improvement from 0.6 times last year to 0.1 times this year. We saw positive working capital development. We also paid the Swedish tax debt back in full and we paid an extra dividend in December. Please turn to page 14. Looking at our strong value creation, we paid an extra dividend in December. We also started the 300 million buyback program that will run until March 25. The board now announced that they will propose an ordinary dividend of 2.6 krona per share. This amounts to 570 million. The board also have an intention to start a new buyback program of 500 million after the coming AGM. This means that since we launched our new financial targets and capital allocation priorities would have up to Q1 26 distributed nearly 2 billion SEK to our shareholders. We will continue to generate good cash flow and allocate capital to optimize shareholder value through investments, dividends and recurring buybacks. For that, I thank you and ask you to turn to page 16 and hand back to you Jens.

Thank you very much, Per. As you hear, we have a positive outlook also on the market development and we expect gradual improvement throughout the year, driven by strengthening economy across the Nordics. Based on the current booking situation, we anticipate a stable first quarter with slightly higher occupancy levels and rates compared to the same period last year. But I also want to highlight that Easter falls later this year in April, whereas last year it was in March. Overall, we deliver a strong quarter, and I'm very pleased with the continuous improvement we are making to build an even stronger Scandic. We remain sharply focused on our key initiatives to further improve our commercial and operational capabilities. With the Oracle Opera Cloud in place, the launch of our new loyalty program, and our strategic partnership with SAS, we are in a very strong position. Additionally, we are making great progress in preparing for the launch of our new web and app, which comes in Q2 this year. as well as also the implementation of a new workforce management system across all our hotels just before the summer. These initiatives, they mark a shift towards a more commercially and competitive Scandic, and we have strong potential to attract more guests, increase loyalty and improve the efficiency. Now it's time to build on this momentum and to take Scandic to the next level. In the coming years, our focus on growth combined with continuous improvement through profitability will drive good profits and also with low risk. And to achieve all of this, we have a clear strategy, which, of course, we are looking very much forward to share with you at the Capital Market Day later today. But with that, I would like to thank everyone for joining this quite short presentation. We keep a lot of this until later on during the day, but we are ready to open up for the Q&A session. So back to you, Operator.