Scandic Hotels Group AB (publ)

Welcome to the Scandic Hotels Group Q2 2026 report presentation. For the first part of the conference call, you will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answers session, you are able to ask questions by dialing pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers, CEO Jens Mathiessen and CFO Per Christensen. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much and good morning everyone and thank you all for joining us for this Q2 presentation. My name is Jens Mathisen. I'm the CEO of Scandic and together with me I have our CFO Per Christiansen as always. Let's dive into the highlights so please turn to page 2. We delivered a good quarter with solid growth. We improved our earnings and also higher profitability. The business is performing well across most of our markets, with Finland remaining the exception. Market conditions were favorable, supported by a busy event calendar, strong leisure travel and stable demand for business travel and meetings. Demand was particularly strong in the capital cities of Sweden, Denmark and Ireland. Finland remained challenging throughout the quarter, while the Norwegian hotel market was affected by a hotel strike lasting more than six weeks. The recovery in Finland is taking longer than we had expected, but we remain focused on turning the performance around. We now expect a gradual improvement with a stable second half of the year with a financial performance on same levels as last year. During the quarter, we expanded the hotel portfolio, continued to grow ScandiGo, we secured a long-term financing framework, and we progressed the Dallata acquisition according to plan, with completion expected in the fourth quarter. Looking ahead, the booking situation remains strong. Compared with earlier this year, we now see better pricing conditions across our markets, supporting our expectation of a good third quarter with occupancy broadly in line with last year and higher average room rates. Please turn to page three. Let's here take a closer look at the financials for the quarter. I'm pleased with the result, which reflects the strong underlying development. Sweden delivered another strong quarter. Norway also performed well despite the strike. Denmark continued to show strength and the latter delivered another strong quarter. The positive development was seen across most of the markets while Finland continued to face a more challenging market. As a result, adjusted EBITDA increased to 796 million Swedish kronor, corresponding to a margin of 13.3% compared with 12.5% last year. High operational efficiency and disciplined cost control continue to support our performance. Please turn to page four. Here, let's take a closer look at the market development starting with the Nordics. Overall, the market development developed well during the quarter, supported by a busy event calendar, continued strong leisure travel, and also stable demand for both business travelers and the meeting and conference segment. Sweden had another strong quarter, particularly in Stockholm, where high activity in both leisure and corporate demand supported a healthy market. In Norway, the hotel worker strike had a significant impact on the market during the quarter, affecting both occupancy and room rates. Despite this temporary disruption, the underlying market fundamentals remained healthy. Denmark also continued to show strength, with Copenhagen benefiting from high international demand and a strong event calendar. As you can see from the chart, Finland has been the clear exception of this, not only during the second quarter, but throughout the first half of the year. But all in all, the Nordic hotel market is healthy, and based on what we see today, we expect market conditions to remain favorable going forward. Please turn to page five to have a look at the development of Ireland and UK. Ireland continued to perform strongly with particularly good pricing development across the market. The Dublin market also remained healthy, supported by a solid demand from both business and leisure travelers. The UK was stable with both London and the regional markets showing steady and in some areas improving market conditions. Please note that the market data on this slide covers April and May only as final June market statistics have not been yet published. Looking at Dallata's performance for the full quarter, it's also encouraging to see that the business continued to perform well relative to the market. Dallata delivered another strong quarter with particularly good performance across Ireland, London and the UK overall. These are attractive markets with good long-term fundamentals. Please turn to page six Let me give you a brief update on our hotel pipeline. We continue to expand the portfolio at a good pace. At the end of the quarter, including the largest pipeline, we have 20 hotels and more than 4,700 rooms in development across our markets. The pipeline includes a good mix of Scandic, Scandic Go, and the larger hotels with several attractive projects in prime locations. Together, this provides a strong platform for continued growth in the years ahead. Over the next slides, I'm highlighting some of the most recent openings and signings, so please turn to page seven. Here, we can highlight some of the recent development for ScandiGo. Since our first quarter presentation, we have continued to expand the ScandiGo portfolio with both new openings and new signings. During the quarter, we opened four new ScandiGo hotels, one in Helsingborg, one in Gothenburg, and our first two ScandiGo hotels in Finland, in Turku and Ålo. We also signed a new ScandiGo hotel in central Stockholm, further strengthening our presence in one of the most attractive hotel locations in the Nordics. ScandiGo is gaining traction. Interest from property owners remains strong and the concept continues to create attractive growth opportunities in prime city locations while allowing us to reach new customer segments. Please turn to page eight. Here are a couple of other activities since the previous quarter. We signed an agreement for our third hotel in Frankfurt, further strengthening our position in one of Europe's most attractive hotel markets. We also signed two new franchise hotels, continuing to build a high quality franchise portfolio in a disciplined way. Franchise is an important compliment to our leased portfolio, and it enables us to grow together with strong local partners. So overall activity remains high, and we continue to see strong interest from property owners across our markets. With that, I hand it over to Per for the financial updates.

Thank you, Jens. Good morning, everyone. I will now go through the Q2 financials. Please turn to page 10. Looking at the second quarter, we saw organic growth of 1.2%. Overall, good results, better than last year in Sweden, Norway, and other Europe, including the Lata. Norway was negatively affected by the six-week long strike, but results were mitigated by the hard work from the teams as well as the strike-related compensation. The much lower result in Finland compared to last year is explained mainly due to softer prices, rent costs affected by fixed rent agreements and guaranteed levels, and the saved hours in operations was offset by higher salary costs. The coming important third quarter looks in line with last year for Finland. Strong performance from Dalata. The contribution from the management contract gave us 78 million in top line and 66 million on the EBITDA level. Group cost in line with same quarter last year and efficiency improvements balancing the inflation and salary increases. In total, we saw a result of 796 million and a margin of 13.3%, an improvement compared to last year's margin. All in all, a stable result. Please turn to next page. We had a strong cash flow of more than 2 billion SEK on a rolling 12 month basis. Investments was in line with plan and we continue to deliver on our portfolio strategy. The free cash flow totalled of 0.9 billion on a rolling 12 basis. Please turn to next page. We have a strong financial position, net debt of 276 million, meaning a leverage of 0.1 times compared to 0.3 times same time last year. We are in a good position to support the portfolio growth and the plan acquisition of the Lata Hotel operations. All in all, we deliver a solid quarter. Please turn to next page. In the quarter, we signed a new long-term financing framework with the wider bank group. 7.5 billion SEK is committed. This support the plan acquisition of Dalata. The contract is a three-year tenor with extension options for another two years. I will now hand back to you Jens and please turn to page 15.