SkiStar AB (publ)

2025 and 26, and really happy to be here today with our CFO, Sara Ginlund Uggelberg, and also our retail responsible, Anders Aspgaard, as we will today have a little bit of a deep dive in our retail segment. So we will have a short introduction. We will go through our financials, and we will have an outlook, of course, and a short repetition of where we are in our strategy, and then also talk a bit about the upcoming winter and about the booking situation, which I understand, which is a very important part of this quarter, since the quarter is not so big from a financial perspective. So let's spend some time on that. to bring some clarity for all of us. So a short introduction. For you who haven't been with us, we are the leading holiday operator for Scandinavia and really glad to have a high satisfaction from our guests. 80% of our guests are highly satisfied with our hospitality. We are really glad to have satisfied employees and also our digital improvement the last couple of years has been significant and I will soon take you through that as well. Really glad to see that Sälen has stepped up from place number 15 to place number 13 as on the list of the world's largest ski resort from Ski Days Seoul. Many of us maybe doesn't recognize Sälen as one of the largest, the biggest ski resorts, but that is a fact, and it's really happy to see our improvement, and also to have Åre on the top list, as well as Tryfyll, which has bumped up a couple of steps up on this list. So, we are working on some strategic initiatives to reach our financial targets. You can read about them in our annual report, but they are, of course, our guideline, and we work with them. And to help us every day, we work with our integrated business model. And, of course, the integrated business model build on digitalization and our close to 40 million visits. We have decided to also show you, for the first time maybe, a breakdown of our integrated business model to really show the strength of this business model and how we work with it. And both from a booking situation where the customers book the accommodation, and then the second part is how we work with the guests pre-arrival And then we are all the time in interaction with our guests from a CRM perspective. And then when the guests arrive, we also work with the guests with a point of sales. So this picture illustrates the different revenue streams and the split with the different revenue streams and the importance of work with our different revenue streams and also develop our revenue streams. And that's why I'm really glad to have Anders here today talking about the revenue stream retail later on in this section. We changed our strategic direction five years ago, and it has been a very important change for us since we focus really both on this picture, the top line, as well as this one where we show the EBIT situation and the EBIT has have a significant improvement from an operational perspective which is very important for us to talk about and get less importance out of our sales of land or property development so to say so here we guide the market with the 70 to 100 million per year and last year it was a little bit lower but We are proud to improve our EBIT in the operating part of our business. So, Sara, should we talk a little bit about our financials?

Yes. Thank you, Stefan. And I will start to show you this picture that has been presented before, but it is to point out that we do push our efforts the guest experience, obviously, together with cost optimization and exploitation opportunities. And I do believe that those together will improve our profitability, increase revenue, and improve our operating margin. And the goal is, or the target is set at 18%. And the financial targets, I mean, the quarter itself, the first quarter, we do have limited business. But the revenue growth in last 12 months' perspective has increased from 3.3% to 4.2%. And the operating margin is on par with last year, 17.1%. The debt structure, net debt to EBITDA, is still at a very satisfactory level. We do have a low net debt at 1.6, and the headroom to the target of 2.1 is quite high. And that enables us to further invest in mountain operations. The dividend at the AGM last week it was a decision to pay a dividend on three SEKs per share. And to summarize the quarter, sorry, I would like to inform you that we have made a reclassification when it comes to property exploitation that used to be included in net sales. As from the 1st of September, property exploitation will be recognized as a net amount in the profit and loss statement. That will impact revenue growth and operating margin. And I would like to, because I will get back to the net sales and operating profit later on, but I would like to address that the equity asset ratio is at a very high level. It's 50% when excluding IFRS 16. And the net debt, as I said, is fairly low. And that is, of course, during this quarter due to quite high amount of customer advance payment. And net sales is stable. We do have a stable growth during the quarter corresponding to 12%. primarily driven by retail and ski style all year. And we will get back to the retail part later on in this presentation. Next sales by category. And the revenue growth is related to ski paths and rental income together with the sport shops. even if we have a limited operation during the quarter, retail is an operation that is going on every day and during the hour as well, especially online and at our physical sports shops. And that has led to a net sales development during the quarter of 11%. The operating profit development is, as I said, on par in terms of last 12 months, 17.1%. And so I would say that the underlying operation is very solid during the quarter. And looking ahead, or even during this quarter, but we do have diversified revenue streams. And we have increased our share from international guests. The calendar going forward is very favorable. And we also have not just during Christmas and New Year, but also during for the Easter, which is earlier this year in comparison with last year. And operating profit per segment. So in total, the operating profit has improved by 1%. And the profit has been improved by operating from the operation of, mounting resource together with property development. The impact or the negative impact within hotels is due to the acquisition of Topeja, which is Høgfjells hotellet, the operation from Høgfjells hotellet. We have had a positive impact when it comes to sales, but in total, the operating profit from the acquisition is negative during the quarter, but that will improve quite significant later on. We start from the second and the third quarter. Cash flow and capex. If we start with cash flow situation, we have a fairly high cash flow from operating activities, and that has continued during this quarter and the last 12 months. situation is high, more than 1 billion SEKs in operating cash flow, which is good. The capex has increased, and that has been mentioned before, and that is due to significant investments ahead of the winter season that have been paid during the first quarter. So the capex during the quarter amounted to which is an increase in comparison with the corresponding quarter last year. The net debt structure is satisfactory, and we do have a financial preparedness which has increased quite significantly in comparison with last year. So the financial preparedness amounts to more than $1 billion at the case, And the increase is due to the refinancing that was agreed in June. And the net debt to EBITDA was 1.6 or 1.55 to be exact. And that gives us a huge or quite significant headroom to the target, which is good, of course. And that enabled us to put even further and invest even further in our mountain operation, which is, of course, both important and important for us to be able to do that. So, Stefan, the outlook.

Yes, thank you, Sara, and just sort of an update of where we are with our business plan and how do we continue to focus and what do we continue to focus on to deliver on our target. I will give you some brief update about that. And of course, like I said before, this integrated business model is the core of everything we do and also how we improve in each of the revenue streams and really put focus on each of the revenue streams to deliver according to our strategy. And Sarah mentioned our financial stability and we have fantastic stable financial situation, which also allow us to continue to invest. We will continue to invest in snow, and we will continue to invest in water. And in the bottom of this picture, you see a picture of something called Talvos Damman. And why should we invest in water? Yeah, because water is an important source for us to produce snow. And that's why we will invest in a large water plant. water reservoir and we will continue to invest in our hotels, in our rooms, in our lifts and in our equipped platform etc. So that's why it's important to deliver to our guests. We also see that the decision we took a couple of years ago to go even more with international guests is helping us to drive the average spend and also drive top lines as the international guests, they spend much more than Swedish and Norwegian guests. So the average spend for SkiStar is 20,000 per booking, but the international guests like British, German, Netherlands people, they spend more than 30,000, which means 50% more than guests from Sweden or Norway. We also decide or have made decisions to continue our ESG initiatives. And that's quite important for us since we have signed up for the science-based target and we don't give up anything around the ESG initiatives. I would say that we increase and also speed up as well as focus on our ESG initiatives. So for this quarter, I'm really glad, for example, that we have launched a huge partnership which is a chain which is working with both that you can charge your cars, of course, but you could also fuel up. And if you fuel up with HVO100, we support our guests with one Swedish krona, and supports with one Swedish krona, price for normal diesel and hvo 100 will be the same and that's of course an important part since the impact from our guests on the environment is quite high so that's why one initiatives we take to to reduce that part i'm also very glad that we continue to drive new revenue by focusing on those streams and anders will take you through the retail part which is shown on this one, where a CRIP, of course, stands for the most important or maybe the largest impact on this growth pattern. However, we also have other revenue streams, like we are running now 30 restaurants. So that means also it's a new revenue stream for us, which is both supporting top line, as well as the guest experience, as well as the EBIT. Many of you which have followed us for a while have seen this type of picture and also how we work with property development. Two years ago, we invested in a ski lift. This is an area of Söderåsen in Lindvallen Sälen. And the area in the bottom here close to the ski lift is showing or showing a way of how we would like to develop the area going forward. And we are now in the middle of exactly how that should happen and also in what pace we will develop the area because we see a possibility to do everything in a very short period of time. And that's why also how we have taken deeply discussions right now with our partnership with Skia, for example, of how we will develop this area. We will also develop new lodging and concepts around beds. And this is a picture from Åre. This is a land spot we have just next to the ski lift Vemottan. And we are really happy to now having a detailed plan sent out to the neighbors at this area. Very happy to launch a new ski area in Vemdalen this year, Hogdessyd, which opened up two weeks ago. And we have the possibility to open up the next step next year. But before we do both of these areas, we have said let's see how the customer flow or guest flow will look like in Vemdalen before we do that second part. The right side of this picture shows that we have bought a huge part of land from Holmen, which is now on the detailed plan level together with the municipality. Skistar have an enormous strength. One of our enormous strengths is that we have running the five largest ski resorts in Scandinavia. And how can we take advantage of that? Yeah, we can take a large advantage, both by SkiStar All, that you can buy a ski pass, meaning that you can visit all our resorts. But if you just want to, for example, visit two of them, you could go to Sälen and buy a ski pass. And if you buy a weekly ski pass, we give you the opportunity to visit Trysil in the same ski pass for two days of visit, as an example. The other part is that we also have decided to launch the lowest price ski pass in the ski mountains. So here we could give the opportunity for more people to try to ski in our areas or our ski destinations. So that was a bit of update of how we are focusing on the business plan. deep dive on the winter 25-26, which is then for the upcoming winter, which I think many of you are curious about. So I must say we are really proud that we have a very solid situation, both with bookings as well as snow conditions at all SkiStar destinations. Then something which has a big impact on us is, of course, the calendar effect. So this holidays period which starts from actually Saturday now we have a lot of guests coming in this Saturday the 18th of December sorry the 20th of December and then the early Easter will of course help us very much this year and this calendar effect drives both volume and and profitability. And what we mean with this is that, of course, we have three full weeks as a starting point. That week two gives an extra opportunity, and I will take a deep dive in that further on. But that's a very important week for us to show extra growth. As well as the early Easter will help us to secure good conditions for the guests, but also that we could close down our some of our resorts and areas within the resorts earlier, which means that we could have a better cost control as well, which we haven't last year when we had a very late Easter, where the Easter went to weeks 16 and 17. Then we can see a very changed behavior in the customer, say, customer booking pattern. And that means that we have made some adaptation change. in our marketing. So we are much more aggressive, so to say, in the areas where we see that we need to focus on. So when we do that focus, and also when we produce snow, we can see that we have a much higher digital engagement. So for example, when we put in some pressure or push on marketing. We can see, for example, in quarter one, we have increased our digital engagement with 21%. And we also increased the number of individual users with 6%. So the digital engagement is very important for us, even though we see a small change in the conversion rate from 2.2 to 2 we see that we still have a high conversion rate but this is very much connected to that you are a little bit more hesitant should I book or should I not book but you are out looking you're out searching and that's of course important for us that the customers are doing that and we will this winter have our strongest news launch ever, ever, ever. And it's a very important part, of course, how we will drive this launch for this season. And also, we have a very favorable calendar, as I said, not only Christmas, also early Easter. And what I think is important, which I missed in the first slide, which I will then Talk a little bit more about on this picture where I truly believe that there is a lot of interest in is that we have booked 80% of our beds for the season. 90% of our bookable beds are booked actually up to week 10, meaning that we have a very strong booking situation. That means we are plus 2%. from week 52 up to week 10, which means that probably the most important part of our season, as you can see on the pattern here. And it also shows that the three first weeks will be very important for us, and we are actually very satisfied with the booking situation at these three weeks. We're also very satisfied with the breaks, the February breaks, which also including the week 7, 8, 9, which has a very strong situation. We are also increasing the number of international guests. So we're increasing the international guests with 6%. That means that we are going from last year 39% up to 41%. And the increase is coming from Denmark with plus five, Netherlands 13, Germany 14, and the British one with 12. And of course, this is very important for us. And the Belgium one is a new line with TUI. And we can see that our collaboration with ECF and TUI has been very important for our airport and the Scandinavian mountain airports in . will increase the number of passengers this year from 25,000 to 50,000 passengers. So a very important number then. And I will stop my part of the presentation here and hand over to Anders, who will take the deep dive in Skista retail, and then we will take the Q&As after that. Welcome, Anders.

Thank you, Stephen. So, I'm going to take you through our retail business. There we go. So, our retail business goes under the name SkiStar Shop. We're going to kick off with showing the same pictures Stephen showed you earlier and tell you how we are integrated within SkiStar's business model. So looking on the pre-arrival part of our business model, we target our customer database and the customer during the customer journey with pre-bookings of rental business, but also digital retail. And this stands for about 55% of our total revenue in the business area. During the stay and the point of sale period, we target customer with drop-in rental business, but also with our physical sports retail doors on the destination, which stands then for the rest of the 45% of our total turnover. Looking at our concepts, we have a DNA that says we are Mountain Sports, and we divide the business area within three different segments. So the first one is our rental and service business, which consists of 33 units. These are mainly ski and bike rentals, but we also do have point of sales of sporting goods in these stores. Here we have weather-related products that has a high margin. We also work with a long life product range to reduce risk in stock. It's also self-service assortment. Looking on the next segment, which is our concept stores, consists of 12 units. These are fully-scaled sport retail stores with a curated selection of leading brands, including Equip, which is our private-owned brand. We want shopping to be a part of the mountain experience, and we also believe in high expertise in our staff in these stores, and we also work with DM Equipment, which is quite unique compared to other retailers that are Our customers can try out before they buy. And then we have our growth engine, the digital retail, which has two storefronts, skisashop.com, which is available in three different markets, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. And then we have equipstore.com, which is available in 14 European countries. So we cover in total 15 markets with our digital retail. We have a wide range of well-known brands, and of course, EquipStore.com with a full focus on Equip as a brand. Looking at our revenue, we have had a stable growth over the last years with a total turnover of 724 million SEK in 24-25. If we take this down to each segment, Our rental business, which then includes both pre-booking and drop-in rental, stands for 251 million and has had a CAGR at 6% over the last six years. Looking at physical retail, we have a turnover of 240 million seats with a CAGR of 10%, and then our digital retail, with a CAGR of 32% over six last years, with 242 million tick in turnover. And this is our growth engine. Looking forward, we believe that we have a strong setup to continue growth. We have a business model with a really strong omni retail and rental offering, combined with circular business models as Pizza Shop Preused, which has been a success of reselling old skis, and also with the opportunity to new categories within rental. Assortment and our own brands are a key to continued growth, and we want to significantly increase the share of sales from our own brands. and combine this with a reduced and refined external assortment to drive growth and profitability. We see that we can continue to expand our distribution with the continued fast growth within digital retail, but we also see further potential to establish or acquire additional physical stores. SkidStar's customer database and marketing is key to continued growth. And we have quite a unique opportunity and situation in the market because we know when the customer are going skiing, where they are going, with whom they are going, and for how long. This is quite unique data for a retailer to have. Looking at our organization, we have secured the right skill sets to continue to grow, and we also enhance processes and systems support related to purchase and analysis. As Stefan mentioned, we also updated and invested in a new platform, so now we have one platform that is very modern with two different storefronts, one for skistoshop.com and one for equipstore.com. And then we have Equip, which is our private-owned brand. Equip was launched in 2019 and has been a success story since then. Equip is created based on customer data and no need of the ski store customer for the wide range of skiers. Last year, Equip represented 28% of our total revenue within retail and takes a bigger share for every year. The organization is driven by an Equip first mentality, which means that we prioritize to sell Equip first and we front Equip in our stores at the best spots. External brands are thoughtfully chosen to enhance and complement equipment. We see a strength in placing equipment side by side with well-established brands in our stores.

Thank you. Thank you, Anders, for that detail, and I think for as we get a lot of questions around our retail operation, I was very glad to have this presentation from you, Anders. So now we will hand over from some Q&As to the audience.

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, you will need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. And to withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. And we will now start with our first question. This is from Alice Beer from ABG Sandal Collier. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning. Thank you, Alice, for that question.

I mean, this 17% down is a very limited amount since those numbers are very low, so to say. It's that they doesn't stand for any big amount of beds during that period of time. As you probably can see on our graph, they are very limited from a bed perspective. Those weeks are mainly used by locals and also gives the opportunity to sell skis all year or ski pads for the, So that's why the importance of open up early is good for us to both have the good snow conditions at our slopes, but also get the rumors out in the market that we are open up, actually. That's why it's very important from a marketing perspective that we open up one week earlier.

We'd open up one week earlier in this year than we did last year and the Hemsedal

I think it is roughly the same, to be honest. I'm not 100% sure. Hemseral is probably the resort where we have the most and best snow conditions at the moment, actually. We have got more snow, natural snow, and cold degrees so far this year than we had the whole last year, actually. So Hemseral looks fairly strong at this moment. Trisilk? bit warmer, but in the same way as we were last year at this time. you should always be worried of course that we are not in this case and we have decided to also use some marketing activities to secure that we will have a very strong bookings between week 11 and 18. so we are not worried in in this building we are very calm very and think this is a very solid situation so we will continue to do what we have planned and we are not in any worries at all actually the opposite we see this as a great potential for us to actually improve where we ended last year

Okay, great. What would you say would be your biggest challenge due to regarding keeping costs high? Are you doing anything different this year?

From in the second quarter, we are working much more with our cost situation from a staffing perspective. We are working with our new AI developed scheduling tool, which is now... happening within the organization. And we have put in a lot of effort to secure that we keep our costs on a good level. And then, I don't know, Sarah, would you like to say something of our cost control?

Yes, sure. I mean, we have several initiatives that relate to cost optimization, I would say. The staff scheduling, of course, is key in terms of securing that the resources scheduling is optimized. And then, of course, together with combined duties, the investment and purchase process has been improved, both in terms of process systems and capabilities. And we are working heavily with ensuring that our destinations, we do have economies of scale that we need to take advantage of. And then inventory spare parts, of course, it's quite huge costs, and we see a potential to further improve that one. And that is the processes or initiatives that already are taking place, but important ones, of course. So we do quite a lot of initiatives to improve or focus on cost optimizations.

I didn't hear your question, Alice. I'm sorry. The language is a bit poor, Alice.

Yes.

on the recalifications of the property exploitation in terms of homes, how much of that was in net sales last year?

Property exploitations, how much was included in net sales last year? Oh, sorry. Act. I need to check back because I don't have the number at hand, but I can get it to you. The capital gain was 51 last year, but I can get back to you on the revenue side. That is now excluded in the sales, and we have also restated previous year number, of course, to be able to compare, to make an even fairly comparison. But I can get back to you. Okay.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. We will now take our next question. And this is from Stefan Sjernholm from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.

Hi. Stefan here. Can you hear me?

Yes, we hear you, Stefan.

Yeah. I hope my line is better. I start off with a question for Anders and Equip. How do you see the potential to expand into new categories?

Thank you for the question. We look into new categories all the time, and we've been growing the assortment into new categories and wider product lines for each year during this growth period.

And what's the last category you entered?

We added on more cross-country skiing this year, some more soft goods for, like, the cabin time during the visit. We expanded into new categories within skiing clothes as well. We added on cross-country, a new cross-country line with shallots kalla this year. So we're looking into new categories all the time.

a lot going on obviously yeah and then yeah good and and regarding in the property segment new transaction this quarter uh can you give us an update on the python what what's ongoing or if you are about to start up any new projects yeah i i think it's a very fairly good question uh stefan because we have said that we are not in hurry

with our project for us it's more important to make them right and the third awesome project is starting to come become quite big that's why we have decided not to stress that project but that is the one first in pipeline together with some air other areas in cell and where we see some important pipeline so we are in the the ballpark of the 70-100 for sure this year and we have no idea to change that direction at this moment of time. So we keep what we have said in the guidance of the 70-100 this year as well.

So short term it's focused on Sälen. Is that due to a problem with permission on other destinations or is it

No, no, no, absolutely not. No, absolutely not, because we are really digging into where do we need more beds. And for example, in Sälen, we have a huge need for beds, because it's the largest destinations right now. And we also see that that is the destination for where the, the international guests are looking at connected to the airport together with Trysil. Trysil, we now have the agreement with Utmarkslaget, and that's where we will start to build the first beds close to the gondola lift. And then we have the second part with the camping part. But that will be a little bit further ahead then. Closer in time it will be Sälen. Åre, there is a huge project with this new lodge, but that will probably also take some little bit more of time before we have get that detailed plan from the municipalities. We could also start to build in Hemsedal, but we have said that Sälen is for now the most important part.

Okay. Thank you for that update. And last question from my side, what's the right 90% of beds booked up until week 10. How far can you get? It is fair to assume 95% or I think you're talking 100, but I think that's...

Yeah, exactly. I mean, 90% is a very good situation, of course, up to week 10. But what I think is quite interesting to see already this week, we can see that week 52 and 1 is also still booking quite the last beds we have there, actually, which is quite interesting. So I think that the week 7, 8, 9 will come up to 100, this week. 52.12 will come up to 100, and then week three to, I could see when I looked into week three and four deep dive, I could see that we were roughly around 80%. So we will continue to book as we normally do. So maybe 95, now I'm taking a wild guess, but I'm very happy to see that we continue to have a strong booking situation on those weeks, actually. And it looks favorable, good for us, quarter two here. Since we had a very strong quarter two last year, and since this quarter looks even better, both from a booking perspective as well from an international guest perspective. And since we know that international guests are spending more, we are very confident about the second quarter. Then about the third quarter, Like I said to Alice previously, is that we see a huge potential for us to improve how we ended last year in the third quarter. So where we lost a lot during Easter due to the weather conditions. But now we see a really big upside in that period of time, both on top line as well to reduce our costs, actually.

Just to answer Ali's question, sorry, the revenue from expectation property was 66.5 million SEKs last year, and the net result, the capital gain, was 51, as I mentioned. That's a fairly low number, 66.5.

No further questions on my side.

Thank you, Stefan.

Thank you. We'll now take our next question. This is from Linus Allenton from Nordea. Please go ahead.

Hi, and good morning. Just a quick couple of questions here for me. Just first of all, if bookings, you know, after week 11 to 18 don't pick up, at what point would you suggest At what point would you reduce prices here to gain more demand?

I mean, we don't see any reason to reduce prices in that sense. We rather have other plans for our marketing, which I don't want to share this call, but we have a very aggressive plan actually for that period of time. It could include more than pricing activities, Linus. So bear with us, trust us in what we are doing to fill up that period of time. But we will for sure launch an attractive Easter package for our guests, actually.

That sounds super. I guess that it's mostly domestic guests at this point during the late season. Is that correct?

Normally, it is the most domestic people. And we will continue, of course, to push the domestic market since we see that there is a potential in the market that the interest rate is in a low level. We see that also that the net debt of our customers also have the opportunity to invest. The savings are on a good level. So we see that holidays are on the top list and also to do it in the Scandinavian mountains. So we see a push there, but we will also continue to push a little bit in Denmark, actually, since we see a potential for Danish guests and also that the flights will continue from Denmark to Scandinavian Mountains Airport. So we will try to push some Danish guests as well, actually.

Okay. Could you give a number on how much the domestic bookings are down?

That was a good question. They are down around 4% down, the domestic. All right. And that's much related to the late part end of the season, as you mentioned, actually, earlier, Linus, about what to do with that period of time. And that is where the domestic market stands for the significant part of that.

Okay, super. Another question here on the ski pass sales that increase quite much here by over 30%, much driven by the all-year passes. And I just have a question here. Do you have an ambition here to move more towards a subscription-based model? I know Vale in the U.S. has built their model around the Epic Pass. How are your thoughts there?

Yeah, we see a very important, a very good question, Linus, because Since we are now also shifting the company into a more year-round business, we could see that this summer, for example, that we have a very high usage of these Skista all-year passes from our guests. And that's why we see this as an important part of drive the year-round business. And it is also... a quite interesting model to have this subscription model for splitting up the cost per 12 months and so on. And that's why we're really glad to launch this path. This is now the third year we're going in, and we increased the number of users and prescriptors every year, actually.

Super interesting. Thanks. And just one last question here on the margin target. Now that you have with the new accounting, you will have an artificially higher margin. How are you thinking about the target there?

The financial target, you mean?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And we have discussed that internally, of course. And the financial target, they will stay unchanged. And then, of course, the The picture that I presented on the initiatives to reach our financial targets, we do have an ambition to exceed 18%. And then, of course, we will think about new targets later on. But for the moment, they will stay unchanged.

And we also feel comfortable about this year right now that we're moving in the right direction towards the financial target.

Yes.

Super. Thanks. That was all from me.

Thanks. Thank you. Thanks, Linus. Thank you. We will now take the next question. This is from Carl Johan Bonavia from DNB Carnegie. Please go ahead.

Yes. Good morning, Stefan, Sara, and Anders. Just a couple of follow-ups. Just to get a feel, how do you feel about the product that you now look to be able to deliver for Christmas and New Year? It started off very nice with cold weather in November. You were all ready to start. But I understand that a lot of rain of late has maybe made the slopes quite restricted in quite a few of the resorts. And given the booking pattern coming after Christmas with a lot of people joining you, Do you feel that you can deliver a good product?

Thank you for the question, and we will deliver a product in the almost like we did last Christmas period, and you are completely right that it's been milder weather, mainly in Sälen and in Trysil. However, I'm really glad that we have five of the resorts which is less, what should I say, impacted from a weather perspective. And our slopes, I was there by myself on Saturday, five days ago, six days ago, and they were in a very good shape and nothing to complain about. Then, of course, I would love to have even more slopes open, but it's not less or more slopes than we had last year on the total level so that's why I think it is important to say that so the conditions like I said previously with Alice is that Hemsedal, Vemdalen and Åre are actually in a better shape than we had last year and it looks fairly good and right now I saw pictures from Hemsedal it's snowing there And in right now, today, it's a bit milder. However, tomorrow, it's going to snow there. So I'm not so worried about the product we're going to deliver to our guests, actually. But then, of course, I would like to see some white on the trees, et cetera. And today, it's not white on the trees. Hopefully, after tomorrow, it will be white on the trees there as well.

Sounds lovely. Sounds lovely. And when you look at the importance of, say, a strong Christmas, New Year season for them, creating maybe repeat demand to drive Easter and the post-season, so to say, is that a big factor in bridging that gap that you have for the moment?

We believe that the most important right now is to open up and show our guests that we have... a good product to deliver. And also, we will then start to do some, let's say, marketing activities to build upon what we have delivered during Christmas after the Christmas period. So, of course, it's an important part for us to, have a good product to launch the season with right now, which I'm fairly comfortable with. And it will also give us a good season. I actually, normally I'm not so loud in my words about the season, what we will deliver. But this year I'm fairly confident in that we will deliver a record season actually due Both the conditions we have, the destinations we have, the news we have launched, and not at least the calendar. The calendar will help us to have a very strong year.

I like your confidence. I like your confidence. I heard you mention the contribution of 70 to 100 from the property and exploration operation. How do you see that in current years? Because I heard also your comments to Stefan's earlier question about how the pipeline looks for the moment. Is it logical to still believe that this year will be more in line with what we have seen for the last two years?

It's a very good question. It depends on, I'm laughing here a little bit for myself because everything is connected to the pace we will have, and the agreement we will make, and when will we make the agreement, so to say. So it's, everything is about timing. And I think I need to be honest in that question and say we will stay in the line of 70 to 100 for now. I don't see that it will be, as you said, you asked the question was if we could see it in the same range as the last two years. And yes, maybe a little bit up, actually, rather than the last two years. So that's what I would say. So more in the higher range rather than the lower range.

And Sarah, you talked about the CapEx levels and what you're going through for the month. Is this still a good proxy for this year, ending up around 650 million in CapEx?

Yes, I would say that is a fairly good estimate, yes.

Excellent. And Anders, on Equip, you mentioned how you feature your own product in the store and similar kind of thing. Could you mention how you try to work with the pricing strategy against, say, the top brands?

Sorry, I didn't hear that.

Did you ask about the pricing strategy? Your pricing strategy compared to the top brands that you feature them against.

Yes. We're really picky with the level of quality in the products we produce at Equip. So what we first look at is the quality level that we can compare our products with these established brands. And then we work through this direct-to-consumer model where we distribute Equip through SkiStars retail channels, but also then equipstore.com to new markets, which makes us able to put a much lower price point for the end consumer than compared to the external high-quality, high-level brands who can deliver good pricing for a very high quality.

And just walking around in Stockholm, I noticed a lot of youngsters wearing equipped gear also in downtown Stockholm, so to say. Is that a good kind of entry to get the brand working, so to say, to catch the youngster and then maybe also getting the elders involved that might just use it at the ski resort?

Absolutely. I mean, the youth business comes from the family customer. And that's, I mean, that's the skis for customers. So we're really happy that we sell a lot to women, a lot to men, a lot to kids. And, I mean, looking at the kids, we produce the products to work both in ski slopes and at the schoolyard. So when I see the quick products when I leave my kids at school, then I'm really satisfied.

I can see that. Well, thank you very much, and good luck with the season and all the best out there.

Thank you, Karl-Johan.

Thank you. Thank you. And as a reminder, if there are any final questions, please press star 1 and 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. That's star 1 and 1 if you have any further questions today. Seems there are no further questions coming through, so I will now hand back to the speakers for any closing comments. Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening to us. And by that, we would like to wish you happy holidays and also hope to see you in the slopes because we are going there. So take care, everyone, and happy holidays.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect. Speakers, please stand by.