SkiStar AB

Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Ski Star Half Year Report Q2 1st September 2025 to 28th February 2026 webcast and conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference has been recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speakers today, Stefan Jostrand, CEO, and Zara Orgelberg, CFO. Please go ahead.

Thank you so much, and a warm welcome, everyone, to this quarter presentation of the second quarter, 25-26. We have an agenda for today where we will talk about performance. We will give a financial update outlook and then a summary before we open up for questions. So I will then start with the second quarter and the performance. And before that, I'll just start to talk a little bit about who we are. We have a vision to create memorable mountain experiences, and we are now operating six destinations in Sweden and Norway, where we have a market share of 42%. I'm really happy with our integrated business model, where the digitalization is the driver and also an enabler, actually, to continue to secure long-term growth within our company. We also have a very significant land bank for the property development. If we then look into the second quarter, we are really happy to present an increase of 8%, as well as operating profit with 6%. And if we adjust that from the exploitation gains we had last year, we actually have an profit increase as well and I'm really happy to have the margin with 17.9 percent slightly below our goal of 18 percent and also the record we are setting within 4.3 million scale days sold which is an increase of two percent and Sarah will take you through the numbers in a more detailed view later on but Really happy to present this result. And what is the drivers? Yeah, we can see there is a really strong demand for mountain vacation. And the number of international guests continue to grow. And we are slightly below 40% now of international guests. And we see that they really like to come to our resorts where they can take advantage of all services we are offering. Really glad to have also most of our ski lifts and slopes open from January to March. And we had a slightly tough situation in Trisil in Säl and in December when we opened up for the winter season. But then we had a lot of snow coming in around the new year and the snow has actually stayed long and we had very cold weather. And we have excellent, actually, views out of our ski resort. We are now standing in awe and looking out of the mountains. And it's beautiful views with a lot of snow in the slopes. We also see that our guests like what they see and like what they experience when they come to our destination. So we have increased guest satisfaction. As well, actually, our co-workers... The guests actually like what our coworkers does, which is of course very impressive. We can see growth in all revenue streams, and also important is that we continue to invest at all our destinations. And then we see this strong demand for the mountain vacation. We see that we have a changing booking pattern, and that's very much depending on if we talk Talk about foreign guests, they book much more long in advance. And then we talk about the domestic market or the Swedish population. They book much later than they have done before. But since we have a very strong business model with skistart.com, we could handle all this. We can also see that this mountain holiday, it is a prioritized among families with children especially. We can also see that this experience economy where you really like to be outdoors, you would like to have an active holiday increase. And this is of course important for us running this ski destination. And we can also see that staycation, coolcation also increase in levels. Then we have spoken a lot the last couple of years about the international guests. And I think this is a very important picture to show that a guest from UK or Denmark or Germany, they spend 50% more than a Swedish guest or than our average. And of course, that is important now when we continue to increase the base of international guests and the international guests stay longer. And when they don't stay longer, they also spend more at our destination. And, of course, what's very good with international guests is that they have other peak weeks than the, for example, domestic Swedish market, meaning that we can spread out the international guests even weeks where we have a lot of capacity, like week three, four, five, six, et cetera. So this is very important for us to have this stable capacity utilization then. Really glad to have this integrated business model because this is the engine, this is the power, so to say, where we can really see that this diversification of revenue streams we have conducted the last couple of years, where we have the digitalization as an enabler, support us within our business models. And this is also a data-driven pricing model. And that's why it's so important, for example, when we had a lot of demand for the season, we could also drive prices up for the booking. And that has been clearly seen now when we increased the turnover also in that segment. But also when we see when we had lower demand for the east and we can also take down the prices so this data driven model is of course very important we also have this multiple point of guest interaction which is really helpful for us because that means also that the customers spend a lot before they arrive and then they arrive with a full wallet to our ski destinations which is of course very important for us and and all the time we collect data We are mentioning an increase of all revenue streams within our report and last quarter we also have a deep dive within our retail business and it's quite impressive to see how we continue to grow and if we are putting together our rental as well the retail side we have a strong growth. And our own brand, Equip, grew actually 37% in the second quarter. And if I just look at retail in itself, pulling out the rental business, we are increasing 19%. And I think that's a very strong number, especially when you can see that a lot of weak result is coming from these businesses today. at other competition for the moment. So I think this is a very strong signal from our perspective. And then if I look at the property development, we have this integrated real estate development model within our system. And we are focusing on the warm beds. And now we are making construction, for example, in Sälen, where we are constructing 400 new beds. And of course that will help us for next season and they are already now bookable and we can see that this will of course help us for the next winter season as well. And then the value creation through this side is of course very important and we have now since a couple of years back decided to not sell out land when we don't need to do it. We are really cautious in how we treat this land bank. And I think if you look into the result in this quarter, really last year we showed sales of property and had property gains last quarter. This year we have not. And this is the signal of we sell when we are ready to sell and we wait until the right timing. So that is the most important for us. Lastly, before we go into the real numbers, I just would like to highlight our investments. And this is so important for us to continue enhancing this capacity and guest experience. And we can clearly see now, for example, that this year's guest satisfaction increase is very spectacular. within, for example, in Åre, where we added an extra lift, where we added an extra lighting, where we can see that the customer flow is completely different. Really glad to invest in snow system and more snow, and that will be an important factor for us even going forward, that we continue to invest in snow and systems for snow, as well as lift capacity as well actually for launch renovations to secure a strong guest experience. So by that, I hand over to you, Sara, to talk about the numbers.

Thank you, Stefan. And I would like to start with net sales development. So what are the drivers for growth, for revenue growth? And obviously, During the quarter, the weather has been good. We have had favorable weather conditions, and we still have all our destinations. And revenue is also driven by that we have the pricing power. International shares continue to grow and amount to approximately 40% of the revenue for the quarter. And we have, as Stefan mentioned, diversified revenue streams. We do have attractive accommodation. We have improved our food and beverage concepts. We have increased our sales related to retail, both in our physical stores and online, and we do offer family-friendly products and services. And not the least, we have got the capability to experience. For example, the gondola increases. And that has led to a revenue growth in the quarter that amounts to 8.2%. And if we take a look at the next sales development in more detail, that has increased by 74%. And that's a combination of price, mix, and volume. And the same for accommodation that has increased by nearly 10%. And that is also a combination of price and volume, but also the acquisition of Fopeja, which is the operation at Högtälfotellet that took place in May last year. That has been driven by strong growth when they were equipped. And restaurants have also increased by quite significant numbers, and that is also impacted by the acquisition of the operations at Herzog & Sotellet. We've had a currency effect related to revenue that amounts to nearly 50, and if we exclude the currency effect, the revenue growth amounts to 10%. If I could continue with operating profit development, that it has increased during the quarter with 6% and exploitation gains, the operating profit has increased by 8%. So the operating profits have been impacted by, of course, the revenue growth. But all of this is a mix. And when we increase our revenue streams, we have increased our direct costs related to accommodation and restaurants. We've also had higher costs related to electricity, and that's a combination of volume. The weather has been, the temperature has been fairly cold during January and February. Price increase. During the quarter, we have had no property transactions CapEx and cash flow If we start with cash flow, the cash flow from operating activities last 12 months was 1.1 billion, as the case, and that has been positively impacted by the fact that the profit after financial items has improved. CapEx, as we have mentioned before, that CapEx has increased due to several increases significant investments ahead of the winter season. And of course, we will continue to further invest to refine and improve our guest experience. And during the quarter, CapEx amounted to 76. In comparison with last year, that is an increase. But last year, CapEx was impacted by the divestment of property or land by 29, so the underlying capex in comparison with the quarter, the second quarter last year was more or less on the same level. Net theft and EBITDA structure or the debt structure is fairly low. It amounts to 0.5. It's a very low number, and it should be during this time of the year. And starting with our financial preparedness, which I believe is a very important number, it's high. It amounts to $2.2 billion. And in comparison with last year, it's a fairly high increase. Last year it was $900 million. And, of course, it has been impacted by the refinancing that took place in June last year, but also, of course, that we have improved our profits. And the net debt is fairly low. It amounts to 0.6, the interest-bearing net debt, which is also a fairly low number. So the debt situation is we have a very satisfactory level. And that will, of course, support us or enable us to further invest going forward. If I continue with other financial KPIs, starting with return on capital employed has improved during the quarter and the same for equity asset ratio that has improved to 46. If we exclude IFRS 16, the equity to asset ratio amounts to 59%. And the last one financial KPI Return on equity has also increased. So all financial KPI has improved during the quarter. And last but not the least, a summary of all financial targets. Revenue growth has increased and amounts to 8.2 during the quarter. Operating margin during the quarter, or this is actually last 12 months, amounts to 17.9. The net debt structure is 0.5. Those are, of course, important measures for us, showing that we are on the right track. Stefan.