Earnings Call: Q2 2021

Jul 23, 2021

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Basic-Fit's 2021 half year results conference call and webcast. I will now turn the call over to your host for today's conference, John David Roeg, Manager, Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin. Good afternoon and welcome to our conference call, during which we will discuss our results over the first half of 2021. With me today are CEO Rene Moos and CFO Hans van der Aar. This call is being broadcast live on our website, and a recording of the call will be available shortly afterwards. As usual, I would like to point out that Safe Harbor applies. We will start with Rene, who will discuss the highlights and operational developments, followed by a more detailed look at the financial results from Hans. After these prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. The call will finish no later than 3:00 P.M. With that, Rene, I would like to hand over to you. Thank you, John David. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining today's call. We are reporting over a period which was determined by COVID-19 and the subsequent government measures. In the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, clubs were closed for a long period. Our clubs were closed for 81% of the time in the first half year, compared to 49% of the time in the first half of 2020. During these times of closure, we did not collect membership fees, which resulted in a significant loss of revenue. Revenue was EUR 53 million, compared to EUR 183 million in the same period last year. We reopened our clubs in the Netherlands on May 19 and in Belgium and France on June 9, after which we saw our membership quickly coming back to their clubs for their workout. We also saw a strong inflow of new members after reopening. At the same time, the number of leavers was relatively low. In the six weeks we were open in the Netherlands and the three weeks in Belgium and France, our membership base has increased from a low 1.75 million to more than 2 million at the end of June. The month of June turned out to be our best month ever, with over a quarter of a million members joining our clubs. This strong performance helps us recover from the impact from the two lockdown periods over the past five quarters. It also clearly demonstrates that people are eager to get back to our clubs, to work on their physical and mental health, and to meet their friends and new people. In the first half of 2021, we grew our club network by 68 clubs to 973 clubs. Compared to a year ago, the number of clubs is up by 142. Let's go to slide number 3. In December 2020, due to the government measures, all our clubs, except for our clubs in Spain, had to be closed. In the end, our clubs remained closed for 81% of the time in the first half of the year. When our clubs in the Netherlands, Belgium, and France reopened, we had to respect several restrictions with regard to things like the maximum number of people in the club at the same time, no live group lessons, and the use of showers. Since reopening, restrictions have been relaxed, which means our members can do their workouts again during their favorite time of the day, visit their live group lessons, and use the showers. Since July 21, French members have to show proof of vaccination, a negative test, or immunity by means of a health pass. It is currently not clear if and how the new government measures in France will impact the demand for fitness. We read encouraging articles in the media about the progress that is now being made with regard to the French vaccination program. In Spain, our clubs stayed open in the first half of 2021, and in Luxembourg, our clubs reopened mid-January. Performance in these countries were held back by strict government measures. With regard to the membership development, we expect that we will see a more normalized membership development during the summer holiday season. After the summer, we expect the positive membership trend and the recovery of the membership base to continue. I think it is good to briefly discuss what we did the past months to keep the company in the best shape possible and to position ourselves optimally for the growth opportunities that lie ahead of us. During the period of club closure, we focused on keeping our members and employees engaged. Our members received regular updates about their clubs, were able to use the Basic-Fit app to sport at home, and their memberships were put on hold. This approach was appreciated by our members and resulted in a relatively limited cancellations. In Q4 last year, we already halted the construction and opening of new clubs and limited the maintenance activities, like replacement of equipment and refurbishments, to bring the capital expenditure to a minimum. In the period, we continued to receive support of our long-term business partners, including landlords, contractors, and suppliers, which helped us to limit our monthly cash outflow during the month of club closures. In addition, we lowered the operating costs where possible and received support from governments who provided compensation for staff costs. At the same time, we took care of our expansion capabilities and made sure that they remained intact and our business partners strong. To make sure that COVID-19 would not negatively impact our long-term growth strategy and to make sure that we would be well-positioned to pick up growth plans post the pandemic, we issued new shares and a convertible bond to finance our accelerated growth plans. Let us now go to the slide on club openings. We started the year with almost all of our clubs being closed. The impact this had on joiner rates is clearly visible in charts on slide four. Luckily, the trend significantly changed in May when we could reopen our Dutch clubs. The number of joiners we registered since the announced reopening in the Netherlands on May 19 was three times the number we reported pre-COVID-19 in the full month of May 2019. Due to a low number of leavers, the net increase in memberships in the Netherlands in May was more than 39,000. The fantastic growth in the Netherlands in May continued into June as members were happy to work out again. When Belgium and France reopened on June 9, we saw a similar trend in joiners growth as after reopening in the Netherlands. In the three weeks since reopening, our French membership base rose by 18%. June turned out to be our best month ever in terms of membership growth, with over a quarter of a million people joining and growth of our membership base of over 200,000 memberships. If we look at the membership development in the Netherlands, Belgium, and France in the first 3 weeks after opening this year compared to the same period after reopening in 2020, the number of joiners was 125% higher or more than twice as many. This is a great result. Let's go to the next slide. We strengthened our leading position in Europe with the addition of 68 clubs to our network, 973 clubs compared to a year ago. We grew our network by 142 clubs or 17%, which is a good result considering the pandemic and the long period in which we halted the club rollout. In the first half of the year, we added 45 clubs to our network in France, which now consists of 492 clubs. In the second half of 2021, we expect to open club number 500 in France. This means that we will further extend our market leadership in that country. In other countries, we also opened a substantial number of clubs in the first half of the year. This development underlines once more that we see plenty of opportunities in all our markets to successfully develop locations. I am proud to say that despite all the challenges that the pandemic has caused since the start of 2020, we are really looking forward to the opening of club number 1,000 in the month of September this year. Let's move to the next slide. Our priority remains organic growth. We will also continue to look at potential acquisition opportunities. We confirm our previous guidance of adding around 105 clubs to enter to our network this year. Thanks to the strengthening of our balance sheet in the first half of the year, we now have ample liquidity to accelerate the execution of our growth strategy. Assuming no major new government measures due to COVID-19, we expect to reach the 1,250 club targets by the end of 2022. We have a pandemic clause in nearly all of our new property lease contracts, which gives us the flexibility to adjust to changing circumstances if we need to. This concludes my part of the presentation, and I would like to hand over to Hans for the financial review. Thank you, Rene. I would like to start with a slide on our revenue development in the first half of the year. As Rene already told you, we were forced to close our clubs for 81% of the time in the first half year. With memberships being on freeze, this means we missed well over EUR 200 million in revenue. The result is that we reported a 71% decline in revenue to EUR 53 million. When our clubs in the Benelux and France reopened in May and June, we first compensated our members who were entitled for compensation for fees they paid while our clubs were closed in the second half of 2020. What this means is that we started charging usual fees again in the Netherlands from June and in Belgium and France from July onwards. Let's go to the next slide. Slide 9 and 10 show the main elements of our income statements and our underlying club EBITDA and net result performance. Our club EBITDA was close to EUR 0 in the period, compared to EUR 96.5 million last year. The decrease is, of course, entirely due to the longer period of club closures compared to last year. This longer period of club closures also explains our lower personnel and other costs in the first half year. During the time our clubs were closed, we received government support for employee costs of EUR 30.5 million, compared to EUR 16.2 million in the first half of 2020. The reduction in other club costs this year is explained by lower cost of goods sold, like our sports water, lower maintenance costs and a one-off benefit of EUR 11.2 million as fixed cost compensation from the French and Belgian governments. We reduced our overhead costs by 26% to EUR 90.8 million thanks to higher government support schemes for head office personnel and lower marketing spend. At our headquarters, while our clubs were closed, we further improved our processes and prepared ourselves for our growth acceleration program. Higher depreciation amortization charges reflect our growing club network. We recorded higher amount of COVID-19 rent credits of EUR 16.9 million compared to EUR 8.6 million in the first half of 2020. COVID-19 rent credits are property rent discounts received from our landlords that did not result in amendments of lease contracts. Let's go to the next slide. On slide 10, you see our underlying club and group EBITDA and our underlying net result. The increase in club rent cost is the result of our growing club network. The exceptional costs are almost entirely COVID-19 related. Underlying club EBITDA amounted to EUR 8.7 million and underlying EBITDA was a loss of EUR 12.5 million. The EUR 2 million in amortization was related to the purchase price allocation from when Basic-Fit was partly acquired by 3i Investments in 2013. The reason for the steep decline versus last year is because by now the memberships have been almost fully amortized. The next slide is about the mature club development. We consider a club mature if it is at least 24 months old at the start of the year. At the end of June, we had 670 mature clubs, which is an increase of 107 clubs compared to the end of 2020. 249 of our mature clubs are located in France. That means that 40% of our mature clubs are now in France compared to 31% a year ago. The average number of members per mature club was 2,540 at the end of June. In a period of just 3-6 weeks since we reopened in the Benelux and France, the average number of members per mature club increased by 250 or 11%. It is worth mentioning that in France, the number of members at mature club rose by 12% in just 3 weeks' time. Let's go to the next slide on capital expenditure. The initial CapEx per newly built club was on average EUR 1.17 million, compared to EUR 1.23 million in the first half of 2020. On maintenance, we spent on average EUR 14,000 per club, compared to EUR 22,000 in the first half of 2020. We continue to work on our product offering with adjustments made in the layout of many clubs. We also installed our smart camera system in more existing clubs. This system should allow us to have more 24/7 clubs and unstaffed opening hours at night in the future. We currently operate more than 200 24/7 clubs. Our aim is to have the smart camera system installed in all Benelux clubs by the end of this year. Other CapEx of EUR 4.1 million was almost EUR 3 million lower than in the first half of 2020. In that period, we included the acquisition of the full IP rights of our exclusive membership administration software. The EUR 4.1 million was spent on innovations and software development. Let's go to my last slide before I hand over back to René. The balance sheet. At the end of June, we had net debt of EUR 420 million compared to EUR 539 million at the end of 2020. The decrease over the past 6 months is explained by the net proceeds from the capital raise in April of roughly EUR 200 million and a convertible bond issue in June of just over EUR 300 million, of which EUR 65 million is accounted for as equity component under IFRS. These combined proceeds more than offset the operating loss we recorded in the 1st half of the year and our CapEx related to the new club openings. Our available liquidity at the end of June was EUR 479 million, of which EUR 207 million cash at hand. Following the equity raise in April, we repaid the drawn part of the bridge facility and canceled the facility. As a result of the earlier communicated covenant waiver and the relaxation, there was no covenant testing in June 2021. We came to an agreement with our syndicate banks for amended covenant testing at the end of 2021 and the end of June 2022. For the end of 2021 testing, we can now use the underlying EBITDA of the fourth quarter of 2021 at a run rate for the underlying EBITDA of that year. For June 2022 testing, we can use 2 times the underlying EBITDA of the fourth quarter of 2021, plus the underlying EBITDA of the first half of 2022. Now back to René for the final slide. Thank you, Hans. I would like to conclude with our outlook. We expect to end 2021 with more than 1,000 clubs as we expect net new club opening of around 105. We have ample available liquidity, which allows us to accelerate our club rollout and reach the 1,250 club mark by the end of 2022. We will continue to be flexible and adjust the timing or pace of club openings if government measures adversely affect market conditions. Currently, we continue to expect to see another strong post-summer season and the next important step in the recovery of our membership base towards pre-COVID-19 levels. This concludes the presentation. Operator, please open the lines for questions. Thank you, sir. If you would like to ask a question at this time, please press the star or asterisk key followed by the digit one on your telephone. Please ensure that the mute function on your telephone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. If you find that your question has already been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two. Okay, we will now take our first question from Robert Jan Vos at ABN AMRO. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi, good afternoon. I have a couple of questions. Maybe first on the number of clubs in 2022. It's a bit confusing because here and there you mentioned to reach close to 1,250, and I think in the statements you said that it is now really the target for 2022. Maybe you can make that clear to us. Related to this, you've already set the target for 2021, 105 new club openings. Let's assume 1,250 for 2022. That means quite a bit more than 200 clubs to be opened in 2022. My question is, why is then the new club opening pace relatively modest for the second half of 2021? That is my first question. I have 2 other questions. Maybe this one first. Thank you. It's good you don't ask them all because that first question was already three. The 1,250 is a number you cannot exactly say because we are always depending on government to give us the license to operate a gym or license to build a club. It's not an exact number. That's why we always say close to or around. We think 1,250 clubs at the end of 2022 is reachable. We think we will reach 1,250 clubs if the world stays normal and there's no other COVID lockdowns. The 1,250 is something we think we will reach without COVID lockdowns. The target for 105 clubs. What that means is that the second half, it is correct, we will open less clubs than in the first half, but we will build a lot of clubs in the second half, let's say in Q4, that will open probably in the month of January next year. What you will see is maybe less openings in the second half, but there will be a lot of construction going on with a lot of opening in the beginning, in the month of January 2022. That means actually the clubs are built in 2021, and they will open in the beginning or end of January. All right. That's clear. I have a question on the government compensation. I saw 2 numbers in the press release. 1 was the EUR 41.7 million wage compensation. Sorry, the EUR 30.5 million wage compensation, and there was EUR 11.2 million mentioned as a compensation for fixed costs. Just to be clear, the total is then EUR 41.7. It's not as if the EUR 11.2 is part of the EUR 30.5. Maybe Hans, you can answer that question. René. I will answer that, Robert. No. We have a EUR 30 million compensation on salary costs in the Netherlands. You know the NOW rules. Yeah. We use that, and the EUR 11.2 is the compensation we got from especially the French government for the fixed cost. They're separate- Okay compensations. In total, it's the 41 that you mentioned. Okay. Clear. Thanks. My final question. Expansion CapEx. It was quite limited per club, EUR 14,000. That is as anticipated, I guess. Is it fair to assume that this will go up quite materially in the second half? If so, maybe you can elaborate a bit on that. Not expansion, but you mean the maintenance CapEx? The EUR 14,000. I think the maintenance CapEx. Sorry, yes. 55,000. Yeah. The maintenance CapEx, the EUR 55,000 per year, is something that will maybe this year be a little less, but I would say that on average, let's say the next five years, that number is still correct. That is a number you can work with, EUR 55,000 a year on average per club per year. Could be this year maybe EUR 5,000 less, and then the other two years after that, EUR 2,000 or EUR 3,000 more. The average EUR 55,000 maintenance CapEx per club for the next five years will be the number you can work with. Okay. That's clear. The expansion CapEx was a bit lower. Is that something to anticipate for the second half or maybe next year as well? Are there reasons why it did go up a bit? It depends if we open big or smaller clubs. That can vary per quarter, per half year. I think the second half will be a little bit more expensive. It will be below EUR 1.2 million for sure, also the coming periods. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Maybe to add to that, in that EUR 1.2 million, maybe good to add to that as well, we are putting in a new camera system in every existing club, but every new club that we are building, that is already in. That means, let us say the EUR 1.2 million, that is EUR 1.15 million for the club and how we normally build it, and EUR 50,000 for the new camera system. For the last year and a half, every new club that we opened, we put in the camera system and the security system, which costs us on average around EUR 50,000. That is included in that price you see now for a new club. Thank you. We will now take our next question from James Rowland Clark at Barclays. Please go ahead. Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll also ask one by one. The first question please is on your membership growth of 250 net new members. 250,000, sorry, net new members. Could you sort of give a little bit of color, if you have it, about where those members are coming from? I'm thinking, are they first-time gym users? Are they from the competition? Were they previously Basic-Fit members that have come back and rejoined? Thank you. Well, what we saw in the first lockdown in 2020, after we reopened our clubs, we saw a lot of young male only joining. Now what we see is completely more back to normal. We see male, female, on the pre-COVID-19 numbers, more or less the same as before. That has gone back to normal. We do not see a lot of older people joining at the moment still as a member, but male, female is back to normal. We do see a lot of new joiners, people who's never been in a gym before. I think that is overall a really good sign. Okay. Thank you. Sort of the second thing would be, as you look at your markets, your core markets, Belgium, Netherlands, and France, how much capacity do you expect to come out the market? We've heard some of your peers talk about, in conversations, talk about over 20%. Is that the sort of number that you would agree with? It is a bit early to say anything about that. Our plans for the Netherlands and Belgium were to grow to 300 clubs per country. That is a number that we're still very comfortable with. Actually, we think it could be even more. France, we said we would do 1,000 clubs, and those numbers were all related to a certain amount of fitness penetration. What we see now is that a lot of people are joining that never been in a gym before, and also the whole sentiment about being locked up for such a long time. People had the time to think about, well, it's clear that people who are less active and a little bit bigger in size had more problems with this COVID-19 than people who were a bit slimmer and more fit. People had the time to think about that maybe it was time to also work out a bit more. I think what we expect, but it's too early to say that that's going to happen, that the fitness penetration in all countries will go up, not only the countries where we're active. Again, that's a thought. You're not expecting? No, we're not sure. You're not expecting a material proportion of your competitors, perhaps the smaller chains and the independents to drop out of the market once support disappears, or you are? Well, we do see some people stopping, or we see some bankruptcies. I'm not sure that it's going to be a huge number. Some countries are talking about 10% or 20%. We definitely see people stopping. It is really too early to tell because of all the government measures, that they could pay the taxes later and all the things. Of course, one day they have to be paid, we have to see who's able to pay everything. It's too early to tell. Okay The fitness penetration will grow. I think the market will be there for everybody who's still there. Yeah. Okay, great. The final one was just on the club costs. As you sign new sites, are you signing these contracts at preferential rates to before? By what percentage sort of reduction are you seeing these new sites at? Sort of add on is, on your existing sites, are they still running at the same kind of rental rate as before, or have you renegotiated those as well? Well, I think it is definitely clear that we get better deals, better rent proposals. To put a % on it is a bit difficult right now. It is clearly that we get better deals. James, you should also understand we get into those new contracts included the pandemic laws, so that we can postpone all the rent payments when a lockdown pops up. That's also good to get that in the contract. It's the whole deal. It's a combination. It's a combination. The whole deal is much better than we used to have. It's not only the cost, but also the other conditions are very important for us. Okay. Thank you very much. We cannot say when. It also differs a lot per country and per area. Are you still in cities or are you in villages? It's clear that the rent cost is going down. Great. Thank you. Maybe in a year we can put a number on it. Okay, thanks. Thank you. We will now take our next question from Marc Zwartsenburg at ING. Please go ahead. Yeah, thanks. Yeah. Good afternoon, everybody. Couple of questions left. Rene, can you say something about the opportunities in the market now that the government help is moving away? Do you now see more smaller chains knocking on the doors or anything moving in that direction? Can you give a comment on? Yeah, I would say there are definitely opportunities, more than before COVID. We're looking at that. We are focusing on new openings. That is our main target. We do have discussions about potential takeovers at the moment. Okay. If you look to what's currently going on with COVID stirring up in your main region, particularly in France, with the apps that you have to go into public areas, do you already see a change in behavior there? Are you worried that you have to close down certain clubs again? Or is the talks with the unions and the government still supportive of keeping them open till the end of the year? How confident are you in that respect? The main thing is of course, how people will behave. If the vaccination rate's going up, we are very positive because we see huge numbers of people taking the vaccination. Of course, that is the solution. More distance, not too close on each other, and the vaccination. Yeah, we are hoping that 100% of the population is taking that so we can get back to more than normal. What we are doing is we are really focusing. What we did is we put the equipment further away from each other. We made a reservation system, so it's not suddenly there are 250 people in the club. You have a reservation system that we have a limited amount of people in at the same time. We do whatever we have to do to make our customers and employees work out and work in a safe environment. The problem will not be on our clubs. Of course, if hospital beds fill up again, government has to do something. I hope that people are very wise and keep the distance and get vaccinated. If that happens, then we'll be fine. Yeah. Maybe a few small ones. Will there be a big national marketing campaign scheduled for August, September in all your regions like France, Belgium, and Holland? Yeah, I don't think August. Depending how the coronavirus is behaving and how the percentage are going of vaccination. If it feels really safe that we can have more people in at the same time, that's the moment when we will step on the gas and do big campaigns. That will not be now. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You first await what COVID is doing and also how many members are joining already naturally. Correct. Okay. Correct. We did very limited marketing in June, we had 250,000 join us. We see in the month of July, without marketing, a lot of people joining. A lot of people had time to think about if it was something for them, being more active. It's clearly that a lot of people have made that step now or are going to make that step. Yeah. You can save that money, perhaps. Yeah. The payment for the 68 new clubs in the first half, the full cash out, will that be in the third quarter? Is that how it works, Hans? No. Most of the clubs are already been paid, Mark. We paid already. As you know, we started before lockdown already during the first and second lockdown already with building of clubs. We paid a bit at that time, and now we paid in this year, we paid the remaining part of those openings. It's fully in there. Yeah. Yeah, it's fully in there. Okay. Well, that's it from my side. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mark. Thank you. We will now take our next question from Lance Ettus at CAS Investment Partners. Please go ahead. Hi. Just my question is about the new members. I know you commented a little about it before, but have you seen any closures of gyms around you? Can you quantify how much that is driving the recent surge in new membership? Yeah, I think it's a very low number. Because there have not been so many closures yet because of all the government support that was there. Okay. The new members are really what we see of the joiners, the 250,000 joiners in June. We have seen a big part of that being people who've never been in a gym before and a big part of it being old members. We did not see a whole big group movement from other clubs. No. It's also not what we're focusing on, trying to steal the members away from our. What we're focusing on is getting the fitness penetration up in the countries where we are. If you look at France, 8%. Well, if we grow 1%, we can open hundreds of clubs. We should increase the fitness penetration and that's where we're focusing on. Okay. Thank you. We will now take our next question from Kris Kippers at TP. Please go ahead. Good afternoon. A lot of questions have been asked. Just a small question on pricing. We have not seen that evolving, of course. There is, of course, talk as well, a lot about inflation, certainly in the U.S., but also in Europe it's coming. Do you have a strategy of altering that EUR 20 a month now with inflation coming in, or is it just a matter of filling the clubs as efficient as possible and also controlling the cost base? Second question linked to the costs. I looked at the cost of installing a new club. I see it's going down, actually. Does it imply you can put quite some pressure on your suppliers? Is that the reason? Or is it also a different setup than before? Thank you. Well, the pricing, that is something we will not focus on changing that in the coming one to three years. What we will be focusing on filling up the clubs more. The €19.99 it is not set in stone, but for the coming years, that will be the number. Again, we will focus on filling up the clubs, bringing it back to the 3,400 on a mature club level that we had before COVID. From that, we can also grow to 3,500 or 3,600. That is the focus. No price increase. Your other question was about the club. Actually, we are doing more. We are putting more into the club. We are putting now in a camera system that costs around €50,000, and you still see the price of building a club more or less the same as the year before or the year before that. We do get better deals, but not on all because there is also some parts that become more expensive because of transport or ground stock. The price of iron and all the raw material is going up, as you know. There's still bargaining and negotiation going on, but we're very good at that, so we can keep our price on our clubs around that EUR 1.2 million we always give information about and guidance on. Oh, yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. We will now take our next question from Adrija Chakraborty at Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Hi. Good afternoon. Three questions from me, please. Firstly, on your expansion guidance of nearly 240 clubs for 2022, that looks very good. I assume that that is not the normal run rate for future years. Can you give us some sense of what the medium-term plans would be, or is that one for the CMD? I'll ask the other two later. The medium term, the 240 clubs is something that we feel comfortable with. It's not something that we expect to do only 1 year. On November 4, we will communicate with the market our plans for the midterm period. Thank you. Does the 2022 club guidance include just organic expansion? Yes that include potential M&A? No. Now, again, we are focusing on opening new clubs, and we do look at acquisitions, but we will only do it if it makes sense and we can make the return. The 1,250 clubs will only be new club openings. If we come to an agreement about an acquisition, so that will be then on top of the 1,250. Got it. My last question was just on France. Can you give us any details on the demographics or the average age of members? Just trying to estimate the near-term impact of the new regulation from the health pass. I think most of our members are below, let's say, 30 or 35 year age group. That has not changed. We see older people. Before COVID, the number was growing. In the last year and a half, it's been going down rapidly. We have not seen them come back yet. Even though older people, at least in the Netherlands, were the first one to be vaccinated, we still don't see them coming back in big numbers. I guess there has to be more confidence that it is completely safe out there before they will come back. It's similar what it was before COVID, a bit more focused on younger people now. In France, it's the same as in the other countries. There's no big difference in demographics in France if you compare it to the other countries. It's also in France, the majority of our members are between 18 and 35. Got it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. We will now take our final question from Hans Pluijgers at Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Yes. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Only a few questions. First of all, coming back on M&A. In the past, you always mentioned that you did see potential in the Netherlands, Belgium. Maybe some in France and mainly in Spain. Is there any change in that? Or do you still say that Spain most likely will be a country where you do some M&A, in other countries it is almost not likely. Can you give some flavor on that where you see the opportunities? Secondly-- Yeah, well. Okay. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, I think, again, M&A is only something we will do if we can really make, let's say, a good deal. We do see a lot of good clubs in Spain that are really good to add to our list or to our base. Yes, I still think the most opportunity lies in Spain for acquisitions. We are also looking and talking now in other countries. We are talking about one club or two or maybe a few more. Again, it is not our focus and we will only do it if we can make a good return. Okay. Thanks. On pricing, you indicated for longer term, you see the EUR 19. Could you give some feeling what competition currently is doing? Do you see any aggressive pricing to get additional members in during this period? I don't see it, but maybe you can give some feeling on that, what you're seeing in the market. Well, you see some people doing really aggressive. We have some players saying, well, the rest of this year, you don't have to pay anything. There are just a few doing extreme stuff like that. I don't think it's necessary. That's why we also do not give a huge discount. We're giving 4 weeks for free. Well, before we even gave bigger discounts in certain periods. At this moment, we don't think it's necessary. Because of the regulation, only limited amount of people are still possible to get in. We cannot have everybody in who wants to get in. Because the whole reservation system and the fact that we want to do it on a safe way. For us, that is also a reason not to really focus on getting as many customers in, but we are focusing now also on having our existing members have a good workout. Once the vaccination rate is going up, that's the moment we will focus again on big marketing campaigns, getting more and more people in. The pricing offer, it is really per country, per chain, it is different. You see some extreme proposals, but not a lot. Okay. My last question on the confidence. You gave, let's say, the new locations. Also, anything changed in the absolute level that you are allowed to open for those two periods at the end of 2021? Not the absolute level, Hans, but the relaxation also is. The testing was on 3.5 times adjusted EBITDA, and now in the end of the year, it will be 4.5 times adjusted EBITDA. And for- We will have enough space in the testing end of the year and in June next year. We have no worries about the test. Okay. This year it will be 4 times Q4, and it will be a good quarter, so we don't have any issues there. Okay. Thanks. Clear. We have reached the end of today's conference call. I would now like to hand over to Richard Piekaar for any closing remarks. Please go ahead, sir. Well, thank you very much, everyone, for joining today's call. It's good to have you here. If you have any additional questions, please contact John David or me, and we're happy to continue the discussion. Cheers. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thank you.