Hi everyone, and welcome to SATS Q4 Q&A session. My name is Stine Klund, and I'm joined by CEO Sondre Gravir and CFO Cecilie Elde. Sondre will run through the main message of the presentation before we head over to the Q&A.
Thank you, Stine. Good morning, everyone. Good to see many of you on the line here. This is a Q&A session, so since I will not run through the presentation, I thought we could just give a highlight summary of the messages from our Q4 presentation this morning. First of all, we see that our members are working out more than ever before, and we see that all countries are now following the same positive development that we saw in Norway in 2024. We did several investments in upgrading, among others, the group training capacity in the Norwegian market. That gave good effects on visits, and that we have now replicated in the other markets, and we really see that those markets are following.
We see a positive development in visits, and we see that our new products are well received in the market, with members being happier and more active. More active members, that's good because then they stay with us, and the lifetime value of the memberships increases. Then combined with sales, good sales on top of that, you get strong financial performance in Q4 and also in 2024 overall, with revenue growth of 7% in the quarter, an EBITDA growth of 37%, and EBIT growth of 87%. It's a strong quarter financially. With the high cash generation, we have continued to deleverage. We have paid down just about NOK 100 million on the debt in the quarter, bringing leverage ratio down to 1.4 of net debt over EBITDA before IFRS 16.
As you remember, we have guided on a leverage ratio between 1.5 and 2.0, and that we want to be in the lower end of that ratio. With now that ratio in Q4 on 1.4, we have then started what we also announced last quarter, our shareholder distribution program, which is a combination then of a share buyback and dividend payments coming later this year. We announced yesterday evening that the first part of this share buyback program, with a share buyback of NOK 100 million until the General Assembly coming up in the spring. We have seen that the positive momentum from Q4 has carried into 2025 with the elevated activity levels into the first half of Q1, with group training as an important driver of this.
This provides confidence that we are on the right track and happy with the development both operationally and financially. That's the main messages from the Q4 presentation this morning. And with that, I think we just leave it up for questions.
Eirik Refsdal, vi skal gå hit.
Yes, hi guys. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on a very solid finish to the year. Got a couple. If we can start on the outlook and also on your comments now, Sondre, you seem overall pretty bullish. Can you give kind of a sort of a decomposition of those positive messages, and particularly on the further strengthened financial results, how we should think about that breakdown coming from the different geographies? Also, kind of subsequent to that, your thinking around, okay, how close are we to some sort of ceiling in Norway margin-wise before we need to, you know, materially invest in more clubs? How far behind is Sweden compared to Norway on, you know, you talk about these positive trends early in the year and replicating the GX success of Norway. Like, are we six months behind, nine, twelve, eighteen?
Just some thoughts there on, and yeah, some more color on why, yeah, why so positive on '25.
Thank you, Eirik. There's a lot of things I don't know. The only thing I know for sure is that I will not answer all your questions to the detailed level that you want. Then you have to wait until the Capital Markets Day on the 7th of May to get that level of guidance into the future, I think. But I can comment a little bit. I think, you know, we are indicating here in this presentation that we have had a positive start on the new year, which we also expected. It's a positive momentum that we saw in Q4 that has come into the new year as well. It all starts in our business. It all starts with members being active.
As long as when we launch new products, when we add tens of thousands of additional GX classes, when we launch new concepts, etc., it's all about to see the member adoption of those concepts and to see that members are using those concepts. That's what we see. We see visit growth, and especially on group training, which is a core differentiator for us. It's our key competitive advantage. No one in the market has a similar product offering as we have on group training across the Nordics. This drives engagement, this drives longer member retention, and it also drives up revenue per member because more members buy access to more products, bringing up the average membership price. This goes across all geographies.
We've seen this development for a while in Norway, and now we start to see the results in the other markets, as we are saying. We have not reached the ceiling. We got that question also after Q3. Have you reached this ceiling on profitability and number of members in the Norwegian market? The answer to that was one quarter ago, clearly no, and it is still a clear no. We still have capacity in our existing clubs. We have guided on a growth level of 8 to 12 new clubs per year. We are now building up the pipeline to get to that level, but it's a balanced growth and a moderate growth. So the majority of growth going forward will come from the existing clubs, in addition to these new club openings, but at the level of 8 to 12 new clubs.
But when it comes to more country-specific guidance, etc., we are not giving that. We will, of course, go more into detail on the capital markets day coming up in connection with the Q1 presentation. But you asked specifically on Sweden, and we expect also Sweden to have a positive development in 2025 throughout the year.
Perfect. That's very clear. Thanks for the color. Just a quick follow-up on that club expansion comment. You've got four firm ones in the pipeline now for the next, let's call it, two years, one closure. You say you're building and kind of looking through the pipeline. How quickly can you move, like if you get access to, let's say, two, three, four, half a dozen really good locations, how swiftly can you move to open those and move them out of the pipeline and into reality?
That varies a lot because it depends on is it a development area we're coming into? Is it an existing club we're taking over? Is the location ready for us to just move in and build the club? So it can take six months, and it can take two years. So it really varies across the different areas what kind of location we get access to.
I think it's also worth saying that it takes some time. We also get some questions on, you know, does it take so long to build up a pipeline when it's just 8 to 12 new clubs per year? The thing is that we are prudent on the locations we choose. We do quite thorough analysis to make sure that we know it's going to be a successful opening. So could we have more clubs in the pipeline for opening? Absolutely. But since we are pretty prudent on selecting the right location, it takes some time. We are willing to wait until we get the perfect location instead of taking a suboptimal location in an area.
That's perfect. Thanks for taking my questions.
Petter Nystrøm.
Yeah, thank you. So a follow-up question there on these investments that you're doing in your product. Obviously, that has given a very strong momentum in Norway throughout 2024. You say that you are seeing some of the positive development also in Sweden. Is this, you know, do you expect this to be driven by now that you can take a higher price? Is it that you are gaining market shares? Is it that you expect a strong membership growth? Can you just share some lights on how you see these positive developments throughout 2025 for Sweden? Thanks.
I think one of the most important indicators is the activity level for our members. We see that more members engaged in a broader part of our portfolio and product offering, meaning that they also not only just buy membership with a higher yield, but we know that higher activity level also creates loyalty. That's really what we're seeing, that we know that the activity level will build loyalty throughout the year. That's really one of the most important positive signs that we see in Sweden, which we saw in Norway 18 months ago.
Perfect. Thank you.
Any other questions?
Yes. Can I just say, I just saw the numbers for Finland. I was just surprised. You had one club less in Finland, and still you have a thousand members more. As far as I know, Finland is pretty much struggling with the economy like Sweden. So can you tell me, is there something special going on there?
No, really nothing out of the ordinary, just building the base month by month. A small improvement in the member base. Nothing sort of out of the ordinary in Finland.
It's the same operational, so to say, key drivers as we see in the other markets. The comments that Cecilia made for Sweden is highly relevant for Finland as well. Finland is actually one of the markets where we see that our classes and group training visits are increasing the most at the moment, which is driving member attention and loyalty.
Good. Eirik Refsdal.
Thanks for having me back in . Sorry, Petter. Go ahead.
No, go ahead. You're first.
Okay, I'll jump on that. Just a quick follow-up. Sorry, Cecilie. You mentioned you see kind of the activity levels picking up in Sweden along the lines of what we saw in Norway 18 months ago-ish. Is that kind of a fair estimate on where Sweden is on the curve relative to Norway? Do you think it can maybe move quicker in Sweden because you've got kind of the know-how from Norway over the last year or two?
I think it's too early to say anything around the effect that we will actually get. What we are happy with is to see that the underlying operational KPIs are progressing the same way. And the outcome, we don't know, and we will not guide on that.
That's fair. And maybe another final question, which is maybe CMD material, but I'll try anyway. How should we think about kind of all-in growth and margin potential in Finland and Denmark, kind of given the scale, given the competitive landscape? Yeah, a bit of a different position there compared to Norway and Sweden. Any thoughts there would be good to understand how we should think, yeah, into this year and the years beyond as well.
I think overall, we should be able to improve the margins in both Finland and Denmark. I think the medicine is the same in all countries, and they don't have as tight of a cluster of clubs like we see in Oslo and Stockholm as an example. So that will be one of the ways that we can improve the margins. But I think in general, we will not see the same margins in those two markets, at least not in the short term that we have in Oslo. But the margins can improve, for sure.
Perfect. Thank you.
Petter?
To follow up on that, because is the structure position wrong there? I mean, you have a great position in Norway, a very good one in Sweden, or in Oslo, Stockholm. But in the other two capitals, your market share is lower, and then that's so low that you're not making any money. Does that mean that maybe you should actually just concentrate on one? I mean, if you could do it, sell out of the one and double your position in the other one, particularly if that would be Finland, just because it seems like what is needed here is very high market share in a specific city to get the real good profitability.
I think you're right on the comment on market share, that the stronger cluster we have, the stronger profitability we see to deliver because we deliver a better product to members, making the members stay longer. The cluster is strong, but it could be strengthened both in Copenhagen and in Helsinki. We are doing and will do a part of some of the new club openings will, of course, be also outside of Oslo and Stockholm. But we are happy now with the current development and the trajectory we have both for Denmark and Finland. I don't know if we should say that you should sell one and double down on the other. I don't think my answer is that we will double down on both, but hopefully good financial development for both. One other one, final one.
In Stockholm, in Sweden, you have about 10% fewer members per club than you had pre-pandemic. Can you give maybe a feel for how much is that? It's just, we know Sweden is terrible for everybody in the consumer space. So how much is it a general market development? How much is just that Nordic Wellness has taken a bigger share of the market?
I think, first of all, it's related to the growth that we've had in the Stockholm area since or during the pandemic and the years after. The number of clubs is more than we had, and we haven't been able to fully fill those clubs to the same extent that we had in 2019. Of course, the competition in Sweden is fierce, and we have grown our number of clubs, and so has the competitors. But it's nothing different related to the market situation. I think the same health trends are as important in Sweden. Looking at the macro situation, we did not really see any change for us related to that. We don't really expect that the new macro environment will help us.
I think in general, we just have to be better, deliver higher quality in our product offering, as we are doing right now, and expect to see results to improve as a consequence of that. David Lonko.
Yes, hello. One question maybe related to the maintenance capex . I saw that there was a big raise in maintenance capex in 2024 related to 2023. What is this related to, and can we take the maintenance capex level we saw this year as normative for the next years?
Yes, we have for several years actually guided that we will keep maintenance capex at 5% of revenues. This is sort of the first quarter where we have actually achieved to come back to that level. Throughout this year, we have been, or last couple of years, we have been prudent, but we have at the same time worked hard on ramping up the level of maintenance capex. It has taken longer time than we anticipated because we work very closely with our landlords, making sure that they also invest in our clubs alongside us. The negotiations with some of the landlords have taken longer time than we expected. But we guided throughout this year, we have guided that we expect to come back to 5% of revenues in 2024, which we also did, and that's also the level that you can expect going forward.
Next up is Joakim Sverre.
Hi, congratulations on a very strong quarter and a strong year. One question, you see countercyclically in Q4 that, you know, much higher or higher activity leads to more membership growth, which is up 5,000 in the quarter and is actually growing in each country except Denmark. And you see you are progressing well into Q1. How do you see that developing in Q1 and also, you know, the response to your campaign with the half price three months, how that has been?
Thank you for the question, Joakim. I don't think we will comment anything more on the start of the new year in terms of membership growth or volume than what we have done in the report. So we are, as we said there, we saw that the positive momentum has carried that into the first quarter, and we are happy with the start of the year. But we don't guide any more on the detailed level of membership growth in January or the achievement of the campaigns. That we will have to wait until Q1 presentation.
Thank you. Perfect, right.
Over to Håkon Nilsson.
Just short on the lifetime of your fitness equipment. You extended those in Q3 from 5 to 9 years to 7 to 12 years. I see that you beat the consensus a lot on EBIT and net profit this quarter. I just wonder why, can you just explain why you increased the lifetime and also like how can we think about this going forward for your equipment?
Yes, as you said, we did that prolongation in the last quarter. We have worked very actively with how we maintain and utilize our equipment. We see that in general, we make the equipment last longer than what we currently had accounted for. So it's really just reflecting the actual usage of the equipment that we had. That resulted in a one-off adjustment in the third quarter, which also will generate lower depreciations going forward. That's what you see in this quarter. That amounts to around NOK 5 million compared to last year. At the same time, we're now ramping up our investments so that will, of course, increase depreciation overall. But in general, if you compare to a normal level, we will have somewhat lower depreciation levels as a result of extending the lifetime and the value of the assets.
Thanks. But will that mean that your capex would be lower?
No.
Because you're, you know.
We're not changing the guidance on the 5% of maintenance capex. But in theory, you could say that we could lower like for like the capex spend, but we will not change that guidance for now at least, because for us, it's important to have high quality in the portfolio that we have.
Okay. But okay, thanks.
Any more questions before we round off?
Yes, maybe, sorry. Last one, maybe. Just to understand better, if you could split the capex investment you made this year in order to understand what were the main capex spendings, as I understand, there is a normative level of 5% capex spending in maintenance capex. So maintenance capex is related to renewal of your equipment, or is it related also to other kinds of capex? Like if you could split the NOK 290 million, what are you investing in and what will you be investing in in the next years?
We have a strategic approach to how and where we invest. We look at the different clusters, the quality of the clubs. And for 2024, about a third of the maintenance capex is related to major upgrades where we do a significant investment in our club. And the remaining part is more sort of maintenance, pure maintenance, where we replace equipment or do smaller upgrades. We have, throughout this year, we have touched a huge part of the portfolio with some kind of upgrade. It also varies from year to year what is necessary in terms of major upgrades versus just replacing equipment or adding equipment, which we do to increase capacity. But for 2024, around a third is related to major upgrades, which is both equipment and improving the leasehold in general.
Great. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. And thanks for participating in the Q&A.
Thank you all. Wish you a great Wednesday.
Thank you. Bye.