Okay. Good morning everyone, and welcome to this Q&A session with SATS in connection with our fourth quarter presentation. Here in Oslo, we have Cecilie Elde, our CFO, Martin Stensrud, our head of IR, and myself, Sondre, the CEO. This is the Q&A session where we follow up on the quarterly presentation we released this morning. Great to see so many of you connecting. We'll do this in English as we have some English-speaking participants on the call. We do not plan to go through any presentation as we did that this morning when we presented the quarter. Overall, we are satisfied with leaving 2021 behind us with the same member base as we had going out of 2019 and with increasing activity level in our member base.
We'll leave it up to you guys to ask questions. So hopefully you have a lot of questions, so we can have a good discussion together. So please just, you know, either jump in or if you are on Teams, raise the hand. Yes, please go ahead, Markus.
Thank you. Congrats on a good quarter despite very challenging conditions. My first question is on the member development in January and how you see that progress, and maybe some more flavor. Should we expect actually quarter-on-quarter growth in Q1, despite I would suspect that it's challenging to get new members in over New Year's this year. A bit more granularity on how you expect that into or end of Q1 would be helpful. And then my second question is more on how the campaign level will impact financials into 2022. Thank you.
Yes, thank you. I'll start, and Cecilie can also comment on the campaign level, etc. Of course, the restrictions and the last wave, so to say, of the pandemic with Omicron started to affect our business then in the second half of the quarter, and that lasted into January. It was a different January than a normal January would have been without the pandemic, of course. At the same time, we saw the trends that we are indicating from Q4 with, you know, still a decent sales, but quite high activity level in the base and a lot of visits. That's continued into January. Of course, sales was a bit softer than a normal January.
Now when we see that restrictions are being lifted, in all countries, this has an immediate positive effect on both sales and visit. We do not guide, so to say, on Q1 overall, but we expect member growth to continue, of course, throughout the first quarter, but also further throughout the spring than maybe normal, so to say. Would you comment on-
Yeah, sure.
Campaign effect on financials?
Yeah. When it comes to campaigns, in any normal year, the first quarter is an important quarter for us, and we also invest heavily in marketing and campaigning. We did that in Q4 as well. Maybe Q4 was more abnormal than Q1 will be. We will of course make sure that we do everything we can to take our share of the available members in the first quarter. You should expect it to be as normal, maybe slightly higher.
Just an additional comment on campaigning and financials. I think, you know, it's we invest, of course, in marketing, and we invest heavily in marketing when we believe that's the right thing to fuel growth. We use tactical commercial offerings linked to the marketing investments to drive sales. It's important to say that what we are pretty prudent on is to make sure that we do not do long-term discounts on the memberships in the tactical campaigns, and that we will not do going forward either. Yes, there's a value, so to say, upfront value of becoming a member. You might get, you know, a free month or some sign-up gifts or something.
The price point they enter into where they have the running yield going forward is based on list prices. We do not discuss discount long-term the list prices in general, so to say, in the campaigns. That's important for our future yield development that we actually get, so to say, the positive yield lift that we started to deliver on before the pandemic and that we see clearly now is, as Cecilie presented earlier today, clearly now is happening also in the base going forward.
Thank you. That's very clear.
Thank you, Markus. Any other questions from the participants?
I can follow up if there are no other questions, because I think it's very interesting to see that you're now ramping up your sort of digital investments and training at home, some more flavor on how you see sales of your new products and the activity levels there, and how you expect that. Will there be any meaningful impact in 2022 on your financials? Some more discussion on that would be interesting to hear.
Yeah. I think, you know, the starting point here is the fundamental belief, so to say, in a future hybrid model for fitness. There were speculations, you know, early in the pandemic that will the pandemic change the way we live our lives? Will everyone now just want to work out at home and digital or only work out outside and not come back to the physical gyms? I think our comeback numbers on visits and what we've seen from peers also globally indicates clearly that we get pretty fast back to a normal situation where people want to go to the gyms at an even more, you know, bigger scale than before. At the same time, we have also established, you know, new working habits, working digitally, and also new training habits.
We believe that we want to offer that flexibility. The background for our move, so to say, into digital fitness is a combination of both being able to offer a hybrid model to existing members, but also to target new area, new target groups. You have the 80% of the population who are not, as of today in the Nordic countries, a member in the gym. For several reasons, there might be, you know, a high barrier to go to physical gyms, those we want to target with the digital offer, and also to target potential members in areas where we don't have physical presence. Those are, so to say, the strategic rationale for entering into this. This is a long-term game.
We just launched Mentra by SATS as our new, so to say, digital home training brand, with the first physical product being an interactive fitness mirror, the Rflex. We will, towards the end of this year, also launch a connected bike as the second, so to say, hardware on this platform, and then also have this, launch this as, so to say, a pure digital training platform and subscription over time. This will be a gradual ramp-up. It will, of course, it is an investment. It's affecting our financials, if anything, now in the short and medium term negatively. This is due to just, you know, ramping up a team with coaches and developers. We have already done that. That's quite flexible cost.
For us, it's important to also take a clear position in the digital space and grow, so to say, the usage both physically and digital. We get quite a lot of questions from investors, et cetera, these days when, you know, things are normalizing after the pandemic. You have probably all seen, you know, the big changes happening in Peloton, et cetera. We get questions, will you now, so to say, stop to invest in digital because we see from global examples that, you know, digital is dying and it was just, you know, a short-term thing during the pandemic. For us, the rationale for investing in digital fitness was nothing, you know, directly related to the pandemic.
It's because we believe long-term that the world of fitness will be hybrid.
That makes sense. Thank you.
Ole Martin.
Okay. Please, thanks for taking my question. If we can start first by touching on the working capital development that we should expect for the next couple of quarters, how should that develop? If you also can comment if there are any more sort of leftovers in terms of government support that we potentially can expect in Q1 or second quarter.
Sure. The working capital effect in the quarter was positive. As you say, it's mainly related to receiving governmental support. We've cleared that part now, so we have no other governmental support coming in. Might be something in Finland since we had a close down of clubs there, but that's still up for discussion. We don't know yet what that support will be, if any. In our business model, the ramp-up that we saw in the third quarter with and in October especially with new members coming in, that has a positive effect on working capital due to sort of the prepayments that we have in memberships and also in personal training.
In this quarter, you sort of got a correction since the growth was so rapid during these last months. Normally when we grow the member base, we will also improve the working capital. You will expect it to improve slightly over time, not to the extent that you see now in the fourth quarter. Over time, we will improve working capital, meaning it will be more negative going forward as well. When it comes to other impacts, we have some delay in tax payments related to Sweden, which I think I've talked about previously, which will come in the first quarter.
Can you remind us about the level of those tax payments? What's the magnitude?
That's NOK 60 million.
Okay. You have a growing membership base which is quite strong. I wondered if you can sort of like give us a better feel for, you know, how much is the contribution on this membership base from the new clubs, and if you separate the effect from those clubs, you know, are there sort of growing activity levels, you know, still that good? If you can add some color around that. If the new clubs are they sort of membership growth there, is that comparable to the sort of pre-pandemic levels in terms of how they develop? Some color there would be appreciated.
I think in terms of the member growth, they are performing in line with the rest of the base. Of course, the starting point was difficult given that the most of them were open in a time with either club closures or very high restrictions. I think the graphs that I showed in the presentation sort of shows that the comparable club base now has the same revenue as in 2019. Of course, that's driven by some of the new clubs. The underlying member revenue from comparable members is in line with 2019, but then you sort of have the extraordinary effect from freeze related to COVID and of course, extra campaigning during the quarter.
It's a mix between both the new clubs and the clubs that we've had since pre-pandemic. It will take some more time before the new clubs mature to the same level as the like-for-like clubs. The like-for-like clubs still also have some growth to regain in order to be fully back.
Should we read that as that is sort of unexploited potential, and you expect a sort of quicker catch-up on the new clubs than what is currently in the books, or am I getting this wrong?
No, I think you should expect the same growth across the whole portfolio.
Mm, mm.
We have 29 clubs in the portfolio now that we didn't have in 2019, which is sort of underperforming compared to the rest of the portfolio since the member base at those clubs are not fully up to sort of the average members per club in the portfolio. Yes, that's untapped potential. Of course, filling those clubs with more members will not drive additional costs because the cost for these clubs are already established. Getting new members in will have a very high drop through to EBITDA.
To your comment, Ole Martin, I think it's, as we have commented on earlier, we have typically seen when we open, so to say, a greenfield in a normal situation without the pandemic, we typically see that, you know, it takes six to 12 months to reach break even in the run rate of the club.
To your question, is that, so to say, time period extended now when you open during the pandemic? The short answer to that is absolutely yes. It takes longer time, because for example, when we opened the new clubs in Finland and all the clubs in Finland were closed. Basically, we're not selling in the new clubs either. Then when we now see that we open our clubs, restrictions are being lifted, then sales is picking up again.
would we typically in the clubs we have opened during the pandemic, when we evaluate those openings and, you know, look in the rearview mirror a little bit down the road to see how long it took for them to reach maturity and how long it took for them to reach break even, those that were opened during the pandemic, it will be somewhat slower.
Quickly touching on your cost base, you know, you're doing some yield adjustments. Are they sort of sufficient to compare to the cost level that you see now in your clubs so you don't get margin dilution on the back of the cost inflation that we're seeing?
On the like-for-like clubs, yes. That we are able to increase the prices with inflation and then some because we're lifting the lower, lowest prices. For the like-for-like clubs, it's possible to absorb sort of the cost increase. In the short term, we will have lower margins since we have higher costs related to the new clubs.
The impact on power prices there is also, you know-
Of course.
How much is that, you know? It's quite significant, I guess. Is that something that you're able to really take out in pricing?
Depending on what level the electricity prices will be going forward. Of course, there is a delay between those price increases and the price increases that we are able to take out because we normally do it on an annual basis. Yes, of course, we are affected by that kind of increase in prices. Now we are moving into a season with at least warmer weather.
Yes.
Naturally, we will have a lower number of hours.
Okay, perfect. Thank you.
Eirik.
Yes.
You have the floor.
Yes. Yes. Hi, guys. Eirik from Carnegie here. Thank you for taking my questions. I arrived a bit late, so apologies if they've already been asked. I was wondering, firstly, we saw that EVO got new owners in the quarter. At least in local press, they seemed aggressive in terms of club rollouts and moving forward, just kind of your two cents on that, I think would be appreciated. I was also wondering a bit about kind of your overall thoughts, and maybe that's best left for a CMD maybe later in the year or early next year or something.
In general, kind of on growth versus dividends versus debt levels when things start to normalize, if we kind of look a bit to the longer term and your high level thoughts there would be appreciated as well. Thanks.
Thank you, Eirik. I can start with commenting on EVO and then you may take international, Cecilie. Just short comment on EVO. I think, you know, they've been in the process for a long time, and I think it's great that they have gotten some good new strong owners. We see pretty high competition in all our markets, and establishments from competitors going on all the time. The club portfolio overlap between SATS and EVO is not the biggest. But, so as we know, we only think it's positive that they got solid owners.
As I said, we have many competitors establishing new clubs all the time in all our markets, and we have to fight back with having the best products, and that's our focus, also making sure that we have a competitive offer. That's our focus.
To your question regarding growth, dividend, and debt, I think you're right. That's something that we'll have to come back to more clearly later on. That's, of course, also something we have to discuss with the board. I think that's the hard part right now, sort of balancing between these three areas. If you look at what we have done during this pandemic, we have clearly sort of prioritized growth. Dividend has been off the table during this period naturally. We have increased debt not only due to pandemic, but because we have prioritized the growth. I think growth will continue to be important going forward. We see a lot of opportunities. We have taken a lot of opportunities, and we see that they're also coming in going forward.
We are more attractive now when we see new real estate projects coming up. They want to have us as part of their projects. We see, as we've said, great potential in establishing a wider footprint. We will have to come back to sort of how we balance out dividends more in the long term.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you, Eirik. Any other questions from the group?
Yeah.
Hello?
From ABG. Okay, sorry.
Yes. Hi. I'm sorry. This is Barbara Smit from Fitness News Europe. Is it okay for me to ask a couple of questions?
Absolutely.
Great. One of them is about you mentioned a new concept that you're trying out in Stockholm and Oslo.
Yeah.
Could you maybe give some, you know, indications of what is new about it? Secondly, earlier you mentioned there's more than 6,000 current subscribers to Mentra by SATS. So you gave some indications of, you know, where you see the potential. I'm wondering what the current profile is of them, you know, generally of these subscribers. Lastly, you know, tying in a little bit with the previous question, where do you currently place the potential for the group? I'm thinking particularly of Norway, where, you know, in some parts of the country, the density is becoming really quite high.
You know, you indicated that you're ramping up actually openings and potential acquisitions, small acquisitions. Yeah, basically, where what is the now estimated full potential, particularly in Oslo and you know more widely? Thank you.
Sure. Thank you, Barbara. Three hyper relevant questions. First of all, the concept we were just commenting on the presentation today was basically, in general, we want to highlight that, yes, we are expanding our club network, but we are also ramping up our investments in the current club portfolio. I think one of the things that recognizes SATS is that we are able to grow our clubs even though they are, you know, maturing. We invest in the clubs to make sure that they are still growing members, even if the clubs are 10-15 years old. We are upgrading the clubs, we are upgrading the concepts.
One of the concepts we are launching now is a new HIIT Zone at one of our clubs in Oslo where we have boxing classes and, you know, launching new high-intensity classes, which is responding to the trend that we see clearly in the market of demand among our members of what type of concepts they want more of. We're testing that now, and we will launch that in several selected clubs in our different countries as we go along. We are also launching a new, so to say, design and way of doing our GX rooms to make them more modern. That's the new concept we were referring to.
Then when it comes to Mentra, I don't think, you know, we're not guiding on, so to say, the potential. What the users we get from Mentra now is that we get, you know, subs members that are using the digital content. We typically see both existing members, but also members coming in from areas where we don't have a physical footprint, like more rural areas, buying the Rflex and using this instead of using, so to say, the local gym in their area. We will continue to develop and grow our digital offering there.
Last, when it comes to the density, I think, you know, quite seen from outside, there's quite a lot of people that are surprised that we are opening so many of our new clubs in the already strongest clusters, that they would expect more new clubs when we added, like, 29 new clubs. Wouldn't that be more like new cities? We have been clear on the priorities in our expansion from the beginning. Number one priority is to strengthen our current clusters. Number two is to go into, you know, new cities in the Nordics. So far, we are deploying all our growth capital in priority number one, because we see a lot of still interesting growth opportunities in our current clusters.
Even in Oslo, where we have such a high density of clubs, there are still big competition in Oslo, and we will continue to invest in our club clusters in Oslo, but also then in the rest of the Nordics. That priority remains the same also going forward when we ramp up expansion.
Sondre, when do you expect to move on to phase two, basically?
That, we'll see. We'll see. It might be new opportunities coming up, but I don't think it's natural to go into, you know, concrete timeline on that.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Barbara. Other questions?
Yeah. I have a question here. It's Petter from ABG. Sorry if my questions have been answered. I was 5-10 minutes late to the call. Two questions. Firstly, on the 50 new clubs in 2022, should we expect this to be evenly distributed throughout 2022? The second question is in Denmark, looking at the member base, it's fairly flat this year-over-year. Can you share some thoughts there on the competition landscape and then what we should expect there over coming years? Thank you.
Yeah. Just to the 15 signed new openings, those will be distributed both throughout 2022 and 2023, actually. So, there's not like all of them coming now in the short term. We are opening, though, quite some clubs now in the next coming months, but those are distributed throughout two full years. But that number will increase. So that's, it's not only 2022. Then when it comes to the development in Denmark, basically, we also have a so to say catch up from the bottom, so to say, during the pandemic in our Danish club and the development there in the new year is pretty good.
We haven't seen any competitive, so to say, big changes in the competitive landscape in Denmark. There are several players in the Danish market who are, you know, quite aggressive also in marketing and campaigning at the moment. For us, it's been, you know, important to stick to, so to say, the concept and build up the member base and focus on our key strengths, which is around especially group training, and that will be our focus also going forward.
Thank you.
Okay.
I think that's what we have the time for today. If you have any more questions, please reach out to Martin or me, and we will of course answer your questions.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Wish you all a great day.