Good morning, everyone, a warm welcome to all of you to this Q&A session following our Q4 2022 reporting earlier this morning. We are still getting people joining the call, I think we'll give them just a few more seconds here to get everyone in. There, it seems like everyone is in from the lobby. Once again, good morning, everyone, and welcome to this Q&A session. We are just jumping directly into Q&A. We have set aside 30 minutes. Just raise your hands, and Sine will give you the word, and we'll go through. Massive line on questions here so we go, guess nobody wants to be first.
Yes, I want to confirm that you hear us.
Can you hear us? Great. If you could just, one could raise their hands or give a thumbs up or something. Yes. Yes. There we see some thumbs. Okay.
Yeah. Yep.
At least we know the technique is working. We, as we said, for new participants, welcome. If there are any questions, just, raise your hand, and we will, give you the word. We did not plan to go through the presentation now as we just presented the report, an hour ago.
One question there. Good, Ole Martin.
It's a busy day today, so a lot of reports, but I can try. When it comes to your outlook for membership growth for the next couple of coming quarters, can you give some sort of top level what we should sort of expect and what is your expectations with regards to that, if the positive trend is sort of set to continue? On top of that also, if you can give some more color on the club closures and, You expect and what you see in potential there going forward, also beyond 2023, and sort of what is the sort of growth outlook when it comes to clubs.
Yes. Thank you, Ole Martin. I can start and please fill in Cecilia. When it comes to member development, we are leaving behind us now a few quarters with, I would say, exceptionally high net growth compared to, of course, what is normal. We don't guide on the membership development going forward, but I think, you know, of course, we are more coming toward a normalized quarterly development on the member base, as we also show in the presentation today, which I think will be one of the last time to show it since the gap is now closed. We have now closed the gap on number of members per club on the like-for-like base.
Of course, we continue to develop from there and grow from there and also bring the new clubs back to that or into that level. That will take some time. We also say in the report today that the positive development on sales and also, so to say, a normalized development on churn has continued into the start of the new year. That gives an indication of the start of the year. We will not guide or, so to say, give any flavor on what we expect in our internal estimates for the member base going out of there. In general, of course, the.
When the member base is back like-for-like, and you see a more normalized, so to say, situation in the society, I would expect the net growth to be more normalized quarter by quarter going forward.
Mm-hmm. Just a follow-up on that. When you close clubs, is there a rule of thumb in terms of how many members that sort of continues to be with SATS and how many that leaves?
Well, I can comment on that and also on the club closures. We list some of the clubs that we have closed and are planning to close in the presentation today. There will not be a massive club closure, just to be clear on that.
Mm-hmm.
The only club. What we are, of course, looking into is the few clubs, and that's still quite few of the clubs in our portfolio, who are not generating, so to say, good enough results. Not only talking about those generating negative results, but also not good enough results. What we will typically do then is, of course, to go in dialogue with the landlords, and discuss potential alternatives, both renegotiating the rent, potentially downsizing the clubs, and looking at also relocation alternatives. That would always be the preferred solution. If we don't find a way to get attractive club financials, we will close the clubs, either before the end of the lease contract or by the end of the lease contract. It varies a lot.
There's no I would say there's no rule of thumb, because, on the list now, just to give you two examples, on the list now in the presentation today, we have mentioned, two different clubs in Norway. SATS Hønefoss and SATS Spektrum. SATS Spektrum, you have several great SATS clubs pretty close to that club, and you would typically see quite a low loss of members from the members who have Spektrum as a home club when we close that club. Because what we also look into is, of course, where do the members work out in addition to their home club. And most of those members work out at many different Oslo clubs. There, we don't expect to lose many members.
Of course, when we close a club like Hønefoss in a place where we only have one club, there's a much higher loss of members, and basically you lose everyone. There's not a rule of thumb. When we close clubs in strong clusters, we see a very low loss of members. When we relocate clubs in a strong cluster, we nearly see the opposite. We keep all the members and attract quite a lot of new members because it's a new club, and of course we relocate to, in most cases, a better location. One example of that is ELIXIA Ruoholahti, which we also have on the list today, which is a relocation of ELIXIA Salmisaari in Helsinki.
We just moved the club a few hundred meters. It's to a much more important location in terms of in terms of public transport. The club already has 8, 900 more members than the old club we closed just some weeks ago. It varies a lot, Ole Martin. That's that's the short answer.
Yeah. Just to follow up, you mentioned, you know, the significant increase in these rates. You're also having looks to have be some successful negotiations with the landlords. Can you comment upon have you concluded the majority of those negotiations? How many are ongoing, and, how is that sort of affecting your, lease cost increases for the coming quarters?
We have not concluded where that work that's still ongoing. I think for the cases where we can do some structural changes in the leases, either by resizing it, we have sort of more success in getting both contribution from the landlords on refurbishing the club and doing some more work on them and at the same time reduce the lease because we prolong the lease. Of course, the dialogue with the landlords when it comes to adjusting KPIs is tough. I think it's important to sort of show that we have alternatives if we don't see that they are cooperating or contributing. It's still an ongoing work.
Yeah. I think it's fair to say we're in the middle of it. We will not, you know, we will not be able to get the majority of leases down. Just be clear on that. It is tough negotiations, but of course, it helps to close some clubs and to relocate some and to show that we can do that with success. That's important for us in the negotiations.
The final one for me before I step into the non-existing queue. When it comes to the. You talk about a gradual improvement in profitability. Can you give some more color? What is your expectation with regards to that? When do you expect to sort of have completed the cost initiatives, and where are you sort of back in operation?
I think you will see exactly what we state, will it be a gradual effect during the year. That, we run right into 2024, we'll have a different sort of cost base than we have as of now. Overall, the cost reductions are mainly in overhead costs. We've said that we will take that down to the same level that we had in 2019, in terms of, costs related to revenues. We will follow that path. I think you will pretty soon see that, the cost is coming down, but the full effect will happen gradually during the year.
Just on that, since it's headquarters and you looked at taking a lot of the measures already, why isn't it happening sooner?
It's not only FTE costs, it's also costs related to other items. That will take more time to sort of get full effect of.
Okay. Thank you.
Any other questions before we round off? Barbara Smith? Please go ahead, Barbara. You're on mute. Barbara Smith? Takk.
Okay. I think we close the meeting if there is no more questions. Doesn't seem to be so. Thank you all for joining in, and we wish you a Happy Valentine's Day. Cheers. Have a good one.