Thank you so much, a warm welcome to this Q2 presentation. You can take the next slide, please. We can start with the agenda for today's presentation. Myself, Stefan Sjöstrand, will start up with a short introduction and after that, we will talk about short summary about the quarter. We will give an outlook of how the rest of the season and also the future is look for us as a company. You can take the next slide, introduction one. Also next slide for our business idea.
We are extremely satisfied that we reworked our business idea, and our business idea is or our business concept is to create memorable alpine experiences, develop sustainable destinations and also offer accommodations, activities, products and services of the highest quality with a focus on our guests. When Anders later on will present our report and our numbers, you will see that we actually are managing to have a fantastic report where we will fulfill most of all this, which has where we have set up as a business idea. You can take next slide, and this is SkiStar. If you look into the net sales, previous year was SEK 2.75 billion.
We are extremely satisfied this year where we have eight out of 10 satisfied guests where we deliver this amazing result for this year. What we also are extremely happy with is that nine out of 10 of our employees are satisfied, especially when we had two years behind us with extremely tough situations with the pandemic in the world. We have managed to operate all our ski resorts every day, and our coworkers, employees have come to job every day with a big smile. That has, of course, led to all this great satisfaction among our guests.
Our skistar.com is showing 32 million visits, and we are closely nearly reaching 1.5 million members in My SkiStar this year, which is of course something we are extremely proud of when we're also looking ahead of the future for our company. You can take the next slide. Our history is still there. We have been running our ski operations since 75, and we have been on the stock market since 94. We are continually continue to grow with with different parts of building new history. 2 years ago, we launched our sports and adventure and our summer activities and of course that will help us to build our business going forward.
If we take the next slide, the Q2 summary, and also take the next slide after that, the Q2 highlights. I will continue and talk about the cold November, with the weather conditions helped us to start up very early with snow production. And also we could see that our strategy, the new strategy pays off, and we can really see that the focus on the core business, alpine skiing, is really in the highlight. You can see that we have all-time high results in number of visitors. We have all-time high in ski days. We have all-time high sales from all strategic products, including the ski pass, ski rental, lodging, SkiStarshop.com, concept stores and equipment. We see that we have something extremely important for the future. We have 9% new guests, which has never been shown before.
This number is also telling us that we have a great outlook going forward. We also see that 22% of our guests is returning, and they are returning back to going skiing after many years not being skiing. We can also see that the recovery from the pandemic effect is going much faster than we expect, and we can see that SkiStar is coming out much stronger than the pre-pandemic years in 2018, 2019. Of course, we are extremely proud when we had the grand opening of the new SkiStar Lodge in Hundfjället, Sälen, Sweden, and it has been fully booked since day one we open it. We can take the next slide of highlights as well. Here you can see the numbers of ski visitors. We have 33% increase in the visitors.
We have 43% increase of skiing days. We have 57% increase in sales of ski pass, 70% of lodging, 85% of ski rental, and 48% of our sport shops. We are extremely proud of presenting the results this year. Not to forget, if you take the next slide, it's around sustainability. By this report, we can really show that we are putting many more people and activating, and that is one very important part of our sustainability focus.
To just see the increase of visitors at our resort with 33% and also the skiing days with 43%, that means that we put a lot of more people and activate them at our resorts. We are super proud that we have increased the usage of HVO, we have managed to put that into operations in Norway. Also we have tested the fossil-free petrol in March as well, this month. Really focus on that.
Something we also tested, with a collaboration with Audi, this winter season has been to put the charger stations on the way up to our resorts, and it has been very successful to put in these extra chargers, and where it has been, sometimes helpful for people with electrified cars to charge their cars. We are super happy with that. Also the dialogue and interaction with both, the municipalities as well the government, around how to create a stronger infrastructure going forward to our resort, starts to pay off as well. We are very happy about the report, about the highlights. Now, Anders, I hand over to you to go through the real numbers. Anders, please.
Thank you, Stefan. I will go through the figures, of course. We can move into page 11. Before commenting on the Q2 and the first half year results, we would like to give a background on the financial development to put things in perspective. It's important to show that SkiStar has had a strong financial growth before the pandemic. Here you can see a graph that shows historical development of EBIT and EBIT margin ending with a figure for 12 months rolling or 4 quarters rolling actually. The same of course. Main reason behind historical profit development are a great effect of underlying volume increase in core business and smarter and differentiated pricing of a specialist ski passes.
It's also important to understand that in the previous full year results, especially before the pandemic, a substantial part from the EBIT has come from capital gains in the property development at around SEK 150 to SEK 190 million. The two financial years 2019-2020, 2020-2021 are affected by the pandemic. Of course, we cannot parry the loss of revenue, but we did maintain a strong profit, which has given us peace of mind in a stressful time. Looking at the fourth quarter rolling figure at SEK 7.7 million is really exciting, especially knowing that we have a Q3 coming up with half of the winter season to come. The curves has pointed downwards, but we are extremely pleased that to see the turnaround already. Moving into page 12 then and diving into the second quarter, first half year.
As you can understand, the first quarter is very quiet at SkiStar. Now it starts to happen. Slightly complicated with the growth figures, you can see that our sales growth is coming across the board in products and services, as Stefan already stated. Close to SEK 1 billion in total. Four takeaways on the revenue side, first half year. On the left side, you can find our core business development, where you can see that the volume growth is behind the sales development. Volume, i.e., new guests buy all the products and not only the ski pass. Continued strong development in the retail business, both online and offline at the resorts. Also, we now have a hotel and lodge division since last summer, which contributing SEK 200 million top line first half year.
Four of the six hotels and lodges we run are located in Norway, where we have had a tough start with the various restrictions, such as alcohol bans, which of course affected the restaurants and the hotel. We have had a slower pace in property development. On the income side there, it's minus SEK 80 million, but that's more of a timing effect still, we'll say. Moving into page 13, you can follow the changes in EBIT by segment and the impressive effect of our business model. The margin on the last ski pass sold are of course 100%. In property development, we've had smaller capital gains, as we already mentioned, but we are consolidating a better result from our joint ventures.
Finally, our hotel division has had a slow start, but we're happy to be up and running and see all the opportunities around the corner. After Q1, we had some profit to make up for when the lifts opened, and we did. Isolated Q2 are close to half a billion SEK versus last year. Probably even more impressive, we beat our previous pre-pandemic all-time high with over SEK 100 million with a lot less capital gain. Moving into page 14 and the cash flow statement first half year, we get of course, a very positive effect from the underlying demand and the profit from our operations, along with the behavior of booking and paying for your holiday earlier and earlier.
It's very favorable for SkiStar that our guests prioritize and secure their winter holiday early, unique to our industry, we would say. It also gives us both self-confidence and financing for future investments. We have also received the final payment for the disposal of our shares in St. Johann, EUR 50 million. Moving into page 15 and the financial summary to round things up. A summary, a very challenging time is now behind us, at least for the moment. SkiStar is still in a strong financial position, and with a positive cash flow, it gives us all the opportunities we need. Our balance sheet is strong with equity ratio of 48%, excluding IFRS 16 net debt.
Net debt is low and liquidity forecast is better than ever due to responsible actions in the pandemic and the record quarter we report today. Our financial position is of course the main explanation for our belief in the future. We will show what we mean by accelerating our investment in our core business. Stefan will talk more about it now and more of the future right now. Stefan, page 16 and onwards.
Thank you so much, Anders, for presenting, this, I must say, amazing numbers, this quarter, and something we are like also begun with, extremely proud of. Can we please continue then to the next page 17, where we then take a slightly look forward then. When we presented our last quarter, we spoke about the whole winter season, more or less, where we could see an increase of booking by 14% for the whole year. Now we are looking into what's left of the season, and there we can see that we are still up 9% compared to the top year 18-19, means pre-COVID. It's really continue with this staycation trend and where the customers really like what we are offering as a company.
Plus 9%, and we can see a very strong Easter coming up for us as a company. This means, of course, that we are strengthening the position as the leading holiday organizer for Scandinavia. Since we now have held back a bit of our investments the last 2 years from the pandemic, we are now speeding up, and we are speeding up quite heavily. A record high investments by +SEK 550 million, and it will be focused on modernized ski systems, but also securing the snow production for an early start of the season. We continue to invest in real estate and property. Our collaboration and our JV with Skiab is also continue to grow our business locally.
We have said that we are making a big transformation also from being a winter destination to a year-round destination. Now we are, of course, focusing to end up the winter season and Easter, but also planning for the great summer season. Here we have now planned for a lot of activities in our lodges, and we are really trying to steer the bookings towards our own locations, like our lodges, as well our own property we are owning. We are making collaboration with Marathongruppen, which is meaning that we will have a lot of races in the mountains. We also have done a great collaboration with the Swedish Olympic Committee, where athletes would come up and have camps at our resorts during the summertime.
Of course, we have a SkiStar business where we have a lot of conference guests, where we can see that a lot of conferences starts to begin again, and they really like to do that in the environment we can offer as a concept. Summary, the staycation trend is here all year round, summer as winter. Again, SkiStar is coming out much stronger after the pandemic than we did when we stepped into the pandemic 2 years ago. Proudly responsible for the company today with all the great efforts from all our employees during this last 2 years. Hat off to them and we open up by that for Q&A and the page 18 then.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing zero two to cancel. There will be a brief pause while questions are being answered. Our first question comes from Karl-Johan Bonnevier with DNB Markets. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. First of all, congratulations. It's excellent execution and fantastic results for the period. No question about it. A couple of questions, though. You mentioned, Anders, that Norway had a struggle at the start of the period. Could you elaborate a little how well you see the Norwegian operation then performing in during this period compared to say, what you would call an ideal situation that I guess you had in the Swedish operation for this year?
I can try at least, Karl-Johan, Stefan will maybe add on to some things. Yeah. It's, I think in the beginning of the winter season, in December and January, the situation were fairly tough. We saw some Swedes and Danes coming into Norway having their winter holidays for Christmas and New Year's, but there were some restrictions in Norway. There are definitely an upside to for the coming winter season, where you can have hopefully a full no restriction and full tourism for all the international guests, actually, even the Englishmen were not we haven't seen that many Englishmen in Trysil this year.
Tough start, but in January in Norway, as as we did in Sweden, everything has gone fairly smooth. Summary of my answer to you, Karl-Johan, is that I think we will have an upside next... next winter.
I can continue to build on what Anders just said is that if you look into the revenues from the Swedish operations, we are 30% up compared to last year, and last year was the record season. Just to put that in a context, I mean, 30% of growth on growth. The Norwegian business is growing, of course, 350%. If you look into that from a historic perspective, it is actually equal with the record season 2018-2019. Norway, we managed this year, even then due to what Anders just described, a slow start in beginning, December, January. Now moving up in a extremely fast pace and also, a great outlook of the rest of the season.
We are very pleased with what we have seen that our operations has managed to deliver and also see potential for us growing going forward is absolutely there.
When you look at that's Stefan, you put up some more what you called midterm, I think, target here in one or two quarterly reports back when you say you set your agenda for the company. Now it sounds like you're gonna be very close to those already during this year. Is that, is that a fair assumption that things have really gone much, much quicker than you hoped for?
Yeah. I must say, I'm back then to, you know, when you have an organization having 25%, 30% I will not use the word sick leave, but leave due to restrictions. The company is then moving together, people working in the office, going out, taking care of the lift operations to secure operations. That's also build a strong momentum within the core team of the company, of course, which I'm super satisfied about. When you see that type of people coming together, you also see that maybe the result is coming a bit quicker than we expect as well. Our strategy where we have decided to take a larger, I would say, majority of the business takes, for example, ski rental, our ski shops, et cetera, at our destination.
When all that works in a good manner, we can also see that it will help us to deliver a strong result going forward. It looks like our strategy where we have larger ownership and a larger control of the different business types, it actually pays off.
Yeah. No. Thanks for that. On the highlight page you showed in the presentation, obviously the impressive numbers across the board. As you implied, you have done quite a few actions on the pricing side of the ski passes. Could you elaborate a little on what kind of effects that are coming through in those kinds of fantastic pricing figures on top of the volume numbers?
Well, that depends on which perspective you have. I was talking about that in this five to six years perspective. The main reason I mean, if you look at it from a five to six years perspective, is that the differentiation of high and low season. Before that the price per day was the same, even if it was, you know, a New Year's Day or a slower period. I think that's the main answer to the question from a historical perspective. In this year's figures, it's more difficult because we have of course a ski pass increase. It's compared to the volume increase, it's very small.
It's also a very technical answer because you have to also understand how much are children in there and how much are seasonal pass effect. Of course currency. There are ski pass increase. The reason behind this year's figures is volume.
Excellent. When we look forward, sounds like, say, Q3 is looking very promising, even though you don't really have the season with you this year. When you look into the summer season, you also indicate that you will, say, step up the number of actions in the resorts to drive demand and then integrate the lodges in that more. Does the lodges give you a better opportunity to do this year, so to say, compared to last year? Is that a fair way of looking at it?
Yes. I mean, I must say we have managed to work more on the activation side now and try to make an agenda or or what you say, a great where we put in a lot of happenings during the summertime where we have been rather more closed than open previously. That's opened up for a good summer season. Then we have not managed to work on the operation side, which we plan to do this year because we have been so quite busy with all the things happened due to the pandemic, I must say. That stopped us a bit to do focus on the organizational part and so on. There is also an upside going forward for us when we look into the operations of our hotel business.
Now this summer we will work on a more activity calendar, like I said, with these races, Tjejmilen for example, or conferences, et cetera. That will help us to fill our resorts, especially in Sälen and in Trysil. This summer we will open up both lodges in Trysil because we can see an increased demand on especially biking and hiking in Norway. Trysil is a great place where we have probably the best facilities for doing all activities going forward.
Excellent. On that theme, I think you had a number of aiming for in a midterm to get, say, the summer season up to 50,000 bed nights or something like that. Is that something you look at maybe hitting already this year then?
Yeah. We said, we put it in a three-year context. We said 60, 7,500, and now we are at the 75,000-year target Guest nights as a situation. If you look into the situation right now, we are quite good on the pace for the summer. We are 30% up, like I said on low numbers. We are following the pace to reach this 75,000. Not to forget, this year we are also investing in Hammarbybacken SkiStar Stockholm, our new location, which will help us to grow also a very great year-round , where we will have summer skiing, we will have this Mountain Coaster, we will have these climbing parks, et cetera.
I think SkiStar Stockholm will have a great opportunity for us to both strengthening our brand as also supporting us with some revenues during the period where we not have snow.
Good. Just if you also could elaborate for us, you mentioned that the Skiab at Södra Fjället getting off to a strong start. How does the exploration backlog look in that operation? Have you added any more projects of late in there?
Well, we have. We have both executed. We have a big project in Åre, Sälen in Björnen, for example. We have one in Lindvallen, and we have a concept store in Lindvallen that we work with. Yes, there are some. I don't think that that's not the biggest ones, but it's good to be up and running and executing some of the projects, and there are some bigger ones coming up. A bit too early to talk about.
We'll return to that. One final for me. Just to get a feel for how you see and how you can, say, build business around it. This 9% new visitors and 22% returning old timers, so to say. How can you make use of that in, say, driving your concepts?
I must say, that also if you look into the SEK 550+ million in investment now going forward, a big part of that is of course lift operations, snow production. It's also in a new CRM system where we call it internally Customer to One project, where we will increase the, let's say, relations with our visitors, with our customers. Also, since we digitalize all the purchase by ski pass, it has also helped us to come in closer contact and also increase my SkiStar membership. We are up to 1.5 million members there. All that will help us to have a closer connection with our visitors and guests. By that, we hope that we can continue to grow our business going forward as well.
I guess those kinds of percentage numbers , like 9% new visitors that haven't been with you before and 22 returning, those must be numbers that you've never seen historically ever in the company.
No. It's, if I use the word crazy in a positive manner here. It's actually amazing to see this. I mean, we have known these numbers now for a couple of weeks, me and Anders. You know, every week when we have looked into the number of visitors, we have had all-time high every day in our operations during, for example, the holiday weeks. When we measure the number of visitors in our system, we say, "Oh, no, not today again." In a positive way. "Oh, wow, all-time high, all-time high." Every day, we have beaten all-time high record of visitation during the winter break season. It has been fantastic, and it has been the same at all our resorts actually.
No, good to hear, and congratulations to good execution.
Thank you so much, Karl-Johan.
As a reminder, if you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. At this time, we have no further questions. I will now hand back to our speakers for any closing comments.
We think Karl-Johan was very thorough with his questions. There was some good questions and some hopefully some answers that give you a broader perspective on that. Otherwise, we are happy from Stockholm and we have fun. We say goodbye, and thanks for today.
Thank you very much.