Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the SkiStar Q3 Report, 1st of September 2024 to 31st of May 2025, webcast and conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speakers today, Stefan Sjöstrand, CEO, and Sara Jinnerot Uggelberg, CFO. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Sharon, and nice to have you all here for the SkiStar Q3 presentation. It will be myself, Stefan Sjöstrand, and our CFO, Sara Jinnerot Uggelberg, who will make the presentation today. The agenda for today is actually that I will take you through a brief introduction with 10 slides, roughly, and then we will take you through the Q3 highlights and also with some numbers. After that, we will guide you through some outlook and how it looks forward for the upcoming next winter season as well as this summer season. If I start with a short introduction, there will be some of the slides some of you have seen before, but it is more to make a short introduction, like I said. First of all, I am truly happy to have this 50-year love story of SkiStar as a company.
We have celebrated this 2025, and we will continue to celebrate in the beginning of next winter season as well. The true anniversary is October 9, so it will be really positive to continue this 50-year celebration with a lot of activities together with our guests and customers. Our position is that we have a very strong position. We are the leading holiday organization for Scandinavia. What is very important for us is that we would like to create a memorable mountain experience all year round for our customers. We are really trying hard for that. You will see later on what we have done this season to really make sure that this happened throughout the whole season.
Again, we are one of the largest players in the world, and it's interesting to see that Sälen, what many think is a small destination, but it's actually the 16th largest destination in the world. SkiStar have three destinations in this top, actually, of the top 50 list in the world, which is amazing. If you look in and zoom into Scandinavia, we are the top leading company. We have five ski destinations, winter destinations in the top five. We have not updated the numbers for this winter season since we are waiting for the rest of the market. In Q4, you will see the full updated numbers for how it has looked this winter season. Again, I'm really glad that we will continue to work with our framework and the strategic framework where we will focus on mountain operations and the property development.
Sara will also take you through how our development has looked through both sides of mountain operations and the property development also from the past seven years. If we look into our integrated business model, this is one of our real strengths within SkiStar. We are really glad to have close to 40 million visits to SkiStar.com, where the customer comes in and they book their holidays, and they also book all the activities. This is something unique with our business model that we can continue to work with SkiStar.com as our distribution channel and our own OTA, which is, of course, very important. We have our financial targets, and they consist of 6% growth, 18% margin. We have a net debt EBITDA of 2.5 and a dividend up to between 40-60%. No changes there.
The same with our sustainability targets. We really would like to continue to focus on creating activity and recreation by adding more customers for skier and activity days. We continue hard to work with the climate reduction and also to work with different types of collaborations to continue to both work with the climate reduction and activate more people in our resorts. What's very important for us to work with in the strategic initiatives to reach our financial targets. They are really the five strong from and to, and this development of the all-year-round operations continues and the same as we strengthen the margin and growth. We continue to increase the number of commercial beds, both build new ones and also take in new ones in our booking systems. We continue to work with the sustainable future mountain experience as well as normalize investments over time.
With these five strategic initiatives, I will start to focus on the Q3 summary. If we look into the report, some of you have read it this morning, and of course, we can clearly see that our sales and profit declined. It declined due to the late Easter. From Good Friday, we could have really made, yeah, it happened with really poor weather conditions, and it started to become really, really warm at our SkiStar destinations, mainly in Sälen and Trysil, later on also in Vemdalen. Åre maintained quite good as well as Hemsedal, but the three in the beginning had really tough weather conditions. In week 17, normally we have closed in Sälen and Trysil, week 17. This year, we have decided to have it open due to spring holidays or Easter holidays in the north part of Sweden.
Unfortunately, we need to open up for the snow guarantee at the three destinations, Sälen, Trysil, and Vemdalen. What was very interesting was that media made a big thing out of this, and also media were announcing that this cost us a fortune out of money. However, we would really like to make underlining that this week 17 was not the main reason or the snow guarantee or that we did not pay out money to our guests for canceling the bookings. What really happened was that due to the weather effect in week 16 and over Eastern, guests did not decide to come to the Scandinavian mountains. They decided to stay at home. That is the pure reason, actually. Those guests who stayed at our destinations, I must say the coworkers or staff we have, they made so impressive work to make good conditions for our guests.
They worked day and night. They closed some slopes, and they shuffled the snow to the slopes where we had open to really make as good an experience as possible for our guests. Hat off again to all our employees making this happen, actually. Another highlight in the Q3 was that we have refined. We have made some refinancing with improved commercial terms and limits. We have added SEK 700 million, which is, of course, very strong. In connection to our debt situation, I will come into that later, but 1.15, we are in a very strong financial situation going forward as well. During the quarter, we have sold a piece of land, Vasa Sjoland, to SkiAB, and we also have made a long-term lease agreement with SkiAB to rent that back. That will be 600 new beds coming up for the season 2026-2027.
We also have made a very important agreement with the landowner, Utmarkslaget. Utmarkslaget owns all land in Trysil. Previously, Utmarkslaget has been the one who developed the land, and we have leased the ski part. Now we have actually made an agreement with them that we will, together with them, develop more property development within Trysil, which is completely new. We will start up with the area around the gondola in Trysil, which is the AAA land around this gondola lift. A very positive agreement with the landowner, Utmarkslaget. We have made an acquisition of Högfjälls Hotellet's operation. We have been the owner of that building since many years back, but now, since May 1, we take over the operation in Högfjälls Hotellet.
We are really glad that also Folk & Försvar, the big conference in January, will continue to work with SkiStar also in January. We are really proud that we have made a collaboration together with seven other ski resorts for work with the sustainability part. We have called it Global Sustainability Alliance. This will support also the development to put some pressure on our suppliers to really work hard on new development within the area of sustainability. That could be within the steel to have fossil-free steels. It could be more electrical development and also even more snow efficiency production. We are really glad that we could make this collaboration. Also, we have done an even long-term collaboration with SJ and Snälltåget, and that also means that customers can today book for winter season, the whole winter season next year. That has not been possible before.
That will be very, very important, of course, but also something which has been a big requirement from our guests. Last but not least, OK-Q8 AB have signed a strong partnership with us, and that means that we will, together with them, support each customer who fuels up with HVO. We will compensate the difference with normal diesel vs HVO to create a more sustainable travel to our destinations. I continue with some highlights of the Q3. Not only, sorry, not only Q3, also the winter season, because now we can make a summary of that. It is the second best result after the pandemic, actually. We make a very strong operational result. I think the pandemic was exceptional. If we take that year out, we make the best year ever.
The main reason for that is that we, of course, lose some skier days due to this winter, sorry, the weather effect in quarter three, but we open up with even more international guests. We increased 8%, and they now consist of more than one-third of our total number of guests. We can also see that we increased the ski school, and ski school is important for the future. Also, all these international guests, or most of the international guests, actually buy the ski school as well. Retail or our ski shops continue to grow, and our own brand Equipped grew with 33%. Also, this retail area is now close to SEK 700 million in turnover, which I think is quite important to look into as an even more important part of our revenues going forward.
Last but not least, our coworkers are making very strong work, and our guests actually really like what they are doing and give them high scores, 9 out of 10, actually, like what our coworkers are doing in the job when they meet them every day. Just a summary of the winter season, I said it briefly, we lose in the end of the season. Easter did not match up to the year before when the Easter was week 14 and 15. Now we only got some numbers in week 16, but it was unfortunately too low numbers. What is really interesting is, again, the importance of the international guests. They drive average spend, and they continue to do that. That is why I am also glad to later on talk about the new incoming flights to Sälen Airport. The digital engagement continues.
What we could see during this quarter was that we have even more digital engagement, and that was a result actually of many customers actually looked at the weather because we show the weather forecast updating every day and also the number of lifts and slopes which was open. Unfortunately, that also led to less conversion. We also have made some updates in our MySkiStar members due to this GDPR. We decreased the numbers, but now we are starting to build it up again, and that is why we increased with 15%. We are now up to 1.5 million members again then. We have retail growth. The retail growth is continuing, like I said, and we are growth on growth. This business has really challenging times within the area of sports. You have seen many challenges within the industry.
For example, XXL have went into or are close to bankruptcy, and they have now had really tough times and lost a lot of money. We can continue to show both growth and profitability within this segment, which is, of course, important going forward. By that, I hand over to you, Sara, who will talk a little bit about our numbers more in specific.
Thank you. If we take a look at the graph that shows the net sales development in comparison with last year, you can see we've got a growth of 1.3 when you look at the last 12 months number. Obviously, we had a very strong second quarter with a positive calendar effect. The third quarter has been negatively impacted by late Easter and together with poor weather conditions.
That is obvious when you take a look at the revenue growth. The number of ski days was down 1.6%, but still it amounts to 6 million, which is a fairly high number. The occupancy rate in accommodation was low. It was 46%, which is down 3%. If we take a look at the next winter season, the calendar effect will be very positive next year. That is Christmas and also during Easter. That will have a positive impact on the net sales. We continue, as Stefan mentioned, to be an attractive choice for our international guests that has increased by 8%, and their average spending is high. We have a lot of exciting investments for our guests that will be effective from next winter season. The net sale development by per category.
Obviously, and this is from in comparison with last year, so the total period of September to May. Yes, we have an increase in ski passes that has grown 3%, 3.2%, which is volume, but it's more price. As I said, the number of ski days is down 1.6%. Accommodation, the revenue growth is actually flat. Price is 4%, and the number of objects is down 4%. We have, as Stefan mentioned as well, the retail segment has improved and increased. That is both ski rental together with sport shops that add up to a positive impact on the sales development. When it comes to lodging, which is the sum of hotels and mediated accommodation, we've also seen that we have added capacity in restaurants, and that has also been a positive impact on net sales.
Exportation is down, actually, because last year we had a lot of property transaction in Hemsedal, and that impacted net sales positive, but it actually had a net gain negative impact on net gain last year. Others, which is up 7, it is actually events that has improved in comparison with last year. If we have a look at the operating profit per segment, then you can see that the development, and once again, this is the development from September to May, and operating of mountain ski resorts and operating hotels, the development is more or less flat. The development or the upside comes from property development that was affected by a capital loss last year. This year, we've had a capital gain of 50. We have also had a positive impact from joint venture that has improved year on year.
Net sales, sorry, net sales, sorry. Operating profit by per business units, it is more or less the same story, but it is up 7%. It is property development, as I mentioned. It is also ski pass, of course. It is lodging where restaurant drives as a new capacity drives the improvement. Support functions, which is down SEK 18 million. That is related to sales activities, but also IT. The seasonality impact, and this is more to describe that the seasonality impact is fairly high. We do make money the second and the third quarter, and then we lose money in the first and the fourth quarter. The seasonality impact is high within our operations.
If we continue with the operating profit development year on year, then last 12 months graph shows that we should have in total SEK 816 million, but that includes a fairly high capital gain of SEK 126 million. That is related to last year. The capital gain remaining of this year will be limited. The margin is 17.1%, which is a fairly high number. The underlying business, the operating business, is SEK 690 million. As Stefan mentioned, it is a fairly high number. It is the best result ever if we exclude the peak year that was the year after the pandemic. We have actually been able to double up our operating profit during the years. If we take a look at the cash flow situation, the cash flow from operating activities amounts to SEK 1.2 billion in comparison with last year.
That is down to some extent, and that is due to a repayment that was made last year. If we compare the periods, that is related to working capital that had a positive impact last year. Still, the operating activities amounts to a fairly high number. Net or the net investment is SEK 295 million, which is lower than last year, and that is due to lower investments. That is more a timing effect. We will most probably have more investment in the first quarter. During the year, the investment rate will be more or less SEK 550 million, as we have said before. Cash flow from investing activities, sorry, cash flow from financing activities amounts to SEK 963 million.
That is a higher amount in comparison with last year, but that is due to that we've made a repayment of our existing debts to actually prepare for the refinancing that has been made in the recent days. Take a look at the debt structure and the EBITDA. The leverage is 1.1, which is a low number, and it has decreased in comparison with 31 August last year. The financial net debt amounts to SEK 1.3 billion, which is a decrease from last year. Together with an improved EBITDA, the leverage has improved. The refinancing agreement was actually signed just the other day, and it's a new agreement with DNB, Handelsbanken, and Nordea. The agreement has resulted in improved commercial terms together with an increased credit of SEK 700 million. Also, all loans and facilities are linked to sustainability performance.
The quarter, in summary, yes, we had this quarter a temporary setback due to late Easter and poor weather conditions. That impacted operating profit for the quarter that was down 10%. We have a very strong balance sheet position, and the equity asset ratio is high. It is 64% when excluding IFRS 16. As I said, we have a low financial debt, and we have a fairly solid investment ratio, which is good. All in all, it looks good for the future. The financial position and the financial performance is solid.
Thank you, Sara. It is like we all, both of us are saying, we have a temporary setback in the quarter. Again, we cannot control the weather, but we and we have limited possibilities to control the costs when you are in the peak of the middle of the season as well.
That's why the main reason. However, if we look into our sustainability activities, I think really proud to, like I mentioned, this leading the industry's transition and the way we have now collaborating within these seven different ski resorts. I think it is amazing to be part of that collaboration. Since we have created this alliance, there are many more actually ski resorts who would like to join this collaboration. It has been really good. I mentioned Uggle Kluotta, and I mentioned also SG. Now I will move forward, and I will talk about the outlook. What we think is really important is that we continue to work with these strategic initiatives to reach our financial targets. I really hope that you will see again that this temporary setback we had in the quarter, it's very challenging to mitigate.
We have done our best. However, again, the winter season will be very strong. If we look in now, what is looking ahead of us then? I think Sara was into talking a little bit about the calendar effect. We have both the Christmas holidays where we also will gain week two next year as a full week of holidays. Of course, that will be very good for us. You could see how this winter season was for us this year, and it will be even better the winter 2025-2026. When we will have Easter, week 14 and 15 next year, it will also be the best weeks of having Easter as well. The calendar next year, super good. I mean, this Scandinavian Mountains Airport is growing. Scandinavian Mountains Airport now will next year have 47,000 passengers coming into that airport.
That means that airport will be number seven in Sweden taking foreign guests. Within five years, this airport has grown from zero up to this position, which I think is very strong. By now bringing in more guests from the U.K. with EasyJet, they are coming in from both Gatwick and Heathrow, and they will also come from Manchester. The collaboration with TUI has been very strong. We had TUI Netherlands. We have been working with them. This year, they invited actually, not from our side, it was TUI themselves who invited Germany and Belgium to come and visit us. Immediately, they signed up for flights coming from Düsseldorf and also Brussels. Of course, this will be super positive for us having these guests in our system. What are we doing for our guests?
Yeah, we will invest a lot. When you do and work with what we are working with, you have a lot of permission to take care of. Sometimes you have to wait, and all of a sudden, everything happens at the same time. That is why I'm really happy that for this upcoming winter season, we will have the new gondola in Trysil. It will be a fantastic new investment, and it has been something our guests have been longing for in Trysil. In Åre, we have this area called Bjørnens Saden where we have had some challenges when the weather conditions can be windy, etc. Now we will invest in a new ski lift as well as lighting.
That means that the whole area could open up earlier, close later, and also really make sure that the whole Åre area is actually coming together as one, which is super important for the people having the houses in that area. We believe that that could also help us to get more bookings in Åre, Bjørnens Saden during the period of time when it's dark outside. Vemdalen, we invest in a completely new ski area. For those of you who have been visiting Vemdalen in the peak period, it has been very challenging. Excuse me. Now when we open up the whole new ski area of the seed, it will be completely actually amazing to have this new area. We will widen the slopes in Sälen relating to more of the modern skiing actually, which is of course super good.
We get a lot of critics about our pricing from media especially. Now we will show that we will introduce the lowest price in the ski mountains actually. Especially in Klövsjö, we will introduce this ski pass for SEK 399 per day or SEK 1,995 per week. That area will be as big as or even bigger than many areas within the Scandinavian mountains actually, which is something super interesting to follow and see how that will develop. We continue to do construction projects. Like I have said, Vasa Sjoland, they are ready, the beds, 500 new beds. Capital gains will be a bit delayed this year, and it will start to come more into next year.
We said it already during both Q1 and Q2, and now it will be very sure that we will actually have challenges this year, but it is very open up for next year when we can see some really strong numbers. We have done an acquisition of Juhls Sport in Trysil, and that will come into our books from September 1. That will also mean that we will take a large grip within the area of retail in Trysil. Last but not least, the winter bookings are now 30% of next year's season booked, and that is up 1%. I think, oh, is 1% high or low. I think we should look into that from a longer perspective. Last year, we were up 9%, and the year before that, we were up 5%. I think it is year on year on year.
This is the highest bookings we ever have had actually for the next winter season during this time of the year. We are very glad for that, of course. Before we talk more of the winter, we really would like to also take a look at the summer season. We have just in front of us, we are up 2%, and we can see it's not the largest numbers, but we also see that the change into a year-round business continues. Really glad to see that we have a plus number here. What we have worked really hard with this year is actually to do work more with offerings since we made large investments between fiscal year 2021, 2022 up to this year where we invested close to SEK 200 million in summer activities. Now we have them in place.
Now we work more with packages, marketing to really get our customers to come up. Many of the visitors do not book only in our cabins and hotels. They also book their own or take usage of their own cabins and utilize our packages we offer. I think very interesting for next summer season is that we will have a kickoff July 2nd in Stockholm Hammarbybacken for a new soccer tournament. This is going to be super cool. We are going to have two soccer pitches at the top of Hammarbybacken where we kick off this big soccer cup, and it will come to Sälen next summer.
What we really think is interesting here is that all soccer cup, I can tell it from myself as a father of a son who played a lot of soccer, and we went through both Sweden and Norway to play soccer cups. It was always challenging to stay over since there was a limited number of beds. What we can offer within SkiStar is a lot of beds during the summer period. That is what these companies have found out and why they really signed the agreement with us to start up with a big soccer tournament in Sälen for next summer, which is of course something we are looking forward to. Back to the winter, like I said, it looks really good when I look to the graphs. Again, week two is a week which will be very strong for us.
We're going to have 52, 1, and 2 as the three main weeks around Christmas where we have a lot of red days, which will be positive. Of course, we have Easter, which will come week 14, 15, which also will be very good for us next winter. Again, we developed the destinations with all these news. I have told you about them, so I will not repeat myself. What I could repeat is a little bit more what we are doing is that we continue with this anniversary competition we have had with SkiStar 50 years, and we have had close to 100,000 guests trying to make this slope. We also see that this snowpark is extremely positive and rewarding for the young generation especially.
Also, when we're lighting up and invest in lighting and do that in a professional way, we could also see that we can open up the product for even more guests to come and also take usage of the ski passes they have paid for. Really positive development for next year. Lastly, but not least, I really would like to talk about these ski passes. In Sälen, Högfjället, you could do it for SEK 295 per day, and in Klövsjö, Stohångna, for SEK 395 per day. Extremely positive. We will go out and talk a lot about this in media now and to really gain more and new families developing and coming to the Scandinavian mountains where we're providing a fantastic guest experience.
Last but not least, we can see that this mountain holidays in Scandinavia, it continues to be an obvious choice for many, especially during these challenging times we have in the world when we can see a lot of things happen. People really would like to stay home and spend the time in Scandinavia where we could provide a lot of safety and a good environment. By that, we would like to close our presentation or stop the presentation and open up for questions. Thank you so much.
Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. We will now go to the first question. One moment, please.
Your first question comes from the line of Alice Beer from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.
Hi, and good morning, you could say. Just a question about this 30% of accommodation booked. How much was booked last year? What could you say is like a normal booking rate at this point of the year? Also, following up on that, these 600 new beds from Vasa Sjoland, are they accounted for when we talk about 30%?
First of all, thank you, Alice, for that question. The 30% is according to our plan. It is 1% higher than last year. Last year, we had a record of plus 9. That is why I really like to highlight that the 1% and 30% booking, it is a little bit more than 30 actually. It is on a high level and on a historical high level.
That is why we believe it is very positive. I could also see we have a typo; the Vasa Sjoland beds will not be ready for next year or this upcoming winter season. It is the winter season 2026-2027. I apologize for that mistake. However, we are going to get some new beds coming into our booking system with Högfjälls Hotellet, which we will not have had in our booking system for next year. Sorry for that typo actually. The correct information is the winter 2026-2027 for Vasa Sjoland. However, Högfjälls Hotellet's beds are coming into our system instead.
All right. Thank you for that. A question on the Q4 in the summer. We have had a pretty cold June so far. Does cold summer weather affect your summer sales or earnings?
No, actually, we had a very good start actually of the opening. It was quite bad.
We opened up the 6th of June, and then we had also a lot of actually visitors coming now to midsummer. The first weekend, it was really good. We were surprised actually. We had so many visitors and quite good revenues, even if it's on a very low level. Quite limited when the weather is less good actually. People have learned that the clothing is more important than the weather actually. Positive.
All right. That's good to hear. Just a question on the margin target of 18%. How are you feeling about that for the full year? Could it be achievable, or would it have to be a fantastic Q4 for that?
Do you mean this year, 2023, sorry, 2024, 2025, or do you mean 2025, 2026?
No, this year.
No, but we will have challenges, of course, to meet up.
We normally do not give forecasts, as you know, but since we are closing the winter season, we will most probably not reach up to the 18%, of course, since we are closing the winter season now.
Yeah. Okay. Got it. Just a question on CapEx. As you mentioned, so far this year, you have amounted to just under SEK 300 million. Do you have good visibility on CapEx for the projects that are supposed to be completed by Christmas, or could it go up or down?
I mean, obviously, it can always be time differences when it comes to investments, but we have a fairly good view on the investments this year up to August actually. The amount will be approximately SEK 550 million.
Then starting next year, we will most probably see not a peak, but the investment grade will be more than usual due to the gondola in Trysil and Hovdesyd. Not very much, but the first quarter will most probably have more investments in comparison with last year's. This year, SEK 550 million approximately. We have a fairly good view.
Okay. Great. Thank you. Just one final question. This Juhls Sport acquisition, could you talk a bit more about that, and is making more retail acquisitions part of your plan to grow your retail leg?
I think what we have done previously is that we have worked with acquisition vertically to really strengthen our position within the area of different businesses to strengthen us. During the years, we have made some small acquisitions.
We did an acquisition in Trysil also three years ago within this segment since we had challenges to come into that segment since there were a very limited number of locations in Trysil. Now we will actually, since we are taking over Juhls, we will actually have a fairly good control of the sport shops in Trysil. In the same way we have done in Klövsjö, we did the same type of acquisition last year, even if it was a small one. When there are opportunities coming up, we will see if we can take them. If we are not, see the opportunities that we can continue to grow our own market share more or less. We did the same acquisition in Trysil also last year with Trysil Guide and I when we took the full control of the ski school as well.
Again, vertical integration has been and will be continuously important for us to have at our destinations to continue to grow our revenue streams in more areas than only the ski lift operation more or less. All right. Thank you. That was it for me. Thank you. I can just add the Högfjälls Hotellet operation is also a similar, also vertical, you can say, where we will take over the hotel, but also restaurants there. That is also another way of showing the vertical integration for us and how we will continue to grow the business, both organic and with some minor acquisition vertically.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Frederik Lundell from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thank you for taking my questions. Hello to you both. I hope you are well.
I just wanted to start off, follow up on Alice's question on the volumes for the next season, 2025, 2026. You have already now the Högfjälls Hotellet into the numbers in percentage points. How much does that add to your volumes of beds? And on top of that, is there anything other that is coming in? That's the first one. Thank you.
The number of beds in Högfjälls Hotellet, I think we need to come back to exactly how many beds it will be actually, to be honest, Frederik. I was, bad on me, not fully prepared for that, but no. But it is a hotel. And what I think is very good with that hotel is that when you have the tourists coming in from with TUI, we need to make blocks, block bookings, etc. for that.
The tourists from the U.K. mainly also love to stay at the hotel. That is why we could really take advantage of Högfjälls Hotellet. Let us come back to the number of beds in Högfjälls Hotellet, and maybe also in totality then.
Yes, we will come back to that. It is not just hotel rooms, it is also mediated accommodations. It is a combination of both, which will add extra capacity, but we will get back to the total number.
Y es, that is perfect, thank you. I continue then with my questions. If we could go back to, it is always good to understand a little bit better the Q3 with warm weather and late Easter and what is what here. Did you early on, I mean, you talked about the fact that Easter was positioned late in Q3 this year, so that was no surprise.
Did you, in order to fill up your volumes, your capacity, move around with your pricing more actively in order to fill it up? You early on saw this, or was it sort of when we stood there in the east, and you saw that the usual volumes you do not control, i.e., private owners of houses or late decisions on going up skiing, did not show up and buy ski passes? What is what in these weeks? Interesting to know.
I think it is a very good question, Frederik. During the Q2 report, we showed that we have exactly, like you said, weaker bookings week 13, 14, and 15. Week 16 looked fairly okay at that time of the bookings. When we came closer and closer, like week 13, 14, and 15, we could see that the bookings did not take off.
We really tried to reduce the prices to people to come up, but we did not manage to fill up. Also, all these private owners did not come up neither, especially to the Swedish mountains actually. Myself, I was up walking and hiking on the top of the mountain in Sälen, which I normally cannot do. I normally go cross-country skiing on the top of the mountain. I did that on the påske, on the Easter day there, påskeafton. It was impossible to go skiing on the cross-country. That, of course, means that a lot of private house owners did not come up since they looked at the weather conditions. They just decided to stay home. That came as a real surprise for us, of course, that the weather became so warm. It went very fast actually.
In the beginning of the week, it was fairly good. During Good Friday, it really started to become warm actually. When [Foreign language] källe, I do not know the word in English, but when the cold in the ground, the minus degrees in the ground, start to open up and start to melt, it goes extremely fast. That was what happened actually. A lot of customers, unfortunately, did see. Again, that meant that we lost revenues in the hotel segment. People did not come up and the lodging. We also lost ski pass tremendously. That also led to we did not sell any products of these cold products, which you need like gloves or underwear, etc., in our sport shop. All segments lost actually during the third quarter and in the end of the third quarter versus the year before.
Okay. Thank you.
[crosstalk] My final question. Sorry. What I also could say to everyone here is that to mitigate the staff cost is, of course, extremely hard when you have we are taking the staff costs down in week 13, 14, 15, and planning up and gearing up for a big eastern. You have giving the schedules for staff, and then you can, of course, not take that out. That led to higher cost due to both scheduled for lifts, but also that our staff worked day and night to move and shuffle snow and make sure that the slopes were safe. We had full amount of staff working 24/7 actually to create as good condition as possible for all those guests who are up visiting us. I think that's also important from a cost perspective that it was very challenging to mitigate.
I have two questions on this topic. When things turned more warm than you expected, what have your capacity in terms of water supply, how has that improved during the year? So how much more water capacity do you feel you have in order to produce snow to safeguard a late season sort of? Has that changed?
I think we have enough of water to provide our operation. We do not feel any problems with that at all, to be honest. What we had this year was that week 16, which is one of the latest weeks in the season, had a combination of Easter this year. That, of course, is the really bad combination where you normally have a peak for Easter, and then on top of that, the warm weather, it was impossible to mitigate.
Of course, due to the warm weather, we are not able to produce snow even if we have water capacity. We cannot produce snow, and that is a problem, of course. It was a problem.
Yeah. Sure. Sure. I understand that. Final from me then, pricing for next season. You talk about the cheap ski passes for Högfjälls Hotellet, for example. What have you sort of done in general on pricing? Is there anything we should keep in mind in price adjustments besides cheaper?
No. What I think is important is that we, as many other providers in this industry, work with dynamic pricing. If you book a holiday trip or a hotel today or in three months from now, it, of course, gives you higher prices as close you come to the stay if you have not booked. There is potential for increased prices.
We have decided to stay calm in the beginning of the season like we are doing now. If you go out looking at our prices right now, they are plus minus zero roughly. We will have a price increase during the year like dynamic pricing. Let's see how that ends up. We are becoming more and more professional in this, like also the hotel chains and air companies, etc. I think this is one of our great benefits in the company to work with that. The other part with the two lower price ski passes is to really take this feedback we have got from guests and also media who are always telling that we are the most expensive, which is not correct, to be honest, when you do price surveys.
That is why I also want to show the market that we have the cheapest ski passes in the market. That means also that we introduce a price ladder. You can say clearly within ski passes that we have the cheapest, but we will probably also have the most expensive as well. For us, it is important to work with the dynamic pricing and also with the professional pricing and continue to deliver a good product for our guests and make that in combination with the number of slopes we provide within the ski pass. Take this Flörsjö-Storhångla ski pass. I think that will give many ski resorts in Scandinavia some competition now when we provide that for SEK 19.95 for a week. That will be throughout the whole season.
That could also be in Jämtland-Härjedalen, also a lot of customers in the neighborhood who travel for one day for SEK 3.95 also give us some volume. That is also one of our decisions to really work with volume here.
Okay. Thank you very much. I'll go back in line.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone. We will now take the next question. Your next question comes from the line of Carl-Johan Bonnevier from DNB Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, Stefan and Sara.
Just to continue on the answer to Frederik here, looking at the dynamic pricing, when you look at the price increase you managed to achieve on the ski passes during this year, do you have any idea how much dynamic pricing added to that and for what you managed to realize in season, so to say?
Sara, could you support?
Dynamic pricing has actually, it's quite a huge part of the price increase in total. I haven't got the number, but it has been a fairly large part of the total increase.
We try to communicate to our customers, "Book and pay as soon as possible because it will be higher prices as close you come to the buying period." A lot of our customers or guests are actually buying very close to the visit. That has, of course, helped the revenues a bit.
That makes total sense. If you just could, the 8% growth you've seen in international guests, then I guess it's a fall in total number of guests. Could you just give us some flavor for where you see the growth coming from international at this stage and then maybe what to do about, say, then maybe the falling domestic kind of percentage in this?
Yes. The international guests, if I include the Danes in that, that means that we increased with 8%. That means that they now consist of roughly 30% plus. That starts to become a quite fairly good number.
We see also now in the booking of this season, the main part actually, I do not know if you remember, but last year when we had the bookings, a large proportion of the 9% we had up last year came from Danes where we had had a campaign in Denmark. That is the same this year. We increased more with the international guests this year in the bookings than we do with domestic. Now we have not actually worked so hard with any marketing activities for next winter season in Sweden especially yet. We will increase actually our marketing activities this year to really speed up. We would like to take back Swedes. We really would like to work with our NPS factors to secure that the Swedes come back.
We will do a lot for Swedish families mainly, which is the largest target group. Marketing activities will start. We will also talk much more about what is free at our destinations. For example, we will give children free meals if you stay at our hotels. We continue with the free equipment, etc., etc., to really focus on the Swedish families with children since they are the largest target group. We are putting in more marketing money for this upcoming winter. We're also putting in more effort with the international guests since the international flights are coming more to Scandinavian Mountains Airport.
Yeah. It sounds that it fits in very much with the pricing strategy that you elaborated on. Given that we have had such a weak consumer confidence, I guess, particularly among the Swedish. Is that the way you see it?
That it's a question of maybe lowering the price point to get the Swedish family back again that might have been missing during this season?
Maybe not only lowering the price, maybe giving more benefits. Really talking about what's free actually. Sometimes you do not need to lower the price. You maybe need to give benefits instead. Since our size of the company, we could manage actually to do that. There is not so many maybe of competition who can do what we have since we also have this OTA with our booking platform and what we can offer for free. We also want to make sure that the cleaning is on a high level for next winter at our different cabins and hotels.
We will also provide cleaning in all what you call mandatory cleaning from our side in all beds as well, in all cabins as well, which will be an important part as well.
Excellent. Just one final from me. The Trysil area, the cooperation with Utmarkslaget sounds very interesting. What is the plan for the area around the gondola and how you can exploit this?
No, I think there are three important areas around in Trysil. You have first the area around the gondola. Then you have an area around its previous camping area. Then you have the big parking area where there is today a parking. Since we open up the gondola, the large parking and the new entrance to Trysil will actually be moved down to where the gondola is placed today.
That means that the parking, the big, big parking lot today in Trysil will be possible to make exploration on. Since we now have made this agreement with Utmarkslaget, that will also, of course, provide new opportunities also in Trysil, which has not been possible in the past. I think we are strengthening the collaboration both locally with these landowners as we have done at other places at our ski resorts.
When you look at timings of potential new beds, is that more a question of 2026-2027 season than or is that something that could come into force already in the coming season?
The first part will be for the 2025-2026, no, sorry, 2026-2027 when we talk about the gondola. We will have some facilities like toilets, ski shop, and there will be some beds around that area.
And then we will have the other large proportion will come a couple of years later. I think we need to come back to that since it is fairly new actually. Yeah.
No, I appreciate that. Thank you very much and all the best out there.
Thank you.
Thank you. We will now go to our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Leena Alenton from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Hi, and good morning, Stefan and Sara. Just a couple of quick questions here from me. Back to volume. Ski days were down roughly 13% if you reverse engineer the numbers you have given. I was just wondering if you could elaborate a little bit more on the volume drop here. What contributed mostly to this? Was it domestic volumes or international volumes? Also, follow yeah.
Yeah. Sorry, Leena, continue. Yeah.
Also, just corporate volumes, how they have held up in the season. What do you mean with corporate? Do you mean conferences, etc., or what do you mean?
Yeah. Exactly.
Okay. Okay. Yeah. No, if I start with the last question, conference volume has actually been a little bit up actually. Also, for next winter season, we can see that conference volumes are up. That is positive. When you look at the ski days drop, it is mainly actually domestic drop since the international guest does not come so late in the season. They are dropping, say, dropping starts to drop out around week 12. The last couple of weeks is much more domestic. Since also many of the house owners come up visiting their own homes around this period of time, they did not come this year since the weather conditions was fairly bad actually.
Not only week 16, it started to be warm very early. All right.
All right. And just a quick other question. On the mountain segment, the EBIT margin dropped roughly 340 basis points. Was this due to the operating leverage or was it due to cost-specific factors as snow making, etc.?
I would say it's a combination of both. I mean, the majority, the negative impact was related to the drop in ski passes, of course. I mean, the net sales and then the margin for a ski pass is quite high. And then, of course, we had to put extra resources to prepare the slopes, as Stefan mentioned, that we have also been able to mitigate costs. The cost, for example, vehicles and electricity and then maintenance, that has decreased to be able to mitigate the revenue loss.
It was a combination of revenue drop or net sale drop together with cost extra staffing.
Okay. Yeah. I think the top line loss is around, you can say, SEK 100 million roughly. Normally, you can say Easter weekend, we can sell ski passes for around SEK 150 million. This year, we had a high drop. Of course, we did not reach more than half of that number. Of course, then you get the drop. It is maybe bad to say it is not more difficult than that, but it is actually exactly we cannot change the weather. That is how the weather affected us during this week 16. That is why, again, next winter will be completely different.
We will not see this happen within the next coming five years at least when we have so late Eastern again. Yeah.
Okay. Super clear. That's it for me.
Thanks.
Thank you. Thank you. There are currently no further questions. I will hand the call back to you.
Yeah. Thank you so much. Just answering Frederik Lundell's question around the beds for Högfjälls Hotellet, it is 220 beds we will add each week. If we have it for 15 weeks, it comes up to a couple of thousand beds, of course, we are adding for the full season, Frederik. I hope that was answering your question as well then. By that, I would like to say thank you very much for a lot of questions. I could imagine there were a lot of questions due to the weak result for the quarter.
At the same time, we are actually very proud that we managed to deliver the second best result ever in SkiStar history. We are really proud of that. I would really like to give a big hand to all our staff, who have done a fantastic job. I am also very forward-leaning for both the next summer season, of course, which is very close to us right now, but also the next winter season, which has everything in place to become a record season. I am actually super positive for that. Thank you everyone for listening in. I wish everyone a happy midsummer. Celebrate a lot and enjoy the Swedish midsummer. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.