Welcome to the SkiStar Q3 Report 2022, the 2023. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answer session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing star five on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to the speakers, CEO Stefan Sjöstrand and CFO Martin Almgren. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and a warm welcome to our Q3 report, especially a warm welcome to our new CFO, Martin Almgren, who will soon take over from my start of the presentation. Today, we have a short agenda. We will give you a short introduction. Many of you who normally listen to this call will recognize the slides. Then I will go into a summary of the quarter. Martin will continue to give you a deeper analysis of the numbers. I will give you an outlook. Then we will have an open Q&A session then. A short introduction.
You know, we are running the five largest ski resorts in Scandinavia, and we're also having a very great opportunity here in Hammarby, Stockholm, where we are now transforming to a year-round business as well as the rest of our destinations. This is numbers from last year, and I really would like to highlight that we are continue to have a high grade of satisfied employees. Eight out of 10 are very satisfied to come to work every day, and also eight out of 10 of our guests are satisfied with what we offer them. Now we will go in to a summary of the quarter, and we are really focusing on the four areas within our transformation.
As you have read in the report this morning, we can see that we have an overall strong winter season. However, we have a slower pace in the last quarter. You who listened to our Q2 presentation could see that we were 10% behind our bookings for the rest of the year, when we presented that in March. We could see that we actually never managed to catch up where we were. We continued to have a slower pace, and even though that we had some good weather conditions, it was the bookings we could see in the week two to six, never came actually in the end of the season.
We could also see that we have a high cost situation, and we have had that during the whole year, actually. However, in the quarter, we are stabilizing our cost situation in a very good manner. The big part, which is increasing in cost in the quarter, is related to repair and maintenance cost, and that has been high the whole year. We have made a decision that we will continue to do that since we both were lower during the pandemic years. As well, they have taken a strategic decision to do this maintenance work to keep up and keep an attractive destination in focus. That we're doing both with high maintenance cost as well, investments. We are in the peak of that right now, but I think it's important to highlight that.
We, of course, also have a less real estate transactions in this quarter. Martin will go deeper into that as well. When we now have seen the cost increase during the year, we decided early in the year to focusing in a cost-saving program. That you can see taking part of in the quarter three. We will really go into the big savings effective from September first, and that will be consist of different things. One is a big reorganization with fewer levels, as well as also focus on purchasing and also restructuring of how we are operating the organization.
I assume you have a lot of questions around that in the number of savings and so on, we have decided that since we are in the middle of this or in the end of this, we have decided not to communicate in a specific number, just to give you trust that this is a highly focus from our side right now. We can still see that there is a high interest in skiing in Scandinavia. We also have got questions as something happening now in the end of the season, could we see that this is a pattern? We will actually see that this year we have behind us is the second best ever. We are only losing 300,000 ski days, which is a very low number in relation to many other things.
We are in a good situation, and that could also the outlook show that actually, and we will come back to that in the end of this presentation as well. I will now hand over to Martin, who will take us through actually the presentation of the EBIT, Martin.
Thank you. As you all can see in this slide, we tried to separate between the operational EBIT and the capital gains. As you see, as Stefan just mentioned, the SEK 561 EBIT from the operation is still, for the rolling 12 months, I should say, is still the second best year so far. You also see that the capital gains from real estates is much lower than the previous years, so only SEK 8 million from capital gains. That has had an effect, and you probably know that the capital gains will vary a lot between different quarters and different years. Going to next slide and talk a little bit about the revenue and the different income categories that we have.
As I just mentioned, the property development, you still see here in the quarter that we lose SEK 54 million from property development. This is due to that in this quarter last year, we had real estate sales that we don't have in this quarter. If we then look at the more operational costs or incomes, we see that we have a loss in ski pass of SEK 43 million and accommodation. The accommodation is related to a rental part, so not our own accommodation, the rental accommodation. That's the three parameters that explains the lower sales. What is really good to see, and I'm glad to see, is that the retail business, the SkiStarshop, and the web continue to grow, which is good.
In this quarter, the growth is 13%, and it's the web that grows a little bit faster than the shop. I also want to highlight that we have a growth in the hotel and lodge business, but this should be seen together with the other costs here because there is a reclassification between those two income categories. In total, the sales in the quarter is down with 8%, mainly due to ski pass, accommodation, and retail. Looking at the sales for the year-end, which is an increase of 2% or SEK 68 million, most of those income still come from the retail business. Here you see that we have a positive effect from the sales of properties, and also the hotel and lodge.
The growth that we have in hotel and lodge here comes both from acquisitions, but also from the fact that the restaurants have been open the whole year in Norway this year, which was not the case last year. You see also that the in the accumulated figures, the ski pass sales and accommodation sales is more or less the same as in the quarter. The whole effect from lower ski pass sales and accommodation is in the Q3. Looking at EBIT per segment, here we see the clear effect of the lower sales in ski pass and accommodation in the operation of the ski resorts.
If we look at the property development part here, in this quarter, as we have said, the capital gain is SEK 50 million. We also have some one-off cost or costs that are not common. That's a write down in our Vacation Club business. Some of our sales week has been reclassified to service weeks for maintenance. We also see that we have a lower result from our associated companies. The majority of the lower EBIT result from associated companies comes from SKIAB, our joint venture, and is related to a write down in their property, properties that they have had.
Just to be clear on this, they have classified their properties as investment properties, meaning that sometimes they are increasing in value, and sometimes it's decreasing. In this quarter, we have a write down of SEK 20 million. Other things that comes from SKIAB are reclassification or valuation of currency effect and derivatives. Looking at the EBIT for the year to date, the nine month period, we still see that the effect from the higher cost that we talked about a little bit in the beginning, related to maintenance, but also related to,
Marketing.
Marketing, sorry. related to marketing, and that is an effect of the transformation to a all year round business, and not only a winter company that we see. We have taken a decision in the first mainly in the first two quarters, to have more resources into the marketing business. What's really good to see is in the last quarter, the cost has been under control in a better way than in the first two quarters.
still a little bit higher maintenance cost, other costs have been in line with previous years. A short summary here, I think we have commented on all the bullet points here, we can just say that the operative cash flow, as you see here, is SEK 300 million lower for the first three months. If we look at that, the operative cash flow in the quarter was minus SEK 50. Part of this, the main part of the lower operating cash flow comes from the first two quarters. The financial net debt has increased with SEK 600 million related to the investments that we are doing at the moment.
Thank you, Martin, and I will then do a bridge over from the sustainability results in the quarter into then the outlook for the next quarter as well, next season. I think, just to highlight, sustainability is one of our main focus areas during this transformation, and we're doing a lot of positive things. First of all, we can see that we have many, both children, but also adults, engaged in our ski school. I must say, I'm really proud that we are actually the world largest ski school, and we are reaching more than 100,000, if I say, actively engaged people in this ski school.
We are increasing with very high numbers compared to last year, and I think it is great to see because this will also help us building this for the future. If I look into Valle's Winter Weeks, it was a bit lower this year. However, I think it's still high number. I think this, what we are doing, as a really make joint forces about to have clean resorts, I think it is Håll Sverige Rent . We actually managed to collect 8 tons of waste, unfortunately. But I think it is a good activity both for us to do it as a togetherness activity with our teams, but also show that we take this as a seriously to make sure we have really great mountains in the future.
We also continue to purchase electricity, and this quarter, we managed to make a really good deal with Jämtkraft, and we have done with the wind power electricity, and that will, of course, support our electricity cost for the next winter season. We continue to have an active dialogue, and in the society, this quarter, we have been very strong pushing actually about how can we address new regulations for staff accommodation and do it in the same way you deal with, like, universities, et cetera. We do that together with the municipalities we are into. We also have other activities together with the interaction. We also have a strong dialogue with the Swedish Railway, SJ, for example, to secure we continue to develop transportation in a more sustainable way.
I think this is a highlight, and now I will go into the outlook of going forward. I would like to start with this slide, because I've showed it before and I have had it in the beginning, but now I felt it's better to put it in this context because it's actually showing, if we look into the last column on the right side, where we are talking about change Q3 year-on-year, we can see that we have a high increase of visitation on skistar.com. We have a lower conversion. However, it's in a very small number actually on, even if we have a slow conversion, on a high level conversion, it still show that we are on top of this, and this is also helping us to create the bookings we are showing.
If you look into the SkiStar app, we have a very high increase of both visitation, 16%, and conversion increase of 25%. If you look into the SkiStarshop, it's also actually, that's why we are increasing in sales. We have a 33% increase in volume, visitation, and also 25% increase in conversion. Of course, these numbers is helping us not only in the quarter, but it's showing that we are strong in digitalization, and we have a very strong booking site, and this is helping us. You can also see SkiStar Members. Now, we are actually coming closer to 2 million members here. We have an increase of 14% up compared to how it was a year ago, which I think is a sustainable, strong number.
Just for us to have an outlook of what is actually going on in this situation, and it's actually very positive. I must say, glad to show this slide. If I look into We are maybe talking too little about what it actually requires from a company to make this transformation into a year-round business. We have managed to operate ski resort in the last 45 years and done it in a good manner. Now we are into this year-round business. I must say, it has take longer time than I anticipated, but we are on a good path. Now we have invested in all our destinations, and that means that we are fully open with summer activities to mid-summer.
I'm really glad to see our destination manager from Trysil now updating her profile picture going into a coaster in Trysil. We are investing in Sälen in the summer ski, as we have here in the picture from Hammarbybacken. We are now also open up in Vemdalen with the climbing park and also biking path, et cetera. We now are up with attractions at all destination. In combination with that, we also updated our pricing model for the summer activities, and that is building very much on the same as we are doing for the winter. It's built on volume, and that's also supporting our guests to rent bikes, to take the lift up and bike on the mountains, hike on the mountains, and also stay a day extra and do activities then.
We're also launching this summer pass, which including all activities, beside the time-booked ones, and that means that you can go as much as you want in the coaster, or skiing, or take a swim, et cetera, when you have this summer pass. In combination with many events, this weekend, we had Tjejmilen in Sälen. We soon have O-Ringen in Åre, et cetera, that also support us to bring more people to come to the destination. If I take on the seriousness here, if I look into the outlook for upcoming winter, I must really underline the cost-saving focus we have. As you have seen, and Martin explained, the quarter is showing that when we start to hit the brakes, it really pays off.
Now we are into a program where we will both reorganize and also changing the ways of working. We have experience from how we could do this during the pandemic, and that's why I feel very comfortable in that way. That means also that we will launch a new organization effective from September 1st. That means also that we will take some positions away, and we will add some new ones, and we will really focus on them having an effective and efficient organization. If I then look into the top line, I must say that the weak currency we have in Sweden and Norway, it actually have led us to a strong demand from both foreign foreigners, if I say like that, or international guests coming to our resorts.
If I call Danish international, they have increased extremely much from around 22% of the number of customers, up to 28% of the volume. Of course, that is a sustainable volume now from Danish guests. We can also see that Germans, British, and Netherlands are increasing. We can also see that the weeks, like week seven, starts to be fully booked already, and that's of course, very positive. We also have a positive calendar effect this year, both with the more bank holidays days during Christmas and New Year, as well as earlier Easter, and that, of course, help us. We should not underestimate there is a challenge with the consumer share wallet.
We know that a lot of, if I take in the Danes, have a different interest rate situation compared to Swedes, for example. We know that a lot of Swedes are needs to change the loans and how it will look like during this upcoming fall. We can see that the prices on groceries are trending down, et cetera. I think we can see, there will be also fight of the share wallet, and I'm absolutely sure that our modest price increase in ski pass for next winter, as well like keeping down with the external price for booking, will help us to really get the strong demand in booking for 5% up as it looks right now.
Last year, at the same time, we had -8. I think we are strong here right now. As we have said, seen, Martin showed also that we have increased our debt a bit. However, I think it's important that all of you on this call actually look into what was the strategy we pulled up three years ago, and it was a very clear strategy about keep up investments to create attractive destinations so we can keep up our strong flow of visitors. If we have strong destinations in a high level, then we know that the customer will book at SkiStar and not at any other destination.
Also, the investment in snow systems will secure that we will have snow the whole winter, and that is, of course, a very important investment, going forward, both from a sustainability point of view, as well as also making sure we have snow for Christmas, et cetera. By that, I open up now for Q&As to me and Martin. Thank you very much for taking the time to listening to us.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Adela Dashian from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Stefan and Martin. A couple of questions from my side. If we could start on the top line development, would you be able to provide us with some color on what the volume versus price mix was this quarter? If we should expect any more price increases to be made this year?
Martin, you or I?
Start I can fill.
I think, if you look, we have a slower pace of number of skier days this year with 6%. If you look into the price increases were up in average, I think we reached on ski pass sales around 5-ish. That is the mix, so to say. I think to give you a flavor on the top line also is that I think one of the colleagues have clearly stated that in the analytics, how we are performing this year. We are going into a year where we compare to the best year ever in the history with the pandemic, where there was no possibility to travel, et cetera.
Week 2 to 6, we have many late bookings coming in, and that surprised us in the Q2 report, more or less. That we may be anticipated that we should have later bookings coming in in the Q3 as well, but we could see a slower pace actually starting in week 10, where we had very high comparison to the year before. We started to lose, I think, SEK 10 million-SEK 50 million in ski pass revenues in week 10, and that follow up with week 11 as well. Actually, those two were the biggest drops we had, and then there were only minor drops in week nine and week 12, 13, 14. I think, we should not expect that it was a very deep dive of less ski pass revenues.
I think we could see that the week 10 and 11 was the main part of the drop in ski pass sales. If you look into our own booking, skistar.com booking, you can see that we have all the year had less booking throughout our channel in external bookings, and we have seen that other have booked by Facebook or Airbnb and that channels, and that have helped us, of course, but even there was probably less bookings during the last weeks of the season. We could also see a shift from eight days ski pass down to more four and five days ski pass, and of course, that have an impact on our revenues as well. A long answer. I don't know, Martin, is there any.
I think just to give all of us in the call some flavor of what's happening in the top line.
Yeah, okay. It's more late bookings that you expected would materialize, that didn't materialize rather than a cancellation?
Yeah, we didn't have any cancellations, and I think that is one of our actually strongest areas. If you look into, even though throughout the pandemic, all of you on this call asked us, will there be cancellations, et cetera? We managed to show there was very low number of cancellations. This year, we haven't had any cancellation. Of course, we have had a few, but not nothing to talk about in big numbers at all. I think that's important for all of us, that that's one of the company's strengths, actually, that your priorities prioritize this type of holidays.
I'm just trying to wrap my head around what could be the underlying factor that's driving the slower pace. Do you attribute it to the weakening macroeconomic conditions, or do you see any other reason why demand load versus the beginning of the winter season?
I think we have to put it in a context of previous years. If you look into the number of skier days, is the second best ever, meaning that the best year ever was the last year, which was 6 million. If I compare to the best year before that was 5.5, and that was the season 2017, 2018. Again, we are on a very stable, high level of skier days. I think we have to look into that context, actually. Many of you, of course, and us as well, of course, follow the macroeconomics. We could still see that the restaurants at our resorts, they made an all-time high ever, actually, so they haven't got any drop this year. I think it's important to say that as well.
Do you expect the number of skier days to stabilize or normalize on these levels, or do you expect a drop next year?
We calculate to have an increase of number of skier days next year, since we have a better calendar effect. We have more days during Christmas, and we have more days better during Easter.
Got it. Okay, thank you. On the property development business, you talk about the capital gains, being quite choppy, during quarters and also years. Do you expect any progressions to be made there this year that could support growth, or should we expect it to be pretty muted for the remainder of this year?
We are looking into different projects. The pipeline with new property development projects, we have that. If it will come this quarter, in quarter four, or quarter one, or quarter two, that's difficult to say. There are absolutely projects that we are aiming to capitalize on going forward.
I think to build on what Martin is saying also, I really would like to underline again, what is our strategy? That is that we will build a much stronger base business and in our core operations, and be less dependent on the, you can say, the property development numbers. We have also been clear that we should not expect to be in that high numbers of property development going forward, that we have been in the past. In this year, we have had two high costs, and we haven't managed to take out that cost during the year, especially in staff and also in others, and that is what we are focusing on now. We are all clear about what are we doing for the situation.
If we could balance that cost out, I think we have a very solid business and a solid business model.
The weakness that's driving, the results in the property development business today, is that purely related to the macroeconomic factors?
No.
No.
No, no, no.
No.
It's just a timing effect, I would say. That's how you should see it over time, because there are projects in our pipeline. The message is that this will come in one quarter or another quarter. It will come, going forward, but we don't really exactly know when.
That's also depending on the municipalities and how they are handling the plans in the municipality. That, what should we say? The time for projects has increased the time you're handling these type of processes. That means that maybe in some quarter it could be higher than we had the year before, and in some quarter, like now, it will be lower. I think that is very much related to also municipalities and nothing we can really control, rather than it is a macroeconomic factor, actually.
All right. Just a clarification on your outlook comments. Is the 5+ on bookings related to the upcoming winter season, or does it also include the summer months?
It's actually only the winter. The summer month, it's slightly below last year. However, it's nothing we are worried about at all, because we see that these big events like Tjejmilen, we had last week, was driving enormous traffic to our retail business, et cetera. We have O-Ring coming up. We see that many more people are coming out, not booking in our system. They are more doing activities on place, and that could be day tourism as well. We're not so worried about the summer, actually. The winter is then the +5%, so it's related to next winter season. The next winter season is then starting from week 48 or something like that. I think the booking starts to come. That is how we have those +5%.
That is compared to -8%, how it was a year ago.
For Q4, since you said that the restructuring effects will start from September 1st, we shouldn't expect any real contribution to the Q4, correct, on profitability?
No, I think, I mean, like, we start with cost control in a much higher manner in Q3, and that hopefully will spill over also in Q4. I think we will rather see the full effect from next fiscal year, actually, starting from September first, because then we have all persons in place in new roles, et cetera, and a new organizational structure. We have planned this very thoroughly, we hope, to not impact the daily work during winter season. We learned that from the pandemic, actually, when we should start. We started doing interviews and all that stuff in week eight, and we make the large announcements in week 14.
From there on, we have actually accelerated the process, which have also helped us to be much more efficient in the outline of how we should finalize this reorganization. We are in the middle of it, and that's maybe why we're also not super clear of the savings, et cetera. Trust us, we have it high on the agenda.
Got it. Just finally on the lower rental accommodations in this quarter, should we view this as a structural change in the way customers behave, that they use other types of platforms than your own website for their rentals? Do you think this is just specific to this winter season?
It's a good question. We have seen that those platforms have started to increase, and we see people maybe in a larger manner, rent out to friends and family. What we will do is that since we have the connection with the skistar.com, we will also... If you don't rent an accommodation from us, maybe you will not get the discount on ski pass, et cetera. We will what should we say? We will make our closer connection with the purchase at skistar.com, with the membership and also how you can get the discounts, et cetera. If you rent an accommodation outside our system, that means that you maybe will not get the good deals, if I say like that.
It's difficult to anticipate, but we will also try to be a little bit more flexible in the way we are pricing our beds as well.
Yep. Makes total sense. That's it for me. Thank you very much.
Thanks.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Stefan Stjernholm from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Hi, Stefan and Martin. Stefan here. many like questions have already been asked, but I have a few detailed ones. If I start with the change in payroll tax in Sweden for young employees, can you say anything about how much that will impact you?
In this quarter, in the quarter three, we see that we have an impact of about SEK 4 million higher costs related to the social cost.
If you give a full year figure, it's some SEK 25 million-SEK 30 million or?
Yeah, around that. I can say it's around that number, and I think it is, You mentioned that in your report also, in your pre-report, Stefan.
Yeah.
I think it was very good you mentioned that because it will impact us, and I think it will be around the numbers you just mentioned. Depending also how many employees we are, how many employees we will employ the upcoming winter as well, connected to the reorganization. It could also be that we make it choose to have more experienced people rather than only youngsters as well, in connection to this.
Yeah, I understand. Regarding your CapEx, you increased that by SEK 120 million due to this express lift in Lindvallen. Just to get the right total figure, can you give the total figure for next year?
Total figure is around SEK 600 million that we have communicated. What we have done is that we have invested in the new express lift in Lindvallen. Then we also took the decision to move some of the investments that we had for this year to move it to 2023, 2024.
Okay.
There is not the full SEK 120 million effect in increased investments in this year.
Good. A final question from my side. Regarding the hotel segment, I guess you had targeted break even for this fiscal year. Giving that the end of the winter season was a bit slower than expected, I guess that will be tough or what do you see?
Depending on how the bookings will continue to develop during the summer period.
... and what kind of customers that come to our resorts? We have some hotels open this summer, so there is possibilities for it. I don't know if you have anything that you can-
No, I think we don't. Yeah, you know, Stefan, we don't give any forecast, but I think it's very much like Martin is saying. Of course, we have the same number of hotels open as we had last summer. What we also are doing, which I think is could be important for all of you on this call to know, is that during the summer period, we also have decided to put out some of our hotels on Booking.com. Since we could see that the guests for summer are booking differently, and that is not actually hit us in the same way as it do during wintertime.
We are differentiate now a bit, and I think this is part also that we have learned of how to work in the winter and how do we need to work in the summer to just understand a bit of. Yeah, that this is a learning phase for us as well to transform into year-round business.
Okay, I understand. Okay, those were my questions. Thanks.
Thanks. Thanks, Stefan.
The next question comes from Karl-Johan Bonnevier from DNB Markets. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Stefan and Martin. Lots of good questions already, just a couple of more from me, if I, if I may. Looking at the + 5% in bookings, obviously a good number compared to last year, as you put it. How much of the capacity in your system would be booked at this time?
Thanks, Stefan. Sorry. I think this is, we used to say that, for example, 1st of December, we would like to have 80% booked, and now we are glad that we have 30% booked, roughly. This is a good number. We are, like I said, 5% above last year, and it feels good that we also have a large increase of foreigners coming into our booking systems right now as well.
When you look at your booking systems compared to what you now find on Airbnb and Facebook and similar kind of things, how has your number of listings that you have in your system developed?
Do you mean the number of beds, you mean?
Exactly, how much of the capacity you basically control?
Yeah, I think we increased. I'm not 100% now, right now, KJ, but we have seen a slight increase in the number of beds coming into our systems. I would like to maybe give a pass on that question on an exact manner, but what we could see that we increased around 5% in the end of the season, but I am not sure exactly how it looks like. We are in the ballpark of roughly the same number of beds as before.
That's good to hear.
Is that?
It's a growing number. That's, yeah, no, that's fine. I just want to hear that it's growing numbers, so you are not-
Yeah, it is growing.
Losing out of your insight into what's available at the different resorts.
That's a growing number.
When you look at the listing, how is the pricing looking for those, if you compare to last year? Are the owners looking for price hikes or aggressive price hikes, or are they more modest?
I think we should differentiate between the different type of beds. If we are looking at the beds close to the slopes, beds at our hotels, we are increasing that prices because we can see that those beds are flying out, if I say like that, or they are booked in a very early stage, and that's a very high competition about to get those beds. There, we will increase prices. In the beds where you have a little bit, if I say you have triple A accommodation, and you have A accommodation and B accommodation, and I must say the beds where you are a little longer, further distance from the slopes, there we will probably lower the prices a bit. We will work much more in the differentiated prices versus how it has been previously.
We have been good in trading prices, but we will be even better of how we trade prices. I think since last year, many owners could see that the weeks didn't be rented out due to competition from lower prices from people who maybe forget to tell the tax authorities about it. They will accept to have a little bit lower revenue, but we can still see that we have very high booking pattern on the high weeks, like week seven, eight, nine, on the Christmas period, et cetera. I must say, actually, we are higher on almost each week during the winter season next year. That, of course, will help to get higher prices out for that accommodations as well. Let's see, right now, we have decided-
To increase the ones which are hotels and the beds close to slopes and lower prices a bit further away from slopes to get the price distance done.
Sounds very reasonable. You mentioned the international components in this pre-booking. Is there any meaningful, say, change in it, or is it, let's say, more stable looking at your, say, recurring clients in both phases coming at this stage?
I think it's interesting to see that all of a sudden, Germans and people from Netherlands are coming to us actually, that we haven't seen before. It's actually a new pattern. Danish guests has been there for a long time, but they are, of course, increasing in number. I mean, it's almost for free for them to come to travel to Sweden with the currency we have. I think it's interesting to see just Germans and Dutch people decide to go north instead of going south, actually.
Is it changed compared to before that they are now booking earlier than you might have seen previously? Basically, to lock in the currency, I guess so.
Yeah, I think so. Also what we know from previous is that people outside Swedes are earlier in the bookings since they needs to secure transportations, ferries, flights, et cetera. That's why they are a little bit earlier in the booking, and that's why I also saying that the Swedes are a little bit slower right now in the booking, and that's very much related to the development we have seen in the last year, actually, that Swedes are slowing in the way they are booking. They are booking closer to the stay. That's good for us, then we have an upside.
Excellent. Just to understand how you do this these days, the hotel operations, is that also including in this booking pattern, or is that treated as a separate kind of thing? This is just your, say, traded accommodations or what we should call it, where you do it for third parties.
I think you can say all hotels are in here beside the Radisson in Trysil. We are now transforming a lodge in Trysil from a Radisson into a SkiStar Lodge. That numbers are into the trading system, and of course, that means that we get the number of more beds in our system and due to that. That will be into this booking number. It's a very good detailed question, KJ.
Basically what I'm after is that we should expect the same kind of a positive pattern, basically, in what you separately report as hotel operation then as well, so.
Yeah. Yes, yes.
Good to know, good to know. Very good comment about the calendar effect. I guess when I look back at the comparison 2017-2018, as you remember, which was the last time you had that kind of really favorable seasonal pattern, I saw that ski days was up 6%-7% or something like that. If you're looking at, say, no impact from consumer kind of trade downs or staying home or something, would that be the kind of best guess for a, for a, say, a seasonal impact sort of moving into 2023-2024 in ski days?
I would like to. We are, you know, we're not giving any forecast, KJ, so I will not. If we try to look into what have we done in our resorts the last years, we have invested, and we expect to have high visitation. We know that it has been built more local, say, holiday accommodations between 2017, 2018, up to 2023, 2024 next year. We know there will be a number of more households for a holiday stay at all our destinations. Now, if you add that, my assumption is that if I compare to 2017, 2018, yes, we will increase, but I will not give any number.
I think, like you could see the 5.6 we present now for last winter season is a very strong number and the second highest ever. If we then can get the better calendar, I really trust and hope that we can get an increase in that numbers as well.
Excellent. good to have calendar with you and if anything, I guess.
Yeah, I think many, if we look into last year's - 8% we have at this time of the year, of course, if I use the bad calendar we had during Christmas, of course, had a huge impact on that because we almost lost one week, actually. Now this year, we win that week back, more or less. Of course, we expect to have a good Christmas and also Easter, since that comes very early this year, it also gives us two fully weeks. That you can see in the booking pattern already, that people start to book Easter already now, and normally they don't do that. I think we have an upside, both at Christmas as well as Easter.
Excellent. You mentioned electricity, and it seems like you have been able to, with your both your hedging and doing savings on the usage, mitigated the extreme inflation we have seen in that cost item. Do you see that the deal you now struck with Jämtkraft will allow you to basically mitigate it also 2023, 2024?
We have been able to reduce with the volume, decrease the volume or usage of electricity to compensate fully, I would say, all the cost increase in energy. We will continue to focus on the amount of electricity that we do going forward. Then the price effect on. I think it's a little bit early to answer the effect of that. We will continue to focus on the electricity volume going forward.
I think just to give some details, we stopped hedge actually during a period of time when it was extremely high prices, and now we have started to hedge again when the prices are down. I think we have also become better in how we hedge prices. I don't know if that's a good answer, KJ, but we really tried to work on this and elaborate on the consumption as well. We do a balance, both hedge and also try to reduce the consumption.
Sounds very logical and very, very straightforward. Martin, if I understand you right, there are projects in the exploration project development portfolio that is coming into harvesting. Maybe if you take the next 12 months, we should have a, say, a somewhat better kind of performance coming out of that than we have had over the last 2 or 3 quarters.
Exactly. There are projects in our pipeline. As Stefan said, some of those take a little bit longer time to get through the system. I would say I would be surprised if we don't have any real estate business in the coming 12 months.
Yeah.
When we look at the cost you now took in the Q2 report related to these, what I understood were partly related to these kind of things, how does that, say, match? Was that things where you felt that you were sitting in the wrong kind of position, or was it, market price adjustments, or what happened?
To be clear on this, the properties that we have are classified as investment properties, meaning that they will follow the market valuation. In the previous years, we have had some positive effects from those in our result, and in this quarter, we have a write down of SEK 20 million from the properties. It's a market valuation effect that we can see in other real estate business or companies as well.
If I look at the business area breakdown, the remaining SEK 28 million that you indicated, that non-recurring item, where did those pop up?
Just so I follow you mean from associated companies?
Yeah, you highlighted the SEK 48 million as non-recurring items.
Yeah, yeah.
The SEK 20 million was, I guess, the re valuation. The other SEK 28, where did that pop up?
That's the write down in the SkiStar Vacation Club, SEK 13 million. As I said in the call earlier, we reclassified some of our sales week to service weeks in some of our SkiStar Vacation Club.
Units, you can say.
Units, yeah. You also have SEK 15 million as an extraordinary cost or a cost related to the restructuring program that we have initiated. We don't see any further costs only minor costs in Q4 related to restructuring program. Most of that cost has been taken already now in Q3.
Am I right to expect that the SEK 15 million are then in the ski operation and the, say, the SEK 13 and the SEK 20 are in the project development exploration operation?
Yep, correct.
Excellent. Thank you. Good luck out there.
Thank you.
Thank you.
There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Again, warm thanks for listening to our call today. I really hope that you. I also would like to say thank you to Adela, Stefan, and KJ for good questions, because that's also helped others on this call to understand us better. We hope that we have given you a good flavor of where we are at the moment. We are really looking forward, actually, for where we are into, even though that, of course, as a CEO, we are not satisfied presenting result as we did this quarter. I'm really looking forward for what we are looking into now, since we have a good booking pattern and also this cost reduction program, where we have a solid business as a foundation.
Again, warm thanks, and, looking forward to talk, later with you guys. Thanks.
Thank you.