Good afternoon. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Tallink's Q3 2022 Financial Results Webinar. My name is Anneli Simm, and I'm an Investor Relations Coordinator for Tallink. We have today three presenters, Paavo Nõgene, the Chairman of the Management Board, Harri Hanschmidt, and Margus Schults, both Members of the Management Board. We will first give an overview of the quarter and then proceed with the Q&A. We will initially address the questions that were sent to us prior to this webinar. It is, however, possible to ask questions during the webinar by writing to Q&A section in the slide meeting. We will try to address these as well. We also kindly ask those who will ask questions to identify themselves, even though it is possible to stay anonymous. I will now give the floor to Harri Hanschmidt.
Thank you very much, Anneli. My name is Harri Hanschmidt. I'm board member for Tallink Grupp. Thank you for joining in to the third quarter webinar. First, uh I will go over the key information for AS Tallink Grupp, should there be any new listeners, and then we will take a closer look of the third quarter results. Tallink Grupp is the leading European provider of leisure and business travel and sea transportation services in the Baltic Sea region. We offer in the northern Baltic Sea region area business travel on shuttle vessels and leisure and cruise products as well. All of our ships are equipped with ro-ro cargo capacity. We own a fleet of 14 vessels. Typically, we operate seven ferry routes.
Currently, we have the Riga-Stockholm route suspended since the corona period. We also operate four hotels, three of them in Tallinn, one in Riga, and this one is suspended as well. Last year, uh we made a revenue or turnover of EUR 477 million. We transported 3 million passengers and also 370,000 cargo units. We own and operate vessels that are um the majority of the EUR 1.6 billion asset base that the company has. In Q3, we had about 5,000 employees, and our Club One loyalty program has 3 million members. We are publicly traded on the Nasdaq OMX Tallinn and Helsinki stock exchanges, and combined have about 40,000 investors.
We have two strong brands, the Tallink and Silja brand. Moving to the next slide, our Q3 developments and key facts. Well, the geopolitical situation is uh challenging. When we came out of the pandemic, uh since uh February this year, a new crisis started, the war in Ukraine and t his has forced a very big effect to our company as well. Firstly, we uh have different client groups missing, and also, uh the energy prices and fuel prices have been affected and have been quite high. This has led us to quite big changes in our business. We have uh chartered out vessels.
Many of these vessels help to uh accommodate the refugees in different countries in Scotland, in Netherlands and in Estonia. We can see high inflation in the region and also high input prices as cost of goods and food, et cetera, for us. The inflation has a direct effect as well as we have most of our loans floating and tied to the six-month Euribor. The interest cost has gone up somewhat as well. We have uh generally seen a lower consumer index in the Nordic countries especially. Despite of that, we still had a quite successful uh summer.
However, the client behavior has changed in the last years, and we see very many last minute bookings. As I mentioned, we have six vessels chartered out, so there are additional charters, short-term charters that end next year of Victoria I, Silja Europa and Galaxy, and we have extended the Atlantic Vision Canada charter for 18 months with an option for another 12 months. We are expecting uh our new shuttle vessel, MyStar, to be ready in November and it will start um operating between Tallinn and Helsinki, and we'll switch out Star and become the closest to our new generation shuttle vessel as a sister ship to Megastar. Moving to the next slide, we can see also the results for the third quarter.
These are now, of course, much better than the last year where we had a very big effect from the COVID restrictions. Number of passengers has gone up by 65.5% and was almost 1.9 million passengers transported in June, July, August, our high season. The number of cargo units stayed around the same level, increased a little bit by 13% to 102,000 cargo units, and the passenger cars also increased by 21% to 277,000 passenger cars. Revenues went up compared to last year by 50%. We are not yet on the 2019 level that there is a lot of comparison done.
Our business right now is quite different as well as we have this record number of charters and do quite a bit of cost restriction. Charter revenues have gone up by 115%. There is a recovery in tourism and hotel business. And um of course, cost of sales have gone up as well as there is more business going on. Fuel cost remains very high and is quite a big factor in our business. As you can see, it's really twice the cost of last year. We are affected by it a little bit less because of the successful charterings of the vessels.
EBITDA was EUR 67.7 million, and we ended up with a net profit of EUR 37.9 million for the third quarter. First and second quarter, we did a loss, but the nine months combined, we have EUR 2.8 million negative result and are working hard to end up in a positive result. Of course, the times are very uncertain, and we don't know how the war is escalating or are there gonna be any more COVID rules or restrictions. Hopefully not. On the next slide, we can also see a comparison to the pre-pandemic levels.
We can see that in the summer months, we could say we were about 60%-70% on the pre-pandemic uh performance uh level and even in July on the Finland-Sweden routes, on 90%, so almost on the pre-pandemic uh level. Obviously, the capacity on the routes has changed and if looking at the company's numbers, this has to be taken into account for, and some of the vessels are chartered out until we enter into more normal business environment again. When we look at the rolling numbers in the last twelve months, we can see right now about 5.3 million passengers anduh revenue of EUR 734 million and EBITDA EUR 110 million.
This gives sort of a feeling of how the business is recovering compared to the uh uh pandemic levels, because as we can see, the 2020 and 2021 numbers don't really give a very good idea of how the business should be doing. On the next slide, we can see also some events about after the reporting period and the outlook. We continue to look for the different chartering options. We have very good vessels, very good assets that can be used in many parts of the world, either as hotels or as regular shipping routes. Most of the chartering contracts today are of a short-term. So, when these end next year, we will need to either work.
We bring the vessels back to the routes, or we find new chartering contracts, depending what is more feasible. I already mentioned MyStar. We are expecting to the route very shortly, and we are very excited about this. It's a complicated project, especially during corona times when the factories were closed and then there was a lot of extra effort to get this ship ready, and unfortunately, we did see quite a bit of uh delay. We also did change in the cruise concept between Turku and uh Stockholm. The ship Baltic Princess is now doing a little bit different schedule in as in the winter season or low season.
She will operate between Turku and Kapellskär instead and enjoy a little bit better time schedule for the clients as well, and so far has been successful. In the summer we will most likely go back to the original schedule. Now I would like to give word to Margus Schults who will continue with presentation. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Harri. Yes, I'm Margus Schults, good afternoon from everyone. I'm Group CFO and would like to provide the details about the development of uh Q3 result. If we first look on the development by operating segments, and you can see that Q3 last year, the biggest contribution in revenues came EUR 35 million from onboard sales. Of course, we need to remember that there is a cost of goods and services related to that, this is not which is affecting in full the bottom line. What is very positive for us is that ticket revenue contributed almost the same amount in revenue growth, EUR 32 million.
And of course, since there is no cost of goods and services, it impacts our revenue, also our net profit, not profit directly. We are happy to see that uh pricing power, what we have used in more brave way in pricing of our services has been successful, and we have been also able to keep our market share. As it has been several times mentioned, the new mix in our business is that we are chartering part of our vessels, and chartering of vessels is becoming now the third largest contributor in growth of the revenue. Last quarter, it was even more than EUR 11 million. Growth of cargo and accommodation was a little bit lower.
Cargo, of course, the growth is lower because it has been on a good, healthy level whole pandemic time. Accommodation is of course a little bit smaller, much smaller part of our business comparing operating vessels. What is also changing quite a lot is revenue structure. You can see that now the onboard sales is contributing 47% of our whole revenues. Tickets 30%, cargo 10%, and now the charter is 8%. If you look at, for instance, what was the structure even three months earlier at the end of Q2, then you can say that this is where the charters were much lower, ticket was much lower, and uh other revenues were higher.
When we used to have small changes in our revenue structures, and now in a changing environment and changing business model, it is changing also quite substantially from quarter to quarter. If you look on next slide, development by geographical segments, and you can see that the same development, Q3 last year versus Q3 this year, revenue. You can see that the biggest contribution come from Estonia-Finland traffic and Finland-Sweden traffic, which are also our key routes. The other almost EUR 19 million is reflecting, of course, our onshore businesses, but mostly revenues derived from our charters.
Estonia-Sweden, the growth has been modest, EUR 5 million, but we have to remember that we have been sailing with lower capacity, only with one vessel whole Q3 on that route. It's good to remember that within Q3, we have had some changes between the geographical segments. For instance, from mid-August, Silja Europa, which normally serves on Estonia-Finland route, became chartered, and therefore half of revenue is reflected on Estonia-Finland segment and half on the other segment.
The same applies to uh vessel Galaxy, which changed from Finland-Sweden route to charter in mid of September. If we look at the next slide, the revenues, results by quarters, the bottom box is first quarter and then the second, third, and fourth quarter in terms of number of passengers, cargo units, revenues and EBITDA. We can see that normally, with trends on passenger side that Q3 is our best quarter across the concessions. It was so before pandemic, it was so during pandemic, and it is also so now in 2022. It means, of course, since many of our costs are fixed, that of course on EBITDA level, the impact to our result is quite big.
In third quarter, we earned EBITDA EUR 68 million. Cargo side is more stable throughout the year and it's still uh very good positive stable addition to our business. Like it has been mentioned several times, then of course now the second leg for providing extra stability is our short-term charters. And if you look net profit level on next slide, then of course it is even more dramatic or the impact of Q3. You can see that in 2019, we earned EUR 55 million in Q3. Of course, we had first COVID year with losses throughout the year.
We had second COVID year, where, in spite of all these restrictions, we were able to increase or to have a small profit in Q3. Now, since the beginning of pandemic, we made EUR 38 million in Q3 this year. This is basically a reflection of the improved revenues, but also, of course, a reflection of lower cost level, except of course, fuel costs. If we go to income statement, then, like that Harri mentioned, 2020 and 2021 are not very good comparison, because environment changed really, not monthly even, but weekly. The restrictions came and were taken off. Therefore, maybe a little bit more relevant is to compare on the right side, Q3 2021 and 2022.
You can see that, uh of course, our sales was increasing due to the improved number of passengers, but also, of course, the cost were increased EUR 50 million cost of sales from derived from the volumes, but also we activated more our marketing activities and had a couple of million, EUR 2 million higher marketing costs. As a combination of these two improved sales and less increased costs, we were almost able to double our EBITDA from Q3 last year, from EUR 35 million to EUR 68 million, and of course also to improve the EBITDA margin. Like it was mentioned already, net profit is EUR 38 million and also earnings per share is now, after recap of the year being negative, has turned into positive. 0.051 euros per share.
On the cash flow statement, as you can see, that of course cash flow from operations is significantly stronger because of the improved volumes. We had some small capital expenditures during Q3, mostly related to docking of some vessels, but also opening of some Burger King restaurants and also some investments which were done to our new vessel, MyStar. Free cash flow basically was EUR 55 million. Since Q2 this year, we have started repayment of principals, which were stopped during COVID years. This reflects that we have paid down EUR 30 million net debt. Net effect of financing was -EUR 36 million.
It's good to remember that in September last year, in Q3 last year, we completed our increase of share capital by EUR 35 million. Obviously, in this year, we don't have need to increase share capital. If we look our financial positions and balance sheet side, there is no major changes. We have still our assets, our vessels mostly. The one major change is, like I mentioned already, paying down the principals of loans. The interest bearing liabilities have decreased quite significantly from end of the last year. Shareholders' equity has been, of course, stable.
Combination of net debt reduction and EBITDA improvement has also reflected in net debt to EBITDA ratio, which is now much healthier than in the previous quarters, and it's on the level of 5.5. Equity ratio, equity asset ratio and book value per share, these have been stable also in COVID years, but on level of respectively 45% and EUR 0.93. Liquidity-wise we are very much on a stable position. Our liquidity at the end of quarter was EUR 226 million. Also debt structure is quite stable and no major changes done during previous quarter. We have our long-term bank loans is amount of almost EUR 600 million. Some of them are floating rate, some of them are fixed rate, and maturities are different.
We have also overdraft facilities in the amount of total EUR 135 million. As you can see, at the end of quarter, most of these overdrafts were not used. Which is happening most likely in Q4 is that financing of MyStar financing from KfW IPEX-Bank will be withdrawn, and this means additional loan to us in the amount of EUR 198 million. This is more details and thank you.
Thank you. It's now time for the Q&A session, and we have received quite a number of questions. I will read them out loud and we'll have Paavo, Harri, and Margus to answer those questions. How do you see the future of the Turku-Stockholm route, and are you satisfied with the current passenger and cargo numbers on that route?
Yes. Good afternoon also from my side. My name is Paavo Nõgene. I'm the CEO of Tallink Grupp. Firstly, I would like to highlight that we had a good summer. We have adapted during last two years, firstly our business with COVID. Now we have worked hard to adapt it with the war. Outcome from the third quarter shows that the combination right now operating our routes, some of them with lower capacity and chartering out the vessels, generates a good combination for upcoming low season. I appreciate all the Tallink Silja Line workers who have worked hard during these hard, difficult times, now already two and half years.
Answering the question, we have made a decision to continue operate from Turku to Kapellskär, rather than Stockholm, until at least April, and again, from September next year. We still ongoing with the decision, when and on how many months we plan to operate to Stockholm from Turku. We want to see first the October results, because October has been the first month when Baltic Princess operating alone on that route, and also the real impact Kapellskär instead Stockholm. We are going to make the decision during the last quarter of the year.
Thank you. The next question is, are you committed to continue on the Turku-Stockholm route?
Yeah.
I guess.
Yes, we will continue with one vessel. We haven't made-
Mm-hmm.
Any decisions regarding to add capacity since we uh decided to operate only one vessel. Our near future plans are operate only with Baltic Princess.
What will happen to Star when MyStar starts operating in November? Sorry. Yeah, go ahead.
Yes. Will it be moved to Turku-Stockholm route to replace Galaxy? Sorry I interrupted you. That was the question. We have plans for Star, but we will announce them when we know exactly the delivery date of the MyStar. We expect MyStar will be delivered in coming weeks and starts to operate in November. We will come back to the question of the Star in near future.
Thank you. Are you satisfied with the passenger and cargo numbers on Helsinki-Stockholm routes?
Yes. Actually, Helsinki-Stockholm were very good during the summer. In July, we uh reached an almost highest uh passenger number for Silja Serenade and Silja Symphony. The route recovered very well. At the same time, we need to take into account that some markets are closed. As in normal years, if you say that the normal years were before the COVID, we had many passengers from Asia. At the moment we are satisfied. There has been also change in the market as uh we are only operator who operates daily departures from Helsinki to Stockholm and Stockholm to Helsinki. We believe that this benefits us as well. At the moment we see quite good demand for that route and for the both vessels.
We plan to operate Helsinki-Stockholm throughout the year with two vessels.
What are the outlooks for the winter right now in terms of reservations?
All the reservations coming in very late, as we have mentioned also during last time when we had webinar. It has been changed quite a lot because people making the decisions in last moment. It's a question of the geopolitical situation. It's of course question of the inflation. We believe that high inflation can be benefit for Tallink because people want to travel still, but many of them can't go anymore maybe somewhere far so they are coming to travel to closer countries. Actually, this has been the case during the last big economic crisis, 2008, 2009, when the Tallink passenger numbers increased and Tallink launched during that time, the shuttle service.
Of course, the passenger numbers generally will be much lower than 2019, but we need to also take into account that we operating less vessels in our own routes. The comparison, as the Margus and Harri also have said, with the previous years doesn't make any sense right now. We should compare vessel-by-vessel basis only. But at the moment, we believe that fourth quarter, if there are not coming any big geopolitical changes more or some other political decisions which can restrict the free traveling, then we don't see any major problems for the upcoming winter season.
Thank you. Next question is, what is the financial headroom after new loan from MyStar? Will the covenants be triggered? How much losses company can bear before new equity is needed?
Yes, we believe we will not have problems with covenants also after MyStar new loan. As we announce today, profit, not a loss, then we also not looking right now the new equity. We are on our way to recover. We have started to pay back all the loans. At the moment, we believe we will meet all the covenants which needed and not planning to find the new equity.
Thank you. What is the expected interest cost level in 2023?
It definitely will be higher compared to 2022. Also, the big part of it is MyStar loan will join the company. But we don't want to predict at the moment the exact cost because Euribor changing quite quickly the political decisions, which kind of like have the impact to the central banks as well. They can be changed very quickly. I think it's not very good idea to start to predict which will be exact interest cost for 2023.
Are there any fuel hedges currently?
No, we don't use the hedge right now. We have ongoing tender right now for the next year, fuel suppliers. Currently we haven't hedged, but definitely we will have a possibility to hedge when we think that it's good time. At the moment, we working on the market price.
I believe the next question was already addressed, but I still read it out. How does consumer demand look like for Q4?
We believe that the current routes we operate and the vessels on these routes meet our needs on the passenger numbers level. As you have seen from today's numbers as well, we are kind of like slim fit. We adapt our business with lower number of passengers. We believe that quarter four will be a reasonably good quarter. Yeah, don't see any big problems right now. As said, this all can change if there are any political decisions starting to restrict the traveling.
The next question is about tunnel. Any news on that?
If to believe the media, then some people having the tickets for Christmas 2024, I predict that this Santa Claus is not coming on that day. Hopefully there are free cancellation possibilities. I think that after what's happened with the Nord Stream gas pipes, this tunnel project will be evaluated or analyzed much longer than it was planned before. In the coming years, we don't see that they're starting any realistic tunnel project between Tallinn and Helsinki.
Thank you. What initiatives are you currently planning to encourage passengers to spend more on board during their trips?
We're working daily basis to make our onboard product better. We of course put more attention to different food and beverages cuisine parts. It's daily based work. At the moment, when we take a look our onboard spendings, the decisions we have made seems to be good ones, so people are spending more on board, and this is helping also us as the results is improving month by month.
Can you reveal what approximate percentage of your passengers are Club One members?
It's slightly below half, so slightly below 50%. It also depends a lot on the months and seasons, and whether there are any school holidays or not. This can actually change this potential percentage quite quickly. Yes, average in 2022 is a bit less than 50%.
Cost of sales as percentage of revenue in Q3 was at 74.2%, which is close to the pre-COVID level. How do you explain that? Does this mean that the company is coping well with record inflation?
We believe that all the companies operating in transport sector need to find a way how to adapt the business with this high inflation and half of this high inflation coming from the energy prices. Definitely, we working also hard to forward these costs to our passengers. We believe that sooner or later, our good competitors need to do that as well. We analyze the market daily basis and trying to do everything we can to forward the prices. Of course, it is combination smaller number of vessels in our own routes, higher onboard spending, higher ticket price, and some vessels chartered out with reasonable profit. This helps us well.
This inflation is changing all the time right now, and it's different also between our home markets. In Estonia, it's more than 20%. Finland reached 10% and Sweden as well. We work with the inflation, and we need to adapt our business with that.
The next question is on whether Tallink is planning to buy back stock now since the price is trading under book value.
No, we don't have such plan. We first want to get back to the safe side, revenue and profitable-wise. We started to pay back the loans and our priority is to sail the company to the same situation where we were before the crisis. We have in place our dividend policy and we make all what we can to sail to that position back as soon as possible to be able to pay again the dividends to our investors. We don't have a plan to buy back stock.
Thank you. What is the final payment due on delivery of MyStar? How much of this final payment will be financed by debt?
It will be 70% from the cost of MyStar, and it will be fully paid by incoming loan.
The next question is, what is the future for the Stockholm-Helsinki routes? One, two, or no ships, and when will you make a decision?
The Stockholm-Helsinki route, as explained, we continue with one vessel and this decision is done. Welcome on board.
Thank you. What is the status of passing higher diesel and LNG prices to customers? EBITDA per passenger still seems below pre-pandemic levels when excluding vessel charter revenue. Will you be able to restore profitability per sailing to pre-pandemic levels in the current fuel price environment?
Fuel price has changed, of course, quite a lot. We are definitely not back in the pre-pandemic level. We work hard to reach the break-even by end of this year. I think after two years of COVID and now already more than half year war, if we reach it will be good achievement for the company. Definitely if everything goes well, then all the investors most probably can predict themselves that, if 6 vessels out of our fleet are chartered out during the low season, then it can give quite good base for the next year's results.
This has been also the aim, to charter out the vessels, as many as possible for the low season period, to lower our risks, especially in first quarter. This definitely have also impact our financial results for first quarter, which has been always quite negative. We believe that this combination helps to improve the next year results. We are not going to predict when we are back in the pre-pandemic level. It depends on too many factors.
The last question is, in light of loan from the state maturing next year, what are the current level of refinancing on the market?
If investors have read our uh Q2 uh release, then uh there I said that uh this loan is refinanced and with credits and we extended the loan for the maximum possible for six years. It was three years, now it is six years. We starting payback that loan in 2024.
Yep, that was the final question. I believe we have thus ended our webinar. Thank you everybody for attending, for the questions you sent. We wish you all a good rest of the day, and we will have our next Q4 webinar planned for February 2023. Thank you.