Stine Klund: Q&A session for SATS Q3 results. I am Stine Klund, Investor Relations, and I am here with CEO, Sondre Gravir, and CFO, Cecilie Elde. Sondre, we will start with a short recap of the key highlights from the quarter, and then we will open the floor for your questions.
Sondre Gravir: Thank you, Stine, and good morning, everyone. Great to see so many people on the call. Welcome to all of you. I will be very brief, just summarizing the highlights from the presentation today, and then we will dive directly into Q&A. This is another quarter in the right but also the same direction as the last quarters have been. Underlying, we see that the activity level in our member base is continuing to increase. We see that 6% more members are joining our group training classes. These are important KPIs, as we have mentioned earlier, because they say something about the loyalty and stickiness in the member base. So increased activity is good for future member development and earnings. Then we see a 7% increase in revenue currency adjusted. This quarter, there are larger differences between the reported and currency-adjusted numbers compared to normal.
Sondre Gravir: It is 7% currency-adjusted revenue increase. This is then primarily driven from higher value per member. Volume, as Cecilie commented on in the presentation, has been affected by the fact that we have closed in total eight clubs and from the introduction of VAT in Denmark. But except from that, we see a positive underlying volume development for SATS in Norway and Sweden and ELIXIA in Denmark. EBITDA in the quarter is up 25% currency adjusted to NOK 235 million. The margin has increased from 15% to 18%, and EBIT is up 35% currency adjusted. So we continue the same trend where we see the operational leverage coming to life, where we see a significantly stronger improvement in the results than on the top-line growth and a stronger growth in EBIT compared to EBITDA, which is the operating leverage in practice.
Sondre Gravir: We also see that the earnings per share is up 33% to NOK 0.69. We have a free cash flow over the last 12 months of NOK 609 million, and the leverage is kept steady at 1.1 this quarter, and that is the fourth quarter in a row. We have also then returned NOK 193 million to shareholders. We have done a dividend payment of NOK 0.72 per share, which is an increase from the NOK 0.67, which was the last dividend payment, and we have done NOK 54 million in share buybacks. So far this year, we have bought back 4.4% of the shares in SATS. We also gave an update. I would say that it is not a new direction, it is just a clarification of the current capital allocation principles following the last couple of quarters. We have extended the net debt to EBITDA leverage range.
Sondre Gravir: It used to be 1.5 to 2.
Sondre Gravir: We have widened that range now, so it is now 1.0 to 3.0. That is just a reflection of the strong cash generation we have had over the last couple of quarters, which we expect that will continue. We have been at the leverage at 1.1 now for four quarters, so it was natural to widen the range for us. We continue with the capital allocation principles. Number one, we will invest 5% of revenues to upgrade and maintain our current club portfolio. Number two, we will open eight to 12 new clubs per year. Now we have 18 confirmed in the pipeline until 2028. Thirdly, we will keep leverage between 1.0 to 2.0, and then we will continue with H2 dividend payments. Same amount in dividend payments that will be stable and increasing over time. We will do regular share buybacks also going forward.
Sondre Gravir: Again, so far this year, we have bought back 4.4% of the shares. The capital allocation principles are kept in the same direction. It is just a clarification compared with what we communicated to the market at Capital Markets Day, May 2025. That is the highlights from the quarter and the clarification on the capital allocation principles. With that, we will open the floor for questions.
Stine Klund: Ole Martin
[Analyst]: Okay, thank you for taking my question. Just a question on the sort of order intake of new members in the quarter. Was this in line with your expectations and can you give some comments on how we should expect Q4 with regards to seasonality and timing of campaigns and so on?
Cecilie Elde: Yeah, I think when we started the year, when we reported our Q4 results, I think we commented on the price increase and what we then expected from volume in this year as a consequence of that. You will know that 2025 was an exceptionally strong year in terms of volume. With price increases, we know that that will have some effect on volume, and that's what we've seen in recent quarters and also in the Q3. If we look historically, this quarter is more in line with what we have delivered previously. In 2024, we had a net growth in the Q3 of 9,000 members, and now we deliver 8,000. When we look at the member development year over year, as I described in the presentation, we have closed quite a few clubs and that has caused a decline in the member base.
Cecilie Elde: We also see that the impact the VAT introduction in Denmark has had on volumes in Denmark also affected somewhat. What's important for us is that we see that in our main brand, the SATS brand, we see a strong development still in Norway, Sweden and Finland. Somewhat more competitive in the low-cost end of the market in Norway. Other than that, it's mainly in line with our expectations at the beginning of the year. Seasonally, the Q4 should be like a normal quarter, but you just have to take into account that 2025 was a very strong volume intake year for us.
[Analyst]: Okay. Thank you. Just on your comment there on the low cost part of the market in Norway being more competitive, how big is your exposure to that segment now, and how did that impact the figures for Norway? If you can make any sort of comments on that.
Sondre Gravir: Yeah. We don't report specifically neither on financials nor member development on Fresh Fitness versus SATS, but of course SATS is by far the largest components in the Norwegian figures. But we wanted to highlight the development in the local segment in Norway, specifically on the slide showing the member base. As Cecilie Elde is commenting on, even though we're not reporting on the figures, that development for SATS in Norway is positive and according to expectations. The competitive landscape in the Norwegian low-cost industry, I think part of the industry, I think there's no major changes here. We are still positive to the longer term development of Fresh Fitness.
Sondre Gravir: But I think for those following this industry closely, if you look at the campaign pressure in the market now, if you look at what some of the operators are promoting at the moment where you can for a long period already, you can train for free without any binding until February 2027. I think that illustrates the competitive situation in the low-cost part of the market in Norway at the moment. There has been significant number of new club openings over the last 24 months in that part of the market. So I think it is a fight for volume.
Sondre Gravir: We fight in that fight with Fresh Fitness, of course, but we do it long term, we do not jump into completely what we see as crazy campaign.
[Analyst]: And just on that note, I am not specifically talking about Norway, but I guess we are entering the period of the year where we start to look at next year and what level of price increases to expect. How do you see the room for continued price increases along the lines we have seen for the last couple of years in the different markets now? Do you still believe that there is room to grow this? And how much mix support do you think it is possible to get in Sweden, for instance?
Sondre Gravir: I will not comment specifically on, of course.
Sondre Gravir: the expected price increases. I think you all understand that.
Sondre Gravir: As we have commented on earlier, we focus on the total revenue development and then in periods that is driven mainly by volume and other periods of price. Now this quarter is a typical where you see mainly the whole revenue increase is driven by average revenue per member increase. We expect prices to further increase in the Nordic market going forward as also underlying inflation is there,
Sondre Gravir: though as high as it used to be. But the mix effect of seeing that members are buying access to, for example, all group training classes also in Stockholm, since you are specific about Sweden,
Sondre Gravir: that positive effect we expect to continue.
[Analyst]: Okay. Thank you. Join, back in the queue.
Stine Klund: Håkon Fuglu.
Håkon Fuglu: Yes, thank you for taking my question. We talked a bit previously about ancillary and that you have been investing behind that, something that has been missing for the last two to four years. We are seeing some increased ancillary yields now. Is this sort of the run rate that we could expect going forward? How is the consumers taking this investment?
Cecilie Elde: If by ancillary you are talking about personal training and retail, then yes, we see a positive development within that area, and we expect that to continue going forward as well. That has been an area where we have been declining after the COVID period and slowly improving. We still believe that there is a significant market for personal training going forward. That will be an area where we continue to push and invest, and hopefully we will see some impact of that in the year to come.
Håkon Fuglu: You still expect that you could increase the yields on the membership base while at the same time continue to increase the ancillary yields as well?
Cecilie Elde: Yes. Of course, the membership yield is separate from the add-on services like personal training. So underlying, that should be definitely possible to improve. Yes.
Håkon Fuglu: A bit on the member base that you have now. Could you explain a bit on how the product mix is? It seems like you are facing higher competition on the lower price segment, but are you seeing higher quality on the membership base now with lower member growth as well?
Sondre Gravir: Yes. So the share of passive members is coming down. If you think back to the Capital Markets Day, we reported that we saw increasing visits per member. We saw the increases in the group training sessions, then we saw improvement in NPS, the member satisfaction and member feedback. That has continued. On the Capital Markets Day, we reported that had led to a 9% reduction in churn compared to the IPO. Of course, as we are not reporting on all these numbers in detail quarter by quarter, but when we have 6% more members now joining our classes compared to last year, as we do report on this quarter, that has an effect. So we see that activities per member or visits per member is up 2%.
Sondre Gravir: We see more active members, lower share of passive members, and we see a higher share of group training, which we have said earlier, a group training member has a member duration which is 1.8 times higher than a non-group training member. These are small numbers, it seems like, but over time, as we also commented on in the presentation today, it is these small steps quarter by quarter that underlying will make also a profit increase going forward.
Håkon Fuglu: In terms of the group training offering, I believe that you increased that by some 16% the H2 last year-over-year. Could you give us some comments on the figure for this half year compared to last year?
Cecilie Elde: We have continued to increase the group training offering. The increase is lower than what we had last year. We still see an increase in the cost related to that. That is something that we target against the visits that we see. We monitor the load factor and add classes when we see that that is necessary. It is lower, but still an increase. That increases the cost by around 0.5 percentage points related to that.
Sondre Gravir: We expect also to increase our group training offering going forward. This is not a stable number for half years as you are alluding to and as Cecilie Elde is commenting on, because this is something we continuously optimize. We continuously optimize the schedule based on member visits, based on member feedback, and then based on the load factor on the classes. We also launch new products and upgrade our clubs and launch new ones. This is so to say, ongoing work, which is monitored closely, I would say, daily if not hourly.
Håkon Fuglu: Thank you. Just the final one for me. I see that you signed up further club openings in this quarter as well. How does the pipeline look from now? Do you see further opportunities, or are we starting to look stretched on the possibilities in the markets? Especially, how do you view white spaces in Sweden? Thank you.
Sondre Gravir: Yeah. We have confirmed some more committed clubs this quarter compared to last quarter. So now it is 18 clubs from 2026 to throughout 2028 confirmed. This is fully in line with our guiding to the market of opening 8 to 12 new clubs per year. It has taken some time. We commented on this new guidance to the market all the way back to the Capital Markets Day in May 2025, and that has taken some time to come up to that run rate. We have been clear all the way. We prioritize quality above quantity. We could easily have come up to this number a year ago. But we really want to make sure that each of the new locations we sign, there are 10 years rent contracts, big commitments.
Sondre Gravir: We need to make sure that these business cases are super strong, both in terms of adding value to the existing member base, but also making sure that we actually add net growth from the openings. That is why it has taken some time. Now the pipeline starts to be good. We are very happy with a few of those locations, strategically very important location that they have signed for us in white spot areas, and we will continue to sign new locations. But again, we are very prudent, and will not sign if we are not sure that the business case will deliver.
Håkon Fuglu: Great. Thank you. I will join the queue.
Stine Klund: Tomas Helgø.
Tomas Helgø: Yes, thank you for taking my question. How much of the 7% uplift came from the easy comparison with last year's campaign? That would be my first question. Thank you.
Cecilie Elde: Not much. In general, it is price increases and mix improvement that is driving the revenue uplift, currency adjusted. We had a strong campaign last year with some more members on lower priced memberships. It is not material. The other two impacts is the most important ones.
Tomas Helgø: Okay. Thank you. In terms of offering to new members, did you offer a longer free period last year compared to this year?
Cecilie Elde: No, overall, the campaign was fairly the same. Since we have increased prices during this year, we see somewhat lower impact on that campaign as we expected.
Tomas Helgø: Okay, thank you.
Stine Klund: Any other questions? No? Thank you. Thank you for joining.
Sondre Gravir: Thank you. Have a great day.
Stine Klund: Have a great day. Thank you.
Tomas Helgø: Thank you.
