Scandic Hotels Group AB

STO:SHOT

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q1

[Operator]

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Scandic Hotels Group Q1 Report 2020. Today, I am pleased to present Jens Mathiesen, President and CEO; and Jan Johansson, CFO. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand you over to Jens Mathiesen. Please begin.

[Jens Mathiesen, President & CEO]

Thank you very much, operator, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining this presentation of Scandic Hotels' first quarter results. As you heard, I'm here together with Jan, our CFO, and we will take you through the quarter now. If you look -- turn to Page 5, we will start with a brief summary. As you all know, this quarter was a quarter that was marked by the effect from the spread of COVID-19. Our revenues were down by 18% in the quarter. Actually, sales were up year-on-year, both in January and February. But in March, sales was almost half compared to last year. Our adjusted EBITDA was minus SEK 174 million compared to a positive result of SEK 160 million in Q1 last year. We have, since late February, implemented quite extensive measures to lower our cost base and to protect our cash flow, and cost reductions did help mitigate some of the negative impact from low occupancy in March. We will, of course, also continue to reduce our costs during the remainder of 2020. There were a number of one-off items in the report. We took a restructuring charge of SEK 184 million in the quarter, mainly related to manning reductions in Sweden. And we have also done a significant write-down of intangibles of almost SEK 3 billion. And there was also a noncash tax cost of about SEK 400 million related to a tax ruling in Finland that we will appeal. And Jan will, of course, comment more on these items later on in this presentation. We can now see that both our occupancy and booking activity are gradually improving and have both gradually improved since the low point in mid-April which is encouraging. On 29th of April, we presented a financing solution with a fully covered rights issue of SEK 1.75 billion and an extended credit facility of SEK 1.15 billion that secures Scandic liquidity and will enable us to continue to develop Scandic. If you turn to Page 6, here, you can see the monthly occupancy development in the Nordic markets. We saw healthy occupancy levels both in January and February. In late February, booking activity began to fall and cancellations increased. Initially, there was a reduction in international travel and travel restrictions among corporate customers. After that, measures taken by authorities to reduce the spread of the virus in our markets have resulted in historically low occupancy rates. In March, our like-for-like revenues fell by 47%. And as you can see, occupancy continued to decline even further in April. If you turn to Page 7. Here, you can see Scandic's average occupancy on 7 days rolling average. Our occupancy reads an all-time low in mid-April and is gradually improving since then. Development varies between the countries in Sweden where all our hotels have been opened throughout this period. The average occupancy is currently around 15%, while it is closer to 5% in Finland and Norway, where most hotels have been closed and where the societies are more or less in a lockdown. The graph to the right shows booking activity on 7 days rolling average. We have seen a double of number of booked nights -- booked room nights since mid-April. It is, of course, very encouraging to see this positive trend, but please note that it is from extremely low levels. If you turn to Page 8, please. We began to reduce our cost base significantly when we started to see signs of weakness in late February. We have temporarily closed more than half of our hotels. Staff number have been reduced by more than 80%, including furlough, with the help of government's support. We have also terminated some 6,000 employees which is a combination of full-time employees and temporary employment contracts. Most of these reductions are done in Sweden, where furlough rules are less generous than in the other markets. In total, we expect that Scandic's cost base for the second quarter have been reduced by more than 70%, excluding rents, compared to what we had planned for in the normal market environment. If we include the rent cost, we estimate that the costs are reduced by around 60%, and we are planning additional cost reductions. It has obviously been a very demanding process to lay off so many of our team members. But I am also satisfied that we have managed to do these necessary measures to quickly -- so quickly in order to handle this extreme market situation. Please turn to Page 9. Apart from the cost cutting, we have also focused a lot on protecting cash flow in the past few months. On March 16, the Board announced that dividend for 2019 was canceled. We have managed to extend payment terms, stopped more or less all ongoing projects and we have rescheduled our CapEx spend. We have also agreed with our landlords to postpone rent payment terms that we will settle partly in September and partly in January 2021. On Page 10, you can see the current status of our portfolio and pipeline. We need to make sure our lease agreements are adapted to the market conditions. Our ambition is that Scandic should be profitable at lower occupancy levels than before. We need to analyze our fixed and guaranteed rents and find solution for that together with our property owners. Around 15% of our leases expire and are up for renewal by end of 2022, and it is as much as 25% from now until the end of 2025. Our signed pipeline amounts to 5,600 rooms, which corresponds to 10.6% of our existing portfolio. But only 1 scheduled hotel during the rest of this year, which is Pasila in Helsinki. And it is likely that there will be some rescheduling among the hotels in our pipeline, especially for projects where constructions have not yet started. Please turn to Page 11. At present, a little more than half of Scandic's hotels are temporarily closed. All hotels in Sweden have actually been opened all the time, while most of the hotels on other markets have been closed. This difference are partly explained by the different ways the government have handled the corona crisis, where there has been less strict regulations in Sweden compared to the other markets. We do now plan to gradually reopen our hotels from now until late August. Decisions to open can be taken relatively fast. It normally takes only 1 to 2 days to open a closed hotel, and perhaps maybe up to 1 week if we include marketing-related activities to the opening. Initially, our offering for F&B and meeting will be limited, a bit more limited than normal, and you will probably see a later opening of some of these areas. We have recently done an extensive survey among our loyalty members in Scandic, the Scandic French program regarding their plans for this summer. And the absolute majority, they say that they plan to spend the summer holiday in their home countries. And then also, they say that June will be their main booking month, which, of course, is encouraging. Please turn to Page 12. 2019 was a record year for Scandic, which although with revenues of SEK 19 billion and adjusted EBITDA exceeding SEK 2 billion. In 2020, we have quickly reduced our costs. We are focused on protecting cash flow, and we have secured our financing. We expect increased occupancy in May and June and gradual improvement in the second half of the year. We will implement additional cost-saving measures during this year so that we enter 2021 with a slimmed cost base that will enable high cash conversion. In the longer term, we see the potential to exceed our margin target of 11%, even on RevPAR levels that are clearly lower than what we saw last year. I think that's it. So with that, I will hand it over to Jan to take us through the financial part of the presentation.

[Jan Johansson, Chief Financial Officer]

Thank you, Jens. I will start reflect and comment a little bit about the operational performance in January and March. Those numbers should be known. They were preannounced already in April. After that, which we also have devoted a lot of time to is that we have reviewed our asset values in the balance sheet, I will come back to that and comment on that, including that we have provided for restructuring in this difficult period. We have also worked very hard with a financing solution, which was announced on April 29, which I also will comment on. And then finally, after all these extensive measures, which has been done in the organization, what kind of run rate we expect when it comes to cost here, the next -- or these difficult months, which we are in and probably a little bit ahead of us also. If we start then with the first page here, and this is [ drilling down ] to the sales development. And as Jens mentioned here, January, February was not bad because actually a slight uplift here. We saw then a first week in March, where it's -- things started to happen. And I would say if we would to report the 2 last weeks of March, it would probably have been between 80% and 90% down in relation to last year. What we have done here, we have SEK 700 million less sales this year in Q1 than last year, and that big hole in the road was created the last 3 weeks. Cancellation rates were exploding, I would say, the second week of March, and the hotel was close to end in the end of March year. And you can see there, it's not a big difference between the market. It's significantly high numbers for March in all the countries. So even if there were different regulations in the different countries, the effect was more or less the same throughout the regions. And it's -- and I think we were especially hard hit in the big cities. The hotels, which is a little bit more outside the big cities has done a little bit better, especially than in Sweden. If we take next page, we have the adjusted EBITDA here and SEK 700 million in less revenue turned into SEK 300 million in less adjusted EBITDA. I think as Jens mentioned, I think the organization here reacted fast. I think we saw this not totally coming here in the end of February, but I think the first week of March, we were really on our toes here. And I think 1 or 2 weeks later, I think, we had all employees in the organization actually see this. So I think actually stepping on the brake quite fast and a SEK 300 million effect on EBITDA. And I think -- having said that, I think, when you look into the Finnish number here, we were on a very good track, January, February here, but we took a big hit in March. But still, we were able to provide SEK 36 million in positive adjusted EBITDA. And if we then take -- and I think this is no new numbers for you. This was preannounced. And I think there is not any changes to those numbers. If we then take the rest of the income statement here on the next page, we have a number of effects here. First and foremost, we choose now to show this excluding IFRS. And the beauty of that is that you can see all the rents on the same line here. Otherwise, they have been spread out through the income statement, and that's the reason why we do it. The IFRS statement is SEK 50 million, give or take, worse than these numbers, so there is a full year effect from IFRS of around SEK 200 million on the net result negative here. And I'll start with the restructuring charges, which we posted and which is included on the line items affecting comparability of SEK 184 million. That refers to redundant termination cost and redundancy cost for to between 2,000 and 2,500 employees, primarily in the Swedish organization, but also some employees in Denmark in that number. And that decision was taken late -- or announced, I should say, late March and included the number. And that will, of course, be beneficial for our run rate in Q2 taking that. Next item to comment on is the revaluation of intangible assets. Prior to this, Scandic carried around SEK 9 billion in intangible assets coming from acquisitions in 3 instances. The first one, 2007 from EQT acquisition and then the Rica acquisition and then the Restel acquisition. We have had, and which I think you appreciate a sector-driven higher risk premium into this industry. That has resulted in, that we, as a prudent and responsible company, need to increase our cost of capital. We have increased that cost of capital from 8%, which it was in December this year when we made the impairment test last time, to 10%. And that gives an impairment of all these surplus values or intangible assets from SEK 9 billion down to SEK 6 billion, i.e., a difference of SEK 3 billion, which is accounted for as cost. And as you all know, this is noncash. I would like to underline that this is not a reflection of our ability to earn money in the future. On the contrary, as Jan said earlier, we believe that we can beat the 11% margin target also lower RevPAR levels in the future. So this is primarily a reflection of the higher risk, and that is a sector-driven thing, not only a Scandic-driven thing. Hence, it's prudent to make this revaluation. And as I said, this is due to acquisition surplus values, which has a rise over the last 13 years in the group. And the next item to comment on is the tax expense of SEK 400 million, also that's the noncash item. That has been an examination which has been ongoing from the Finnish tax authorities during last 13 years, which is going back and forth into the system here. Now we got the ruling. And of course, we need to expense that in the income statement. That has been paid in the last 3 years in different instances. We are going to appeal this ruling, but we believe it's prudent to account for the cost as we have a ruling from the authorities here. Right, I think that's that with this [ scale ]. But all in all, a SEK 3.5 billion noncash impact on the income statement. Then we take the cash flow here is besides any valuation effects. And that is not good. Of course, SEK 740 million in relation to last year. We always have a weak first quarter. This time, it's extra weak. A few things to comment on here is that we were, as I said, this organization is fast, and we were fast in actually addressing the rent payments. And that is the reason why we have an improvement of over SEK 200 million with relation to working capital. Even though this was a very big company coming into the crisis, we were quite fast actually on stepping on the brake here, which -- and the rent, the prepayments, which we mentioned earlier here, has been changed then to payment terms in arrears, and that has supported working capital already in the end of March, as you can see. Another item to comment on is the investments in existing operations. We have some ongoing projects, and that is the reason why you see that we have investment in existing operations of SEK 240 million in total for the first quarter. We do have some ongoing projects which we are committed to. However, we will not start any new projects here, which means that this number should gradually come down now during the rest of the year, even if we cannot reverse the development. Last thing here to comment on is the net debt to adjusted EBITDA of SEK 2.5 billion, and the net debt as such, SEK 4.2 billion. Initial credit facility was SEK 5.5 billion. When the corona crisis hit us, we had SEK 2 billion in liquidity headroom. And I think that was good because it gave us some headroom to find the right financing solution for Scandic going forward. And I think if we turn to next page here, this is the same thing, which we announced on April 29. The important number here is the SEK 2.9 billion. This is based upon a business case, which we have developed here end of March, beginning of April in order to see that we can get us through this crisis through a recovery assumption, which is reasonably modest, but also giving us headroom in terms of operational liquidity and so on. The worst point in time when we calculate is end of Q1 next year as we then -- 2 things happened in that quarter. We have the seasonal buildup of working capital as we usually have, and we will then start to go into the normal payment terms with the landlord, i.e., we pay in advance. But we will also, in Q1 next year, settle some of the guarantee levels with the rent contracts for 2019. So that is the planning parameter, which has been most important when we set the SEK 2.9 billion in extra financing. We will have an EGM, which has been announced and will take place on May 28 and the subscription period, which will start June 3. We will also come up with the terms for the rights issue, which will be announced the upcoming -- Monday next week. So that is the financing solution in place. And then just a few words then on the cost base going forward, which is on this place. You know the number, 70%. We have said that we will -- we expect to decrease cost with enter now in what we call sleep mode. Sleep mode is an internal expression, and that was actually something which we launched when we saw the crisis coming that we should bring the operation down to as low activity level as possible. And from that, we should start up when we see signs of recovery then. We have the normally done in normal life cost base on month, and this is monthly numbers now. It's around SEK 1 billion a month, something like that, excluding rents. We believe that we have taken this down with 70%. Primarily with our own efforts, some, of course, helped by the lower volume. As you can see here, the cost of goods sold is a solely volume issue, and that is not either -- that is coming automatically. You can see when it comes to employee costs. We have done a lot of terminations and so on, but we also get governmental support in terms of furloughs and so on, especially high contribution in Norway, in Finland when it comes to those rules. And in total, they account for a little bit more than 1/3 of the total cost reduction. We also have some support when it comes to fixed costs and rent expenses as you can see here. But of course, most of the lowering of the rent expenses is due to that we are not paying so high variable rents as you can imagine here during Q2. Worth mentioning also is that this assumption on operating cost around SEK 300 million here is based upon an occupancy assumption of a little bit below 10% in average for those 3 months. And you can also see as we saw that the start in April here was a little bit below that. I think that is -- before I leave the word back to Jens, I should also mention here that the estimated average EBITDAR breakeven, we believe is around 20% occupancy. And on top of that, we should also service the rent agreement. Right. I think with that, I think I'll leave the word back to Jens.

[Jens Mathiesen, President & CEO]

Thank you, Jan. And also for me, just, let's say, a concluding remark before we leave it back to you and the operator and for taking on the Q&A. As you have now seen in our presentation, we have seen a gradual improvement in occupancy and bookings since mid-April, and we also expect gradual increase in occupancy on a few percentage points per month here in May and June, like Jan was just expressing. When the holiday season starts, we expect further improvements during the summer and ahead as national tourism flows resume. And of course, that is encouraging, even though it is still on very low numbers. With that, I think we'll hand it back to you, operator, and can start the Q&A.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Andre Juillard from Deutsche Bank.

[Andre Juillard, Research Analyst]

A few questions from me. First one is regarding the type of clientele you have in your hotel. Could you give us some more color about domestic clientele in the Nordics that you have? Which country are the biggest provider and so on? The second one was to come back on the breakeven, you have been mentioning. Is 20% occupancy the right number? Or did I misunderstood?

[Jens Mathiesen, President & CEO]

I can take the first one, and thank you for those questions. The clientele is very different country by country. If we look at that -- some of the hotels that we have opened, we actually do have hotels with quite good occupancy levels and then a lot which is closed. For those that are open, it is a lot of project business we do see in certain areas like in Stavanger and Esbjerg in Denmark. We see that it is oil-related business. So for that, we also see some related to the hospitals or the governments or project business linked to a lot of new buildings coming in, some of the infrastructure projects in the countries, et cetera. And then it is quite limited what we see yet when it comes to traveling -- on leisure traveling in the countries and also the normal corporate traveling is on a very low level, so it's mainly project-related business we see right now. And the other question, Jan, maybe.

[Jan Johansson, Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. Right, Andre. I think I should just clarify one thing when it comes to the breakeven calculation. That assumes no governmental support. And that is actually -- I think that number is especially important then when we restart the business after sleep mode when we see to how many people should we have in the organization when we recover and so on. And so I think this is actually excluded. And that -- I mean, that's the right assumption for the future because those support will come eventually to amend for many different reasons. So I think this is a number which we -- it will vary between hotels, of course, and I think it will be also -- I mean, F&B share is one the side of things and the configuration of the hotel one the side of things and the rates of the hotel is also another thing, but that's a kind of a -- I think we would -- the reason why we will actually put that number out is to create a kind of an expectations. I mean we will have 2 breakeven levels here. One is the EBITDAR, and the other one is, of course, the EBITDA. And I think those will be important going forward here when we come into the recovery, so we can create the right expectations for when the cash flow turns in the business.

[Andre Juillard, Research Analyst]

Okay. Now if we extrapolate my question to a normal environment. Just to have a clear view on what we could expect. Do we talk -- in terms of clientele, do we talk about 60% Nordic clientele in average in your hotels? Or is it higher, lower? And just about to come back also on my second question on the breakeven. I understand that the 20% taking in consideration the government helps. You have visibility on how long this helps will be or not?

[Jens Mathiesen, President & CEO]

Yes. If we take the first one, we do have -- on a, let's say, aggregated Nordic basis, we have an inter-Nordic business of 80% of our turnover that comes from the inter-Nordic business. And we do have quite a high share of local in the different countries which differs a bit. A bit lower in Denmark, a bit higher than some of the other regions. But it is 80% inter-Nordic business. And of course, we also expect the inter-Nordic business to recover a bit faster than the international part of it. I mean, Jan, I don't know if you want to take the second question.

[Jan Johansson, Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. I mean, there is -- the visibility, I mean, it's a continuous discussion, but I think -- and the rules are different between the countries. Also, they are more generous in Norway and Denmark -- sorry, Norway and Finland. But I think the main assumption here is that you will at least have this in range Q2 at least when it comes to the furlough here. I think what is important here to remember that when we do exit out of this support regime, we would need to continue to adjust cost. And I think especially in those countries where you have had more generous support rules, there we would need to balance the withdrawal of the governmental support with further cost actions.

[Jens Mathiesen, President & CEO]

Yes. And you can also say that in some of the countries where, let's say, the rules are a bit more generous for the furlough, it is also furlough that lasts for a longer period in time. So quite a lot of these have been extended until later the autumn. And In some countries, it's actually a very long time where you can benefit from putting people on furlough. And -- but then on the other hand, as Jan was mentioning, you cannot combine that with also firing people and letting people go, where, for instance, Sweden, you can actually combine these two. That's why you've seen also that we have taken quite a lot of initiatives in the combination of the two.

[Andre Juillard, Research Analyst]

Okay. Third question, if I may, about leases. You were mentioning that you have reduced by 60% the leases in Q2. This reduction is coming from a delay of the leases? Or it's a simple cut and presence that have been done by landlords? First question. And you were also mentioning that 50% of the leases were coming to an end in 2022. Will this be an opportunity for you to completely review the portfolio? What can we expect on this deadline, which is in less than 2 years, which means that you will clearly rapidly enter in the discussions?

[Jens Mathiesen, President & CEO]

Yes. I think if I start with the second part of your question, you can say that, of course, clearly, we have a good opportunity as we have quite a lot of contracts coming up for renegotiation. And some of these, I would say, all of that portfolio includes even something from, let's say, contracts, which is with our biggest landlords where we have a partnership on a lot of hotels. So of course, this will initiate, let's say, some general dialogue around the topic, not only on these, but in general, how can we fix, let's say, the levels also in this period of time where we see occupancy levels being lower. So we expect to have that dialogue with the landlords during this autumn and ahead.For the other part, that was more linked to the percentage points. I don't know if, Jan, if you want to add to that?

[Jan Johansson, Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. Just to clarify here. I mean discussions or the agreement which we have had with the landlord which we entered into in Q1, that was a part of actually -- I mean we've changed the controlling extremely fast over to liquidity. And I mean 2020 is very much about liquidity. And the first measure we did was to discuss with the landlord because that agreements where you pay in advance on historical turnovers, that was a crazy model in this kind of circumstances. I'm not saying it's crazy otherwise. But in this special moment, it was crazy. So that then -- and the -- of course, we got a good agreement there with them where we pay in arrears, and that was extremely helpful because that gave us an opportunity to sign this financing solution. And that is an agreement, which is for 6 months, something like that. So when we come into Q4, we will start to pay in advance again, which is the normal thing you do in the estate market. But when settling the guarantee levels, we will do that in the beginning of 2021 because we need to take the full year into consideration when doing that due to this extreme volatility we have had in occupancy. So it's not a volatility, it's just lack of.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Karl-Johan Bonnevier from DNB Markets.

[Karl-Johan Bonnevier]

Just to continue that last note on the lease contract and the renegotiations and looking at those contracts that are coming up to renegotiation and combining it with your efforts on asset management, is there a lot of those hotels that you have highlighted for, say, already pre-corona as something that you would look to either get out of or meaningfully renegotiate the contracts?

[Jens Mathiesen, President & CEO]

Well, I think absolutely, there are a mix of contracts where this makes a lot of sense to do this. We both have some good contracts coming up, but also have some on the lower end even before this was happening with the COVID-19. So definitely, we see this as a good timing for us to, let's say, be able to renegotiate these, and we are happy that we waited with renegotiating these because should we have done that last year, it would have been on other terms as when we look at the industry and the market right now. Of course, we need to find the right balance. We see this as a very good, and we have had a healthy partnership with the landlords for many, many years. And if that has to continue, then we need to find the right balance not only now, but also for the many years ahead. So we will discuss how we can, let's say, structure the contracts to also take care of, let's say, a situation where you would see a larger changes in the market, which we have just seen right now.

[Karl-Johan Bonnevier]

And if you look at the asset management opportunity, and I guess you have indirectly answered the question already with the way you are looking at the 11% EBITDA margin target being, say, easier to -- or should be easier to get to at lower occupancy levels. Is there more of your portfolio that you now would consider under asset management in this respect than you did before?

[Jan Johansson, Chief Financial Officer]

Yes, it's obviously, you will have all other things equal. And just looking into the occupancy levels, of course, you get another view of the portfolio. So I think you have changed in that respect, you're right, KJ. We, of course, see maybe some -- we will look upon some properties with different eyes. I'm a little bit not so clear on this, but I think we have -- I mean we haven't done the analysis fully yet. I mean initially, now we have been concentrating very much on liquidity and driving down operational costs and so on. And I think more looking into the more long-term structure here. So I mean that is actually an analysis which we are conducting right now. So I think we haven't concluded yet.

[Jens Mathiesen, President & CEO]

But I can add one thing that I'm very happy with the focus areas we presented last year. I think we have been extremely crisp and clear in our priorities within also how we would deal with properties and how we would deal with food and beverage, and how we look at these, let's say, these areas, and how we, in the future, would we configurate our hotels. And I think this period of time enables us to speed up even further on that journey, and we will be looking at some of the hotels where we might reconfigurate some of the areas. It might be that certain meeting areas should be changed into rooms and et cetera. And so I think we will use this, let's say, exiting the COVID-19 period also to speed up that configuration discussion and dialogue with the landlords.

[Karl-Johan Bonnevier]

Excellent. And when you look at the room pipeline of these 5,600 rooms that you have, say, signed or for entry, how much of that pipeline would you consider being firm? And how much would you think are in this kind of now extended discussions with the property owners?

[Jens Mathiesen, President & CEO]

Yes. I think most of it is pretty firm because most of it is -- we do have openings both next year and the year after, and they are pretty long into, let's say, creating these hotels. But when I look at it, we have already uncertain of the hotels even opening next year. We have changed some of the configuration. We have prepared some of the restaurants with separate entrances and preparing for those even to be rented out for external partners, not that we have decided to do so, but we want to keep that possibility. So what we do is, of course, we are at least speeding up that journey even on the, let's say, ongoing projects that will open in just a year from now to prepare also for these focus areas we have. Of course, the openings that comes later on 2022, and I had especially '23 and '24, those we can reconfigurate a bit more where we will lower the square meters when you look at other square meters than the rooms. We will probably minimize meeting areas more than we have even done up to now because we think meeting business might not come back on the same level, but then we want to, of course, use some of these areas into rooms where we think the rooms industry will come back eventually. It might take a few years, but we think long term, that business will come back.

[Karl-Johan Bonnevier]

Sounds very logical. Just a final question. Looking at the EBITDAR guidance of breakeven at around 20% occupancy. Just to make it clear, that is relating to your whole portfolio, or is just the open hotels?

[Jens Mathiesen, President & CEO]

Yes, the whole portfolio.

[Jan Johansson, Chief Financial Officer]

Yes, the whole portfolio. Yes, the whole portfolio, including that they need some support from the support offices. We believe it or not.

[Karl-Johan Bonnevier]

Yes, looking at that, do you think it's -- with the kind of a pickup you see now in advanced bookings, your ambition to open up the hotels in full by basically end of August, is that a logical target to expect for maybe Q3 that you will be above that level? Or how do you see this emerging?

[Jens Mathiesen, President & CEO]

That's very early to say, and we wouldn't really know yet. But what we do is, of course, we do even -- right now, we do operate hotels, let's say, in Sweden, where we have a very low occupancy level. And in some of these hotels, and major part of these hotels. We do not operate meeting facilities, that's closed. We do not operate the restaurants, that's closed right now even though we have opened hotels. So we actually run them more or less like a bed and breakfast to keep costs down, and you only have one in the reception, and you have a technical guy running around, and you are cleaning the rooms, et cetera. So we can do that on a very low level. But of course, that doesn't bring us, when you look at the overhead costs, et cetera, to a positive result. But we also have an obligation towards the landlords not to close hotels longer than necessary. So we try to reopen when it makes sense. And I think during the summer and especially after the summer where we expect mid-August that the business environment will start picking up again. We have an obligation both to open, but we also think it makes sense.

[Operator]

Thank you. And as there no further audio questions at the moment. Can I please hand back the word to you, Jens and Jan.

[Jens Mathiesen, President & CEO]

Yes. And I just want to thank everybody for dialing in. As you all know, this is a very extreme situation, and we do our utmost, which is, of course, to bring back value to our shareholders and secure that everything is working well from both our guests and employees. So at least I'm positive to see the small signals of that. And I hope that we can see society reopening not that long ago along ahead of us. But I wish you all a very nice day, and thank you for dialing in.

[Operator]

This now concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for attending, and you may now disconnect your lines.