Scandic Hotels Group AB (publ) (SHOT.ST) fair value

ACCE thesis

Scandic Hotels operates the largest hotel chain in the Nordics, running around 280 hotels under its own brand across Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Germany and Poland, with a mid-market, business-heavy guest mix. Its edge is scale and density: a dominant position in Nordic city-centre conference and corporate travel, supported by a loyalty program and a cost base spread across a large owned and leased estate. Growth is coming from new openings and the conversion of the pipeline rather than from pricing alone, with revenue up 3.5% in the latest figures. The stock trades at 29.7 times trailing earnings but 17.7 times forward, which implies the market expects earnings to recover meaningfully from the current base. With a 15.1% operating margin and a 26.2% return on equity, the business is generating solid returns on capital, though the forward multiple depends on that margin recovery actually arriving, so it is worth checking how much of the expected earnings lift is already in consensus before going further.