AKVA group ASA (AKVA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and very much welcome to the Second Quarter Presentation of AKVA Group. The agenda for today is that, I will start with the highlight and the outlook. Ronny Meinkoehn, the CFO, will do the financial performance, and then finally, we will do our Q&A session. And please post any questions during the presentation for those which are following the webcast. Let's start with the highlights for the second quarter. First of all, we had a very strong order intake of NOK 1.8 billion in the second quarter and also a record high order backlog of NOK 2.9 billion at the end of the quarter. As earlier announced, we got awarded the RAS contract with Cermaq Norway with an estimated contract value of EUR 60 million, minimum. And also, we touched up on this already during the first quarter presentation, but we had a commercial breakthrough during the second quarter on the deep farming of -- with a sales value order intake of NOK 150 million. If you look at the key figures for the quarter, first, revenue came in at NOK 940 million, which is actually representing a record high turnover for the quarter -- for the second quarter on a like-for-like basis. EBITDA at NOK 86 million, which is representing a good progress as such compared to last quarter and the year before. And in particular, Sea Based is strong with EBITDA of NOK 82 million. Digital is fairly in line with expectation of NOK 8 million, whereby Land Based is still the drag with a negative of NOK 4 million for the quarter, which is related to low gross margin in some old contracts, which are both to be finished and will be finished during the third quarter. Actually, we have been talking about those things in quite some quarters, but the duration of those projects are long. So it will not go away before the third quarter. EBIT at NOK 38 million. For the first half as a whole, revenue of NOK 1.8 billion, which is also on the high side on a like-for-like basis. On the EBITDA, NOK 145 million. If you remember we had a somewhat soft Q1 of NOK 59 million. And then combined with the progress in the second quarter of the NOK 86 million, we came in at NOK 145 million, and EBIT sits at NOK 49 million. Maybe the strong part of the report is the development in order intake and order backlog. If you look at the order intake first, which came in at NOK 1.8 billion, we think that's a good level. And it's relatively strong in Digital, NOK 89 million is very much higher than the other quarters, as you can see. And the positive driver there is 1 big contract with 1 particular company in Scotland within the product area observed. So we got a big contract of more than 30 sites in 1 go with 1 of the operators in Scotland. So that's a nice contract. And now we have more than 100 installations deep sites around the world on our AI technology. I'll come back to that a little later. Land Based, we already informed the market about the Cermaq contract of EUR 60 million or about NOK 700 million. But we also had some other contracts mainly outside Norway, all of them below the NOK 100 million, which is the threshold for us to disclose. But the combination of those contracts came in at NOK 360 million, making it NOK 1.62 billion, which is fine. And Sea Based is NOK 690 million, which is reasonable. It's not the record, but please bear in mind that we did not sell any barges in the second quarter. We see a bit of resistancy in the market still to do the very largest CapEx is within Sea Based. There are some trading but more limited than normal. So NOK 690 million is pretty much okay in light of the fact that we didn't sign barges. We expect the barge business to be more or the market to be more, in Norway, I'm talking, sorry, to be more open in the second half of this year, we see more activity there. So we gradually expect that to move more back to normal. Order backlog is close to NOK 2.9 billion. With Digital on a relatively strong momentum, we are improving that one, and we are scaling our Digital business on a steady basis. Land Based of NOK 1.9 billion, whereby no Phase 2 with EUR 40 million and Cermaq is EUR 60 million are the 2 biggest guys. And as we have said before, the new contracts we are making is on absolutely different commercial terms, different contract basis than the old contracts that should go without saying, but we have really made a lot of changes there in our -- in the way of doing business and our contract management. And Sea Based is NOK 817 million, which is fair level, and we should like to see more barges now in the second half of the year. Okay. Everybody following the industry know that the resource tax was finally voted for in the Norwegian Parliament and came in at 25%. And the way we -- the take we have on the market, given that the final outcome of this relatively lengthy process is that the products and services within Sea Based and Digital in Norway, which is really supporting core activity. Now I'm talking about the product portfolio of AKVA Group in Norway in Sea Based and Digital. That is really core of the core, it's kind of bread and butter. And that is -- we consider that is business as usual, and that's basically what you see in our numbers as well. Whereby the post-smolt market is a little different story. And we see that for still some time, probably some months, that will still have a negative impact. The resource tax will still have a negative impact with regards to new contracts. I will go a little bit more into this later in the presentation when I talk about post-smolt, right? And for us, the stance we have on the whole thing, given the fact that we now have some sort of clarity is that we have a long-term view of the industry. We have long-term owners behind. So we have full steam and full spending on our 3 innovation agendas being Sea Based, Land Based and Digital. We annually invest ballpark NOK 30 million, NOK 40 million in each of them, so around NOK 100 million, and that will continue because we really believe in the long-term future of the industry, of course, including Norway. Norway will still be the locomotive in this industry, no doubt. And within our Land Based activity, we have some kind of over capacity in terms of number of people because we ramped up significantly during last year before the issue with the resource tax. Those people are not easy to find if we let them go. So we still keep this capacity, and we have a lot of learning and development activity. So we are qualifying for what we still believe is a growing market in the years to come. So that means we are still running Land Based with a bit more capacity, people or cost, than we should. If we thought it should be the level of 700 in all the years to come, we would have done it a bit differently, but we are still ready for a ramp up. And we see some of the order intake, in my view, is supporting that view. Okay. Let's do a quick rehearse on the overall strategy of the company. This 1 you have seen before. I will just quickly comment that I think there is a consensus between the analysts and people following the industry about around 3% CAGR for the global supply of Atlantic salmon in the years to come until 2030. That, of course, calls for an undersupply situation and the forward price is NOK 90, as you know. Despite that, you have a seasonal shortfall in the salmon price for time being. So that is the global outlook. So 3% is the year-on-year growth in biomass. And AKVA Group is guiding that we think we can translate that into 10% top line growth. So why is that? Okay. Okay, the basis is the same 3%, of course, then we expect to see our Digital business, which is, of course, the smaller part or share of the business today, but we expect to grow that business minimum 20% year-on-year. And we have the same target for Land Based. This year, the basis is -- the run rate is for the time being, around 700. I think Land Based over the years should also yield for a minimum of 20%. And within Sea Based, of course, you have the 3% on the biomass technically, but we think we will have some more growth than the biomass as such. And that is on the back of some more automation, some more modernization and also concepts like deep farming. So we are banking on a somewhat higher than 3% in Sea Based and significantly overweight on Land Based and Digital. And if you do the weighting and the sum of the parts, you are in the ballpark, 10%. And that's our guidance for the years to come on the top line. This is still relevant. We have gone from a situation where RAS, for post-smolt was a little bit undocumented, not fully science behind. I'm talking a few years ago, we have done a lot in order to have full documentation behind our technology, full science behind and also more resources on understanding the biology and have support there as well. So that is our innovation agenda on Land Based. That's what is costing to NOK 30 million, NOK 40 million a year to support, and that is qualifying us for the future, and that is also improving our projects as such. So we have more, sorry, less issues when it comes to commissioning in our projects in the future. And then here, I will talk a little bit about the post-smolt market in Norway also in light of the resource tax. The starting point is the technology as such. And you know that AKVA is of the view that the proof-of-concept is in place for this technology. And with regards to post-smolt, we have a number of installations in Norway, but we have 4 major projects, flagships like Tytlandsvik, MOWI Nordheim, [ Swartberg and Annes, ] which are producing each and 1 of them, a minimum of 3,000 tonne post-smolt a year. And Tytlandsvik will probably end at 9,000 when the complete facility is finished. So in our view, technology is proven. Post-smolt is adding a lot to sustainability because if you start at size of 800-gram or a 1 kilo, you reduce significantly the production time in the sea down to, for instance, 8, 9 months and that is taking away a lot of sea lice pressure and then also lowering mortality. So we think that is really a good concept for increasing volume and lowering production costs, and also lowering mortality. So that's just a rehearse of what we have said on a pretty consistent basis in the last quarters. And what about the market situation then? We -- it's still a bit the early days. The resource tax was decided right before the summer, and there has been a break in -- a summer break in between. But our preliminary take on the sentiment in the market, that is that you can divide the farmers in Norway into 3 segments. You have probably quite a few which are rather negative to invest in new capacity and have been saying that, that they will not invest under the current regime of resource tax. So we will wait and see whether it will change in the future. So that is 1 kind of sentiment or 1 campus there. The majority is in the middle. They are kind of neutral. We -- they're saying, we like to understand all the implications of the resource tax, all the regulations, how is this norm, please, norm price going to work, standard price, I don't know, the English expression, sorry. And we like to understand all the implications of that, and that would probably take up till Christmas or something, I'm not sure exactly about the timing. But we are prepared to make decisions whenever we have all the facts on the table. I think that's the majority of the farmers and the attitude today. And then you have probably a handful, which are saying that, okay, we don't like the resource tax of 25%, but we are kind of pragmatic. And the post-smolt capacity is crucial for our strategy and the way we want to develop the company. So regardless, we continue the projects. And we have a few of those where we are working pretty actively on the contract process and the pre-engineering one. So -- but to say that the post-smolt market is back to normal, that I cannot say, but I expect that we will have probably a few contracts, probably not in the third quarter, but hopefully in the fourth quarter, but it could slide into early next year as well, but probably more full reopening into next year. So we are slightly disappointed by this, because we were hoping that August should be more full opening, more in direction of a full opening, but it's taking a bit more time. What we are doing is, of course, focusing on also other markets than Norway, and we have so far been successful in bringing in some smaller contracts outside Norway. So I'm not negative about the outlook. I'm just guiding that for the coming months in Norway, it seems to be some more resistance than that we were -- than we were hoping for. Then to ongoing. There, we have basically 1 project ongoing now. That's now up in China. And the first 4,000 tonne is now being finalized in the fourth quarter this year and harvest of fish will start somewhere during first half '24. And you know we are also granted the second phase, the next 4,000 tonnes. And there, engineering is ongoing and there is full focus and progress in that project, but the big deliveries will happen in '24, '25. And I have to explain that both for the big summer contract and the NOAP contract, the distribution of activity is over 2, 3 years, right? Phase 3 is about 12,000 tonnes. There, we have a contract signed with NOAP. And we hope that during second half next year that this project also will get started, but that's up to the company to decide. I hope that we will have a proof-of-concept on our RAS technology in China during first half next year and proof-of-concept means basically that can harvest a big salmon taking all the KPIs. And until then, we don't think that there will be a massive -- or I shouldn't use that word -- we don't think there will be a reopening of the market until proof-of-concept is there. I think that's the realistic view on growing. Right. Then moving on to Sea Based. We have the 4 pillars there being marine infrastructure. That's the traditional AKVA products, precision feeding and digital. And then certainly also deep farming. And I will give a little more detailed update on deep farming. And I will repeat some of the things I've said on Nautilus. But I will also introduce OptiCage, which we haven't been talking about before, which we think is also another promising technology. So generally, we believe a lot more can be achieved within traditional farming in the floats to reduce the sea lice level. Generally speaking, concepts like deep farming is very realistic solutions to improve sea lice and the fish health situation for the next coming years. And I just want to make a little point here that, if you talk with the political community, they have very much kind of 0 vision target on new technology. So if you should have a new technology and there should be some kind of incentives related to it, it should be 0 anything, 0 sea lice, 0 anything. And they are talking very highly about closed containments. But those technologies are hard to develop. They are very expensive and at the end of the day, it hardly gets 0 anyway. So we think it should be a bit more realistic and pragmatic. Boosting, for instance, deep framing, where you really can document that you get rid of 80%, 90% of the problem in terms of sea lice. And we have seen that in real farming through Sinkaberg-Hansen. I mean, I think that's a wonderful concept. It's not a 0 vision thing, but it's relatively about a lot of improvements. So I think we should speak more about those things also towards the political community. Anyway, during the second quarter, we did sell more deep farming for our -- mainly in Nautilus for NOK 150 million in the Norwegian marketplace. And the buyers were some of the largest and also the midsized salmon farmers in Norway. So -- and also, we have sold Tubenet to Nova Sea and OptiCage to Northern Lights. I will come back to OptiCage in a minute. So as already said, we think this is a commercial breakthrough after many years of development. And as earlier explained, we have worked together with Sinkaberg-Hansen for several years with the Nautilus solution. And during '22, they had a lot of harvesting several sites with excellent biological results and no sea lice treatments. So we see great potential for further commercialization here. And then -- and then some of the limitations in terms of the size itself, it requires a minimum depth of 60-meter and not all the sites in Norway is carrying 60 meters. So we think -- we are investigating that as we speak. But currently, our estimate is at around 40% of all the sites with that kind of depth. And there are some limitations related to currents. If the current is too high, you might not do it. So in that sense, we think 150 sites are realistic and suitable for Nautilus. And given 8 cage per site as an average and -- we are indicating an investment of NOK 30 million, NOK 40 million. That gives a total market of NOK 5 billion, NOK 6 billion over, let's say, 5 to 10 years. And of course, there is some kind of cannibalize here, because if we sell deep farming, we don't sell the normal cage. But deep farming comes with a very much higher turnover and it's an attractive business for us. But then, let's look at OptiCage for a minute to the right term. That's a different concept. It's not really about deep farming. It's about -- it's about putting a sea lice skirt, but sea lice skirt of 15-meter depth. I think a traditional one is more like 7, 8 meter. And then with 50 meter, you, go of course, much deeper. But of course, you are introducing new problems then with regards to, for instance, oxygen level, et cetera, et cetera. And the solution to that is that we have introduced a large pump, a very large pump, 2-meter diameter and 20-meter down produced by Framo. It's called AquaStream. And the capacity of this AquaStream is very high. So in just 1.5 hour, you can replace all the water within the 15 meters skirt. So -- and that is now already tested. We have done that in collaboration with Framo in the north of Norway, Northern light salmon. And also then supported by Framo. And AKVA has -- we have developed it together with the customer, but AKVA is carrying the IP right on this thing. The first commercial production on 1 site is now being harvested. It is the site of study in terms and there are very promising biological results, low biological FCR of 1, 0, or 2. It's very low mortality and no sea lice treatments and high superior share. It's not fully harvested. So I'm not going to disclose or I cannot give you the final details, but it's being harvested, but it looks very, very good now. So we are now proceeding with more sites with Northern Light salmon. And we also -- we have just started the marketing of this thing, and we are inviting other customers to test this on a commercial basis. So we also consider OptiCage as a very promising solution and there is no requirement here with regards to the depth like for Nautilus. So a normal site is fine. Of course, it could be some limitation with regards to current, but we still need to document that one. So in summary, I'm spending a little bit of time on this, but we think this is a very promising area. So we think concepts like Nautilus, Tubenet, OptiCage, they are all good examples of solutions providing a more sustainable fish farming and significantly reduced sea lice treatments. Also then with reduced sea lice treatments, of course, improved fish health and lower mortality. We think this is going to be vital as part of the toolbox for the fish farmers in the years to come. Then on the Digital Solutions. Also there are a reasonable good progress. I spoke about the 1 contract on Observe. And Observe is about automated heating. We have developed together with a third party, where we are a shareholder with 1/3 of the shares. Observe is based in London. We have developed AI-based heating technology, digital technology. So in totality, we have 101 sites in the world based on recurring revenue model. And in the first half, we have added with 47 sites. So it's a very good momentum there, also driven by the 1 big contract of more than 30 sites. AKVA Fish Talk is steady going. 6 out of 10 salmons in the world will be on our ERP system. That's for the biological control -- planning and control system, and that's a very strong position. And then AKVA Connect, which is about steering, bringing hardware and software together. We changed business model there a couple of years ago, because it was a kind of a free thing together with a barge, with the camera, with the feeding. But that's not a viable business model because you need to maintain the software upgrade and invest a lot in it. So we changed to a recurring business model there as well. And that is being built over the years, and we expect that to be a very much higher number in some years later, but now we are at 268 sites. And we have added -- inside there, we added 19 of them in the first half. So that is also steady going. Okay, that brings me very much to my last slide. We are guiding in the years to come that we can drive top line growth of 10%. I explained a little bit the buildup of that earlier in the presentation. For next year, we are rather confident that we will reach the NOK 4 billion mark. We have quite a lot of focus on operational excellence and cost saving programs. With regards to the cost-saving program we announced a year ago, we said that the big cost driver for us is, of course, people. And we said that we are going to reduce with 100 people, and that 1 we have reached by end of June. We are exactly 100 less than a year ago. So that program is basically finished. Of course, you always have continuous cost focus, but this extra program and campaign is now concluded, not exactly full effect Q2 but almost, but will have a full effect in Q3. And we are saying that we will deliver an EBIT of 6% to 8% in '24, which has changed from previously 8%. And the reason for that is we were banking on a bit higher share from post-smolt in '24. We always said that we are dependent on a full opening of the market after the summer this year. That is rarely happening. And how the economics work for us is that if we could have a somewhat higher activity level in Land Based in '24, that will have a very huge bottom line impact with the cost base we have. We think that is sliding out a little bit, and that's why we give a range now of 6% to 8% instead of a hard number of 8%. Of course, we still wish to look in the 8% direction, but we give you a range. So we are firm on the NOK 4 billion, but we give you a range for the EBIT in '24. And consequence -- consequently, when you change the EBIT, you also changed the ROIs expectation. Talking about innovation spending, I already talked about that, and we have full focus on our 3 digital platforms. And that brings me very much to the end, I probably took 5 minutes more than I should, but I got a little bit excited by a few things. So thank you very much, and I hand over to you, Ronny.

Well, thank you, Knut, and good morning to everyone. So I will give you some more details on the financial performance during the quarter and also on the financial position to the company. But first of all, we are very pleased to report a record high activity level in the quarter and also improved profitability. So I will start with the consolidated income statement for the quarter and for the first half year, where we see the revenue of NOK 940 million, which is a record high quarterly revenue for AKVA Group and was NOK 33 million higher than Q2 last year. So for the first half year, we are just above NOK 1.8 billion in revenue, which is approximately NOK 60 million higher than a year ago. So EBITDA of NOK 86 million is NOK 83 million higher compared to Q2 last year, while EBIT of NOK 38 million is NOK 79 million higher than last year. But please note that we -- in Q2 last year, we reported a significant amount of extraordinary costs related to the high inflation rates and also to some cost provisions resulting in a very low profitability in Q2 last year. So for the first half year, we have EBITDA of NOK 145 million. That's NOK 39 million up Q2 last year. So the D&A part of NOK 48 million, that's NOK 3 million higher than Q2 last year. And this increase is all related to our Digital business where we have invested significantly both in '21 and '22 and is continuing to invest to further improve our Digital Solutions. Net finance of NOK 10 million in the quarter is lower -- is NOK 3 million lower than last year. And the increased interest rate we have on our credit facilities was offset by this increased market value on our investment in Nordic Aqua Partners. So the record high revenue of NOK 940 million in Q2, that's 4% higher than a year ago. And we had a very strong order intake in the quarter of NOK 1.8 billion and the book-to-bill ratio for the last 12 months is now approximately 130% with this order intake of just about NOK 4.5 billion and revenue of NOK 3.4 billion. So compared to Q2 last year, we see the Sea Based revenue at the same level, but we have increased the revenue both in Land Based and Digital. So on the markets, the revenue increase this quarter compared to last year is mainly related to the Nordic market with an increase of 6% while we have this decrease in the market of Americas by 10%. On the segment, we still have Sea Based with 78% of the total revenue in the quarter while we continue to see the strong increase in Digital of 27% increase quarter-on-quarter and 20% for Land Based compared to Q2 last year. So we still believe there is a significant potential for improvements, but we are, of course, pleased to continue the positive trend with regards to increased profit margin. So we commented also during our last quarterly presentations, that the profitability in Land Based business is still impacted by this high cost base compared to the activity level and also partly due to lower profit margins on some of the projects. I will comment more on this later. During Q1, we also talked about the variances with regards to profit margins in our Sea Based product and service portfolio, which will fluctuate. In Q2, the product mix were healthy and had a positive impact on the overall profitability. And this NOK 150 million in sale of deep farming concepts also had some impact on the profitability at the end of the quarter. So despite the acceptable EBITDA level in Q2, we had this reduction in available cash of NOK 107 million in the quarter, and we had available cash of NOK 522 million at the end of Q2, including credit facilities in DNB. So this reduction in available cash, that's mainly related to the increase in net working capital, which increased from 8.2% in Q1 to 11.6% now in Q2, but that's an increase of NOK 120 million. It's partly due to inventory levels, NOK 35 million. We also have a reduction in trade payables of NOK 45 million, but the big ticket, that's the reduced contract liabilities of NOK 72 million. So this reduction in contract liabilities, that's related to the nature of the cash profile we have in our larger Land Based contracts, which are highly cash positive during the first phases of the project execution. However, since the resource tax was announced back in September last year and up to June, we have only been awarded and started off a very limited number of new projects. So we have not been able to keep this positive cash profile on an overall level. So we see that now with a hit on the net working capital, and the cash balance. But we believe that the 11.6% is too high, and we will work hard now going forward to get it below the 10% level. The covenant situation improved somewhat in Q2 compared to Q1, but it's still tight. So it ended at 4.16 compared to the threshold of 4.5. And the EBITDA, we used to calculate this ratio is adjusted with NOK 73 million in extraordinary costs from Q3 last year in agreement with DNB. So we believe that we will manage within the covenant, the foreseeable future, and we also expect the headroom to be more comfortable in the coming quarters. So net interest-bearing debt increased by NOK 43 million in the quarter. We had this positive impact from NOK 86 million in EBITDA, offset by payment of interests, NOK 20 million, increase in net working capital NOK 120 million and also ordinary CapEx activities of NOK 32 million. So total CapEx of NOK 32 million in the quarter, where NOK 19 million, that's related to investments in our 3 innovation agendas, 1 for each of our business areas. And another NOK 11 million, that's related to our ERP project, which we will continue to implement in the entire AKVA Group over the next few years. For the first half year, we have CapEx of NOK 96 million, where NOK 38 million is related to our innovation agendas and NOK 30 million, that's to the global ERP project. So the slow financial performance in '22 and also start of '23 has impact on the return on capital employed, which is low and was negative of 1.4% in -- at the end of Q2. And as Knut mentioned, we have adjusted the target in '24 from 15% to the interval 10% to 15%. And as Knut explained, the reason is that the somewhat slow post-smolt market in Norway. So for the time being, despite a solid order backlog we don't have sufficient with Land Based revenue for '24 to support our rage of 15%. So then we adjusted the EBIT target, which is also having impact on the ROA target. For the same reasons, due to the financial performance last year and start of this year, we have decided not to pay any dividend for the second half, meaning that we will not pay any dividend for 2023 as such. And then some more details on the business segments. I will start with the Sea Based technology. The total revenue is at the same level as last year, while the order intake, we see a slight decrease by 2% quarter-on-quarter. Strong increase in EBITDA margin from the low 5.5% last year to the 11.2% this year. As I mentioned, last year was impacted by high inflation rates and also cost provisions. However, we consider 11.2% this quarter to be acceptable and it also increased from the 8.5% we had back in Q1 this year, which is partly due to a higher revenue because we have more or less a fixed cost base in Sea Based and partly due to this more healthy product mix in this quarter. On the regions, we have noted with increased revenue of 5% with the order intake at the same level. In Americas, we have reduced revenue by 12%, but an increase in order intake of 6% on the other hand. And Europe and Middle East, we have a reduction in both revenue and order intake of 4% and 23%, respectively. Our company in Turkey is still the main contributor in this region. So after our peak in Q4 last year, the 12 months order intake trend for Sea Based is now flat, as you can see, and the same applies to the 12 months rolling revenue trend. We have this order backlog of NOK 817 million, which is NOK 85 million lower than last year. But as Knut explained, this is mainly related to barges. So we have a strong focus to be active in the market now to get both the order intake and revenue trend back on a positive momentum, which is also required to deliver on the organic growth strategy. So despite we have a flat revenue development on the total Sea Based level, we have a very strong momentum with regards to the OpEx-based revenue in Sea Based which is, to a large extent, recurring revenue and represented 35.8% of the total Sea Based revenue in the quarter and increased by NOK 42 million compared to Q2 last year, which is a solid increase of 19%. On Land Based, we had a strong order intake of NOK 1.1 billion with this RAS contract for Cermaq Norway as the big ticket in the quarter with a minimum value of EUR 60 million. Revenue increased by NOK 29 million quarter-on-quarter. That's 20%, but the profitability is still low and EBITDA was negative of NOK 4 million in Q2. So we have discussed it several times, but the lower profitability is mainly related to 2 factors. First, we have the capacity. We have -- we have a high cost base now in Land Based compared to the current activity level. We expect some improvements when the new contracts for Cermaq Norway and NOAP Phase 2 increased activity level, but we need more revenue, new contracts to make a decent profit from our Land Based business. And the second part is related to the low-margin project portfolio, where we brought down the margin significantly in Q2 and Q3 last year. As Knut told you, the remaining work on this low margin contracts will be completed during next quarter. So the rest of the order backlog in Land Based has been entered into the last 3 years, and they have all -- they are all based on mechanism with price escalation, all the contracts. And all these contracts are running with normal profit margin in the quarter. So we see a very strong positive development with regards to the order intake for Land Based in the last 12 months, while the revenue trend is more a flatliner. Strong order backlog of NOK 1.9 billion and the big contracts this year is the NOAP Phase 2 awarded in Q1 and Cermaq in Q2. And last, our Digital business, we have a steady and positive development with a strong order intake of NOK 89 million in the quarter compared to NOK 28 million last year. And the recurring revenue base is continuing to increase and the revenue increased by 27% this quarter compared to last year, and we see that the main part of the increase comes from international sales in the region of Americas. We also have an acceptable EBITDA margin of 23.8% in the quarter compared to 17.8% last year, demonstrating that this business is scalable. So we see the positive development, both on order intake and also with regards to the revenue trend for our Digital business, the order backlog of NOK 162 million, that's a big improvement compared to the NOK 87 million 1 year ago. So that was my financial update. I'll give it back to you, Knut, to close off.

Thank you very much, Ronny. Just quickly summing up that our order backlog is sound, we believe. And also forms a good basis of foundation to execute our organic growth strategy. Salmon price is expected to remain strong, driven by reduced supply and fueling the investments over time. And also the implications from the introduction of the new resource tax is still uncertain, in particular, in relation to the post-smolt market in Norway. Upwards targeting a minimum turn of NOK 4 billion next year and a corresponding EBIT of 6% to 8% for 2024. And once again, AKVA will continue to invest in our innovation agenda, both within Sea Based, the Digital and Land Based technology. So that brings me very much to the end, and let's open up for some questions. And I think we could probably start within the audience here. If there are any questions, we will hand over the mic to you.

Yes, we can start here. And please say your name and the company you're representing.

Ola Trovatn, DNB. Starting off with the Digital segment, you won a large contract for Observe. Can you state the contract duration?

The duration of those contracts are typically for 3 years. In this case, it is 3 years, that's typically the nature of those contracts.

Perfect. And you also mentioned that on all your new Land Based contracts, they include mechanisms for price escalation, but it's true for Cermaq contract and NOAP Phase 2 as well?

Yes. Actually, those 2 contracts are even more in direction of cost plus. So you're on a more back-to-back basis with those 2 large contracts. That's where we feel more comfortable on that one given the history we have seen there. But with all the contracts, there are price escalations and with some of the larger contracts, the nature is even more cost plus and back-to-back on cost coverage.

Perfect. And maybe a last 1 on AKVA Observe. Do you see the potential for more large contracts going forward? Or is it a variation in large contracts and a separate size?

In our pipeline, we have several prospects where we are trying to strike group contracts. So we have -- our sales executives are dealing with some of the larger farming groups are trying to strike group contracts. Where we came from was that it was more -- in the beginning, 3, 4 years ago, it was more opportunistic or people -- visiting people at site, trying to convince them that you can do this business in a different way. And then we were building up and now we get more attention at executive level of some of the farming groups. So our ambition is to do more of those contracts over the next 1, 2 years.

Perfect. And maybe last 1 from me. On the Land Based market in Norway. Do you see any bottlenecks in terms of regulations with a temporary stop in licenses? Or is it mainly CapEx spend from farmers?

It is both. We have a few customers in the queue of getting licenses. So that is also a negative, but there are really a significant critical mass of companies which have the license in place and are more awaiting the final understanding of the resource tax. But there are a few cases where they are also awaiting the grant of a license. So both are bottlenecks.

Sander Lie, Pareto. Just a follow-up on the duration of the contracts versus the duration on the new AUM this quarter, both NOAP and also Cermaq and when will they start running?

The engineering has started on both of the contracts. But of course, you are interested in when the big turnover will start and the income recognition. The lifetime of those contracts will be ballpark 3 years. Typically, the engineering phase could be 6, 9 months and then you start to deliver the packages or the components. So I will say next year, probably you will see a ballpark, 1/3 of the value being invoiced. But this is not very exact but as an indication. And that's also why -- I mean that's also why we are saying we should like to see a few more post-smolt contracts. And the duration of some -- if you have a contract NOK 200 million, NOK 300 million, typically duration is less, and we had a handful of them in principle, ready for signing in August. And that's -- we were banking on that, and that should translate better into '24. Now it seems that this will drag out a bit and that's the little disappointment here because we were -- even though it's good, we were hoping for more. So I think still, certainly, it will come. But I also have absolutely my sincere understanding that this is very complicating, and we understand that the farmer needs to have all the facts on the table before they can make an investment of, let's say, NOK 500 million in total for a post-smolt project, whatever it is. So we are not negative about the future, but we were a little disappointed that we could not bring home those a bit more post-smolt contracts after the summer.

Just one more from me. You commented that for new post-smolt projects in Norway, you have 1 bucket of farmers sitting on the fence waiting. Do you see those more willing to invest internationally? Are you going to comment on the post-smolt market internationally?

The same farmers, yes. Well, okay, there are a handful of them operating in different regions, whether we see different behavior from them, I think that's too early to say. I cannot say that for sure for time being. So of course, we have talks about it, but I don't see -- I'm lacking the materiality behind that funnel. Saying that, there is also a post-smolt market outside Norway, and that's also why we got hold of NOK 360 million in the second quarter, but they are typically smaller projects. And there are some in Chile, there are also some in Canada and other places. Shall we check if there are any questions from the call?

We have no questions from the call.

Okay.

No questions, yes. Okay. Do we have any more questions here in the audience?

Okay. Okay. Then I will say thank you. Thank you very much for the participation. Always good to have some people in front of us. So have a nice weekend.