Andfjord Salmon Group AS (ANDF) Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to this quarterly status update from Andfjord Salmon. My name is Martin Rasmussen, and I am the CEO of the company. And as usual, I'm joined by our CFO, Bjarne Martinsen. We will end this presentation with a Q&A, and you can submit questions through our webcast solution. Firstly, a brief introduction to Andfjord Salmon. The vicinity to the Gulf Stream is a conceptual key for Andfjord Salmon. For more than 20 years, we have been working to develop a concept that integrates our flow-through technology and nature-based advantage in the same seawater environment that salmons have lived and adapted to over thousands of years. Our concept is taking the best from ocean-based net pen farming and combining this with the benefits of being on that. Temperated, oxygen-rich water from the Gulf Stream, we avoid salmon lice, algae and jellyfish in a closed system with water in it at 50 meters water depth. We have large square pools designed to recreate the salmon's natural habitat the Gulf Stream brought on land. And this gives salmon plenty of space to exercise its natural behavior. With our closed system, we protect the fish from external factors such as sea lice, jellyfish and algae, while at the same time, protecting the environment from having such a large concentrated biomass in one place. So over to the highlights from the fourth quarter and the following months. After releasing smolt in pool K0 at the end of September, we stocked K1 with 750,000 smolt in November. The smolt was -- the smolt release was successful with very low mortalities. Just before Christmas, we also secured NOK 300 million in equity funding from certain large shareholders plus an enhanced bank debt of NOK 200 million. Our new contractors, entrepreneur Harald Nilsen AS and concrete specialist Nornebygg AS have finalized their mobilization period during which they identified and implemented several site logistic improvements that will benefit the continued build-out. They are now well underway with the work of concluding the next pools that are part of the current build-out phase. And finally, I'm glad to share that the biological conditions in our pools remain very good. And this manifests itself in continued high survival rates, a growth ahead of schedule in both pools and efficient feed usage and rapid biomass growth. We will get back to the details later in the presentation. So let's look closer at our fish farming operation. And the survival rates continues to be very high. Until now for both the generation stock last autumn and the '22, '23 generation, we are very pleased with the fish health and the strong survival rate so far. The survival rate would never have been this high if the concept did not work so well. So combined with the outstanding effort from employees and partners who work every day to always provide the fish with the best possible conditions in the pool. The yellow dotted line in the graph shows the trend line towards 95% survival rates for a 15-month production cycle. And this does not mean that it takes 15 months to produce a generation of salmon, but we want to show this line to illustrate our survival rate compared to a linear mortality over a 15-month production period. Both pools are currently outperforming this trend line as did our first production cycle in 2022, which you can see from the white line in the graph. The blue line at the top of the graph shows the survival rate in pool K0 so far. The reddish line below shows the survival rate in pool K1 so far. And both pools shows a survival rate of higher than 99.5% after 6 and 4.5 months production. I believe that everyone involved with fish farming will take notice of such high survival rates, and we are certainly proud of them. In other words, an excellent start for the current production cycles. Not only do we have high survival rates, the fish is growing very well, too. The fish in K0 is 1,350 grams and the fish in K1 is 576 grams as of 22nd February, which is significantly higher than our expected growth profile before destocking. And this is largely due to several factors. One, the good smolt quality. Two, higher temperature compared to our initial expected temperature profile. And three, improvements in feeding system and light regime compared to the production cycle in the '22 and '23 production cycle. Four, a hands-on team, always ensuring efficient and accurate feeding. So far, growth in K0 is 30% higher than creating a growth table for seabed salmon farming and K1 is 27% higher. With this growth, we are preparing for slaughtering from early autumn this year, and we're very pleased with the growth in both of the pools. As a consequence of high survival rates, healthy appetite and solid growth, our standing biomass is growing quickly. As of Sunday, 3 days ago, our standing biomass stood at 902 tonnes live fish. This is the highest level in Andfjord Salmon's history, but still just the start of the ramp-up of the biomass. What is also encouraging is that we have achieved with this biomass growth with very low feed conversion rate. And so far, the economical feed conversion rate stands at 0.97 in pool K0 and 0.88 in pool K1. And the FCR means how many kilos of feed are required to grow 1 kilo of fish. So over to the status of the Kvalnes build-out. This is an illustration of how our Kvalnes facility will look in the future. And currently, our main focus is the 4 pools market as Phase 1. In addition to pool K0, which is located south in this photo. As mentioned earlier, K1 is in operation. In K3, the final technical installation are now being finalized before it's fully ready for operation. Work on K2 and K4 are also progressing as planned, and the plan is to finalize K2 and K4 in the middle of 2026, which is sufficient to maintain Andfjord Salmon's production plans. There is ample space in both K0 and K1. So we don't -- so we do not require any new pools for splitting of biomass and new smolt release until spring/summer of 2026. So we have enough time to finalize these pools. Here you can see a photo of pool K3, where all the concrete work is complete and the technical work is close to completion. We are planning to release new smolt into this pool during the second quarter. With the finalization of pools K1 and K3, we have a current production capacity of 6,000 tonnes. Completing pool K2 and K4 will bring our production capacity to 11,000 tonnes. We will then proceed with finalization of Phase 2a, which consists of pools K5, 6, 7 and 8. Once complete, we will have a total production capacity of 17,000 tonnes after Phase 2a is completed. I will now leave the word to Bjarne to cover the finance.

Thank you, Martin. Finally, we can start to report financial statements, including biomass and operations and add some interesting dimensions to the financial reporting. The costs related to the farming activity are accounted for as production costs and allocated to the biomass in the balance sheet. The biomass is then valued at an estimated market value in the balance sheet and the difference between production cost and estimated market value provides the basis for fair value adjustments. We use a model that calculates market value based on the present value of future sales and the model gives a relatively lower value at the beginning of the production cycle. Since all the fish that we currently have in the pools are at the beginning of the production cycles, the estimated market value is relatively lower than the production cost at this time, and the fair value adjustment was therefore negative at the end of 2025. This will change throughout this year and the value of the biomass will increase more towards the second half of production. One new pool and a large portion of the infrastructure on the site are now in use, which will be reflected in the depreciation costs. Financial income and expenses follows the same principle as previously and financial costs in the result are largely affected by the bond loans held by the parent company in the group. The balance sheet still reflects high investment activity. Be aware that accounted investments include invoices from the former main contractor where payments have been held back. This amounts to NOK 366 million and the trade payables related to this are separated from other trade payables and are shown on a separate line under short-term liabilities on the next slide. The biomass was valued at NOK 48 million at the end of 2025, and we expect that a large proportion of the value added through production will be visible through the second half of production. Other current assets includes receivables related to VAT, and that has been paid in after year-end. Equity includes the latest issue carried out in December and borrowings includes bank loan of NOK 900 million and bond loan of NOK 750 million valued at amortized cost in the accounts. As shown in the balance sheet, trade payables related to the former main contractor is shown on a separate line in the balance sheet and be aware that this figure includes VAT. In addition, the group had undrawn construction loan of NOK 400 million and an unused credit facility of NOK 120 million at year-end. Cash flows during the reporting period reflects start-up of operation activity with outgoing cash flow of NOK 116 million related to operating activities in the fourth quarter. The overall investment activity is reduced as several infrastructure work streams are completed. The main activities going forward are related to pool construction. Cash flow in fourth quarter is largely affected by settlement of a guarantee towards the former main contractor as announced on 15th of December last year. Cash flow from financing activities is related to share issue in December and lease financing established during fourth quarter. And with that, I leave the word back to Martin for a summary.

Thank you, Bjarne. We will now go to the summary and outlook. So to quickly summarize, we increased the number of smolt released in Q4 with 750,000 smolts, which give us a total of 1.1 million fish in the facility. Continued strong support from largest shareholders proven through the latest equity issue of NOK 300 million, enhanced bank debt of NOK 200 million. The ongoing construction work is progressing as planned. And the results so far are very good, both in terms of fish welfare and growth. We are planning for a smolt release between 3.2 million and 3.6 million during the year, with some already arriving this spring. And this volume will be used for both post-smolt and grow-out. We will, in the coming months, return with details related to post-smolt and harvesting for 2026. So with that, we will show you a video from Andoya and then move on to the Q&A. [Presentation]

And then we are ready for the Q&A, and you can submit questions through the webcast solution.

So Bjarne, do we have any questions from listeners?

We have received some questions already. First question, is the smolt for both K0 and K1 purchased from SalMar? And have you noticed any differences between the 2 batches? How is the quality overall?

Yes. Both of the batches is from SalMar, but from 2 different smolt facilities. And I would say that the highlight that we have very, very good quality on both of the batches. The main difference between the batches is that we released the first batch a little bit earlier with higher temperatures and the last batch later with less light and lower temperatures, but both of the batches is performing extremely good so far.

You have worked some time with your new contractor. Do you expect any changes to the overall CapEx guiding for Phase 1 and 2a? Yes. What we can say that we -- the new contractor is now working on completing pools K2 and K4 and the work they have done so far, both the progress and the cost is in accordance with our expectations. What can be the consequence of a power shortage at your facility? And do you have a backup plan?

Yes. That's a very -- that's a scenario that we are well prepared for and trained a lot for. And we have a backup system with several backup generators. So in case that we lose the energy on the site on the island, we have backup generators, and we also have backup generators for the backup generators. So we have a full redundance for the system. And this is -- and during Christmas, we lost electricity many times. But since we have this backup system, and we are well prepared and trained for these scenarios, we have never had any consequence on the operation due to electricity shutdown.

Can you comment on expected harvest volumes in 2026? Do you plan to produce post-smolt in 2026?

Yes. As I said in the presentation, we will come back to the specific details a bit later. But because the harvest volume depends on how much volume we will slaughter in '26 and some part of the volume will also be moved to '27. And it's depending on the growth curve and the expected growth profile on the batches going forward. And yes, we are planning for post-smolt in '26.

Yes. And your question a little bit about the same topic. Does your strong operational outperformance mean that you will harvest earlier or that you will aim for higher weights. Or will you retain flexibility?

What we -- with the growth performance we see so far, that gives us the possibility to harvest earlier and also to have a higher weight on the fish, depending on if we want to harvest fish at a specific weight now and decide on that, that can also give the possibility to release more smolt in 2026. So when you're working with operation with biology, you're always seeking after the best possible solutions. And with our system and our pools, we have a very strong flexibility to always work with the best solutions. So I would say we have the flexibility to do both, yes.

Can you share any insight on water quality and waste collection so far?

Yes, water quality, it's been all the way, very, very good water quality. We do barely see any impact on the CO2 levels. We have a very good segmentation of the organic particles and see also very strong improvements on the water quality in the new pools compared to -- based on the improvements we have done now the last couple of years. So in general, very good water quality so far. We couldn't have had this operational results and biological results without very good water quality.

Next question about the time line. Could you please remind us on the time line for pools K5 to K8?

Yes. We are now in a process where we are negotiating with several entrepreneurs on pool 5 and 7. It's important -- what is important for us is that the pools is ready in the first half of '27 because that is when we have the operational need for these pools. So with the time line we have now, and we have already started on part of the construction on 5 and 6. So a significant amount of the infrastructure is already in place. The technical infrastructure is in place. So it's now all about getting the one entrepreneur that we have or a new one to start the concrete production, the specific concrete production on these pools. So we will be more precisely on the time line when we have finalized the contract with the new entrepreneurs.

Yes. And I believe that was it. We have covered the questions that we got. If there are more questions you would like to ask us, don't hesitate to contact us on mail or phone.

Yes. So please feel free always to take contact with the management of the company if you have any more questions. So with that, we would like to thank you all for your attention today, and have a nice day.