Lerøy Seafood Group ASA (LSG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. Then I have the pleasure welcoming you all to Lerøy Seafood Group's Capital Markets Day in our hometown Bergen. And everything is prepared for you with a nice weather, beautiful rain and wind this afternoon. So I will take you through the strategy -- the overall strategy of Lerøy Seafood. Day 1, we will be here in Bergen. As I said, I will take you through the group strategy. Then Ivar Wulff will take us through up sales and distribution. And Bjarne Reinert will take us through the Farming. And Eldar and Borge will take us through the whitefish. And then Sjur will end this session by talking about capital efficiency for stronger returns. And then we will have some time for question and answer. And at the end, we will have a breakout session where you can meet CEO for Lerøy Spain, Basile Bonnemarie, our technical CTO in Farming and will give us insight into the Chile technology and then Jorgen Skeide, will answer questions about our feed strategy. And then we go to Bekkjarvik later today. And tomorrow, we're going to have a site visit to Kjærelva, smolt facility. Gjengane submerged location, Hestabyneset submerged location and feed center in Austevoll and Lerøy Austevoll, preliminary processing. And then we will be back in Bergen here in the afternoon. Today's presenters and the leadership group that will present and also be available for you today. I don't go in the details on everyone here, but they will be available during the day for you. Then I will take you through the group strategy for the next period. But where are we? What is Lerøy today? We have a long, long history reaching back to 1899. And we have become a fully integrated value chain with a diversified portfolio of healthy products and strong brands serving more than 80 countries around the world. We were listed in 2002. We are 6,000 employees, have a turnover in 2025 of NOK 34 billion and operating EBIT of NOK 2.5 billion and VAP processing volume of 340,000 and harvest volume last year of close to 196,000 tonnes and Wild Catch volume of close to 58,000 tonnes. And we produced 5 million meals per day. Lerøy has a long history and actually going all the way back to 1899, as I said. But the last 23 years, we have had a great development after the listing in Oslo Stock Exchange, a turnover of NOK 2.5 billion and today, NOK 34 billion and average growth of per year of 12%. And we want to continue that development. Lerøy is a global seafood company, of course, based in Norway, where we have the fishery and the salmon farming but have a global reach, like I said, to more than 80 countries. We have a fantastic cost in Norway with the best opportunities to and the best areas to farm salmon, but also the fisheries in -- and the other seafood from Norway has a fantastic quality, which gives us a fantastic opportunity going forward. In Europe, we have invested a lot into sales and distribution and VAP units being close to the customer, developing categories and developing the seafood -- the demand for seafood. And in Asia, we're also expanding. We have a long history in Asia. We were the first to have a branch office in Japan in 1996. The first one to have a branch office in 1997 in China and now also opening other branch offices to be a part of the development in these overseas markets and Ivar Wulff will come back later, going more into detail in what we do. We are a major contributor to Norwegian economy and a reliable supplier of healthy seafood across the world, serving 1.8 billion annually to 80 countries. Sales and processing operations in 18 countries and 1,800 employees in Europe, U.S. and in Asia. We are a company with 3 segments. We have the VAP Sales & Distribution, Farming and Wild Catch and yes, has developed these segments in a good way, the last period. We are about 2,600 people in VAP Sales & Distribution, 1,800 in Farming and 1,000 in Wild Catch, both on the industry part and in the fishery part. We have a clear positive long-term trend for -- we are part of a positive long-term trend for seafood. And it's a growing population, a growing middle class. Awareness of health is getting more and more important. Sustainable produced food will -- yes, the sustainable produced food, Wild Catch at the peak and growth covered by aquaculture, and we'll also do that going forward. So salmon farming, it's been a great development all the way back to 2000 when we started to invest into salmon farming. And now we are around 3.2 billion tonne globally, and we see not a high increase going forward, and we also see that the strong underlying demand is driving the value. So we believe we are in a good place also when it comes to other protein products and it's a resource effective and sustainable protein. For feed commercial rate, it's #1. For edible meat #1, carbon footprint, #1, and also water consumption #1. So fantastic opportunities in the market, and we believe that this is the healthy superfood going forward. Lerøy comes from the sales and distribution part. This has been important part of our development being a global leader, driving demand through category development and market penetration. We will see more of that when Ivar is going to that segment. We have a diversified portfolio, a global reach, high capacity in VAP factories, access to resource and integrate the value chain. And our goal is to create the world's most efficient and sustainable value chain for seafood. And -- but we are not there yet, but we believe that we are on the right track to be #1 and to be a leading and efficient, sustainable value chain for seafood. If we look at the targets presented in 2022 on the Capital Market Day at that time. We are on track of most of our goals that were set at that time. The turnover goal is we are on track. VAP Sales & Distribution done a fantastic job and managed to reach their goal and also the farming side being close to reaching 200,000 tonnes in 2025. And also, we are working steadily and with -- in a structural way. Also, for the reduction in emission we have the target of 2030 under review. But like I said, we are step-by-step working in the good direction to reduce our emissions and we have increased the revenue by 70% and reduced reduction in greenhouse gas emission from 2019 to 2025 by 15%. And then, of course, we had a goal of being #1 in 2025, and we didn't achieve that. But we don't to give up, we believe that we are on the right track when it comes to that. Our biological performances has been our #1 priority for us. I will not go into detail on all this. Bjarne will come back later and go through that. But we see for most of our KPIs is going -- we are improving the right direction for growth rate to valuate quality, superior share and also our MAB efficiency. And yes, with a good performance in 2025. And we worked in a structural way for a long time. We are reporting every quarter on where we are -- and we see also the underlying biology in Lerøy Seafood Group is really improving, and we are at a good place at the moment and which also gives confidence in what's in the future and what will happen going forward. And then the new strategy period from 2025 to 2030 we have a proven execution model with the way that we work with Lerøy Way with continuous improvements and consistently -- which is consistently applied. We have updated strategic framework with 4 key priorities, which is growth, cost, simplifying and leadership. And these strategic priorities is the same for the whole group, the segment, the company and all the units. So it's easy to understand and all our initiatives should be connected to these strategic initiatives. And then we sharpen the financial framework. Sjur will take us through that later. It's a focus on return on investment focus. CapEx discipline, strategic alignment and portfolio thinking. When it comes to reduction in cost, we have set a target of reducing the cost base through initiatives in 2026 by NOK 1 billion, NOK 850 million in farming, NOK 100 million in Lerøy Seafood Group, a group -- on a group level. NOK 80 million in VAP Sales & Distribution and NOK 10 million in Wild Catch. And action connected to this is stronger cost management, improved operational efficiency, feed partnership with [ Cargill ], which also will be covered later today and increased production per FTE and procurement review. And the key enablers are the Lerøy Way, strategic framework and financial framework. Driving growth. We have a growth history. We want to continue that. We have ambitions, like I said, for NOK 50 billion. We have a target of 420,000 tonnes sold in VAP Sales & Distribution in 2030 220,000 tonnes in Farming and NOK EBIT of VAP Sales & Distribution of NOK 2 billion. And action connected to this is increased volume throughput, improved capacity utilization, identified strategic partnership and identify acquisition opportunities. Simplifying our business and strengthening leadership action to simplify. 25 years ago, it was one company in Lerøy. In the beginning of 2020, we were about 70 companies. And of course, that's also a challenge with so many units. And for us to simplify the business system that we have, the way we work with the integrated value chain, implementing -- I say, implementation of Lerøy Way will be crucial here. primary processing going over to VAP Sales & Distribution, optimize group structure, reduced number of legal entities and review business portfolio. And promoting leadership. If we want to achieve our goals, leadership is crucial. The way to lead that we have the power in the leadership, align leadership standardizing onboarding program and training, strategy and recruitment retainment and future work on the future workforce and leadership development. So to summarize our goals, for 2030, 200,000 -- 220,000 tonne volume in farming, NOK 50 billion in turnover, NOK 1 billion in a reduced cost base through initiatives in 2026 and EBIT of NOK 2 billion in VAP Sales & Distribution, and we have a long-term objective of having a return on capital employed of 15%. Then a little bit about Lerøy Way, which is continuously improving and improving our business system. It's, I will say, one of the most challenging task I had in Lerøy. We started in 2018. And to date, we are seeing great results with the implementation of Lerøy Way. And we almost reached our target for 2025 of 100% of the units should have started the implementation of Lerøy Way. We are at 96% and we are also doing assessments to evaluate how we work with the Lerøy Way implementations, and we have a Lerøy Way score. And we started this scorecard reporting in 2023, and we see we are improving year by year. And this is continuously work. We need to be patient, step-by-step, but good to see it's improving and someone is improving and also started earlier than the others, and that is [ Lerøy Sjotroll ], which is a great example of how this is done, and you will see it to more also which has a score of 83% in the Lerøy Way assessment. And it was the best Norwegian lean company in 2024. So a fantastic job of what they have done here. And you will see it tomorrow. And then leadership. Without strong leadership, we will not manage to reach our goal. And I will say also, as with Lerøy Way, the development that we had with Lerøy Way the last 8 years, we also started with the leadership programs in Lerøy. And we've had more than 600 leaders through this program. And we also see that this is connected with a Great Place to Work where we also have seen a great development from 64% in 2020, all the way to 26%, now 71% in 2026. And Lerøy is a Great Place to Work certified company. And when it comes to leadership, we are doing some changes or adding one resource into Lerøy, the group management -- and that is Håvard Klafstad, been Head of Procurement in Lerøy and will, from 1st of April, be as Chief Procurement Officer, great background, worked in Lerøy since 2019 and has experience from oil and gas industry and also as consultancy. And procurement is a key lever for cost reduction. And in 2025, we have a purchase of goods and services of NOK 25 billion. And with the direction that we have going forward to 2030, we will be around NOK 35 billion, but we believe that we -- this can be much lower going forward. And procurement and purchase is a significant potential for cost reduction and with a high cost focus that's in Lerøy today, we -- this is a crucial resource for us. So good luck to Håvard Klafstad when he starts with this job, and we have a great belief in that you will really make a difference going forward. Then some investment highlights. We are a global integrated seafood leader. There is a sustained structural demand growth. There is a significant efficiency and margin upside for Lerøy and harvesting stronger returns from long-term investments will need to come. So yes, thank you very much for the introduction. So then I think we give the world to Ivar.

Thank you very much, Henning. My name is Ivar Wulff, I'm the CEO of value-added processing, sales and distribution, and I'm going to talk around half an hour and give you hopefully, a bit of a deep dive into the segment and what we are up to. And as Henning mentioned, our target is to become the world's most efficient value chain for seafood. And that is what we aim for every day, and we work very hard for. We have this core value chain of salmon and trout integrated all the way to the end consumer in a way through distribution. We have the same thing on wild caught fish from the northern part of Norway. And we are also integrating external suppliers into this value chain as we are going to show you later on. And in total, building an extremely strong and wide package to customers around the globe. We believe that we are the engine in Lerøy's journey. And as Henning mentioned, we had the 340,000 tonnes through our system last year. We have, in core primary processing in Norway, and we have value-added processing in Europe. We have a global sales organization. And it's enhanced by regional strategic customers and partnerships. And we are around 2,600 employees. And I cannot emphasize this enough because it is our employees, my colleagues that create the value together with our strategic partners around the world. And the segment of value-added processing sales and distribution, it is basically divided into 3 different business units. We have the primary processing, it's basically slaughtering and packing of whole fish processing of [indiscernible] of salmon and trout. And this is an area where we are in the process of transferring it from the Farming sector into the value-added processing sector or segment. And yes, I think Bjarne is going to mention that a little bit more, but the whole idea is that in the farming, we are using 22,000 hours producing a fish from brute stock egg until we take it out of the sea to slaughter the fish. And in sales and distribution, we have around 300, 350 hours to capitalize on the same fish that the farmers have done have used 22,000 hours to produce. So it's something about the focus of leadership and management in this, and that is crucial. So that's why we are doing this change. The second part is the sales and distribution. That's basically operational planning, purchase, sale and distribution of mainly the primary processed seafood. That's the whole fish, that's the prurigo fillets with global sales to large retail, foodservice, industrial customers. And then the third business unit is the value-added processing, consumer products. And that's basically the industry we have in Europe, mainly close to the end consumers, close to the key customers in Europe, processing of raw materials into finished consumer products. And that's including wholesale, direct sales to local retail, foodservice and so on. We are serving more than 80 countries around the world. The ones that are in a darker shade of blue here is the countries where we sell our food -- our seafood today. And most of our business is in Europe, 75% of our sales in '25 was to Europe, where we have had an 11% of yearly growth the last 5 years. To the Asia Pacific region, stood for 18% of our sales last year and have a significant growth, 12% is kind of not telling the whole truth about the real underlying growth potential in the Asian market because we sold in the beginning of this period, we sold quite a lot of volumes to whitefish to China for reprocessing and that was sold further on into the U.S. and Europe. But now that is a much smaller operation. And so the underlying growth for the consumption in China, in particular, is huge. And then we have the Americas, where Lerøy have been -- have quite a light footprint for many years, not been a very big part of our operation. But even though we have had some very good strategic partners in the Americas for many, many years. So it's an important area for us. But quite a smaller part of our operation. But even though we have had quite good growth in the last period, it has kind of stagnated the last year and imagine why. And yes, demand is built through market and category development. We are kind of combining strong in-house brands, and we have a lot of externally selected sourced regional specialties. We have a very close cooperation with our strategic customers. We are developing the category, developing products and always aiming to fit the need for the local consumers because not all markets are the same. We need to be close to the consumers and the markets in each region to be able to develop it in the right way. And we have great people working with product development, as you met earlier today, a fantastic crew and the bottom line is that we thrive when our customers gain market share. So we succeed when our strategic customers succeed in their markets. And that's why we are going into this direction to build the category and the demand from the consumers. And Henning mentioned Lerøy Way quite a few times, and I will do that as well because this is the very basis of how we operate today. It's our common business system. It's our culture. And the way we have kind of tried to visualize this in the illustration on your left is through this Lerøy way house, right? So the house is basically resting on the foundation built on our values, honest, open, responsible, creative and our commitment to food safety, to fish welfare to safety for our people, our employees and sustainability. And further on, we have a method of how we're going to approach problems and how we're going to solve our issues through understanding our business case, organizing our people, standardize and improve what we do every single day. And it's true people matching it with technology, we want to create stability improvements and innovation in all our business units. So the aim is, of course, creating a perfect flow with goods through our system, 0 defects and at the top a perfect customer satisfaction. So let's just to understand how this is built. And to show some numbers on what we are doing also, we have some -- we are measuring completed improvement initiatives through our own format. We call it an [ A3 ]. And we have an increase of that every year since 2023, and going forward. We have an increase in Lerøy Way score, and it is kind of combined or it is as a result of what the actions that we really are taking we get improvements. And then our downstream partnerships, that's what is driving our market penetration. So we are trying to create shared value through partnerships with retail and foodservice players. Our partners, they get benefits with the broad access to quality seafood, stable supply chain, reliability. Our focus is to always make sure that their shelves in their shops are full with seafood because if they are empty, you can't really capitalize on an empty shelf. So it is extremely important to have reliability of supply all the time. And of course, as also [ Fredrik Hal ] mentioned earlier and during the lunch, the cross-market innovation is also extremely important to learn from each other. So we kind of bring our partners on a learning journey so they can learn what other are doing in other markets. And of course, we provide a growth capacity. And when it comes to our benefits of it all. Of course, we get a deeper market penetration. We get a broadening of our product assortment. We get more value-added products. We create more value out of our own value chain, on our own raw material. We -- in that way, we kind of create a more robust business model which is designed to support a stable long-term growth. And when it comes to the potential here, we have a lot. We have, of course, a lot of more value-added consumer products, we want to take this journey into new markets to expand and growing with even more partners. And we have an ambition to increase our strategic clients to 70% of our revenue by 2030 and today, it's around 60%. And to achieve all this, also our upstream partnerships are key to volume growth. So today, we have partnerships with independent seafood farmers in Norway. And we have partnerships with providers of local species in regional markets. And in this way, we are kind of for our partners, we are creating a predictability and cost-efficient offtake due to our volume. We are always trying to optimize the price achievement, of course. We are sharing with our partners, our price achievement. They will benefit from Lerøy's scale and platform and, of course, get a long-term reliability. And in other case, our benefit, of course, we get a more predictability of sourcing of scarce volumes. And through higher volume, we reduced cost in the total operation. We get more of a capacity utilization in our operation. And in that way also, we can have an even deeper customer partnership around the globe. So we are kind of adapting our value chain to the regional markets where we operate. In Europe, we are trying to adapt very closely to the end consumer. We have local downstream processing and sales offices. We adapt the product mix to local preferences. We have partnerships with strategic customers, of course. And we have some core products sourced from Norway and specialties and local species sourced locally or regionally. And on the overseas markets, that's more of a B2B, business-to-business focus, where we have our core products sourced from Norway, we try to have feet on the ground in our key markets to be close to the customers and understanding what's going on and facilitating our growing business and we have partnerships with strategic customers. And going into Europe, of course, our integrated value chain and our local presence is what is driving growth for us. So we have an 11% annual growth in Europe in the last 5 years. And you see that mainly our markets is within the European Union, 68% of our revenues there. And Norway is a substantial part of our business with 23%. And then the rest of Europe outside of the European Union and outside of Norway is around 10%. And I can say that, of course, that will be most of Eastern Europe. Maybe the largest market for us outside of the European Union today is Ukraine where we provided last year around 16,000 tons of seafood into the -- into Ukraine. And that is actually something that we are quite proud of because it's kind of our way of supporting them in a way with the ongoing crisis that we are in. And when it comes to positioning and drivers of these markets, of course, I have already mentioned service reliability and a high share of value-added consumer products. We have a lot of innovations with strategic customers. We have a wide sourcing network of a variety of seafood, and we basically sell to all core European markets. So for an example, even though we have not an operation in Germany, we are serving the German markets from Netherlands, where we have a big operation and from Denmark, where we have also a huge operation. And to highlight Asia, because that's a very important and strong or a high-growth market for us. To say it like that, is this actually Japanese cuisine, that is driving the demand for high-quality seafood in the Asian market today. The large or the extreme increase of demand in China, for instance, would not happen without the Japanese cuisine and the Japanese restaurants basically that is established everywhere or Japanese-style restaurants. It's not Japanese driven restaurants. And that's the same thing in the whole of Southeast Asia. Basically, it is spreading a lot. It's always been there, kind of, but it's a huge underlying demand for that. So yes, we have had a quite strong revenue growth in the last years. And again, we have a focus on our core value chain portfolio. And we are adding offices in new growth markets. So the last 2 years, we have started up in Korea, South Korea, in Vietnam, in Thailand and in India now lately. And of course, China is the largest and fastest growing. And quickly developing consumer market probably in the world at the moment, they are for salmon and trout in particularly. We see all flood gates have been opened into the Chinese market now, even though there was all the restrictions were kind of opened in 2018. On paper, there has been a lot of gatekeepers on the way to maybe slow down the free trade and the development of that market for Norwegian products. But now we see last year, all the kind of stops or gates were removed, and it's now a very open and free trade that way. Japan and South Korea are mature markets for the high-quality products that we serve, very important markets for us. And as I said, Thailand and Vietnam. There is definitely a rising middle class in all of Southeast Asia. And they also have a large and active seafood processing industry. And India is maybe the country in the world or the seafood market in the world with the highest potential in the next 10 years, I would say because it has been held back, okay, you can see a lot of cultural stuff and how much seafood consumption they have had, but the tariff situation in India has been holding that market back for many, many, many years. So after the free trade agreement came in place now recently, that 30% tariff that has been on Norwegian seafood will be gradually removed over the next 5 years. And that is definitely something that is catching on, on the -- for the Indian industry and the Indian seafood players basically. So this is a very interesting market going forward. And then going into the -- more of the value drivers and the product flow -- we have the sourcing on top here, if you go to the right illustration, while catch is around 15% of our volume today. Our own Farming production is standing for around 55% of our total volume. And then we have external volume, all kinds of species, including salmon of around 30%. We have the operation of primary processing, as I showed, sales and distribution and consumer products. And we have sales of -- we're around 60% of our sales are primary processed. That means either whole fish or fillet. And we have value-added products where we do more to them than that of around 35%. And our sales are basically retail foodservice and industry. And the first 2, of course, is larger than the latter. And the value drivers into this operation is, of course, volume, as I mentioned, the total sourced volume is important. The sales price that we achieve, which creates our gross profits it's around -- it's about the allocation of -- with the right product to the right customers. How we are optimization of our product mix and, of course, the processing yield of our operation. And then we have the cost, which is extremely important. And that is driven by the capacity utilization, how efficient we are going back to Lerøy Way and our focus around that and the scale effects of our operation. And then we have the capital employed, which is basically resting on our ability to turn our working capital how much fixed assets we have and the goodwill in our operation. So scaling profitability with global seafood demand. We have a growth journey in this segment as well, 8% the last 10 years annually. And it's really -- the last years, we have -- when we really have implemented working in a different way with the Lerøy Way, with improving our operation all the time and introducing a new method and a clear strategy. We have achieved quite a good jump in 2025. And hopefully, we will continue that journey on even better levels. So yes, we have segmented the distribution in the segments where we have sales and distribution as the largest contributor to both turnover and EBIT. And I'll go more into that here. So on the right, you will see the numbers for the sales and distribution where we have a solid volume growth last year and particularly where we sell our core products to European and overseas markets. And the issue here is to have a capital-light operating model and binding as little capital as possible and have a quite okay you could say, a cash situation out of that operation. And then you have the value-added processing consumer products, where we also had a quite significant volume increase to last year. And we also are increasing our profitability going forward. But of course, that's a much more cost-heavy operation. But even though we are working very hard with the capital on that one. We are a growth engine, amplifying value for Lerøy's integrated value chain. So if we start in the upper right corner, we have our upstream volume from whitefish, from salmon and trout farming, which gives us quality, reliability and service. And that is our strength and our proposition to our strategic partnerships on the customer side where we aim for value-driven market leadership. We have a focused portfolio of customers, and we are searching for a culture that is aligned with ours. So it is -- the customers and us are on the same frequency in a way of how we are working. And that again gives us shared a growth. Through our work, we are aiming to create category winners through stronger consumer demand. So when our customers gain market share in their respective markets, then we succeed. And when we succeed with that, we can integrate more external volume into our value chain, and we can share the value with our partners. And in that way, we are creating a wheel of success. And the value amplifier on the illustration on the left -- on the right, you can see the last 5 years, we have an upstream volume from farming and wild caught of around 1.3 million tonnes. And that has generated directly around NOK 12.4 billion the last 5 years. But it's amplified by the operation that we have in Value-Added Processing Sales & Distribution, with about NOK 3.6 billion. And so its uplift the whole group with around 30% in EBIT. And hopefully, we are through the process we are now. We are not -- we're going to fight for those 30% and hopefully increase them going forward. So as Henning mentioned, we are raising the bar again. We have some ambitious targets. We are coming from NOK 1.29 billion in '25 we are aiming for volume growth, which is going to give us as we have in our prognosis, around NOK 300 million more. We have a cost program, both in our processing industry and in our sales and distribution operations, which is going to give us some more. And then we have other possibilities through yes, acquisitions and so on that might help us a little bit more to reach our new target of NOK 2 billion. So that's it. Thank you very much.

Very good. Welcome to the Farming section of the Capital Markets Day. My name is Bjarne Reinert, I'm Chief Operating Officer of Farming, and will spend the next 30 minutes to walk you through how we're building responsible and cost-efficient farming, the progress that we've made and the steps that we are taking to further strengthen our competitive position. As most of you know, we harvested close to 196,000 tonnes of Atlantic salmon and rainbow trout in 2026. This represents a sustainable and extensive food production along the coastline of Norway. And I'm proud of the work that my colleagues whom there are 1,800 of in Farming who've been working effortlessly, and hard with solving problems and managing continuous improvements. Our license capacity remains quite stable at 117,500 tonnes. We are still operating in 3 regions, separated to reduce both biological and financial risk. Our primary value chain is more or less unchanged. We are doing some improvements at the moment. We are restructuring by consolidating the processing activities and one unified leadership, repositioning it to the VAP Sales & Distribution segment. And we believe this reorganization will create synergies. It will give us more leadership capacity to the biological part of our farming value chain, supporting improved performance, supporting scalability and long-term value creation. Over the last 10 years, our volume has increased from 150,000 tonnes back in 2016 to 196,000 tonnes in 2025. However, the volume has fluctuated throughout this period and that is mainly due to biological risk. And the biological challenges that faces our value chain. '25 represents an all-time high harvest volume achieved organically through operational improvements. And if you look at the right on a regional level, we have had the strongest increase in harvested volumes from North and West. Lerøy Aurora has delivered strong performance and strong biological KPIs. In Lerøy Midt, we have had more marginal growth and still untapped potential. And in Lerøy Sjotroll, I would say we have had a more biological turnaround with positive growth and strong trends on key biological KPIs. Despite record volumes, our earnings per kilo has declined, reinforcing the need of both cost performance and further improvements on the biology. On the Capital Markets Day back in '22, I was clear about our main focus, and that was to strengthen the core through operational efficiency. And I'm really happy to see that this work has gained results. We've increased our efficiency on key biological performance indicators like growth rate, the survival rate and the quality of the fish. The growth rate has increased with more than 10%, obviously, important for the volume that we are able to produce but also important because it reduces the exposure time in the more challenging grow phase. The survival rate has increased from 83% to 88%. That's a 30% decrease of mortalities. Obviously, very happy to see that we are gaining such improvements on the survival of the fish and fish welfare is at the core of what we care about. And the quality has increased from 89% to 91%. It gives us a better price achievement in the markets, and it's an indirect KPI on the fish welfare and fish health. And these KPIs are important to increase our utilization of one of the most scarce resources that we have, the maximum allowed biomass. It's increased from 1.6 to 1.82 tonnes, a ton of capacity. That's higher efficiency and that's an efficiency rate that is well above the benchmark of the industry. So these key indicators are all prerequisites for an efficient farming operation and has provided us with a solid foundation for further improvements and further growth. If I said it takes approximately 22,000 hours to produce a salmon. There are a few biological value chains that has that long production time. I think it's on the forestry that maybe beats us. And that's 22,000 hours where we cannot afford material mistakes. In Farming, I've got 1,800 colleagues. They show up every day, sometimes at night working effortlessly to solve problems, to gain results. And the sum of our improvements are the sum of both small and large measures. In addition to the daily operations, we've done some step changes at key areas. Henning was mentioning this in his presentation. The genetics lays the foundation for what's biologically possible to achieve in our value chain. And we've been working hard with our partner to select the strongest possible material tailor made for our operational needs. To protect this foundation, we've optimized our row incubation protocols. That might seem quite operationally detailed, but it's of critical importance for full cycle biological performance. Our smolt production has been strength to stricter operating protocols and to target the investments in infrastructure capacity to ensure consistent execution. And tomorrow, you will at least be able to visit Kjærelva, it's one of our large [indiscernible] facilities, delivering all the Atlantic salmon that we need for overproduction in this Western region. And the reason why we have done so much work on the land phase of our cycle is because a lot of the determinants for a successful full cycle production is laid onshore. So working to control the factors that we can influence and manage making them systematically has been crucial to gain biological improvements. In the grow-out phase, we've worked and primarily through preventing the needs of sea lice treatment is key. And we've invested significantly in shielding technology. I will get more into the details on that later on. And we are also having a breakout session with Basile, where we go more into the details on the shielding technology in broad. But that measures taken to improve fish welfare and its measures to improve our performance in the challenging rollout phase. Finally, over the past years, we have been worked thoroughly with our methodology, the Lerøy Way, a common way of working. That's based on a disciplined KPI structure, accountability and consistent execution across the segment. Although biology is key to our efficient value chain, it must, at the same time, be cost efficient. And while we are delivering strong biological performance or cost performance compared to the best cost performing peers regionally is not competitive. We are, therefore, having structural cost disadvantages. And closing this gap and restoring cost competitiveness is our most important priority going forward. Nevertheless, I believe operational improvements that we have delivered are positioning us well to take further steps going forward. We will continue to work systematically with our ability to deliver both stable and robust biological performance. Fish welfare is our license to operate, and we are ambitious in defining what best practice should look like. Sea lice is the key regulator must be maintained at low levels and mainly through prevention. And we will optimize the returns on the significant investments that we have been making in shielding technology. And within these boundaries, cost competitiveness is a prerequisite for a profitable operation and for future growth. And this is where we see the greatest potential. So looking ahead to 2030, there are 4 priorities. We will increase the harvested volumes from 196,000 tonnes back in 2025 to 220,000 tonnes in 2030. And that's a 25,000 tonnes increase and will mainly be delivered through increased operational efficiency, so mainly organically. We have initiated a comprehensive cost program targeting NOK 850 million in reductions in 2026. That's equivalent to approximately NOK 4 a kilo and we'll first be seen in our cost to stock, then on the harvest costs from late '26 and later on. We aim at reducing the biological feed conversion ratio from 1.2 to 1.12 and improvements in shielding technology and enhanced biological control will be a key levers. And most importantly, we are ambitious, and we will aim at establishing a cost leadership in all the regions where we operate. I believe these targets are realistic, but they are, at the same time, demanding. And they will require systematic improvements across every part of the Farming value chain. Over biological performance is not driven by luck or by short-term factors. It's a result of hard work. It's a result of the competence that we have in the organization. It's a result of the capabilities that we have and structure and discipline. And I believe what truly has made a difference is our governance model, Lerøy Way with clear and defined KPIs at all leadership levels with the fine meeting structure with fixed follow-up cadence, with setting immediate actions when we have deviations and by continuously improve through structured problem solving. This engine has taken years to build. And what we are not changing is to elevate the cost KPIs at our performance agenda. At the same time, we're enhancing our performance on 3 key areas: that's feed cost, biological conversion ratio and our fixed cost base. I will come a bit more into the details on that. Feed is our single largest cost components and therefore, one of the most powerful levers in our cost program. And our strategic partnership with [ Cargill ] is the key enabler. That was established back in 2024 and covers approximately 70% of oversourced feed volume. We've implemented a performance-based incentive model to align our partner with our continuous cost-reducing initiatives. And through collaboration, through optimized formulations, the increase of the use of poultry by products, we are targeting structural savings of NOK 1.4 per kilo of feed in 2026. Today, it's approximately NOK 0.3 a kilo has been realized and the full financial effect of this measure will be seen gradually through 2026. Given the scale of feed in our cost base, improvements translates directly into material impact on our harvest costs and our competitiveness. Since '23, we've invested more than NOK 1.2 billion in shielding technology. And by the end of '25 approximately 40% of our stocked biomass was shielded. The biological impact has been tangible. We have reduced the needs of sea life treatments. Significantly, we have improved fish welfare, and we have gained a higher superior share. We have also strengthened our regulatory position and improved our growth potential. However, these investments has also brought us some challenges. And the main challenge is that the biological FCR has not met our expectations. We have therefore, initiated a targeted improvement program to increase our feed conversion efficiency. And this program includes equipment upgrades, it includes site portfolio optimization and scaling of the best practices across submerged sites. Over time, we expect these measures to be effectful. We expect improved biological FCR and lower unit costs as we fully optimize on the shielding platform. So the main priority now is to fully capitalize on the investments that we have been making. And therefore, investment levels in new shielding technology will be lower in 2026 compared to '24 and 2025. In the breakout session, Basile will go more into the details with regards to our shielding technology. To sum up on cost, addressing our cost position is being executed through a structural and ambitious cost program. Our target is NOK 850 million in reductions in '26 and that's driven by 3 main levers. The feed price effect is secured through the partnership with [ Cargill ], the FCR improvements is secured through optimization of the shielding technology and through optimizing both smolt quality and biological control. And operational efficiency measures or cost base efficiency includes higher FTE productivity. It includes reduced reliance on external services and a more disciplined procurement process across regions and across categories. Over the coming months, we will reach out to all our suppliers and expect them to take part an effort to identify cost reducing initiatives and to improve cost position. And by doing so, they can position themselves to be part in securing a role to supply Lerøy and our future growth. We are targeting 220,000 tonnes of slaughter volumes towards 2030. That will primary be driven by increased biological performance through higher survival rates, through faster growth cycles and through improved quality and improved harvest weight. That will enable profitable organic growth. It will increase the utilization rate of our MAB capacity. It will improve -- be improved by sea lice control. to reduce regulatory constraints and to enhance our operational efficiency. In addition, there is an upside potential in license acquisitions and in selective M&As. But however, organic growth remains our priority as it delivers the highest returns on our invested capital. And the growth will come on a lower and more competitive cost base. So to conclude, we have a clear strategy for both responsible growth and cost-efficient farming, growth by delivering industry-leading biology performance, cost by establishing cost leadership in all the regions where we operate through structural improvements, through optimization of technology and through strict operational and financial discipline. Simplification by reducing complexity, increasing our speed and focusing on the things that creates the most value. And leadership because our people are the most important resource that we have and the key to consistent execution. With this strategy, we believe we are reducing the risk. We are strengthening our competitiveness and we are positioning ourselves to capture on the opportunities that lies ahead of us. Thank you.

We will have a short break, so we'll start again quarter to 3. [Break]

Yes. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Wild Catch season section. My name is Eldar Farstad, I am CEO in Lerøy Havfisk, [ Controller ] Company.

And I'm Borge Soleng, CEO of Lerøy Norway Seafoods. The Wild Catch segment is based on the [ troller ] company, Lerøy Havfisk and Lerøy Norway Seafood, which operates the land-based industry. Lerøy Havfisk is the largest fishing company in Norway. We have approximately 8% of the whitefish quotas. And while the most important species in whitefish is called saithe and haddock. And we also fish [ radfish and black halibut ]. And we have 7 licenses for shrimps fishery in the [ Barents ] Sea and 1 license for streams in [ Greenland ].

As for Norway Seafoods, we have 10 sites spread along the coast of Northern Norway. In total, we are about 1,000 employees, 400 in Havfisk and 600 in Lerøy Norway Seafoods. When Lerøy took over Norway Seafoods, this was more or less only about fillet production and whole fish. Since then, we have tried to diversify the production. So we have made significant changes to some of the plants. If you take a short trip through the coast, we can start in [ Lofoten in Stanson ]. That was a big fillet plant. It has been transformed to ready-to-eat production. So Norway are producing fish burgers, fish cakes and so on in that plant. And then that also makes it a very sustainable plan for using the rest of the raw material from the fillet production. Then we have [indiscernible], still a big fillet producer, but focusing on frozen products and mainly from frozen raw material. Going north, we come up to the blue ring with the 2 dots in [ Hammerfest ], where we have 2 plants [indiscernible], mainly a purchasing station for buying fish, but also a small fillet production. And then we have [indiscernible] focusing on right and salted cold and safe. We have [indiscernible] the next [ being ], which is a quite diversified plant, but our crab center. So crab has been more and more important for [indiscernible]. And the last [indiscernible], which is the last big fillet factory, focusing on fresh products and producing from fresh raw material. Then we have [indiscernible], which are both purchasing station, buying a lot of fish, but also have the capacity to produce fillet, if needed. Both of them have been shut down for the last years because of the fillet market. So we are mainly focusing on purchase there. And last, [indiscernible], 2 small purchasing stations.

Lerøy Havfisk and Lerøy Norway Seafood are linked together through political regulation linked to all quotas. We have delivery obligation and we also have activity obligation to specific places in the north. The fisheries in Norway are subjected to strict political regulation. You must be what we call an active fisherman to be qualified to own fishing licenses. That means that you have -- must have your main income from fishery and you also have to participate actively in the fishing to be qualified. But Lerøy Havfisk as a part of our listed company, we have exception from this legal requirement. And therefore, we have obligation towards the land industry. We have delivery obligation on 80% of our card and 60% of our haddock. That means that we have to give these -- who are on sorry. Those who are entitled under the delivery of obligation. The first right to buy the fish based on a price that is an average for the last 14 days. And we also have the activity obligation to specific places, there are 6 production plants in 4 [indiscernible] and 2 in [indiscernible]. And that means that we have to maintain a certain level of activity regardless of how the quotas and framework changes. And that is taken care of the activity obligation is taken care of by Lerøy Norway Seafood in everyday business. But this obligation ties us together and mean that we must operate in 1 unit in the value chain and especially when it comes to catch and production of cod. The graph on the left shows when and from what region Lerøy Norway Seafood buys their cod. And the red area shows deliveries from the own troller fleet. And also shows a normal operational pattern for the toller fleet over the year when it comes to catch a cod. We start at the beginning of the year, delivering fresh cod to the factories in Norway Seafood. And when the coastal fleet season starts in February, we are focusing on fishing other species like saithe and haddock. And we also fish some card, but that is frozen. And Norway Seafood are also buying some of that catch for production in the second half year. And as you can see in the costal season from February till May, there are large volumes delivered from the coastal fleet. And in the second half of the year, there are a few deliveries from external fleet and the production plans are totally dependent on delivery from the troller fleet. On the right, you can see where we operate the troller fleet during the year. And in the second half year of second half year, the card fishery takes place far north in the [ Barents ] Sea. Normally South of [indiscernible] and the area around [ Bear Island ]. And from the fishing ground to the factory in [indiscernible], it takes 20 hours. And that is challenging when we are delivering fresh fish, of course. From the fishing ground to the production plant 20 hours, then we have to unload the vessel 20 hours back to the fishing ground. And that result ineffective fisheries and high fuel consumption. So what we are doing in our operation is that we freeze the catch at the beginning of the trip and ice it on tubes in the last part of the trip normally the last 4 days, depends on the need for raw material on the production plant. And of course, that makes the fishery more profitable. The cod [indiscernible] task has been reduced, as you can see here year-by-year. And especially the last 5 years has been challenging and especially for the land-based industry. We are now at the lowest level since 1990. But the troller fleet has compensated for much of the decline by changing the catch mix. This, combined with significantly higher prices, has meant that catch revenues has been maintained and even increased. The catch value and also the profitability has been increased. And regarding the outlook for the quotas, the scientists don't give any specific forecast or advise for more than 1 year ahead. That is normally given at the end of June for the coming year. But the final decision about the quotas are settled at the end of the year by the primary of fishing and it is settled after negotiation with the Russians because we share the quotas of cod and haddock in the Barents Sea with Russians. And what I have said, they have not given any specific advise, but I have said that we think that we have reached a button and they expected to be a slight increase in -- for 2027 when it comes to cod. For haddock, we expect a more stable situation. The haddock quotas has increased by 18% this year, and we expect a more stable situation for going forward. And the prices, all the whitefish prices have had a strong development, as you can see here, and especially in 2025. Cod prices has increased a bit more than 30% last year. And also the haddock and the sale price has increased even more. I think all the whitefish species had a record high prices last year. The only species with a more flattened price development is shrimps. But we are now experiencing increased demand for shrimps. So we think that this year, the shrimp prices will be much higher than last year. And the catch mix and the catch composition for Lerøy Havfisk has changed as a result of the reduction in cod and haddock quotas. The cod quotas has been reduced by as much as 74% during the last 5 years, 74% in 5 years. And if you go back 10 years, 50% our catch was cod. And for -- sorry, for 2025 is down to 15%. But we have managed to compensate for much of this reduction by increasing the catch of other species. Such as we have increased the catch of saith. We have increased the catch of radfish, and we have increased the catch of shrimps. And investments in new vessel has also improved efficiency and increased value creation, especially in shrimps where we have consumers packaging on board. The increase in price, together with the change in mix has compensated for much of the reduction and it also -- we also managed to increase the catch value and the profitability in the troller fleet, but this has been much more challenging for the land-based industry and for Norway Seafood because they are more dependent on cod than we are.

While the prices has helped Havfisk, it's been a huge challenge for Lerøy Norway Seafood. Both the prices and the availability of raw material has been a real challenge since 2021. And we can see the product volume development, declining by 54% since 2017. So this is the obvious consequence of the quota development. But this means that there is a significant spare capacity. So when the quotas come up again, we have a huge potential for profitability growth by utilizing that capacity. While the product volumes have declined, we have managed to retain the product values. And much of the reason for that is the reduction of fillet volume. We see that instead of only producing fillets, we have added new categories like VAP, value-added products, crab, ready-to-eat products and salted and ripe cod and saithe. So this means that all the eggs are still not in the same basket, which is a good thing. So we have done a lot of investments and spent a lot of time and effort to achieve this. But this means that we are now ready for quota recovery in a much better way than we was before. But as Eldar said, we need to see this as one unit. So when the prices rise, the result at the EBITDA level in half is offsetting the losses in the land industry. So we can see that over time, EBITDA is quite stable for the segment. When it comes to EBIT, it's a bit different, and that is due to all the investments done. Havfisk has done significant upgrade of the troller fleet for more efficient fishery and higher-value products. And when Lerøy took over the land industry, there was a huge maintenance backlog so we have spent a lot of money on getting the plans to a level that is more or less a license to play. But we have also spent a lot of money on upgrading factory to be able to produce new categories. Bjarne and Ivar and Henning has already talked a lot about Lerøy Way. The fish industry in general is immature and kind of old fashioned. Since we took over Lerøy Norway Seafoods or Norway Seafoods, the way the plants are being run, organized and managed is completely different, it's completely changed by the introduction of Lerøy Way. Inspired by the [ Toyota ] Production System, our lean thinking, Lerøy Way has completely transformed the way these plants are running. Even though the billings are pretty much the same, entering a plant in Lerøy Norway Seafoods now is like entering a completely different plant than it was in 2017. The level of understanding and control of the process here are at a completely different level, and continuous improvement is now a natural part of daily work. And this has led to significant improvements in underlying KPIs. But the full potential of this will not come to effect before the volume comes up again. So when the quota comes up, we will really see or realize the potential that we now have worked on because this has not been a quick fix. Improving an operation in a way like this is not a low-hanging fruit. It's incredibly hard work over time. So we have spent years to achieve this. But when we measure the underlying KPIs in our plants, we can see how we have improved the different part of the operation. So we think we will harvest this when volume raises again. Variation is kind of the name of the game in the wild fish industry and especially raw material and industry activity is mainly based on raw material. If you don't have any raw material, you can't do anything. And in this business, the variations are severe. We have the quota variations over year that Eldar showed on the graph. We have the seasonal variations, a lot of fish in some short months and then very little fish the rest of the year. And we have the variation from day-to-day based on weather and wind and fisheries. And this makes it incredibly hard to predict the results. The clearest indication of the effect of volume rates, I think we can see, if we look back at the only year during Lerøy's ownership where the quota has raised, and that was from 2020 to 2021. And the increase in profitability over these years, I think, clearly indicates the potential in these segments. From '20 to '21, we had a 20% increase in quota, and Havfisk improved their EBIT by NOK 66 million and Lerøy Norway Seafoods improved EBIT by NOK 69 million. So this is a clear indication what will happen when the quota hopefully turns back again and starts to increase. And during this time, we can also see the way the raw material costs have increased while the operational cost has decreased. As Eldar said, no one can guarantee how the quota will develop. But history in this business has been running for thousands of years, and we have always seen these variations. So we hope and expect that we, once again, will see the same trend as we have seen earlier. It will come up again to high levels. And with the operational efficiency, both on sea and on land, we should be well positioned to utilize the potential in the years to come. A little bit about modeling, Eldar.

Yes. Trying to make a simple model for how to calculate the operational EBIT in the segment. And if we start with the most important value driver in the troller fleet, that's the catch value for operating day. And we have some costs that are 100% correlated to the catch value. And that is personnel cost and freight packaging. They are always 36% on the catch value. And we use approximately 40 million liters of marine gas oil in a normal year. And other operating costs are NOK 320 million. The fuel costs and the fishing equipment and maintenance are more or less linked to the number of operating days in a year. In last year, the fuel cost was NOK 280 million. And if you -- and the other cost of NOK 320 million. And if you deduct the minus EBITDA in the land industry and the depreciation and amortization and NOK 275 million, you got NOK 270 million, which was the EBIT for last year. But if you look at the cost categories in the troller fleet and Lerøy Norway Seafoods is shown as a combined EBITDA. As I said, the most important value driver and the engine in our profitability is catch value per operating day. If we take 1 year and an average for our [ draw ] loss, petrol has approximately 300,000, they must have a catch value for 300,000 per day to break even on an EBITDA level, 300,000 to break even. And if you increase the catch value higher than 300,000, then the company has a profit of 64%. And that's because we still have a crew cost on 30% and freight packaging on 6%. As on 36%, they are following the catch value 100%, and the profit is 64%. So as we -- and all the other costs are already covered when we are at 300,000. So catch value over 300,000 gives 64% of profit. So if we try to link that to the figures for 2025, we had NOK 674 per vessel per operating day. And that's approximately 370,000 higher than breakeven, 370,000 per day. And if you take 64% of that 370,000, that's for one vessel and you divide that figure with all our operational day was approximately 3,100 , then you got the EBITDA for the troller fleet. Simple as that, and that's also difficult. But the thing is that the 300,000 will be a variation in that and especially when the oil prices is going high, like they are doing now. So -- but this is a simple way to calculate on an annual basis. And as you can see here, we have maintained -- we have been able to maintain the catch value and also the profitability despite the reduction in quotas. We had a little down here in 2024, but we are now back on track in '25. And the best guess for this year is the same level as we achieved in 2025.

A quick look at initiatives for profitability recovery. If we look at the targets for 2030, continued increase in operational efficiency is obviously a main focus. Operational excellence is what it's all about when it comes to making this segment profitable. So we will continue that journey. And then, of course, the quota coming up again, we expect will give us a much better framework for achieving profitability. [ HSE ] is a strong focus both in Lerøy Seafoods Group and also in our companies. And we are proud to be able to tell that we run in an entire year without any lost and injuries last year. So we reached the milestone of H1 at 0, which was good. And we will continue to have that focus. And then we will continue to try to source more raw material from Havfisk into the land industry. And the key drivers to achieve this is cost discipline, catch volume utilization, throughput, fleet capabilities and of course, at last Lerøy Way. Wild Catch is an important part of Lerøy's value chain because it makes Lerøy a complete supplier of seafoods. We can offer a bigger range of products, making Lerøy more attractive to strategic customers globally. And we can offer predictable and stable access to even whitefish. So as Ivar said, Wild Catch segment contributes now to 15% sold downstream, and there is more potential. So to sum up then, strategic access to high-quality whitefish resources. We secured long-term access to scarce and regulated whitefish resources through our rights at sea. We have proven flexibility in utilizing a wide range of species in Havfisk. We now have a highly efficient trailing operation, our plants are trimmed and diversified and ready for volume increase. And we are a key contributor to Lerøy's integrated value chain. So we are well rig for quarter recovery. I think that's it.

Yes. Thank you.

So this is a fantastic picture, and it shows a lot on where we are. So we are in an industry with structural demand growth because our products are healthy. But more than anything, they are extremely tasty. And that's a good place to be, and we are very proud of our products. Still, demand itself does not create value. So I'm Sjur Malm, I'm CFO in Lerøy and I'm here, and my job today is actually quite simple. That is to show how our strategy execution transfer into increased free cash flow generation and increased returns. So that's what I'm going to do over the next 25 minutes. Firstly, some more comments on where we are. So looking at the last 5 years, we have continued our structural revenue growth. That growth has been present for decades, and that's quite unique across any industry. That growth is driven by structural demand. but it's also driven by Lerøy's strategy and our strategic choices. As has been highlighted previously today, our upstream volumes, they secure access to volumes, guarantee quality, traceability, and they open the opportunity for strategic partnerships and the opportunity to sell more volumes, penetrating market with more value-added products. So growth opportunity in Lerøy remains very strong. Then if you look at the profitability, the picture is a bit more mixed and also highlight on the lateral bullet point, we see returns, and this payout is lower than what is our ambition. And we have room to improve on cost I think it's also fair to say that turn in the last 3 years is not due to poor execution. Key reasons for lower returns last year is a lower salmon price and also that we have invested a lot, which I will return to. And why does that matter? Because it shows also the opportunity ahead. Summing up in a simplified chart, what has been presented today. This is then the sum of operational EBIT across all segments. So Ivar has shown us the impressive downstream development, which has been very strong recent years. Borgen, Eldar just talked us through the resilience in the Wild Catch segment. despite extremely challenging quarters. And Bjarne has shown us that the biological improvements in Farming are vast and very strong and that we are excellently positioned for cost reduction. So from this picture, we can also see one point out of this integrated value chain, and that is stability. So our integrated value chain beyond growth opportunities, adds stability. And it adds stability without taking away the upside, which comes from lower cost in Farming from -- in a tight salmon market without taking away the potential upside from a quota recovery, we're taking away any upside when it comes to continued growth downstream. So I also have to make some comments on the salmon market. But it's fair to say before I do that, that our cost -- our strategy for coming years is not based on some optimistic market scenario. It's based on what we can control. Growth cost capital discipline. But it is fair to say that the fundamentals also in the salmon market are attractive. So I've spent now 15 to 20 years in the seafood industry, also analyzing a bit. And the overarching team looking on salmon in recent years has been the lack of new license capacity and a lack of opportunity to grow. And that has not changed. But what we are seeing, and I'll first add then is this chart is showing the last decade, a 12-month rolling supply growth of salmon, last decade. We can see some years in '22, '23 with extremely challenging biology and no growth. And we can see recently the significant uptick in 12-month rolling supply growth. And just now, here we stand is actually the highest supply growth in a decade. So it's extremely high supply growth, now highest in a decade. That is due to catching up some of the challenges we saw in '22, '23 and through the biological vast improvements that Lerøy has seen and that the Norwegian industry have seen. And it's also, as this is global volumes, we will also see improvements in other places. I am 100% certain that such improvements cannot last. And if you look on external analysts' view on that supply growth, it's impossible to say which day it will happen or which week it will happen, but we are talking months and not years before that 12-month supply growth will decline. Then I've added here and this one is inverted. So it's a little bit technical, but I'm a [ hearty ] guy. So when this one goes down, it actually goes up and this is inverted price development, 12-month rolling. And I added it that way just to show you the high correlation. So this market is strong. Demand is strong. We are currently at the highest 12-month rolling supply growth in a decade. That is about to come down. And at least from our point of view, the market fundamentals looks strong. Then obviously, the key task today is how to connect business strategy into our financial strategy. And that is actually quite simple. And so our aim out of this strategy is to grow free cash flow, simple as that. Because cost reduction, which we're talking about, they will support cash generation. Cash generation will support growth. Disciplined capital allocation will convert cash into higher returns. And from this higher free cash flow generation, our priority is clear, we would like to see stable and growing dividends. It's very important for us to remain investment grade, and we will look into selective high-return investment opportunities. We also have some enablers which have already been covered today, and I will cover a bit more on Lerøy Way on capital allocation. So if you look into Lerøy Way, built here like a house, as already described by Ivar and others. So beyond the basis of our values, beyond the basis, including the food safety, fish welfare, security for employees and sustainability. Make no mistake. The reason to why we are doing this is to increase profitability and to increase return, that is the core objective of this work. We can do that through 5 levers. And obvious one is increasing demand. So if we are god in quality, if you are reliable, if we see customer satisfaction, it is obvious that, that will increase demand. And Ivar shown some examples of that already. When it comes to increased capacity, this is a toolbox for how do we operate more efficiently, both with our people and our assets. So we have plenty of examples already of increased capacity. As Borge highlighted, some of the increased capacity is not yet being used. So there is more growth opportunity in our capacity. Another lever is increased gross profit, and we have so many examples of how we, through this Lerøy Way toolbox can increase yield which is as simple as how much high-quality product you get out of 1 kilo raw material. And finally, we can reduce cost and we can reduce capital by it. So what does this mean? It means that this work on Lerøy Way is helping our P&L., it is reducing our balance sheet and it's increasing our free cash flow. And that means that Lerøy way is actually perhaps the most important enabler also for our financial strategy. A key component of Lerøy Way is understanding which problems should be solved and how should we solve them in a way that they don't occur again. So one KPI for this is just looking into how many of these problem-solving initiatives have we done. So in 2021, it was 38. You can see in 2025, which was almost one every day. So that's a big change over the last year. We made some calculations down to left because all these initiatives have an estimate on profitability generation. And these are making a significant impact to increase our profitability. But also, as has been highlighted, among others by Bjarne, we are now moving the focus on this system more on cost and capital but, and it will work. So that's the key focus for coming years. And then before we move on a bit on capital allocation. This is also a bit of a complex slide but I get to it. I think the key point of what you are seeing and hearing today is that what we are talking about is not 1 initiative or 10 initiatives. What we are building is a system, a business model, which compounds over time. That is our aim. So when 4 strategic key focus areas, combined with Lerøy Way into thousand of problem solving, increasing our capacity utilization, lowering our cost, that is a strategy that will enhance financial performance. And that, together with a strict discipline on the use of capital, will enhance returns. And this is a system that over time, which will compound. Some comments on our capital base today. This shows the distribution between the different segments. So we have around NOK 28 billion in book values employed. Farming is the most important. We have around NOK 4 billion to NOK 5 billion in each and value-added processing in Wild Catch and NOK 18 billion in Farming. And obviously, we need to make this capital work harder because we are not happy with the return we've seen in recent years. In Farming, we have highlighted the potential for cost reduction and growth and there is high return opportunities in new technology, which one example is [ Apadaz ]. In value-added sales and processing, we believe there are potential for higher capacity utilization of what we have, there is potential for incremental smaller investments in a factory we have, and there is potential for smaller acquisitions. We have good returns, and we would like to continue to grow that business. In Wild catch, that's well covered in previous section, but obviously, we have a lot of spare capacity. So this will be a lot about how can we utilize our capacity even better. And then some comment on associated companies. And we have more than what's shown here, but in particular, we own 2 assets, which we have 50% of. One is [ Scottish Seafarms ], that is U.K.'s second largest farming company. It's well positioned in U.K. It's through the full value chain. 2025 was a particularly challenging year. And we have clear and Scottish Seafarm has clear targets for growing in the coming years. Guidance for next year is 43,000 tonnes and the potential beyond that is even higher. And we expect Scottish Seafarms to contribute significantly more to [ Audetel ] in the coming years. Also, we have [ sales stock ], which is a large well board company over 7 mostly very new wellboat, nice operation, around NOK 200 million a year in EBITDA, a good company. Giving some more comments then on CapEx. So we have invested a lot in the last 30 years in developing the value chain that's been covered, and we have invested even more in the last decade. This goes particularly into Farming. In Farming today, we have 3 modern processing facilities along the Norwegian coast line. You will visit one of them tomorrow at Austevoll. In Farming, we have 3 state-of-the-art modern recycling facilities for smolt, 1 in each region, and you will visit one of them tomorrow. And we have also invested significantly in new technology. And we have not taken fully out the potential of these investments yet. In Wild Catch was just covered. We have made investment in new boats to increase efficiency of the fisheries. And also, there was a massive maintenance backlog in the land-based industry, which is now filled. And while doing that, we've also opened 4 new products. So we are will also in the future make growth investment as long as they have high return. We have NOK 1 billion in maintenance CapEx, but we are shifting a bit from building capacity to harvesting returns. So what are the drivers then? What have you learned today on value driver in Lerøy and led and there are quite a few, and I will not repeat all of them. But I think it's important to know that we are exposed to the salmon market and the development there. In addition to that, we have value amplification opportunities, as Ivar has highlighted in the downstream segment, and we are exposed to Wild catch. And I think some key points from this is that it offers growth opportunities, greater stability and capital allocation opportunities. And this stability is key also to our financial strategy. For two of our objectives is one of them is stable and increasing dividend and the stability in business model is a perfect match with that strategy. We will also, going forward, aim to have a stable and growing dividend. Secondly, it's important for us to remain investment grade. And obviously, this stability reduces risk significantly. And over time, that should lower cost of capital, and that matters. So a bit more on how will this translate into growing free cash flow because that's the main message today. Beyond stability, our strategy will convert into growing free cash flow. And this has been well covered. In farming, we will see volume growth together with cost reduction in a tight market. That should increase free cash flow generation. Value-added sales and processing, Ivar has highlighted his focus on a capital-light model. It generated significant cash in 2025 and the continued growth should continue to do so. In Wild Catch, we are at relatively stable EBITDA, but we are very well positioned for a quota recovery. We do not know when it comes, but if its history repeats itself, it is a matter of time. And this increased free cash flow gives the opportunity then to increase our dividends and look into investment opportunities, if it's CapEx or acquisition, which have high returns. This sums up a bit guidance and our long-term ambitions. And just to repeat, farming, we will cut costs significantly in 2026. We will, through that cost focus and growth, be #1 cost player in all the regions we operate by 2030. In value-added sales and distribution, we will grow our volumes by 25%, growth driven by interaction with our strategic customers downstream, but also by sourcing upstream. That has the potential to reach our EBIT target of NOK 2 billion by 2030. And on Wild Catch, we are very well positioned to grow when the quota returns. Across all our segments, we will have efficient capital allocation to higher return opportunities. And this sums up to this. And I would say this is actually not the optimistic scenario. It's just a mechanical calculation of executing our strategy. So this shows our return on capital employed last 3 years. It is obvious that NOK 1 billion cost cut, which is targeted here today will increase cash generation and will enhance return. It is obvious that if we reach our NOK 2 billion target downstream, it will enhance our return. Increased volume in farming on existing licenses will enhance return. And beyond that, we are exposed to other drivers, which includes quota recovery. It includes also the fact that NOK 1 billion is not the end of our work with cost. We will continue that work going forward. And it includes the exposure to a very tight salmon and truck market for coming years. So trying then to sum up before we open for Q&A. So Ler�y today is a global integrated seafood leader. We have a value chain from -- in both redfish and whitefish all the way to the consumer. That gives us good growth opportunities with key strategic customers. It gives us stability and it gives us opportunity to allocate capital at high return opportunities across the value chain. That value chain is in a market which is positioned for strong demand growth. That's been like that for decades. It will continue. Our strategy is obviously to utilize that. And then we have highlighted that there is upside to our operation. We will reduce cost. We have seen massive improvements in biologic in farming. We are focusing on keeping that, obviously, while reducing cost. We will continue to grow downstream, and there is a potential in Wild Catch. So we are very well positioned to see significant efficiency gain and margin expansion. Lastly, I've highlighted our focus on capital discipline. And obviously, the key here is to grow, to generate increased free cash flow, increase return, and that should give sustainable also shareholder returns over time. So thank you for your attention, and then we open for questions in a couple of minutes.

There is opportunity for questions also online. But of course, we will start with you guys joining us today. So are there any questions in the audience?

Henrik Knutsen, Pareto Securities. You mentioned 220,000 tonnes in 2030. Could you give a split per region?

You like to answer that, Bjarne?

No.

Well, I think we will return to that. But I think if you look at license capacity utilization in different regions, you will get some indication. So -- but overall, we expect to grow then to 220,000 towards 2030.

What are the sort of lowest hanging fruits to add 25,000 tonnes to where you were in 2025?

I can answer that. But to late last question, we have the highest utilization rate of our capacity in North in Ler�y Aurora, well above 2 tonnes, a tonne of capacity. And the rate or efficiency ratio is a bit lower in mid and in West, but they are quite equal. So the largest growth will come from mid and western part of our operations. The improvements will come mainly from two levers. First one is the growth rate that will increase from the level that we have today of 108 to 120. And we are also aiming at increasing the survival rate of the fish, so that will be the second lever. And of course, harvest weights are crucial to deliver volumes. So that will also contribute to the volumes added.

And you didn't speak too much about closed containment systems, but could you elaborate on how much of this growth that you expect to come from these types of investments?

It depends on how we perform. But of course, it will make us able to utilize some of the capacity that has been withdrawn in production Area 3 and 4. So that's a part of the volume that will be gained through a closed containment system. The other part is increased biological performance of the rest of our growth portfolio by stocking larger smolts, by turning the production cycle and increasing the production from the sites that are best performing.

And one last question for Ivar. You mentioned the importance of the Japanese cuisine driving growth in Asia, but you also mentioned India having the highest potential. How is the Japanese cuisine sort of trend in India?

Yes. For now, it is not very large or not close to what we see in the rest of the Asian market. So you can see that is also what is a huge potential for further growth for the -- especially for the salmon and trout industry. We have a huge potential market in India that is not utilized at the moment, and it is underdeveloped. And that's also where we can see a substantial growth potential for the coming years.

Wilhelm Dahl R�e, Danske Bank. Just a question on the -- maybe for Ivar as well. The 25% increase in volumes through sales, of course, higher than volume growth in that sense. Just how contingent is that on quota recoveries and external volumes? And yes, where do you are on capacity utilization now?

Well, the capacity utilization in the segment of value-added processing sales and distribution is kind of not my favorable topic, to be honest, because it all depends on what kind of product mix you take through our facilities and so on. It's all about value creation, what kind of value do you create per kilo you take through our operations. And if you can say that Bjarne and the farming segment is going to contribute with 20,000 tonnes and hopefully, some from Wild Catch. We think that the business model that we have will make us able to get more volume from more external suppliers, basically, both from the farming site in Norway and from external suppliers of other species in our core markets. So that will drive the volumes upwards.

Alex from DNB Carnegie. So just a question on the primary processing being moved from farming to the sales and distribution bit. You say NOK 50 million in savings. Is that a net incremental savings? And also what's the effect going to be on the farming numbers? Will that segment now be a cleaner farming segment with, let's call it, a lower sales revenue per kilo and also a lower cost?

Yes. I think those NOK 50 million is basically that will be reduced in farming. So that there will be symmetry between them. It would mean that the farming segment would be cleaner in a way, meaning that the processing will not happen there. But they will pay then the farming, the value-added sales and processing for the processing fees kind of like to get the job done.

And just on the CapEx, it seems NOK 1.5 billion in annual CapEx, and that's enough to reach the 2030 targets?

I think the -- yes, so our targets are based on those assumptions, yes. So -- and I think it should not be read as an exact NOK 1.5 billion CapEx guidance. So we have NOK 1 billion in maintenance CapEx. Overall, we are working hard to reduce CapEx. And I can say that everything that we do should have high return. So if there are very good opportunities, it could be higher. If it's not, it will be lower than the NOK 1.5 billion.

Christian Arctic Securities. You say that in terms of feed price development or improvement should be around NOK 270 million. How much of that is driven by raw material and currency and how much is other factors?

Yes, I can answer. So the idea behind this figure is no and with the same raw material price. So it's excluding any change in raw material price.

And in terms of your volume growth in farming segment ahead, you say that you want to have faster cycles. How exactly are you going to get faster cycles from current level, which is already at pretty good levels?

Well, there are improvements gained by genetics and by the continuous development of the operations, and that's what we have shown during the latest year since '22. So partly by improved genetics and partly by improved operations and the quality of the way we farm fish.

First question on smolt. What was the average smolt weight in 2025? And are you planning to increase this going forward?

I guess I have to answer that. The average weight of our smolt was approximately 230 grams. The most important thing is to produce a smolt that has the quality to perform both on growth and on the robustness. So it's not a goal that we have to increase the average weight of the smolt. It's more important for us to produce a smolt that has the right quality. But we are increasing the throughput in our RAS facilities, and that throughput could be gained through either increasing the number of smolt released or the average weights of the smolt that we will release. And we've been reducing the intensity in the smolt production. We've also done some investments during the latest years that has reduced the capacity and the throughput from our smolt facilities, and that throughput will eventually increase now by having these investments in place and up and running.

And second question on the volume growth. Should I expect it to be linear or will it be more back-end loaded?

Well, sure, I guess you've communicated the growth in 2026 already.

Yes. So '26, we said guidance. But I think in general, none of the targets that are shown today are hockey stick goals in general. So most of this, we are going to do step by step, not necessarily every year, but step by step.

Finally, hopefully, a more short-term question. But of course, salmon farmers, you are dynamic, but can you comment on how much of your exports to Asia is going through the Middle East hubs?

I was kind of expecting that question, to be honest. Yes. Right now, on an average week, we have maybe around 700 metric tons through the Middle East or through Dubai as a logistical hub. That, of course, now is rerouted and is on its way through a narrow passage in -- through Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan and into the Kazakhstan and that area into China and Southeast Asia, Japan, Korea. So the routing is going, yes, I would say, quite smoothly at the moment. The air freighters have been very helpful with rerouting their planes. But of course, it is a lot of, let's say, work on an operational level during this weekend and today to make that happen. And on the percentage level you are asking for, I would say that on a normal week, somewhere between 50% and 70% of our volume moves through the Middle East on its eastward journey. So -- but so far, it is working quite okay on the operational.

I guess some of the improvements in feed conversion ratio that you target is driven by improvements also for the submerged cages and also this could help reducing the production cycle. What are the key -- is it possible to say something about the key initiatives to get those feed conversion ratios down? And what are the current spread, for example, among the best-performing submerge sites? Is that close to the conventional sites?

Yes. We will dig more deep into this in the breakout session. The spread is quite large. The best performing close to 1.15 and the worst performing above 1.3. So the best performing are close to what we reach in traditional farming and the worst performing is not good performers. And I think it's fair to say that we have selected sites with subsea technology, sites that did not perform with traditional technology. So the data that we are gathering are sort of biased because we are farming with subsea on the lowest performing sites. And the measures, it's about technology optimization, both large and smaller steps taken there. It's about utilization of our site portfolio. And that was the thing I mentioned about site portfolio optimization using the subsea technology on the sites that are suitable for such technology. We will gain a lot of data with regards to what criteria needs to be in place to perform on subsea farming. And it's about developing best practice throughout the sites that are operated with subsea farming. So it's a sum of many things, but it's a structured way of solving it, and we believe that this will reduce the feed conversion ratio down to a number that is competitive.

And does the change portfolio -- site portfolio mix, does that also mean that you can change back to the conventional from where you have sub...

Yes, yes. So we can switch almost whenever we need to switch, use equipment that we have invested in on sites that never has used subsea technology and the other way around. So it's flexible because we are using a lot of the same infrastructure that we have for traditional farming in subsea.

Thank you very much for the good presentations. I have a question on capital allocation. For the acquisition targets, do you target companies in Norway? Or would you look elsewhere also? And regarding the Wild Catch segment, do you guide on any specific EBIT target?

I can comment a bit on that. When it comes to acquisition targets, farming, we mainly look in Norway. If you look downstream, we look outside Norway. And I guess it's fair to say, particularly in Europe as the strategy is today. When it comes to Wild Catch, I think in general, yes, it could potentially at some time make sense to do acquisition in Wild Catch. But I think in general, if you look on valuation of Wild Catch assets outside our own, valuation is extremely, extremely high at very, very low yields. So that's not an alternative today. And then your second question related to -- sorry for forgetting.

Any estimates on the Wild Catch segment going forward? The last Capital Markets Day, you had a target of EBIT NOK 500 million. I don't know if you have dropped this at some time.

Yes, we dropped it. And the key reason to why we dropped it was that quota was down 70%. So learning from that, we are not making any EBIT estimate in 2030 in Wild Catch. But what we have done is to provide a model. So if you use that model, you can put in what you think and then you'll get to the answer. So what we believe is that from what we know today is that 2026 is likely the trough when it comes to quota. At what rate it will recover, we don't know is the honest answer. So we can look at historic graph as well as you can.

Yes, that was a very good model. Last question on capital allocation. You expect to increase dividends. And this could be a question for the Board, but what about share buybacks? And if there is a scenario of extreme undervaluation, is that something you rule out?

No. So we have -- or the Board has a mandate to do share buybacks. We haven't done that for some time. So it's not top of the list, but I will not rule out anything.

[indiscernible] So you presented a good case for becoming #1 on cost in farming, right? And you have these measures like cost reductions, feed, feed conversion, biology, et cetera, and survival and growth rates, if I sort of got that picture right. So your ambition, to what extent are these components sufficient to get to the #1 position? And secondly, do you include the improvements your competitors probably also will do? And thirdly, the cost element, does that include depreciation?

You could answer the last question. But of course, we are benchmarking all the time. We are benchmarking against the competitors that we have are able to gain any numbers from. We have in-depth waterfalls that explains the differences, both with quantity and sometimes with quality. We really believe that we are able to produce with the estimates of NOK 850 million in '26, and we obviously know that the best performers will also perform better. So we think it's possible. It will be demanding. We need to work with structure, and we need to make disciplined decisions throughout the years ahead of us, but we think that's possible to reach best performance on a regional level. And I forgot if there were any questions between that and the depreciations.

No, I think that was it. If you could just add on the growth and survival rate, the improvements you've seen over the last year, how would that sort of quantify into millions of EBIT? Are you able to give an illustration on that, please?

As of '25?

Yes, you showed the pickup in survival and growth. Let's say, for not necessarily '26, but perhaps '27 is more representative.

There should be or there are scale advantages in the operations that we are managing, but we are not happy with the achieved scale advantage of the increased volume. So that's something that we are working on and to increase through better utilization of the resources that we have in action. But of course, increased volume will be a part of being more efficient at least for the fixed cost base that should be scalable with higher volumes and a part of our cost disadvantage is related to the resource efficiency, both onshore and the resources that are involved in the sea phase operations. So increased survival and increased volumes will be part of our -- reaching our target of being the cost leader on a regional basis.

And depreciation should -- it's included.

Great. It's been a long day. So for those on the webcast, thank you very, very much for joining. For those here, we will now go into the breakout sessions. You should have all received an e-mail or SMS on where to be. So I just make sure that you -- so those who are in group #2, you can just stay put. Those who are in group #1, and then just one more on group.