Proximar Seafood AS ($PROXI)

Good morning, and thank you for joining this first quarter presentation. With me here from Yokohama today, I have our CFO, Kobayashi. And we will now first go through the presentation, and then we'll have a Q&A session afterwards. Through the first quarter and into the second quarter, we have continued to see good operational development also when looking at the biological performance. We see high survival rates and high superior share, although the first quarter was impacted specifically by 2 tanks of the underperforming mixed batch 11, which was finished harvested in March. The average harvest size achievement was somewhat below expectations, but the overall harvest volumes in the higher end. However, the big challenge has been the price achievement, which has impacted the revenues for the first quarter. As we've not been able to get steady supplies, our fish has, to a large extent, been sold in the spot market in Japan, which in the short term has been oversupplied by imported salmon. This leading to a disappointing price achievement on the average, but also for the market size fish above 3 kilograms HOG. Entering the second quarter, we have continued to see harvest sizes slightly below 3 kilograms HOG. And combined with the current market situation and low prices in the Japanese market, we have decided to take measures to prioritize growth of the bigger fish getting past the threshold of 3 kilograms HOG. To enable this, we will need to harvest out some smaller fish in the second quarter to free up tank capacity. We are revising our full year expectations and expect to harvest in the range of 3,000 to 3,400 tonnes HOG and also shifting 110,000 fish into January 2027. This compares to previous expectations in our fourth quarter report of 3,500 to 4,000 tonnes HOG. The market prices are impacting our revenues and combined with the price -- with the adjustments in the harvest plan, we expect lower-than-anticipated revenues also in the second quarter. We have, therefore, proactively requested a waiver from the banks for our sales covenant for the second quarter and the lower revenue expectations also creates a funding need, and we're working on several tracks to secure additional liquidity. Although we are still below our expectations in terms of the 3-kilogram threshold, the underlying trend is positive. So far in the second quarter, the average size achievement is 2.72 kilograms, up from 2.25 kilograms in the first quarter. But following the strategic harvest now planned in the second quarter, we expect this average to come slightly down from [ 2.72 ]. We harvested a record volume of 697 tonnes HOG, approximately doubled from previous quarters. As of last week, we have harvested 470 tonnes HOG this quarter, and we see the superior share for the second quarter now being back at above 99%. Although our harvest is below 3 kilograms HOG, the big challenge has been the market situation here in Japan, which has impacted and is still impacting our price achievement significantly. Since we have not been able to supply steady volumes, sales in the contract markets has been limited, pushing most of our sold volumes into the spot market and over fish markets. Entering the first quarter, we experienced large unsold stock from imported salmon in December coming out pressuring prices in early January. And we also saw salmon from Canada and Chile starting to come into Japan. The reason being lower consumption in the U.S., likely as a consequence of tariffs and later the Iran war taking a toll on the U.S. consumption of Atlantic salmon. The Chilean and Canadian salmon has therefore found its way to Japan and being sold aggressively at prices below the cost of imported Norwegian salmon. We see this situation persisting in the second quarter. And in addition to imported Atlantic salmon competing, we have seen local drought coming out in April and May and also expect this to come out in June as a seasonal harvest of sea cage farming. However, in the medium term, as we reach more stable supply above 3 kilograms, we expect to be able to increase our share of contracted sales, which will result in relatively higher price achievement compared to the spot market. Having said that, our long-term expectations remain unchanged. And as soon as we can supply stable and predictable volumes of 3 kilograms and above, we expect to get back to previous levels. As mentioned, there is a gap in our price achievement between contracts and spot, in particular, on 3 kilogram plus for contracted sales achievement as much -- where we see contracted sales achieving as much as 30% to 50% higher prices compared to the spot market sales. Average contract price for 3 plus in the first quarter was NOK 95 per kilogram, but due to spot market exposure, the overall average price achievement for this size group was only NOK 75. While we expect to see the same market dynamics in the second quarter, we continue to see strong interest for our fish, and we expect to revert to premium pricing as seen in 2025 in the longer term. The import cost of Atlantic salmon to the Japan remains high, driven by the significant transportation cost, and there's no change to this picture and the transportation costs have also come up recently following the Iran war. We, therefore, expect the benchmark to remain representative, supporting a strong price achievement in the longer term with a gradual recovery as we can get more stable supply. As for the consumption in the Japanese market, this continues to be steady and slightly growing. A long-term trend we expect to remain with a relatively higher consumption per capita of younger population compared to the older one. When it comes to the operational development, as said in the introduction, this is developing positively. We continue to see good fish health and appetite. And so far, we have harvested more than 2,500 tonnes since first harvest, which is meaningful volume and also demonstrating the [indiscernible] ability to produce high-quality Atlantic salmon with an achieved superior share of above 98% for all harvest, and we are encouraged to see the system continues to perform. The survival rate remains high, and we now just need to get past the 3-kilogram threshold. Our efforts continue to improve growth conditions by strengthening operational control, monitoring of water quality in addition to further strengthening of our operational team. We have seen some elevated nitrate levels lately, but these have been stabilized and are now trending down. Nitrate is not harmful for the fish, but could have some impact over time on the growth. We're also continuing to monitor the fish using AI, which gives us valuable insights to our standing biomass, both monitoring growth and also for better planning of harvesting and sales. And perhaps even more importantly, it gives us good insight to the size distribution in the tank, which is also essential for better sales planning. We see the accuracy is high, although as you see on this graph, we have 2 deviations standing out being system operator related. But the general picture is that it gives us very precise information, and we also expect the accuracy to continue improving as we get better calibrated systems and also more experience with the operators of the [ cameras ]. This means that when we now look at our performance and growth curves, these are being calibrated with the result of camera samplings. And this is a big improvement since last year when we experienced larger deviations due to inability to get proper and representative information from our extensive manual samplings. And as you see on this graph, the trend is positive as we have expected. The 3 curves on the right are fish exposed to long-term suboptimal conditions in 2025 and also from 2024. And even on these batches, we have seen gradual improvements. But more importantly, looking into the future, we look at the batches on the right coming later, and we see a solid shift in the right direction. One exception here is batch 21, which is the yellow curve, which has been exposed to very high densities for approximately a 2-month period from around 1 kilogram. We will still work to improve the growth conditions and performance by necessary optimization, but also by operational improvements and talking closely to others in our industry, sharing experience and learnings. As we see improved growth performance, we have also seen average harvest sizes trending up. This is shown on the graph to the right. And here, you can also see the underperformance related to the mixed batch 11, which are the lower data points here in March and February. Also importantly is the graph on the left showing the size distribution in our harvest. Previously, we've seen a lot of fish in the 1 to 2 kilogram category, but I'm pleased to see that this is trending down being from -- being in the 20s to well below 10 percentage now. Equally encouraging is to see the positive development in the 3 kilogram and above trending up, demonstrating the fundamental development, in my opinion, going in the right direction, although we would hoping for it to be somewhat faster, but the trend is positive. This is also the reason that we now want to take action to get back to the initial harvest plan as soon as possible. We see growth developing positively and the bigger fish is also growing. However, our challenge now is that we are utilizing all of our production tanks. If we had free tank capacity, we could hold back harvest of larger fish, but this is not an option at current stage. This means that we need to continuously free up tanks for growing fish and for coming batches. Until now, we have continuously been harvesting the tank with the biggest fish. However, this has now become sort of a vicious circle. We are now harvesting fish that ideally should be left for another 6 to 8 weeks of growth before harvesting to be on the safe side of 3 kilograms. So instead of gradually getting past the 3-kilogram threshold, we now plan to prioritize harvest of some smaller fish to free up tank capacity and leaving the bigger fish to grow for another 6 to 8 weeks. This will also increase the average weight of our standing biomass and align better with our production plan. The result is that the harvest sizes in the second quarter will be somewhat lower than initially expected. But this is also a decision impacted by the market situation and the poor price achievement, meaning that the short-term impact in terms of revenues will be relatively lower and the long-term gain more than offsetting this. With the recent adjustments and updated forecast, we also revised our expectations for the full year to 3,000 to 3,400 tonnes HOG, also impacted by the fact that we are shifting harvest of [ one ] batch of approximately 110,000 fish into January 2027, equivalent to approximately 340 to 380 tonnes HOG. I will now hand over the word to Kobayashi-san to go through the financials.

Thank you, Joachim. Let me briefly go through the main numbers for the first quarter. Operational revenue increased to NOK 36 million. Despite harvested volumes in the higher range of our expectations, the revenues were impacted by the lower price achievement as described throughout the growth quarter. In addition, we received the last part of the insurance payout of our business interruption insurance following the biofilter incidents. This was recognized as other revenues. EBITDA improved significantly to positive NOK 9.8 million despite negative fair value adjustment. When looking at the adjusted or operational EBITDA shown below, -- excluding insurance payouts and fair value effects, the EBITDA for the quarter was NOK 1.8 million. We continue to see good cost control compared to our expectations and budgets. We are still seeing some higher costs during the ramp-up phase, but overall still within the range of expectations. Move on to the balance sheet. Noncurrent asset remains at NOK 1.19 billion, representing 85% of total assets, while inventory and biological assets increased with continued production growth. Equity stood at NOK 372 million with an equity ratio of 26.7%. As for last quarter, our current liabilities are high, mainly because of the syndicated loan with maturity end of August and JA Mitsui leasing loan at the end of the year. The company is also actively working with its banking group on the financing and potential maturity extensions for debt maturing in 2026. In addition to that, we are discussions with other banks and institutions for refinancing and will continue with extensive efforts going forward. This slide highlights scalability of our business model. As said, we see a good cost control comparing to our budget and expectations. Although we still plan for some higher costs related to improvement and optimization initiatives, extra staking and resources during the start-up phase and other ramp-up related costs. We still expect long term to be more aligned with our expectation. This slide illustrates our long-term or normalized EBITDA expectations with sensitivities taking different production volume into account. For the first quarter, our EBITDA cost for the harvest fish was NOK 87 per kilogram. But also bear in mind, this number is impacted by the time of production of the fish, which due to the issues in 2024 and 2025 were exposed to lower feeding and longer time in the facility and therefore, also allocated higher portion of fixed costs. With this in mind and the longer-term price expectation in the Japanese market, our business model remains robust and in line with our expectations. I will now hand over to Joachim san to go through the outlook and summary.

Thank you, Kobayashi san. And moving on to the outlook and summary. We are continuously working on financing, both with regards to necessary refinancings coming up and for the liquidity needs, especially related to the lower sales following primarily the market situation in Japan as described. We have addressed needs in our previous communication in the first quarter, and we have successfully just now in May, made the drawdown of NOK 80 million facility from a regional Japanese bank. Following the weak market situation, we have proactively requested a waiver of the sales covenant also for second quarter and discussions are progressing constructively. Our banks are showing a very supportive attitude. We also started discussions with a potential 1-year extension of the syndicated loan, similar to what was done last year. In parallel, we are exploring other alternatives as always. As for the short-term liquidity, we are currently assessing needs and various sources to secure this in a good way. We're having various bank discussions and discussing other working capital financing solutions and are experiencing interest from other stakeholders. We will continue working on this in the coming weeks. And with the recent and more specific interest also from potential Japanese investors, we are considering engaging a Japanese investment bank to conduct a strategic review. So wrapping up this fourth quarter presentation, we are encouraged by the steady operations and improved biological performance seen at the facility. The fundamentals as such are looking good with low mortality, good fish health, high superior share and improved growth. Although we are not above the 3-kilogram threshold, the trend is positive, and we are taking action to get steady volumes above 3 plus. Our business model remains robust, but the current spot market situation and our limited contract coverage for the first half is significantly impacting our sales and the timing for taking action to get back to harvest plan is therefore as good as it gets in terms of the overall impact. We expect more stable supply in the second half with better price achievement and profitability. For the year, we expect a total harvest volume of 3,000 to 3,400 tonnes HOG also impacted by pushing one batch from 2026 into 2027. When it comes to the refinancing, we are experiencing strong support from our banks, and we'll continue these discussions and other discussions going forward, including the possibility of extending the syndicated loan with 12 months. Near term, we are addressing the liquidity need following lower sales and considering several alternatives. In addition to this, and following increased interest for Proximar, specifically here in Japan, we are considering engaging a Japanese investment bank to conduct a strategic review. We have, for a long time, had many discussions with banks and other potential investors, and we'll continue our efforts also taking into consideration further refinancing in the future. So with these words, we will conclude our presentation and open up for questions.

The first question we have is regarding weight distribution. What was the weight distribution of harvested fish in Q1? And are we seeing any improvements in April and May?

Yes. So we have shown the distribution graph in the presentation and a bit more to the numbers. We -- in first quarter, we had roughly [indiscernible] slightly below 4% on the [ 0 to 1 ] kilogram, [ 1 to 2 ] was 25% -- so far in second quarter, we have close to 0 on [ 0 to 1 ] and around 7% on [ 1 to 2 ]. On the 2 to 3, we have 52% in the second quarter so far compared to 40% in the first quarter. And then if we look at the 3 plus, we have -- sorry, I said [ 2 to 3 ] was 52% in second quarter so far compared to 40% in first quarter. And looking at the 3 plus, we are now approximately around 40% compared to 26% in the first quarter. So we see that the shift is gradually moving up in the right direction with less of the smaller fish and more tilting towards 3 and 3.

Very good. And to follow up on that, there's another question on what the current size distribution looks like for the batches expected to drive harvest in the second and third quarters?

The general picture is that we see a less wide size distribution. And we've been touching upon this in previous presentations. We believe that a large part of the explanation of the large size deviations was also related to the mixed batch that was completed harvest in the first quarter. And we see that the coming batches are getting more centered, and we also expect this trend to continue going forward.

Thank you. And the next question is related to the covenant waiver that you requested. And the question is what revenue or harvest volume run rate is expected to be needed to avoid any further covenant waivers?

Yes. So the covenant waiver is JPY 400 million, including consumption tax. And I would say that under normal circumstances, with the harvest weights and the price -- normalized price situation, we should be well within the covenant within the covenants in the second half of -- as we get back to the stable production that we're now targeting.

Next question is whether your AI camera surveillance has resulted in any changes in feeding regimes?

No, we are using the AI camera as of now for checking the biomass, the average weight, also the size distribution in the tanks. -- and to monitor growth. So this is purely related to the growth and insights to the biomass. When it comes to feeding and feed control, we are looking for better solutions also using AI. But so far, we have not found a suitable solution for us. But this is something that we are emphasizing going forward and see if we can find better ways to control the feed and connect it to the [ SCADA ].

And on your harvest, what is the target harvest window you have? At what we do you initiate harvesting? And how long does it normally take to harvest the full batch?

Yes. So usually, one batch is, say, 1 month. When we put in the eggs, we do monthly egg inserts of approximately 100,000 fish and then we harvest in the end during the entire month. And that's also according to the size distribution in the different tanks. So during the production, we are splitting and grading the fish to optimize also the harvest. So far, our challenge has been that we have been harvesting as we also say in the report, the fish slightly too early, and that's also what we are now taking measures to improve to bring up the average size achievement. And I would say we should aim for higher than 3 to be on the safe side of 3 kilograms HOG -- so one thing is to get the average size up, but also importantly, to get the size distribution more above the 3 kilogram. And the harvest is 4 days a week throughout the month of 1 batch.

Thank you. On financial planning, the next question is, what is your financial plan for the next 3 to 5 years?

Yes. So first of all, we are continuously working with the financing, and we have, through the years, been having several discussions with financial institutions and investors. And we see that the interest in Japan is increasing. And that's also why the Board has -- is considering to initiate a strategic review to consider the alternatives in the long term for the company and for the shareholders and which routes are available and also to handle the discussions here in Japan, especially. So this is something we will be working on going forward for the longer term.

And on that note, the next question is, when do you expect the potential strategic review to be completed?

Well, first of all, we have -- it has not formally been initiated, but it's a discussion that has been in the Board and is now being considered. So we'll get back to that when a decision is made.

Can you say something about the focus by the Japanese government to grow in-country food production, especially seafood?

Yes. And this is -- in the first quarter, there was a new long-term plan by the Japanese government and also from the Prime Minister to emphasize and focus also on food production going forward in the next is a 30-year plan. Yes, 30-year plan. And aquaculture and RAS is on this list. And I believe that this is something that has also triggered a bit more interest to Proximar. We see that comparing to building a new facility, our CapEx has been very competitive. It's now on the agenda of the national authorities, and we see that generally, which has also been the experience since we started construction, focus on sustainability, but also self-sufficiency is on top of the agenda here in Japan. And we see that there are schemes now coming in terms of financing, subsidies and maybe also loan solutions that can be available for the industry, which is, of course, of high interest.

And then related to the operations, what led to the elevated nitrate level in the quarter? And is nitrate levels not continuously monitored?

Yes. It is continuously monitored. -- the nitrate levels takes time to develop, and it's probably related to the boost in feeding that we did in the fourth quarter and into the first quarter. We saw it rising. Then we took measures to improve the denitrification system at the facility, and we have seen now in the last couple of months that has been also trending down, and we expect this trend to continue going forward. The nitrate level is not harmful for the fish, but it could have some impact to growth, although this is still not a lot of documentation on how much. But it's trending down, and we are continuously working to improve also the denitrification.

Thank you. It looks like we have no further questions from the web.

Okay. Thank you very much for your attention.