Good morning, and welcome to the presentation of the second quarter 2026 for Aker BioMarine, where myself, Matts Johansen, the Chief Executive Officer, and the Chief Financial Officer, Katrine Klaveness, will take you through the financials and the highlights from the quarter. The second quarter 2026 was yet another strong quarter for Aker BioMarine, delivering $57 million of revenue, up 5% year-over-year for the group as a whole, with an adjusted EBITDA of $12.9 million for the quarter. Human Health Ingredients delivered another record quarter with revenues at $34.1 million. That's up 17% from the same quarter last year with an adjusted EBITDA of $15.9 million, up 14% year-over-year. The underlying krill oil business grew 21% year-over-year, continuing the very strong growth we have seen the previous quarters.
Consumer Health Products delivered a fairly weak quarter with $26.4 million, down 6% year-over-year with an adjusted EBITDA of $1.1 million. There were some great development in the quarter, which will hit us later in the year. One was a win over Lysoveta contract that we have announced to the market earlier. That will deliver $4 million the first year and $6 million the second year. Also, this morning, we also send out a release informing the market that we have secured a new Superba business, which will rank among the largest customers we have. As mentioned, $57.9 million of revenue, up 5% from the same quarter last year, and EBITDA down about 4% to $12.9 million. Moving into the segments. Human Health Ingredients, as mentioned, 17% year-over-year growth, while the krill oil revenues were up 21%.
The difference between those growth rates is that we sold less of our QHP product. That's the by-product from production in Houston, which means that we produced a little bit less than planned in Houston in the quarter, and as a result, we produced less QHP that we could sell. This will normalize itself throughout the year. The underlying growth of 21% for the krill oil business is driven by a combination of solid volume growth across all markets, but also favorable pricing driven by product mix and a larger share of capsulated products. Our gross margin is stable. We have somewhat higher SG&A following some investments that we have done in sales and marketing organization to support our algae and Lysoveta business long term. As a result, EBITDA margin is slightly lower than what it was the same quarter last year.
I also mentioned Houston had a bit lower production in the quarter. We had some power outage and some improvements programs that impacted the production schedule. We'll catch up the shortfall later in the year, but as a result, we produced less QHP, and we had less QHP to sell to the market, which negatively impact the quarter. We secured a new Lysoveta business. First big contract. It's for the Chinese market. A big launch later in the year. With a guaranteed $4 million of revenue the first year, and then 50% growth the second year to $6 million. That kind of kicks off the larger business for Lysoveta. We already have some small or medium customers that are doing really well, but this is the first large customer secured for that product, and it's a good start for the further development of Lysoveta.
I also mentioned earlier that we have this morning announced to the market that we have secured a new Superba business, just now. It will be one of the largest businesses we have. We will start delivering on that business in the fourth quarter this year, so we haven't seen impact of it yet. We will start to see the first impact in the fourth quarter. This is a significant business for us and a great achievement for our sales teams to also land this big opportunity. On top of that, there is constraints in the global fish oil markets now, both driven by uneven supply and demand now for a long period of time, but accelerated through the El Niño effect, which means there are less anchoveta harvested in South America, which means there is less raw materials for fish oil manufacturing.
We are trying to get in position both with our algae product and our krill products to be a solution for brands when they want to diversify their product portfolio and have other alternatives for consumers if there will be a disruption in the supply of Omega-3. Moving to Consumer Health Products. A fairly weak quarter, 6% down. Main reason for that is that every year we got new products on the shelf. Last year we got many of them in the second quarter. This year we will have them going online a little bit later in the year. Underlying, I think Lang is tracking towards our goal of modest growth. The weak sales is also impacting the EBITDA, and that is why also we have $1.1 million EBITDA versus the $1.3 million that we had in the same quarter last year.
We have moved our Epion portfolio now over to a partner called Pattern. They are an AI-driven engine for e-commerce sales, specifically on Amazon, and they are basically the largest reseller on Amazon. They will now buy products from us at a lower price, but inclusive of marketing cost, meaning that going forward, they will carry the marketing costs. The price they pay for the products will reflect that. That has a short-term impact on our revenues, but longer term, it will be very positive for the Epion business. With that, I give the word over to Katrine that will take us through the financials.
Good morning. I will present the financial figures for the second quarter. Starting with the P&L statement. Revenue for the quarter was at $57.9 million, up 5% from same quarter last year. The increase is driven by Human Health segment showing 17% growth, as Matts have already alluded to, where Superba Krill Oil sales had 21% growth compared to same quarter last year, driven by both volume and price due to product mix with more capsule sales. Cost of goods sold are stable across segments, but gross margin in Epion is down due to new revenue model with Pattern, with lower wholesale prices compensated by lower selling costs. SG&A is up on higher activity and sales in Human Health Ingredients, but lower in Consumer Health Products from cost reduction in Epion.
About $4 million is adjusted out of the SG&A as a result of non-recurring project work, including the potential HHI transaction, the protein transaction, and restructuring work in Human Health Ingredients. Net financial items is higher than normal due to the redemption cost of the bond as part of the refinancing that was partly recognized in Q1 and in Q2. Net loss in the quarter was $5.4 million. For Q2 last year, an impairment of the Understory Protein business led to a higher loss. Adjusted EBITDA for the group is $12.9 million for the quarter, slightly down from Q2 last year at $13.6 million as the transitional service agreement with The Qrill Company is terminated, leading to zero TSA income. Moving over to the corporate segment.
The corporate segment reported an adjusted EBITDA of a - $4 million, significantly down from Q2 last year due to a positive elimination between the segment last year, as well as TSA income from The Qrill Company of $500,000 . The corporate segment now also includes parts of the old emerging business, approximately quarter of a million dollar per quarter. Adjustments of $3.9 million includes preparations for the potential HHI transaction, the protein sale process, and restructuring cost, as mentioned earlier. The adjusted EBITDA in this segment reflects the underlying SG&A level going forward. Over to working capital. The company purchased the entire 2026 Nutra volume in the second quarter, increasing inventory with 7,500 tons of Nutra. In parallel, part of the Nutra purchase from last year was paid this quarter, increasing net working capital with $7 million from Q1 this year.
Settlement of the 2026 Nutra volume purchase will be primarily in Q3 2026. Investments. CapEx for the quarter was $2.9 million, mainly related to Houston maintenance work and the feasibility study for the capacity expansion. Total CapEx for 2026 is expected to come in somewhat above the 2025 level at $10 million for the full year. Cash flow. Negative cash flow from operations of $6.3 million due to Nutra payments in the quarter of $9 million. Cash flow from investing activities was - $2.9 million, as discussed on the previous page. Cash flow from financing was + $9 million and included further drawdown under the working capital facility. Net change in cash for the period was marginally positive at $0.1 million, ending the cash balance at $19.7 million, and total available liquidity was at $23.7 million.
Net interest-bearing debt is at $185 million in the quarter, up from Q1 this year. The increase is driven by the Nutra settlement in the quarter. The new bank loan structure has a leverage covenant calculated by net interest-bearing debt over adjusted EBITDA with a threshold of 5.5 times. The company is compliant at 3.8 times. The company is also in compliance with a minimum liquidity covenant of $5 million. Finally, the balance sheet. Property plant and equipment additions are related to Houston equipment mainly. Other non-current receivables refer to paid tariffs that are due for refund. Inventories are up as a result of Nutra purchase done in the quarter. Cash is at $19.7 million. Assets held for sale includes Understory Protein after all IP rights have been sold to Human Health Ingredients for $8.2 million. Interest-bearing debt reflects the new bank loan after refinancing of $175 million.
Total equity amounts to $135.9 million, equaling an equity ratio of 34%. That concludes the financial section. I will hand the word over to Matts to conclude.
Thank you, Katrine. We will now have a look at the outlook. For Human Health Ingredients, we have seen strong development in this quarter, just as we have seen in the previous quarters. We expect the positive development for Human Health Ingredients to continue also in the coming period with the continued growth and improved profits. Even though Consumer Health Products posted a weak second quarter, we still expect Consumer Health Products to get back into modest growth mode when all the new product wins from this season have been implemented. As we have announced earlier, we have engaged Jefferies and Houlihan Lokey as investment banks, to support us towards a transaction in 2026. As also we have said earlier, we will not provide any update on that process. The next information on this one will be when the process is concluded.
For Understory, we are in advanced discussion with one particular party. It's the same there. There will be no further updates on that process until it is finally concluded. Sorry. With that, we will move over to Q&A. You can now all send in your questions to ir@akerbiomarine.com. We will answer the questions now.
Okay, thank you very much. Yes, we have received quite a few questions here. Starting off with some, I would say, general market questions. The first one to you, Matts. Any views on new contract wins on Lysoveta expected for second half and onwards? Will the product be available for any new markets in the second half?
Yeah. We got that new contract in the second quarter that we have reported, which is for the Chinese market. That's the first big contract. Going to be 10 tons now in the first year and then 15 tons in the second year, with prices around $400 a kilo. Quite a significant business. Then we are onboarding customers all the time. Typical of the customers that are being onboarded now are small to medium brands, early adopters, fast movers. Then we have dialogues with also big companies and big brands, which typically take a little bit longer time to launch.
There will be a stream, I would say, of new Lysoveta customers coming in the next quarters. Then on the markets, we have the U.S. market open, we have parts of the Asian markets, the Australian market open. The big next market is the approval we are waiting for in the European Union, which also opens up for Norway. We expect to have that in the beginning of 2027. Also the European market will open.
Okay, thank you. Any development on the krill oil versus weight reduction project, so to say?
Yeah. First of all, we have a second study ongoing. We had the first study we published last summer, we followed up with another study. Many brands, they would like to have two studies to confirm a claim. That's ongoing now. We should have the results in four to six months. We have already some customers starting to use it. We announced this big win in Costco in December. That started in December last year. They are using it, and you can see it sometimes in their social media, with some of the influencers they are activating. They are talking about it. It's starting to pick up, but it hasn't been mainstream product on it yet.
I know it's a priority for many brands.
Thank you. Any noteworthy developments in new markets, I guess for krill oil in general?
Yeah. We are established already in most markets. I think the two, call it emerging markets for us now is Brazil and India, where we in both these markets over the last couple of months, we have gotten an office up and our first employee. They are kind of starting up now. Apart from that, we are already established in all the key markets. You saw the deal we announced this morning as well, which is U.S.-based. Even the more mature markets keep growing and keep opening up new opportunities. That's the situation there.
Okay, over to you, Katrine. With another Nutra payment coming in Q3, should we expect net debt to continue to increase in the coming quarter?
Yeah. Looking back at the previous quarters, we've had some increase in interest-bearing debt. It's a sum of several factors. One thing is the Nutra payment that came now in Q1 and Q2 this year. We do prudent cash management when we can, and factoring is part of that work. We did pay the previous year's Nutra in the first half this year. When it comes to this year's Nutra purchase, as I said in the call earlier, we purchased 7,500 tons in the second quarter, which is due for payment in Q3. There could be similar cash management processes, depending a bit on the situation. We could see some factoring agreement in place also now. If we pay the full amount in Q3, which is currently the plan, we will probably see a further increase in the net interest-bearing debt.
Overall, underlying cash flow from operations is good. It's strong and growing, but we also have had significant non-recurring project cost over the previous months. For 2025, we had, I think, around $10 million in costs related to the feed transaction and the restructuring program. Now, following the preparations for the potential HHI transactions, similar cash goes out of the business, covering all the preparatory work. We will also have continued non-recurring costs throughout this year, in addition to the Nutra meal payments. Yes, we can expect that the net interest bearing debt will increase also in Q3, unless cash management initiatives are implemented.
Okay. Thank you very much. Over to algae. Can you give an update on where you stand on the algae business today, which should benefit from expensive fish oil prices?
We are preparing for that. If you follow us on our social media or LinkedIn profiles, you'll see we are gearing up for that in our communication material these days. Just a little bit of background there. There are major supply disruptions of Omega-3 coming into the nutraceutical market as well as in aquaculture. We expect not only prices to go up, but also that brands will struggle to get hold of enough fish oil. We are positioning both algae and krill oil as a solution to that, and also spending quite some time educating the markets on data and what things look like on the supply and so on to make sure everybody are aware before the problem hits. We are, both for Superba, but also for algae, getting ready for that.
That means that we are looking at our partners for raw materials and also getting some extra capacity externally to be able to cope with the potential spike in demand from that. We're well positioned for both products to reap the benefits of that supply disruption.
Some follow-up questions on algae. Specifically, how much did you sell of algae in Q2 in tons? How much do you expect to sell for Q3 and Q4? Do you have now control of production or quality control of production of algae oil?
We're not 100% there when it comes to manufacturing, I would say, to get it at the right level we want. We're still working on that. Taking longer than expected, but we are making some third-party solutions in the meantime to make sure we're covered, and that shouldn't come to hamper us in the market opportunities. In Q2, we sold maybe 4 tons-6 tons, something like that. Not a huge volume. Not giving specific guiding for the rest of the year, but we are tracking some larger opportunities in that space. We will see how much will come in.
Some questions on the new contract. First of all, could you explain how many tons that contract is for? I think you also already commented that this was for the U.S. market. That is covered, but mainly then on the contract size in terms of volumes.
As we said, it's going to be among our largest customers. There is not a specific volume in the contract, so that depends a little bit how successful the product will be. It's a major retail launch in the U.S. with quite good visibility of what the demand will be. It will appear on the shelf in the beginning of next year. We will start supplying in the fourth quarter of this year so we can provide some more flavor to it once it's on the shelf. Given that it will be one of our top customers, you can go back and look at when we have talked about our size of customers before. You will see that that means probably it's going to be around the $10 million mark from a size perspective.
I think that concludes the Q&As, that there's no more questions. Listening in. See you next time.