Good morning, everyone. My name is Lars Christian Bacher. On behalf of all the Aker companies present here today, I would like to wish you all welcome to this Aker Companies Investor Day. Before we start on the program, I would like to mention that there is no fire drill planned for today. In case if the fire alarm is activated, please evacuate the way you came from through the reception or through that door. The fire assembly point is behind building five, which is outside to the right. Moving on to the program. We will start off today with Aker ASA's President and CEO, Øyvind Eriksen, who will give you a presentation of Aker ASA and share with you Aker's ownership agenda for the respective Aker companies. We will move on to the other companies.
One by one, they will all be presented by the respective CEOs and CFOs. Following each of the company presentations, we will have a Q&A session. For those of you in the audience, we ask you to please wait for a microphone to be passed on to you. For those of you following us via the webcast, we invite you to ask questions there. For those of you who have dialed in, unfortunately, we can't take the questions through dial-in. With that, I leave the floor to you, Øyvind.
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Aker Investor Day. We have this time invited you to London for two main reasons. Our international shareholder base continues to grow, and this is a pretty important location for our future. As we speak, some 100 engineers are working on the floors above to design parts of the great Johan Sverdrup field on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. As both Det Norske, Aker Solutions, and Tranberg will elaborate on later today, that field is pretty important to our future. By performing some of the work with our employees here, we're expanding our international footprint. That's in line with the, you know, trend in recent years and will continue in the years to come. Today, the most important Aker companies will be presenting, and hopefully, they will give you a valuable insight to their respective businesses.
First, we'll start with Aker ASA, the industrial investment company that is setting the direction for the entire Aker group. Aker's mandate is to create value and maximize shareholder return. We spend a lot of time on deciding the direction, targets, and structures for each of our portfolio companies. We address the strategic direction and main actions. We review M&A and restructuring opportunities. We consider alternative funding and capital structures. We develop the human resource base, in particular, the top management teams, and we initiate operational improvements. Here you can see the five bullets I would like you to, at a minimum, remember from this presentation.
I will describe what we have, in other words, our current portfolio and financial strength, and I will explain what we offer in addition, i.e., the three pillars in Aker's shareholder value proposition, and add some color to each of these. Let's start with what we have, our portfolio. The recent turmoil in oil and gas has reminded us of the importance of having a balanced portfolio, not only in terms of sector exposure, but also in terms of investment characteristics. This is a new slide. On one axis, industrial holdings, where we have a long-term ownership horizon versus opportunistic investments, where we have a more transactional approach. What do I mean by that? It means creating values through transactions and partnerships similar to a private equity approach and not only divestments. On the other axis, growth investments versus yield investments.
Upstream cash flow is important to an investment company, both to preserve investment capacity, but also to cover operational costs and dividend to our shareholders. Today, Aker has a comfortable level of upstream cash flow, and that will be maintained in the years to come. To our financial strength, which again provides us with optionality. Financial strength is not only measured by a solid cash position and a high equity ratio, but also in terms of liquidity, upstream cash, freely tradable assets, and debt capacity. Even though we have ownership covenants for some assets, like parts of our shareholdings in Aker Solutions, Akastor, and Kværner. More than 60% of our assets could be monetized within less than three months without asking anyone else.
In order to sell the remaining 40% of our assets, we would need some more time or approvals from third parties. All our assets are unpledged, and our financial commitments towards the portfolio companies are next to zero. To put it succinctly, Aker is in a unique position in terms of flexibility, optionality, and financial strength. Why should you make an investment in Aker ASA? First of all, you need to share our view that despite the current market uncertainty, the longer-term industry fundamentals for our portfolio companies remain prosperous. I strongly believe that the three additional arguments for what we offer makes it compelling. First, our M&A capabilities and track record for creating shareholder value through transactions. Second, the cash generating capacity in our portfolio. Finally, our policy of returning dividend to shareholders. First, Aker's track record for long-term value creation by M&A.
Aker has a significant transactional focus and experience. Since relisting in 2004, Aker has executed more than 50 large M&A equity capital markets and restructuring transactions. Without going into details of these transactions, let me briefly mention two different nature of value creation. Firstly, M&A has contributed to our net asset value development. The list of examples is long, but the most prominent is probably still our divestment of Aker Drilling a few years ago. Value to shareholders doubled by that transaction. Secondly, transactions transformational to our portfolio of investments. The two recent examples are the transformation of various stranded shipping assets into what's today Ocean Yield. The journey from the merger of Aker Maritime and Kværner to what's today quite different value propositions in Aker Solutions, Akastor and Kværner respectively.
With more optionality in Aker than I've ever seen before, and a strengthened investment team in this particular respect, it's a fair assumption that we have just started. Oil prices are fluctuating. I've learned that the hard way myself. When I was offered the job as CEO in Aker, the oil price was almost $150 per barrel. When I started five months later, it was down in the low forties. The recent drop in prices is, in my mind, not that abnormal. It's actually the nature of the business we operate in. The question that then comes to: How can we best take advantage of the cyclical markets? What we learned from the previous downturn is the importance of being financially prepared.
May I have your attention please? May I have your attention please? The testing of the fire alarm shall commence shortly. Staff are required to take no action at this time. I repeat, the fire alarm shall be tested shortly. Staff are required to take no further action at this time.
It's a fire alarm, not an oil price alarm. Okay. We're discussing the oil price and how we can best take advantage of the cyclical markets. What we learned from the previous downturn is the importance of being financially prepared to pursue new investment opportunities that tend to materialize in times like this.
May I have your attention please? May I have your attention please? The fire alarm test has now concluded. I repeat.
Well, we don't need that alarm to confirm that this time we are in Aker financially prepared. As you understand, I consider our optionality structurally to be significant. As an investment company, we're spending a significant amount of time on evaluating how we best can take advantage of this cycle. Even though we have seen repricing of stock exchanges, it takes times for bids and asks to meet. We strongly believe that the coming months will offer some attractive opportunities. The cyclicality favors those who have the capability to adapt and move swiftly. In Aker, we have already taken measures to reduce costs significantly. Operating expenses are being reduced with more than 15% with full effect from 2016 and onwards, representing about NOK 35 million in annual savings.
Executive salaries and board remunerations will not be adjusted this year, and other salaries will not be adjusted above inflation, and bonus payments will be reduced compared to recent years. Although these actions are specific to Aker, we expect our portfolio companies to follow our example. For our companies in oil and gas, it's particularly important that we continue to pursue operational excellence, less complexity, cost reductions, and flexibilities in terms of cost base and capacity. This will be crucial in order to improve the competitiveness in a continued low and volatile oil price scenario. A diversified and then solid financing is equally important. Most of our companies already have that in place prior to the downturn, whereas Det Norske is in the process of obtaining it. This slide is illustrating Aker's underlying earnings. Financial strengths can be measured in different ways.
Our balance sheet provides one answer. The quarterly share price development in our holdings provide another. Ultimately, everything relies on the financial portfolio, the financial performance of the companies we own. That's why we also keep an eye on Aker's pro-rata share of revenues, EBITDA, and the dividend from our entire portfolio. As you can see, those grew significantly last year, and are expected to grow further in 2015 based on Bloomberg consensus estimates. Yet another sign of robustness and progress in Aker regardless of market turmoil and more uncertainties. This is a slide showing our upstream cash flow and dividend track record. A key observation is that our upstream cash exceeds dividend payments last year. Our dividend proposal for 2014 is to pay 10 NOK per share and half with optional share settlement.
This represents a nominal decrease compared to last year, but is still at the highest end of our dividend policy range of 2% to 4% of net asset value. Going forward, you should expect us to manage the dividend policy actively based on performance and market outlook. Let me now move on to our ownership agenda for our respective key industrial holdings which we'll also present later today. Starting off with the Norske. For Aker, a 50% shareholding in the Norske is a main building block, short and long term. The Norske is a growth investment in our portfolio, but with a clear ambition to become a yields investment down the road. We own the Norske because we strongly believe in the company's unique asset base and the ENP opportunities on the Norwegian continental shelf.
The combination of approximately 60,000 barrels of daily production at a lifting cost below $10 per barrel and the robust field developments, Ivar Aasen and Johan Sverdrup, which will almost double production, makes the Norske an extremely attractive investment to us and others. The key focus for the Norske going forward is the Johan Sverdrup unitization process and field development, operational excellence with respect to day-to-day operation and project execution, and securing a diversified and robust financing. When it comes to the latter, the Norske has identified alternative sources of funding. Negotiations are going on as we speak. Rather than rushing a conclusion, Aker has encouraged DNO to spend the time required to put in place the most value-creative solution possible. I'm pretty sure that DNO management will provide us with even more comfort when they present later today.
Aker Solutions is a dividend-paying growth investment in Aker's portfolio. The split of the old Aker Solutions last year coincided with a sharp drop in the oil price and cutbacks in our customers' spending. This delayed the anticipated revaluation of the company. I believe that over time, the market will appreciate the strength of the company as it demonstrates improved operational performance. Our ownership agenda for Aker Solutions is unchanged. It's all about reducing cost and complexity, operational excellence, and margin improvements. I urge you also to listen carefully to Luis later today. He was promoted to the CEO position to drive operational excellence hands-on. My expectation is that he will express clear targets and some sense of urgency when he enters this stage. Akastor.
Our investment in Akastor is industrial in terms of perspective, as the nature of Akastor's own business model is opportunistic. We own the company because we believe in the underlying value of the portfolio companies, as well as the management team's ability to unlock the full value potential, be it through organic growth, strategic partnerships, or M&A. Same message goes for Akastor as it does for Aker Solutions. Operational excellence and proactive measures to reduce cost and adjust capacity is necessary to remain competitive in a tougher market. In addition, Akastor will pursue transaction opportunities as they materialize. We support the divestment of some real estate last year. We welcome future and further portfolio adjustments to come. Moving on to Kværner.
During the last four decades, Kværner has been a key player on the Norwegian continental shelf based on a reputation of delivering on time and on budget. The company has recently worked on its cost structure, unfortunately, the loss of the first Johan Sverdrup topside contract was a setback to the company when it comes to its competitiveness. Tender processes currently going on will decide whether or not there is a future for Kværner as an EPC topside supplier. On the positive side, Kværner's jacket business holds a solid and healthy order backlog. Later today, Jan Arve will elaborate on the company's priorities going forward. Let's move on to Ocean Yield. Ocean Yield has become a cornerstone investment in our portfolio, it's not only our single biggest investment as we speak, it's also our most prominent yield investment.
The company's business model is very much about financing, a core competency in Aker. Since inception, the company has consistently delivered on its mandate: expand and diversify its portfolio of assets and grow its cash dividends to shareholders. We own the company because it pays and will continue to pay an attractive quarterly cash dividend to shareholders. In addition, we expect share price to continue to develop favorably due to the inherent growth profile in the backlog and through yield compression. Our ownership agenda is basically to enjoy the ride. If new capital is needed to further accelerate growth, we're still open-minded to own a smaller share of a bigger company. Listen to and admire Lars when he presents this afternoon. The Ocean Yield performance tells that he and his team are pretty good.
Finally, Havfisk. The star performer in our portfolio, with share price more than double since Webjørn joined us as CEO less than six months ago. Two years ago, our investment in Havfisk represented approximately 1% of Aker's gross assets. Today, Havfisk represents 7% of our assets. The company delivered record-high results in 2014, driven by continued favorable white fish prices, increased harvesting volumes, and improved operational excellence. Last week's announcement that Havfisk won the appeal in the Glitnir lawsuit was yet another positive news from this company. In our oil and gas-centric portfolio, Havfisk has lately proved the importance of some diversification. So far, Havfisk has been a growth investment. With the progress made in recent months, I also expect the company to yield a decent return, by start paying dividend, hopefully and probably already this year.
Let's spend also a few minutes on some investments in our portfolio that are not represented here today. Firstly, Aker BioMarine. The company is a pure growth investment. With its inherent operational leverage, the name of the game for this company is to build and expand the market for its products and hence the top line. The journey has been longer than originally anticipated, but giving in is not our nature. We have earlier communicated that potential U.S. listing of Aker BioMarine, but timing is dependent on continued growth and increased visibility on earnings. Let's move on and take a brief look at our U.S. Jones Act investments. Our ownership agenda for both American Shipping Company and Aker Philadelphia Shipyard is to develop and maximize values and gradually seek to monetize these assets. In what way remains to be seen.
We can either sell fully or in part, or we can seek a more yield nature of these investments. As a consequence, each of the two companies have an ongoing process to evaluate strategic alternatives to maximize shareholder value. This is still work in progress. Lastly, our real estate exposure through Fornebuporten. Following the sales of the Aberdeen offices last quarter, the main asset in this real estate portfolio is the teo office buildings under construction at Fornebu in Norway. In addition, the company owns more land, both at Fornebu and in Aberdeen, which carry a significant option value in the case of additional regulatory approvals. For Aker, our investments in Fornebuporten provides us with financial and strategic optionality. We can sell and monetize the investments or alternatively, benefit from the yield characteristics of these assets.
To summarize it all, Aker ASA is positioned both for growth and yield despite the uncertainties in oil and gas. We consider the portfolio as attractive with companies well-positioned in their respective market segments. In addition, we have financial strength and flexibility, which creates optionality. The Aker share provides our shareholders with a competitive yield by cash or split dividend. At the same time, there is significant financial capacity to invest, and thereby securing the basis for short-term stock appreciation and longer-term value creation in the Aker portfolio. That's Aker ASA for now. Let's open up for questions.
To summarize it all, Aker ASA is positioned both for growth and yield despite the uncertainties in oil and gas. We consider the portfolio as attractive with companies well-positioned in their respective market segments. In addition, we have financial strength and flexibility, which creates optionality. The Aker share provides our shareholders with a competitive yield by cash or split dividend. At the same time, there is significant financial capacity to invest, and thereby securing the basis for short-term stock appreciation and longer-term value creation in the Aker portfolio. That's Aker ASA for now. Let's open up for questions. We'll start with questions from the audience. Anyone who would like to start? Okay.
Thank you. It's Adam Epstein from UBS. I wonder if you could talk about, your financial capacity and willingness. To extend either additional equity or debt to your subsidiary companies, if required. Thanks.
As the principal shareholder in all the companies I've reviewed this morning, and Aker, it will also continue to support their development. However, each investment will need to be justified by its own merits and yield an attractive return to Aker and our shareholders. As far as the need for an additional equity concerns, we have, as I also said in my presentation, the view that basically all companies are fully funded and we follow the ongoing discussions and negotiations in the Norske to strengthen the Norske's long-term financing closely.
Any other questions? Are there any questions from the web? No questions from the web? It's now you have the opportunity. Okay, we'll move on with the Norske, represented by the CEO, Karl Johnny Hersvik, and CFO, Alexander Krane.
Okay. Good morning, everybody, thank you, Øyvind. Thank you all for taking the time to come here today and listen to our investment proposals and opportunities. I'm going to talk a little bit about the Norske, give you some highlights and a bit of an overview, and a little bit of a deep dive into some of the projects as well. Then the CFO, Alexander Krane, will take you through the financial state, and then I'll come back and give you a little bit of guidance and updates on the outlook going forward as of the rest of 2015. I thought I'd start by basically giving you a bit of an overview of what is the Norske.
The company went through a significant transformation this year and last year as we acquired Marathon, the transaction was completed, as you remember, on the 15th of October in 2014. We are now a fully fledged E&P company with about 500 employees, our operations are solely focused on the NCS, and most of our licenses are in the North Sea. We have a very strong reserve base of 206 million barrels at the end of last year, if you include the Johan Sverdrup field, the reserves will be around half a billion barrel of oil equivalents. Last year, we produced roughly 67,000 barrels of oil equivalents every day, actually outperformed our own forecast, which was roughly 60.
In addition to a solid production base, we have a world-class asset, and in the development phase, you will see that there is a large potential for production growth with strong underlying cash flows in the years to come. The Norske currently has a market cap of about $1 billion and an enterprise value of about $3 billion. Now, to start out, what are the key investment considerations for The Norske? I'd like to spend a little bit of time on this, as this is kind of the key issue for us here today. The Norske is among the leading independent E&P companies listed today.
For an expected production level in 2015 of roughly 60,000 barrels of oil equivalents, the development assets we have in our portfolio will have the capacity to lift oil production above 100,000 barrels of oil equivalents after Johan Sverdrup reaches the plateau. Moreover, these same projects will ensure very competitive netbacks from Norske for many years to come. Johan Sverdrup, as an example, has a break-even price of below $40 per barrel and are among the top discoveries on the Norwegian continental shelf ever made. Once Johan Sverdrup is in production, the Norske will generate a significant free cash flow for many years to come. Even at today's forward curve, the Norske will deliver more than $5 billion in operating cash flow in the 6-year period from 2020 to 2025.
We are currently working, as Øyvind talked about, to increase our financial flexibility and robustness by optimizing our capital structure. We are confident that we'll be able to fund the planned developments in a good manner in order to reap the benefits of the aforementioned strong cash flow for many years to come. I'll spend a little bit of time on our assets, as I think this is the key to understanding the Norske as a company. First and foremost, as I said, we are solely Norwegian Continental Shelf, but we're also concentrated in two core areas.
The projects are located either in the Utsira High, where Johan Sverdrup and Ivar Aasen are the main assets, and also in the greater Alvheim area, where we just tied back the Bøyla field to the Alvheim FPSO. We move to reserves, then I'll go back to the assets a bit. 2014 was an extraordinary year for the Norske. We went into the year with 66 million barrels of certified reserves by the end of 2013, and this has increased to 206 million barrels during 2014. As some of you may recall, Marathon had a 2013 year-end reserve number of 136 million barrels.
During 2014, we produced about 24 million barrels. Revisions accounted to an increase of 28 million barrels, about half of that from Alvheim and half from re-reserve revisions related to Ivar Aasen. That means that the reserve ended in 2014 with 206 million barrels. Our reserve replacement rates in 2014 was 1.16, meaning a 16% increase in base run reserves from the same assets that we're currently developing. Not that bad. After the submission of the Svalin PDO in February, the Norske reserves will have more than doubled. The P50 reserves are 279 million barrels of oil equivalents. We have assumed that the preliminary working interest of 11.89 to the Norske.
The split here, in the light and the gray indicates, the first and the second phase. About 80% of the reserves are related to the second phase, to the first phase, 20% to the second phase. Now, if we move to production, we can see how these reserves will come into play in terms of cash. As you've seen this before, we have given a production guidance in 2015 in the range of 58,000-63,000 barrels a day. Almost all of this is produced through the Alvheim FPSO with very low production costs. In total, we actually expect production costs for 2015 to be in the range of $8-$10 per barrel.
The exciting thing about this outlook is not the low production cost, but it's that we continue to develop projects with low break-even costs that will continue to secure strong cash flows for decades. As you see on the graph, we have an increasing production curve for the next 10 years. Actually, if you balance this production curve and reserve slide I just showed you will see that the R over P, the reserves over production, are roughly 20 years of flat production. Based, this is just based on the reserves that are in the ground today in terms of Alvheim, Ivar Aasen, and Johan Sverdrup. No new projects that have yet to be discovered are added to this production graph.
This will then, in turn, generate a large cash flow to the Norske after 2020, after the investment program for the most part have been completed. As I said, to illustrate the example, in the six-year period from 2020 to 2025, the Norske will deliver an after-tax operating cash flow of about $5 billion at $80 of oil equivalents. We actually think that that is quite a significant cash flow. Moving on to a little bit of a deep dive in our production assets. The Alvheim area is a group of fields that are all produced through the Alvheim FPSO, and in total, these fields produced 97% of our production in 2014. They will continue to be our producing backbone until the development projects on the Utsira High come on stream.
The Alvheim area contains about 90% oil and are all tied into the Alvheim FPSO. This production unit is fully owned by the partnership and has a very low production cost, as I said, of roughly $8-$10 per oil equivalents. The FPSO has actually performed astonishingly over the years, with uptime just short of 100%. That track record has continued through the integration and through the first quarter of this year. We aim to continue this trend and are in the best position possible to do so with an outstanding operation team that has been working on the Alvheim FPSO since it started producing back in 2008.
For 2015, we estimate productions in the range of 58,000-63,000 barrels, the range are reflecting the fact that we're putting four wells on stream this year. The most wells that have been put on stream on Alvheim in a single year since 2008. Now, we continue, as we said in June when we announced the transaction, we intend to continue to develop the Alvheim area, the Bøyla is the first in line. The first well commenced production in January this year, it is a 30 km tieback to the Alvheim FPSO. It was hooked up with no shutdown to the FPSO on the 19th of January. This is a 36-month development project, it's commenced production four days after the scheduled date.
I don't think that's too bad in a world where cost overruns and delays seems to be the norm. The second well are currently being drilled and will be completed and put in production during Q2 2015. What we try to do here is to standardize the subsea tie-ins. Roll over team after team and then do one development on the back of a node. The Viper Cobra and the IOR project are excellent examples of just that. During 2015 and early 2016, we will complete and drill the remaining three infill wells on Alvheim. The first will start producing later this quarter. This IOR project will contribute significantly to the production in 2015 and are important, and I must point this out, very, very profitable projects to us.
The projects are of course sensitive to weather and available diving vessels in the market, and that is why we have such a wide range from 58 to 63,000 barrels every day. Now, Viper Cobra is one of these tie-in projects. As I said, we will continue to develop the Alvheim area with low break even and highly profitable projects. This Viper Cobra project was recently sanctioned. The field contains about 9 million barrels of oil equivalents and will build on the existing organization and utilize the same resources that developed Bøyla. This is an excellent example of standardization and utilization of the same development organizations time and time again. It may seem strange that we choose to sanction projects in the current macro environment, but one must keep in mind that this is a very, very profitable project.
The breakeven are in the 30s. The execution phase is just 18 months from sanction, the commencement of production. Indeed, this proves my point that the Alvheim is an extremely profitable and interesting area to be a part of. Our other big development projects are the Ivar Aasen on the Utsira High. If you look beyond the Alvheim area, we just discovered that the majority of the remaining employees in the Norske are in some way, shape, or form, actually working on or with the Ivar Aasen developments. We are the operator of this development, it is on schedule to deliver oil in 2016. We are about to complete the engineering phase. Most of the key sub-modules are being completed, construction of the topsides have reached a stage where the decks are now being stacked.
The first deck has already been stacked, and I'll go down and see the stack of the second deck actually next week. We have basically reached a point where you can see by your own eyes every time you visit the yards, the progress, as the modules grow bigger, better equipped every single day. It's actually something special when you worked on this project for a long time, really hard, and see this progress, every single day. The fact that there are about 1,400 workers on this sub module is also a fascinating sight. I must say that the progress we've seen over the last few months have actually impressed me quite a lot. Now, a project such as this consists of many different pieces to the puzzle.
The first piece of the puzzle has actually been completed and is ready to load out from the Arbatax yard on Saipem in Sardinia. The jacket was completed in January on time and below budget, following a period of an impressive team effort and outstanding HSE performance on the yard. The jacket will sail to Norway during April before being installed on the Ivar Aasen field this summer. After the jacket is being installed, we will commence drilling pre-drilled wells, injectors, and producers through the jacket. Øyvind put strong emphasis in his presentation on operational performance. I can tell you from the bottom of my heart that I completely and utterly share his view on operational performance. We spend a lot of time on the Norske talking about how we are going to increase our performance in every single part of the business.
The drilling on the Ivar Aasen field has already started. Maersk Interceptor is currently drilling pilot wells in order to further appraise the Ivar Aasen subsurface and make sure that we have a robust planning for the pre-drilled producers and injectors. The results from the first Geo-P ilot is broadly in line with expectations, and two more pilots will be drilled before the drilling of producers and injectors commence this summer. I must say that the rig has so far performed admirably, and the cooperation with Maersk has been nothing less than outstanding. The rig itself is actually also an outperformer. We've seen the statistics here, from the Rushmore database, and there are only two rigs in the relevant category that have drilled faster than 115 meters a day of dry hole since 2007.
I can assure you neither of those rigs were cold rigs straight out of the yard. I got a message as the well was completed from the offshore supervisor. The subject said, "It's an acceptable start." Construction of topside. At the SMO yard in Singapore, the topside is currently getting in shape. These are recent pictures, where we are preparing to stack the last deck, the so-called weather deck. The engineering is now close to complete. We have just completed the 90% three-D model review, and are closing out actions as we speak. Most of the main pieces and the sub-equipments have arrived in Singapore, and the construction itself is now roughly around 50% complete.
As I said, the intermediate deck was stacked on top of the cellar deck in January, that was just in line with the target on the previous plan revision that we set out this summer. The next deck will then be stacked later this month, as I said, I'm looking forward to going down and witnessing the event myself. We are now entering a very hectic period where a lot of equipment installation would go on. Flare drums, emergency generators, process separators are all being installed as we speak and sit here today.
Our team is also spending quite a lot of effort to follow up all the key parts of this puzzle and make sure that we have no issues and no worries later on in the construction phase. Moving on to another excellent project. When Ivar also starts producing in 2016, the other giant on the Utsira High will go into the main development period. The company benefits from being a partner in a nothing but outstanding field, the Johan Sverdrup field. We are sure that the company and its owners will benefit largely from the large-scale cash flow that will come from this field once it is producing in late 2019. The plan for development and operations was submitted to the ministry a month ago, the plan confirmed project's timeline.
The field will be developed in multiple phases. The first field will extract roughly 80% of the resources, and the recoverable reserves are now estimated to be between 1.7 billion and 3.0 billion barrels of oil equivalent. The partnership will invest NOK 117 billion in the first phase and another NOK 80-1 00 billion in the future phases. This is obviously quite a lot of money to invest, we are here developing a field that will produce up to 650,000 barrels of oil equivalents on Statoil and is expected to produce for 50 years.
With a break-even price in the 30s, this is a field that will be profitable in every conceivable long-term oil price scenario. We are looking forward to working with the operator, Statoil, to develop this field in the best way possible. Now, however, the Johan Sverdrup stretches across several licenses. The field had to be unitized. It's well known by now that Norske did not sign the unitization agreement. The reason is very simple. For the Norske, it's always been a decisive principle that the combination of volume and value will be decisive factors when the field is unitized. We are of the opinion that the western side with a thick oil column is cheaper to develop than the thinner and more distributed eastern side.
When a proposal from the operator did not reflect what we believed to be the underlying value in the various licenses, the Norske could simply not sign the agreement. Let me make this very clear. This administration is committed to protect and develop shareholder values, that means all the values, we are deeply committed to ensuring that all our shareholders get their fair share of this outstanding project. The ministry will now conclude on the unitization, meanwhile, we will work constructively with the partnership to develop the field and simultaneously work to get a fair share of the ownership in the license. Now, moving on to exploration.
Amid the current market environment, our drilling schedule has been somewhat scaled back in 2015. We expect to spend roughly $115- 125 million on exploration this year. We will, however, be a part of a couple of exciting exploration prospects also in 2015, with the Skirne East prospect, a potential fast-track development to hand out probably the most exciting one. The reduction in wells in 2015 does not mean that we're not seeking to replace reserves. However, we are taking the benefit of this downturn as an opportunity to thoroughly revamp our exploration strategy. We are spending time on reassessing prospectivity in all our exploration areas and step up our seismic acquisition and processing.
We are working actively to assess potential in the 33 licensing round, as well, looking at ways to working up new potential core areas and optimizing our portfolio. We look forward to revert to the market with more flavor on this as time goes by. For now, I'll leave you to the floor to our CFO, Alexander Krane, to give you an update on funding and liquidity. Alexander, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Karl. Good morning, all. At the year-end 2014, we had a cash position of $296 million. The book value of our bank debt was just north of $2 billion, and the not $1.9 billion unsecured debt net zero-two bond was accounted for at $253 million. In total, this sums up to a net interest-bearing debt of just below $2 billion. Including our undrawn credit on the company's reserve-based lending facilities, available liquidity then amounted to around $900 million at the end of the year. In connection with the acquisition of Marathon last summer, the company secured a $3 billion reserve-based lending facility, or RBL, that replaced the company's previous bank debt.
The company had drawn $2.1 billion on this facility at the end of the year, and we had availability up to $2.7 billion. The RBL is a seven-year facility, with a bank consortium consisting of 17 banks. The available amount under the $3 billion RBL facility is determined twice a year, and it stems from the value of the company's borrowing base assets based on certain assumptions. We believe we have a very robust RBL. The drop in oil prices since the last summer does affect the available borrowing base under the RBL. This is only partially so due to how this RBL is structured. First of all, Johan Sverdrup, which makes up about a third of the original borrowing base, is included on a U.S. dollar per barrel multiple. This is a fixed multiple.
Under the Norwegian fiscal regime, oil companies are effectively allowed to depreciate 89% of their investments for tax purposes. The company's historical tax balances are not sensitive to changes in commodity prices, and thus will soften the impact of any reduced revenues by a reduced tax burden. Thirdly, the borrowing base includes a mechanism that allows the company to borrow against the expected CapEx for the next period. We have a comfortable headroom to the RBL covenants. Net debt over EBITDAX was well below the covenant level of 3.5, and EBITDA over interest expense was significantly above the covenant of 3.5. At year-end 2014, we had an adjusted equity ratio of 15.5% below the covenant level of 25% in the debt-to-zero-to bond agreement.
Defaults only exist when the ratio is below 25% on two consecutive quarter dates and the covenant breach is not remedied within the following quarter reporting date. The strong operating cash flow from the Alvheim assets, the RBL facility, and the equity issue from last summer made the company well-equipped when the oil prices started to drop last autumn. With increased production come also increased sensitivity to oil price fluctuation, even though the company benefits from a world-class low break-even cost asset base that Karl went through. We are therefore taking steps to further strengthen our business to adapt to the current market situation and ensure that we come out of this downturn as a stronger and more robust company.
Karl will revert to you with how our cost efficiency initiatives will contribute to this, but securing an optimal capital structure is also a vital piece of this puzzle. We are continuing to work on increasing our financial flexibility and robustness for the longer run. As evidenced in the financing of the Marathon acquisition, the support from the company's bank group is strong, and we're having constructive dialogues in order to optimize this capital structure. We are confident that we will be able to fund the planned developments, but we will have to revert to the markets with more details as this work progresses. We are addressing the current challenging macro environment by putting in place risk-reducing measures for some of the key risks facing the company.
Firstly, the risk of dependency on only one producing hub is reduced after entering into a loss of production insurance for the Alvheim FPSO. This is a market standard insurance that addresses the impact of an accidental Alvheim FPSO shutdown, both in 2015 and 2016. The company has also increased its foreign exchange hedging activity in 2015, and we've taken advantage of the development in the U.S. dollar NOK FX rates over the last month by securing CapEx and tax payments in NOK. We have also used the minor upticks in the oil prices until last week to initiate a hedging program to secure the downside in the event that oil prices should fall further.
For 2015, from March onwards and 2016, we have bought put options at $55 a barrel strike. We are about halfway into this program at this time, where about 15% of 2015 volumes are covered, and the target is to have 30% of the volume covered. As you know, the petroleum revenues are taxed at 78% in Norway, while financial items, including put options, are taxed at 27%, thereby achieving the desired after-tax effect when securing 30.1% of your production volumes. In the final part of this section, I will just briefly take you through the previously announced CapEx guidance for 2015.
In 2015, the company expects CapEx in the order of $950 million-$1 billion. This can broadly be split into Ivar Aasen with 45%, Alvheim 30%, and Johan Sverdrup 15%. The 2015 CapEx for Ivar Aasen includes drilling of the Geo-Pilots that commenced in January, construction of the topside and living quarters, transportation and installation of the jackets, and some other project costs. On Alvheim, there are three infill wells that will be drilled during 2015, and LLIs for two planned infill wells on Volund will also incur some costs. On Bøyla, the second well will be completed, and the Viper Cobra project, as Karl mentioned, is well underway.
On the Johan Sverdrup development, the key focus will be on awarding contracts and start the detail engineering and procurement in 2015. Concept studies for future phases will also commence and some costs attached to that. In the other buckets, where the company will incur some expenses on Gina Krog. There's some IT costs and other minor costs, and Utsira pipelines as well. The company also expects to have an exploration spend between $115 million and $125 million this year. Production costs, fairly low, between $8 and $10 per barrel. Where we end up in these ranges will depend on how successful we are with the cost efficiency program that has been initiated. Karl will cover this in a bit more detail in his outlook section.
That conclude my section, and leave to Karl to wrap it up.
Thank you. Even if we were quite well equipped to meet the sudden downturn, we are by no means shielded by the macro environment. As I said, we are committed to operational excellence in every part of our organization. We have just initiated a cost efficiency program, where we are attacking every part and every cost in this company. The first phase here will be concluded by this summer, and the goal is to take off more than $100 million of cost from our bottom line, either by reducing activity, by reducing cost, or by optimizing our processes. This is just the first stage.
As we conclude this, and it's now rolling into the execution phase, all the actions have been detailed out, and there are more than 43 actions that are now being rolled out into the organization. Works, we have continued and are now discussing phase two, which will commence over the summer. I think the key issue here is that the top management run and own this process. As my team is being measured on their success on this program. We follow this in every meeting. So far, we have realized about 50% of this volume. I'm not going to break it down into buckets, but a lot of this has to do with activity program, but it also has to do with the way we're working with our vendors.
We're continuing to work with our vendors and our contractors to optimize both the schedule, but also the cost profile and the effectivity of our operations going forward. We firmly believe that this is not just an activity that we have started because of the downturn. This is an activity that will produce a healthy backbone to operational excellence when the oil price comes back up. That's the overriding priority to why we are executing this with the amount of management attention that we are. I'll wrap up by trying to walk you through the key priorities. Strategies have a tendency to become pretty big. In this company, we like to keep things focused, and we like to keep things simple.
In many ways, we have split our agenda for 2015, but also for the first part of 2016, in two simple buckets. The first one is to drive execution. We are committed to deliver Ivar Aasen on first production in Q4 of 2016, and we're spending much of our time doing so. We have said when we acquired Marathon, that we are committed to developing and maximizing the value of the Alvheim area, and we are delivering on just that promise as we speak. As Anders has said, we are continuing to work with the Johan Sverdrup execution, but we're also simultaneously working to maximize our share of the field. On the other side, we are continuing to develop the optionality.
As Øyvind talked about, we believe that this is a period of time where there will be a lot of opportunities as well. That means that the work on optimizing our capital structure is going forward with full speed. We are going to deliver, and I'm quite confident on this, on the cost efficiency program, and we are going to roll that directly over into an improvement program to improve our operational excellence as well. As I said, we are continuing to work on our reserve replacement strategy going forward to make sure that we are replacing reserves with as valuable reserves in the future. I think we'll end by that, and I'll invite Alexander back up on stage, and we'll try to answer questions as best we can.
Perfect. Okay. First question here.
Thanks. It's Adam from UBS again. Questions on the financial flexibility and the sort of efficiency of the capital structure as you describe it. You've got about $2.9 billion of available debt facilities at the moment. What is the sort of level of overall headroom that you're both looking for in order to deliver your strategic objectives? Is it 3.5? Is it 4? Is it something totally different? Secondly, it's quite easy for us to assess what the cost of equity being sort of charged at the moment is in your stock price. I think we've got less visibility on negotiations with potential debt providers. Obviously you've been testing that market. How would you assess your effective cost of debt versus equity in the current environment? Thanks.
Would you like to answer that?
I'll start with the second one.
Yeah.
I think that, you know, if you look at, the debt that we've been raising, historically, you know, that gives you a measure on, you know, what the cost of that debt has been. I think, you know, after the acquisition of Marathon, we, at that point, would assume that, you know, raising additional debt wouldn't be, you know, more expensive than, you know, the previous debt that has been raised. Now, of course, we are, you know, mindful of, you know, where debt markets are today. We think that, especially working closely with, the bank group and the core banks, that we have, you know, that will be the most efficient type of debt funding.
Exactly what the price of that will be and how much will be, you know, secured debt versus the more unsecured, you know, we're, you know, we're not prepared to give that exact guidance on, you know, that kind of detailed costs at this moment. The first question, remind me again.
How much funding would we need?
How much funding? Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, also that's a very difficult question, depending on, you know, the upsides and all the projects that we would like to sanction going forward. I think it's fair to say that, you know, we think embarking on this development phase that the company is going into, you know, it should be a robust balance sheet, and it should be more robust than the level that we have today. If it's NOK 500 million or if it's more than that, you know, then it also depends on the cost of that. We think the funding is available, but it's a matter of cost.
Okay. I think we had a question all far in the back.
Charlie Stewenson, Swedbank. Karl, you discussed Sverdrup. A couple of questions on Sverdrup. What should we expect in terms of timeframe? When will you be able to announce your final owner share? How should we think around the range of possible outcome? How low could it be, and how high could the owner share become?
Well, in terms of timeframe, I think the ministry has stated that it will try to resolve this as quickly as possible. I don't think I'll try to speculate on what the ministry means with as quickly as possible. The question how high can it go? As high as possible, I hope. But again, it's a very difficult speculation to make, sitting here today. What I can say is that we will work hard to maximize our share of the Johan Sverdrup field.
So there's no downside risk or on your current on the 11.8 to 9 ownership?
Well, I don't think I said that there was no downside risk. I think it's a matter of fact that we haven't signed the agreement because we don't feel that the fair share has been distributed. That's our starting point.
One final on Sverdrup on CapEx. I guess the official CapEx guiding on $117 billion does maybe not fully take into account the potential for cost deflation. Any thoughts around potential for lower CapEx on Sverdrup?
Well, I think it's NOK 170 billion and not USD.
NOK, sorry.
I also believe that there is, there should be ample opportunity to reduce costs on the Johan Sverdrup development. However, I think it's also important to say that it is, it's important to develop this project in such a manner that we realize the start of our production in 2019. The cash flow of that project is such that the balance between cost reductions and securing the schedule needs to be carefully thought through when making those kind of assumptions.
Thank you.
Anne.
Thank you. Anne Gjøen, Handelsbanken Capital Markets. I have two questions if I may. First one, what's been the cost or will be the cost in 2024 putting together these oil price hedges and the production insurance hedges? The second one, when you mentioned $5 billion in free cash flow in the period 2020-2025, to assume $80 oil, is that real term or in no-nominal terms?
I can take the first one first. When we started putting in place the puts for the commodity hedging, we did that when oil prices moved over $60. The pricing for the balance for 2015 and 2016, it varies between $2 to three and a half dollars per barrel.
The assumptions that we made when forecasting that cash flow is basically in line with the forward curve, that is roughly an average $80, but I think it's nominal, over that six-year period of time.
Hi. This is Alex Topouzoglou from Exane BNP Paribas. On slide seven, you're showing your base reserves and then your upside scenario in terms of production. What incremental investments must Det Norske make to access those barrels and those upside? What appetite does Det Norske have to make those investments in the current oil price environment?
Could you repeat that first part of the question?
It's just on slide seven, you show your base reserves production and then the upside scenario. Just what incremental investments must you make to access those barrels and the appetite for you to do so in the current oil price environment? Thanks.
Okay. I think a lot of these projects are actually tie-in projects to the Alvheim area. The appetite will develop, of course, based on the oil price, but also based on availability of infrastructure, both in the greater Alvheim area and for gas in the Heimdal area, as well as the decline in the remaining production infrastructure. So far we are foreseeing that quite a significant part of this upside will actually be actionable under the current forecast of future oil prices.
Okay. If we look at your hedging of a downside, you know, you're limiting a downside to $55 over 2015 and 2016. Is that enough to justify those investments?
Uh, I-
Keep in mind, you know, those are puts in place for 2015 and 2016, whereas these upsides are more in the longer term after that hedging program.
Okay, thanks.
Okay, we have a question here.
Hi there. Yeah, good morning. It's James Thompson from JP Morgan. Just wanted to ask Alex's question in a slightly different way. In terms of the Alvheim area, obviously, you spent about six, nine months looking at that now. What in terms of, you know, you've sanctioned the Viper Cobra. In terms of further reserves upside and capital that you might have to invest in that, can you give us those-
Two numbers. Then second question on Sverdrup. If the Ministry decides that your 11.89% is the right number, will you be signing that unitization agreement at that point?
Okay. I'm not sure I'm prepared to give you the number, but every time we've done such an acquisition, we go back and we look at the what was the valuation case that we made the decision on, and what are the actual case after we've actually made the acquisition. We've done that in this case as well. Let me put it this way. We underestimated when we did the evaluation of the Alvheim Area, underestimated both reserves and upsides. Upsides more significantly so than the reserves. The case that we made when we made the investment has subsequently been strengthened by the observations that we've done after acquiring the assets. We still believe that this is a very good investment opportunity and a very good business case going forward.
Will we sign? I think we'll come back to that when we see the result and we see the process. I think our key, our key driver here is to secure that this is a good and transparent process and that all opinions are being heard. Bear in mind, the agreement as it stands now, the oil in place will be redetermined in 2025. The discussions we're having now is basically related to cost and value as a weighing factor going into the final unitization.
Okay. Thank you.
Okay. Then microphone here for Eivind sitting there.
Hi. Good morning. David Mercer, Société Générale, just at the back here. Can we move on to costs in Norway? You've had your leading shareholder saying he was disappointed that Kværner didn't win phase one topside for the Johan Sverdrup project. You're going to be followed by a number of Norwegian oilfield service companies. How well-placed do you think the Norwegian oilfield services industry is to adapt to this lower oil price environment? How much do you think it will have to change its business model and move away from larger projects towards smaller high-technology projects? Do you think the shipyards have a future in Norway to supply large modules to your upcoming developments?
I have that. I think there are people following me who will be much better equipped to answer that last question. The first question, do I believe that Norwegian oilfield service industry is well-positioned to be competitive in the future? I definitely, I think so. Remember, even if we're building the Ivar Aasen in Singapore, more than 50% of all the equipment are actually coming out of Norwegian companies and yards while being put together in Singapore. What we've seen so far is an industry that is very eager to turn around, also in the cost efficiency program and initiate improvement project and increase their competitiveness. Yes, I believe that Norwegian oilfield service industry does have a very bright future.
Okay. We have time for one question from Eivind, and then we have a couple of questions from the web.
Sure. Eivind Sars, DNB. I have a question on the timing of the hedging program. Is the initiation of the hedging program at all to be seen in connection with the ongoing discussions that you have with your bank syndicate?
No, I think we've said for quite some time that, you know, that's part of a prudent financial risk management strategy for the company to have that in place. I think that's important, you know, just for securing operating cash flow. You know, it doesn't negatively impact, you know, RBL price decks, et cetera. It has that added benefit to it.
Okay. I've been told that we will get the question from the web up on the screen. This has come. On Sverdrup, there is no unit agreement. Is this common occurrence in other oil fields or is Sverdrup more delicate because of the huge size? When do you expect this uncertainty to be resolved?
I know two points to that. The first one is, do we have had PDOs without unit agreements that have progressed? The answer to that is yes. That actually also happened on Ivar Aasen. It's not an abnormal occurrence that commercial issues are not resolved while the development projects are ongoing. I believe that this is actually the first time the Ministry will make a ruling over a unitization or so-called track participation in Norway. I think the timing here is, I won't really answer that question. Is it because of its huge size? Well, this is, of course, a very important issue both to the North Sea and to the other companies.
As I said, for us, this is a very principled thing about protecting our shareholders and the value of our shareholders in this field. However, we feel that this is based on the differences inherent in the field between the east and the western part of the Johan Sverdrup field.
Okay. There's one more question. Karl, you talked about optionality. Does this include non-organic growth?
Well, for somebody who's worked in BD for the last 10 years of my professional life, I think I basically equate organic and inorganic opportunities. We will basically be value driven and focused and do what is value accretive to the company independent of whether it's organic or inorganic.
The last question before we take the break. RBL slide 19. Can you please tell us what USD per BOE multiple actually is, and what volume is it based on?
Well, we can't disclose the exact amount, but, if we, you know, if you say it counts for one third of the original borrowing base, I think it's, you know, you can do the math on the two factors for that input.
Okay. Thank you. We will have a short break, and ask you please to be back here at quarter past for Aker Solutions.
Okay, welcome back. We'll now move on to Aker Solutions, which will be presented by the CEO, Luis Araujo, and Svein Oskar Stoknes, the CFO.
Okay. Good morning. Actually, after a movie like that, Øyvind told me that's the easy way to do it. If I could just stop now and then, just get the emotion. Thank you for being here today. It's good to see such a great interest in our company. I'll be here today to update you because you see the beautiful images, but what's behind this is 16,000 very well-qualified people. According to Øyvind, we deserve better margins. That's absolutely true. Anyway, there's no question that these are challenging times for industry and for Aker Solutions. We are not shying away from making the tough choices needed. Far from it. We are in fact ahead of the curve in many respects after the split in September last year. Here's the usual disclaimer.
Moving on, I guess, you don't need to read all those letters. What the split has done, is reduce complexity, realize synergies, and bring down costs. Today, Aker Solutions is a more simplified and focused company with two main reporting segments, subsea and field design. We are now much better equipped at responding to the needs of customers in 22 countries that we operate. We are expanding globally. We are supremely positioned to capture growth in the offshore subsea field design markets in Sub-Saharan Africa, Brazil, Atlantic Canada, the Asia Pacific, to name a few. Thanks to key subsea projects in Congo and Angola, Africa accounted for 37% of our order backlog at the end of 2014, compared with 30% for Norway.
That's the first time we have had more orders in a single region outside Norway and is in line with our strategy to grow in key international markets. The steep slump in oil prices last year was unexpected in its scope for producers that were already seeking to lower costs. We anticipate a continuous slowdown in the Norwegian markets over the next one to two years, especially in MMO, where we have reduced capacity. Major projects such as Johan Sverdrup development will help offset some of the decline. Such a great project to be involved with. I will talk more about that going forward in the presentation. I have some good news for you. Looking ahead, we expect to grow with our key markets and at least maintain our market share in our core businesses.
We see margins remaining robust in engineering and gradually recovering in MMO, and we aim to achieve peer group margins over in subsea, over time in subsea. Long term, we are optimistic. Our leading technology, engineering, and project management skills put us in a prime position to benefit from a shift towards more complex offshore resources. Few companies are better placed in the global deepwater subsea segments, which are among the fastest-growing external offshore markets. In fact, according to external analysis, the markets in subsea equipment and services is expected to grow 8%-10% annually over the next five years. That's a pretty good place to be, even in the current environment, business environment. What, what's the game plan? Here are the five main points I would like to raise.
One, we will continue to push for the highest level of safety and performance in all we do as we seek to be the partner of choice. Two, we will build on our leading positions in deepwater, subsea, and harsh environment markets through our technology, engineering, project management skills, strong customer relationships, and a global delivery model. Three, we will pursue our strategy to expand internationally in key markets, and we are on track to generate 60% of our revenue this year from contracts for delivery outside Norway, up from about 40% in 2013. Four, we want to strengthen our project portfolio to diversify our customer base and contract mix across the key locations. Five, we will be unrelenting in our efforts to realize the full benefits of Aker Solutions' new leaner business model.
This means achieving deeper synergies across the business, across the company, reducing costs, and strengthening our financial performance. We had a near-record order backlog of NOK 48 billion at the end of 2014. Our job now is to deliver on this through a ceaseless focus on operational excellence, cost control, as we push to take advantage of our streamlined business. You'll hear a lot about operational excellence today. You start hearing from our chairman earlier today, that's what we're focused on. Very important. You can see some examples later in the presentation today. In fact, what I just listed are our main strategical objectives briefly described. One of our key visions is nothing less than to revolutionize subsea and deepwater production. We offer the ideas and the technology to make this happen.
We are both an innovator on our own and a solid sharing industry partner that will be a key player in creating energy industry of the future. A prime example of this is the Åsgard Subsea Compression project. This is a strong collaboration across the company business areas that's enabling us to deliver the world's first subsea such system for Statoil this year. Our engineers dreamed up this project decades ago, long before the technology needed was even in existence. This will help to extract an extra 282 million barrels of oil equivalents from that particular field. Not a bad result for one of our key clients. Going forward, we see more of this. The whole company is focused on developing the future advanced subsea production systems from design to construction, maintenance, and upgrades.
Actually, this type of collaboration across business areas is also a key of our front-end work, which combines the skills from all over the company to benefit our clients. Front-end is about getting involved in an early develop as early as possible in developments, at the appraisal and feasibility stages. We use our technical experience from the full spectrum of field development and our life cycle knowledge to evaluate the total development rather than just the mere parts of that project. This increases the potential for us to develop solutions to improve the overall economics and value of development. In other words, lower the break-even cost of fields by optimizing capital expenditure and production.
As an example, our front-end specter teams were involved in early concept studies in several fields like Johan Sverdrup, Edvard Grieg, Ekofisk, Hibernia, White Rose, just to mention a few projects. I can safely say that our efforts in close cooperation with the clients were instrumental in finding cost-effective solutions for these fields. Our teams, in Houston, Oslo, Kuala Lumpur, Perth, and London, our front-end teams are seeing growing interest in our offering as customers increasingly seek the more effective solutions at the moment in the current environment. In fact, I'm very pleased to announce there's a news that we yesterday signed an agreement with Statoil to deliver concept study for future phase of Johan Sverdrup. Develop in Norway.
We're getting one more more involved in that particular giant field that was explained in more details by my predecessor here from one of our clients. Technology, you know, I'll talk about technology, which is core to this company. Our technology development is also focused on adding value to our customers. That's what we do. Our research and development investments have shifted from a focus in filling product gaps, as we did in the past. Now we're focused on cost-effective products, technology and services needed to address the challenge the industry faces now. From aging fields, more complex reservoir, strict regulations, and higher costs. I think by now we're all convinced that the costs are high and have to be lowered. Our R&D set work now centers in four main areas.
These are advanced subsea production products and solutions, a new generation of subsea controls and automation systems, offshore greenfield concepts, and offshore brownfield modifications to increase oil recovery and extend the life of fields. As part of this overall effort, Aker Solutions last year formed an alliance with Baker Hughes to develop solutions that will boost output, increase recovery rates, and reduce costs of subsea fields. This partnership has made a strong start and recently introduced PowerJump among several other technologies. PowerJump is a fast-track and cost-effective boosting system that's particularly well-suited to increasing production from maturing fields. It's built using proven technology for both Aker Solutions and Baker Hughes, and complements up and broadens our subsea boosting technology portfolio. It's very important in this time of low oil prices. Now to the improvement agenda.
As we spoke quite a lot already in this before in the previous sections, but we are seeking to bring the very best technology solutions to our clients. I think I mentioned that before. We are also constantly working to improve everything we do internally as we more than ever focus on operational excellence and cost control. We intensified this effort last year after the split, and progress is being made in all key areas. We have introduced new cost-saving programs in all business segments and corporate functions, and these are well underway. You see some examples also when Svein also talk about our corporate costs at the present moment compared to our previous larger and more complex company.
As an example, our engineering business is on track with a goal to reduce engineering and procurement service costs by 30% by the end of 2017. Our MMO team is also making good progress in meeting our targets to lower the cost of modifications by 30% by 2016. By the end of 2016. Our subsea business is targeted at 15% improvement in operational efficiency each year and has achieved this in both 2013 and 2014. We have also renegotiated contract terms with suppliers and contractors to adapt to the changing environment. That's a norm in the industry right now, and we are no different than any, our clients as well.
We have adjusted our workforce capacity to counter a slump in the Norwegian MMO market, and we will continue to keep a close eye on capacity in all areas. We have reorganized functions, such as supply chain, technology, construction management, to better use the expertise throughout the business to prevent duplication and strengthen processes. We have continued a major push to improve quality and execution. This is key for this company, quality and execution, deliver according to client specification on time, on budget. This includes starting an initiative based on lean principles to test new work methods, processing key projects, so that we can develop new best practice in the industry and improve significantly the execution of our projects.
The results so far are encouraging as we're expanding the program to include 20 more projects this year, in addition to the four projects we started last year. Together, these internal initiatives are expected to help increase our margins and to help our clients to develop projects in a more cost-effective way. The improvement agenda has two folds, internal and externally with our clients. We also work externally with our customers to achieve operational and cost-saving improvements. As an example, we are collaborating broadly with Statoil on the STEP improvement program by taking part in the ongoing efforts, as well as preparing for the future of STEP 3, STEP wave 3, as we call it.
Our engineering business is also working with Statoil on the Johan Sverdrup development to lower costs through more efficient and industrialized solutions, standardized solutions. Standardization across the whole of the whole field is the norm now. We also have to simplify technical requirements and reduce supply chain costs. That's what we're doing together with Statoil. We have also contributed to significantly lower facility costs for the Johan Castberg project, as announced by Statoil recently, through our concept study for the balanced sea development. Working very close with them to review the specification, make sure that that project has economical, a lower break-even point going forward.
Our MMO business is in collaboration with the customer, recently lowered the estimated cost of a major tie-in project by more than NOK 300 million. It has succeeded in making some production process up to 60% more efficient. Our subsea business too is leaving no stone unturned as we work with clients to find improvement areas. Give an example on that front. The process and standardization we have put in place at our subsea plant in Ågotnes in Norway, have enabled us to cut the average time spent in refurbishing a Christmas tree from 17 weeks to one year. It's a big improvement for the clients, all the time they need to produce oil faster.
Another example, we actually recently, we bid on a subsea production system project where our price was based on customer specifications. Also in parallel, we propose an alternative, a different bid based on reduced specifications and copy technology, which decreased the cost of the production system by more than 50%. I guess it's not very difficult to realize which one they choose. These type of improvements can be achieved, I would say, in a greater scale in the industry, as long as we have an open and two-way dialogue with our customers so that we can understand each other's drivers and cost benefits. This is how we can truly create value for our customers and... Somewhat I just start your presentation, Svein. Sorry about that. That we can understand each other's drivers and cost benefits.
This is how we can truly create value for our customers and shareholders through the right technology development, cost control, and quality execution. By entering a project as early as possible, as I mentioned some examples today. That way we can find the most cost-effective solutions, and we are actually primed to be involved early. We're the only company in this market who gets involved in all phases of the project, from concept feasibility studies up to, up to the end when you produce more oil from the assets, from maturing assets. Okay. Next, I guess I'll, I will let Svein talk about the financials and the guidance, and then I'll come back for wrapping up and remind you all the points that I raised today. Svein. No, you can put yours on.
Thank you. Thank you, Luis. Okay. These numbers will be familiar to some of you here today as they were presented just a month ago. I will quickly recap the main figures for 2014. As usual, all amounts are in Norwegian kroner. Both top and bottom-line earnings developed extremely favorably in the year compared with 2013. Revenue grew 13% in the year to NOK 33 billion as sales grows in all areas. EBIT increased 27% to NOK 2 billion. The EBIT margin widened to 6.1% from 5.4%, helped by improvement programs. Adjusted for one-off items, the margin was 6.5% in 2014. Earnings per share rose to NOK 4.71 last year from NOK 4.31 the year before.
The order intake was NOK 37 billion, down from a record NOK 44 billion in 2013. The backlog rose to NOK 48 billion from NOK 41 billion the year before, as we won key contracts in Norway, Brazil, Angola, and the UK, to name a few. Finally, the board proposed paying a NOK 1.45 a share as a cash dividend to our shareholders. I want to spend a few minutes on our order intake and backlog performance. Our 2014 year-end order backlog is down somewhat from the record NOK 54 billion we reported at the end of the 2Q of last year. However, it was at almost 1.5x last 12 months revenue and provides very good visibility into 2015 and also quite good visibility in the medium term.
New orders in 2014 included a $14 billion contract from Total for a subsea production system at the Kaombo field, offshore Angola, a more than $300 million order from Petrobras for subsea manifolds in Brazil, a framework agreement to provide engineering, maintenance, and modification services to BP in Norway, and two contracts for the Mariner oil field development in the U.K. Overall, the backlog has a mix of greenfield and brownfield projects and a diversity of customers in different markets. Going forward, we aim to strengthen that diversity even further. Looking ahead, we see some awards sliding to the right in the current market environment. Also a number of significant projects on the horizon. Tendering remains steady in most of our markets. Our major projects are progressing as according to plan.
I would also remind you that the 2014 backlog number does not capture the NOK 4.5 billion Johan Sverdrup EPMA contract we were awarded in January 2015. As Luis mentioned, we have now secured a concept study for the future phases of this major development. Next, a quick reminder of the financial guidance comments that we have made in recent quarters. Our 2015 CapEx will be in the range of NOK 1.5- 2 billion. There is some flexibility in this number as about 30% of the planned spending is still uncommitted or not yet initiated. Included in this total is maintenance CapEx and capitalized R&D, which together are expected to comprise around 3% of revenue this year and moving forward.
Reflecting these ongoing investments and progression as planned, our depreciation will be higher than last year at about NOK 700-7 50 million. Our record low working capital position will, as we guided last month, unwind this year and next to a more normal level of NOK 1.5- 2 billion. We continue to see net finance costs per quarter of about NOK 60- 70 million, and we expect P&L tax rates to be in the low to mid 30% range in line with previous guidance. Our medium-term financial guidance is unchanged. We aim to at least keep our market share in our core field design and subsea markets. We expect continued robust margins in engineering and a gradual recovery in MMO.
We aim to gradually move toward peer group margins in subsea, and we aim to improve our return on average capital employed in subsea to 20%-25% from 15% at the end of 2013. We exceeded this target in the fourth quarter of last year with return on average capital employed in subsea of 27%. This was influenced by a record low level of net current operating assets and hence on our calculation of average capital employed. This will normalize as major projects progress through this year. Our other policies around topics like leverage, gearing, working capital, and dividends remain unchanged. The proposed dividend payment of NOK 1.45 per share is equal to payout ratio of 30% of net income. Rounding off, I will touch on the financial outlook this year for our business areas.
In subsea, we see a relatively flat progression for revenue and no expansion in margins when compared with 2014. Note that subsea now includes the umbilicals unit, so this guidance is not directly comparable to our previous comments for subsea alone. We continue to see operational improvements strengthening subsea EBIT margins by on average 0.5 to 1 percentage point per year over the medium term. At the same time, we do see some market headwinds that are likely to offset some of these expected bottom line improvements in the near term. In addition to the expected effect of higher depreciation and amortization. The outlook for MMO reflects a challenging market in Norway. We see revenues for this business area down about 20% as guided previously. We see EBITDA margins remaining under pressure but moving towards the mid-single digits level towards the end of the year.
As we communicated shortly after our fourth quarter results, due to lower market activity, we are now in the process of further adjusting our Norwegian MMO workforce capacity by 300 people. In engineering, we see moderate top line growth this year and EBITDA margins on a similar level to 2014. Finally, on a divisional basis, our corporate charge should be around NOK 30-40 million per quarter this year. That was our financial guidance. I will now let Luis go through the broader market outlook and sum up.
Okay. Thanks, Svein. We all know that these are challenging times for the industry and many of our clients are reducing spending. There is still, as Svein mentioned, steady activity on projects in our main markets, There is a risk of some will be delayed. There's no question about that. Activity in the North Sea, our largest regional market, is expected to be sluggish over the next one to two years. Some key developments like Johan Sverdrup will support our business on that important market. As I mentioned earlier, we adjust our MMO workforce capacity in order last year. We are adjusting right now, as Svein just mentioned. We will continue to be vigilant about capacity in our areas as we face more uncertain markets going forward.
As we expand globally, we are well positioned to capture growth in deepwater and subsea segments, through projects with major clients, our focus on low content and our deepwater technology and global delivery model. Our MMO business is also gaining ground internationally in countries such as U.K. and Brunei, and there is a robust demand globally for engineering capabilities, as I mentioned throughout the presentation. In fact, by the end of last year, half our revenue was generated outside our home markets, up from 40% in 2013. Going forward, we expect this share to keep rising. We are strong in Norway, but we're growing internationally.
That's the message I would like to leave with you. Aker Solutions emerged from 2014 as a leaner and more streamlined company, primed to excel in the important subsea markets to benefit from a shift towards more complex hydrocarbon reservoirs in the future. Our simpler structure enable us to realize deeper synergies across the company, and today's Aker Solutions is uniquely positioned to deliver the next great leap, the total subsea production and processing systems. Nobody's better placed than this company. We are in a position of strength as we face the current market environment, with a healthy order backlog and growing international presence. Our continuous effort to strengthen operational and financial performance. I should thank you. I'm very conscious that we have some time for questions now. That's the last thing between...
I'm the last thing between you and lunch. We have time for good questions. I know there are several there. Svein and I will try and be happy to try to answer those questions.
Okay. We'll go to the first question here.
Yeah, hi. Turner Holm, AS Platou. Yeah, I was just curious in the current market environment if pricing on new subsea projects has gotten more competitive versus what maybe you saw a year ago?
Okay, this is a competitive business. There's no question about that. I was being competitive. And of course, now the main language now is cost efficiency. We have very few data points, to be honest. Not many projects has been awarded. If you follow to the industry, it means we have not lost many, but we have not won many either. There are a few projects that we believe are gonna be sanctioned very soon. We see, as I mentioned today, and it's true, there is twofolds to this, to the actions we see from clients. Not every client behave the same way. We see clients that realize that what the industry needs now is to change the way we work.
I give, I gave several examples there, where we can use standard configuration, existing technology, existing tooling, standardized processes, and to reduce engineering, introduce the risk. I think early on, I saw one of my clients, Det Norske, mention how quick they brought well on stream, 18 months. I'm sure they use, I know they do, they did, use standard technology. We have to, as an industry, stop to reinvent the wheel and use what's available, and we see clients doing that. Of course, this industry has a lot of waste, we know that. When we develop a new technology, like we did in several locations, sometimes you have to do it. We've done that in Brazil, three years ago. We had to develop new technology. There was no technology available.
The risks are always larger, especially when you're trying to develop technology the same time you're doing the project. Right now, in our portfolio, I can say the best project we have is a standard project we've done before. Almost no engineering at all. The client just want to produce oil. That's one of the points. The second point is of course, after all the discussion comes with procurement. Oil companies have procurement departments, and they are putting the pressure to do the work. Of course, we are looking into that scenario as well. I like to say that I prefer to deal with the clients who are looking for a bigger picture rather than just trying to save 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%, because that's our margins these days for the whole industry.
To continue with that theme, you know, besides sort of a, an operator procurement-driven exercise, on lowering break-even costs, I mean, are you confident that the steps you're taking now can move some of these large subsea project break-even costs sort of low enough to make them economic in the current environment? I imagine many of them are probably break even pretty close to where we are now, or perhaps even a bit higher.
There are projects and projects, as you know. When I review the opportunities with my team, we actually have a very interesting graph that we have. I can see Mike riding our strategy guy in front here. There's a big line showing where is the break even for the oil price, and then that line, of course, moves. I gave some examples there. Some of those projects, I mentioned Johan Castberg. It's more sicker. There's still things to be done. We're not alone. Have to believe that what we do is 15%, 20% of fuel development. There's a lot of work to be gained on drilling in other parts of the business, construction, so forth. I think the industry will be more competitive. That's my view.
We see that in our company, big push from the management team. We own that. We are more streamlined company. Our management team now is six people versus 60 in the past. We have, we're doing more with less people in all levels. Of course, we have to be vigilant to make sure that there's no unused capacity, as I mentioned before. I'm confident this industry has proven before. One of the fields I was just discussing with the clients the other day was, is a step out for the field, and that field was sanctioned at $17 a barrel. It's possible.
Okay. Thank you.
As long as you don't try to over-engineer in the end.
Thank you very much.
We have a question in the back there. Yeah.
Yeah. Hi. It's James Evans from Exane BNP Paribas. Question on market share and your ambition to maintain it, particularly in subsea. I guess with FMC still signing up new framework agreements, OneSubsea probably being stronger than it was two, three years ago under Cameron, GE targeting Africa very, very aggressively as an organization, what gives you confidence that you can actually maintain market share? Secondly, I guess in this current tough environment where there are g iveaways on margins, and given your backlog, is maintaining market share the best value-creating approach for you?
Okay. I think you asked your question, but you almost asked the question a little bit at the end. I think, to be honest, personally, I think the market share is vanity. I want the good projects. Of course, we need to. I want the faithful clients I mentioned here, the ones that work with you all the time, and the ones that we understand, we know their drivers. I don't worry so much about the market share. Maybe I don't worry so much because we gain a lot of market share, so you should tend not to worry about things we are, you are winning. I think we grew this company.
If you look back, when I joined this company in 2011, we had far less faithful clients than we have now. That gives you some confidence that we are doing the right thing. I mentioned that we have to deliver 'cause, as I mentioned to my team, very simply, this is a company that you have to think about the simple way. Nobody give you a second car if you haven't finished the first car. You don't put your second car in the garage if you don't finish the first one. What to do now is deliver and get the next project. That's what I believe. I think we are very well-positioned. I'm very confident in our technology.
We have hired more than 2,000 engineers in trade in the last five years. We have a very strong workforce. We talk about reducing people. We are protecting a lot of capacity. We are reducing a lot of contractors. Haven't touched on that point on the presentation, but we did. We usually carry 25%-30% contractors. We have actually up to 9% in some locations. That's how it was designed to be done. I'm very confident in our position, to be honest.
Okay. Any more questions? Yeah.
Hi. Rob Pulleyn from Morgan Stanley. Since the question on market share has been asked and answered, I was wondering, in terms of the request for price cuts, cost efficiencies from your clients, to what degree can you pass that on through your own supply chain? I believe there's been some integrated oil companies sending around letters asking for 20%, 30% cost reductions. Can you achieve the same from your suppliers? Thank you.
I like to approach that question with there are cases and cases, right? We have started to reduce our costs, as I mentioned, September, when the oil price was over $100 still. We continue doing that. There's part of the savings we make, they are passed straight to the clients, and that's how it's designed for. We have, for example, discussing with clients to use our global execution model. I mentioned here without many details, but we do have a very, more and more, a very global execution model. We have a lot of knowledge, as we know, in Norway. That's the Norwegian heritage, a lot of good people there. We mix that with low-cost countries. For example, your objective is being done in Norway here, in the same building, is being done in India.
A lot of bright, young, and eager workforce in India. Impressive to see how those guys want to work, how much value they add, how quick they learn. When it comes to subsea, our plants in subsea in Brazil, in Portland or in Norway, they're exactly the same plant. One of my clients actually, was Petrobras, walked into the plant in Norway and says, "Amazing how look like the other one." 'Cause we standardize. That's important to be able to mix and balance. It goes supply chain as well. There is a limit you can take from the supply chain. We used to be taking a lot from the supply chain.
Of course, everybody has to give a little bit of the, I would say, a little bit of blood on that market environment. There are ways of doing things. Same way we work with our clients, we do work with our suppliers. Of course, there's a lot of possibilities and opportunities now when you have the volume. We are buying some large volumes because we're facing actually with the downcycle with a very large order backlog. They repeat orders, which is very important. You know, taking Petrobras in Brazil or taking Kaombo, exactly the same as Moho in a way.
We can go to those clients with large volumes, and that helps for them to also push one level down to the supply, to the suppliers and also for us to gain this economy scale. Of course, going forward, we have to question ourselves, how much volume is gonna come. I think that's what I like to say. We are pushing. 30% can be ambitious sometimes, if you don't do something different. If you just look into the margins, we won't achieve 30%. Nobody. I don't think we will achieve. I don't think Cavada will achieve or any of the other, you know, the engineering contractors. If you just keep doing what we did before, that we won't achieve 30%. If we change, as I mentioned some examples here, I think we can.
I give examples, a real example. A client come with a specification, you look, you get your engineers. If you just do what they, just give them what they want, that will be 50% more expensive than if you just say, "Okay, you can just produce with that particular technology. You can use this." That's... That goes a long lines, a lot of other things that we add on top. Documentation. When I started this industry, I started as an engineer many, many years ago, 32 years ago. I was amazed the amount of information have not changed. That increased the amount of paperwork.
One of the jokes was common to hear in Brazil is that, if one day we have an apocalypse and this whole civilization disappeared, and somebody else comes, they will find out we had a paper industry just to fuel the paper industry. We have to change that kind of environment. The clients understand that. I think they do understand now, and now is the time to understand. As Karl mentioned earlier on here, sustain that for the future. Don't relax when the oil price goes up because we all believe it's gonna go up.
Okay. We have one question here.
Luis Araujo. Alex Brooks from Canaccord. You put a lot of focus on having successfully diversified out of Norway. One of the big successful customers, of course, is Petrobras, which currently has some very high-profile and ugly problems. I wonder if you could give us some reassurance as to how your current payment and relationship is running with Petrobras, operationally?
Okay. First of all, I'm born in Brazil. I live half of my life outside and in Brazil. I'm used to that, you know, fluctuation and, like I call it, pendulum effects in Brazil. I lived that my whole life. Has been a big stability in the country for many, many years, which was good. Now they are facing challenge for several reasons. Our relationship with Petrobras has never been better. It's a very good relationship, it's a client who trusts us. In fact, almost 100% of the Pre-Salt, which is a great success stories, you know, because you have to look at Petrobras and separate the unsuccessful stories into success stories. Pre-Salt is a great success story. Almost 800,000 barrels in six, seven years.
That's actually half of what took to North Sea, and actually, more than 20% was done in the Gulf of Mexico, all the companies, all the investments. It's a very successful story. All that oil is flowing through trees made by Aker Solutions and designed by Aker Solutions so far. Now, the other guys are catching up, the development technology. It's a very success story. Brazil last year, we delivered record throughput for that plant with very good results, coming from a very challenging in 2011. That's what we did operationally. That plant produced 32 trees last year. Very significant milestone. As you know, we are building a new facility to replace the old facility now, and we believe that, in that country long term.
I guess if you look to exploration successes nowhere else, and nobody else has so much success in exploration as Brazil. In the future, that oil will be produced. Back to your assurance about the payments, we are being paid. We are in a good position. Petrobras needs our components. Our backlog is very secure because we are actually, after the split, just to give you some numbers, our backlog is about 11% in Brazil, 10% in Brazil. You know, it's a small portion comparing to the rest. It's all Pre-Salt, so that there's no question that's gonna be developed. There are some delays, as we know. We all read the papers, and we talk to clients.
We discuss with them to delay some deliveries, which is gonna help us because we are moving to a new plant this year. For us, it's a positive, it's a positive trend. We are, I can assure you that we are working very closely with the client. We are monitoring the situation on a daily basis. I guess by speaking Portuguese helps, and sometimes I can have a quicker conversations. But we are, we are in a good position in that country.
Perfect. I think in looking at the time, we will now have a lunch buffet up in the canteen. The easiest way to get there is with the elevators. We'll be back here after lunch in half an hour where Kværner, Ocean Yield, Havfisk, and Akastor will present.
Okay. Welcome back. We will now continue with Akastor, represented by the CEO Frank Reite and the CFO Leif Borge.
Thank you for introduction. Good afternoon, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here to present Akastor. Akastor was established as a standalone company late last September after the split with Aker Solutions. Our mandate. Akastor is an oilfield service investment company with a flexible mandate for long-term value creation. Our portfolio. We have eight portfolio companies. Even in today's challenging market environment, we see many interesting opportunities in our portfolio. Especially within operational improvement, there are still a lot of things our portfolio companies can do. That include significant cost savings, improved operational efficiency, and strategic positioning in the market. We will use the downturn in the oil market to strengthen our competitive position. It's important to remember that economic downturns in an industry will create opportunities for those who adjust and prepare well. Our approach.
We are constantly looking for strategic opportunities for our portfolio companies. Short-term, we especially have an opportunistic approach towards our financial holdings and our real estate portfolio. Our goal is to create as much shareholder value as possible. A short glance at our portfolio. It's eight portfolio companies with a capital employed of NOK 13 billion, 7,600 employees, and with the revenues of NOK 21.4 billion last year. The three largest investment in our portfolio are MHWirth, AKOFS Offshore, and Frontica Business Solutions. MHWirth is a global provider of drilling systems and service and aftermarket services to the drilling industry. AKOFS Offshore, three specialized vessel within well construction and well intervention services. Frontica Business Solutions, a provider of business and corporate services.
We have Fjords Processing, KOP Surface Products, First Geo, STEP Oiltools, and some real estate assets and a portfolio of financial holdings. If we look at our investments, the net capital employed, MHWirth and Aker makes up around 75%. If you look at the revenues, MHWirth and Frontica makes up around 75% of the revenues. Systematic value creation, the Akastor way. All the companies in our portfolio are new in this context. We have started a systematic journey, and the work is so far progressing well. We are pragmatic and opportunistic in our approach. Phase one is to assess the situation, get to know the companies, get to know the environment we are operating in, and benchmarking us with a competitive environment. It's to define a value creation plan.
Where do we want these companies to be in three years' times? It's about setting clear goals and be able to measure these goals. All our value creation plans includes operational improvements, organic growth. We are looking into portfolio companies, if there is add-ons we can do or if there are divestments of parts of the portfolio companies that should be done. We're doing financial engineering. The long-term goal is to have separate financing in each and every of the portfolio companies. Most importantly, the ownership strategy for each portfolio company. What does we as an owner want for the company, and what can we make out of it?
To be sure that we're able to follow up and measure on the progress in the value creation plan, we have developed a set of tools and reports to support the execution and the measurement of the progress we are making. We have also established a new corporate governance structure within Akastor. All our portfolio companies now are separate entities with its own management that is responsible for the portfolio company's day-to-day operation. We have established separate board of directors for the portfolio companies, and there we are also included external board members in the different portfolio companies. These reporting procedures allows us to closely monitor each company. The current market environment puts more pressure on terms and conditions. The customers of our portfolio companies are requesting different payment terms today than that they did six months ago.
There's much more cash focus throughout the whole value chain we are operating in. For the companies in our portfolio, this is resulting in more upward pressure on our net current operating assets. As a consequence of that, we might see an increase in our net interest-bearing debt. To be able to have a healthy cash reserve, cash reserve will be more and more important going forward. We have put together an experienced team. At Akastor, we are now 23 people working every day to create as much value out of those portfolios as possible. There are eight C-CEOs heading different portfolio companies. I'm quite sure that we have a real good team in place to deliver on the opportunities we see in the market.
If we look into our portfolios, we start with MHWirth, it's a NOK 10 billion business with an EBITDA of NOK 941 million in 2014. Approximately 28% of our revenues are from the aftermarket, a substantial part of our earnings comes from the aftermarket activities. It's very important that we have an installed base that support our aftermarket business. At the end of 2014, we had 78 installed units, we expect that to grow with 10 units this year. If we look at our installed base, about 50% of our installed base is younger than 10 years old. If we look at our older part of the installed base, around 45% of that is on fixed platforms.
Even in the current environment, we expect the fixed platforms to continue to produce oil and continue to use our equipment. This makes a good fundament for a continued healthy aftermarket business for MHWirth. If we look into the floater market, there are currently an oversupply. We have seen a steep drop in the utilization of the drilling rigs, and there are still quite a number of units under construction. However, we see that more and more rigs get stacked and also the scrapping activity is picking up. If the scrapping activities will continue to pick up, sometime there will be a balance in the market again, and we will be prepared to be a key player in this market going forward. For MHWirth, it's now all about focusing on its core business.
It's a challenging market. We need to adjust to the market. We have significant cost focus in MHWirth. We announced when we announced our fourth quarter numbers that we are reducing our capacity between 500 and 750 people. This is progressing as planned, and most likely we will be in the upper part of this range. This will give us a yearly savings of NOK 500-600 million. As you saw, Brazil is a very important market for MHWirth. Today, we have between 15 and 20 drilling rigs in Brazil with MHWirth equipment. MHWirth has a contract with Jurong to deliver seven packages to drillship that Jurong has under construction for Brazil. We are monitoring that situation day by day, and we have a very close and good dialogue with Jurong.
Currently, we have significant construction works ongoing on three out of the seven units. If there will be delays in the construction work, that will result in additional capacity cost for MHWirth. What's important for MHWirth now going forward and how to create values is to protect its aftermarket business, the life cycle business. We need to be sure that we are delivering good service to our customers, so they come back to us. It's all about standardization and streamlining the production process. We're going to strengthen our customer relationship. We're using the downturn to have and establish a very good dialogue with both existing customers and new customers. We are making the organization more international than what it has been in the past.
We need to use the current market to prepare and create opportunities for the future. We have AKOFS Offshore, three specialized vessels, and we can basically divide it into two segments. We have subsea installation. We have had SKANDI SANTOS in Brazil for five years. The vessel has performed very, very well, 98% utilization in 2014. It's currently undergoing a five years classing that we expect takes around 30 days. It will start on a new contract with new five years contract with Petrobras. Last year, the vessel created an EBITDA of NOK 120 million after we have paid all charter hire on the vessels.
Based on the track record and based on the success Petrobras has had with using this vessel, we got a five years contract for AKER WAYFARER to put it into operation in Brazil, doing the same work as SKANDI SANTOS. There will be a reconstruction of the vessels. We'll start late this year, and the vessel will be ready for operation second half 2016. In the meantime, the vessel is in the spot market. It's a very tough spot market out there, but so far this year we have had 100% utilization of the vessels. I'm pleased to announce that we have extended the current contract throughout July this year. Both first and second quarter will be good for that vessel. We have AKOFS SEAFARER. We bought the hull in February for $122 and a half million dollars.
Now we own both the hull and the topsides, and that gives us more flexibility going forward. We have had a lot of focus there to reduce the CapEx and to reduce the OpEx level and been quite successful with that. We are now in the neighborhood of $50,000 a day in OpEx for that vessels. It's extremely important now to pursue all the opportunities we see in the market for that vessel. Roadmap for value creation for Akastor's, it's to capitalize on our Brazilian operation, Brazilian business, and fix the AKOFS Seafarer to get the vessel on a long-term contract. We have Frontica Business Solutions. It's a NOK 5.7 billion business with around NOK 300 million in EBITDA last year.
It's a manpower and service provider for oil and gas industry. We are managing a portfolio around 3,000 highly skilled engineers. Every day we are managing 30,000 IT users. Company is also making sure that people are getting their paychecks and that people have an office to come to every day. They have a global delivery model, local presence. Going forward there, we need to leverage on the current platform and be more efficient and also be able to cut costs so we are also cost competitive going forward. When that is in place, we need to gradually broaden the customer base for the company. Fjords Processing, a NOK 2.3 billion company with an unsatisfactory EBITDA of NOK 52 million last year. We had one project that we lost over NOK 100 million on last year.
Fjords Processing, it's a provider of complete processing systems both for offshore and onshore industry. They have quite some good products. They have their market leader in certain segments, and we need to continue to work in those niches. What's important there to create values is to avoid these kind of projects they had in the past where things has gone really, really bad. We need to secure the operation. Furthermore, there should be an opportunity to grow the life cycle services. The company is delivering complex equipment, but someone else is doing the aftermarket and doing the service on these projects. Our goal there is to build up an aftermarket business. Then we have KOP Surface Products based out of Singapore, a NOK 1.1 billion Norwegian kroners company with NOK 156 million in EBITDA last year.
KOP has been a remarkable growth stories with 26% growth year-over-year. They have some really reliable products and with a great production facility at Batam in Indonesia, and has been able to get a very good foothold in the Asian market. There we are working on expanding the production capacity, and it seems like we can expand the production capacity with up to 25% with very limited CapEx. We still see cost synergies, the possibility to cut costs in KOP. We need to grow it into new markets. We have a portfolio of real estates. It includes eight real estate assets, five of them on long-term leases with Aker Solutions. We have First Geo, STEP Oiltools, and then a box with other holdings, including our shares in DOF Deepwater and our shares in Essar.
Leif will go through some of the numbers.
Thank you, Frank, good afternoon to all of you. I don't intend to go through last year's figures. Those were presented two, three weeks ago, I will focus on the asset base, the portfolio and net debt situation. As we have already seen, Akastor has an asset base of NOK 13 billion. 75% of the asset base is tied up in the two investments, MHWirth and AKOFS Offshore. While the capital in AKOFS Offshore is tied up in the three vessels, the capital in MHWirth is tied up in working capital, NOK 2.6 billion assets, and the last year is a quite high level compared to where it has been historically.
In addition to that, MHWirth has around NOK 1.6 billion in fixed assets. Thus the capital structure of the portfolio companies varies quite a bit. While we had hoped and believed that the working capital of MHWirth would be reduced when delivering several projects during 2015, I'm afraid to say that we are less optimistic now, partially due to the general market conditions, of course, but also due to the Iran projects and the risk of that project tying up more working capital going forward. The capital employed of NOK 13 billion is financed with NOK 9.4 billion in equity and NOK 3.6 billion in net interest-bearing items.
We consider the debt level to be on a comfortable level based on the underlying asset values. Having in mind that we then have an unleveraged real estate base of NOK 1 billion. We have assets in AKOFS Offshore. We have NOK two and a half billion working capital in MHWirth, and then, of course, the underlying values in all of the other businesses. When we established Akastor, we put in place more or less all of the funding on the group level. As already mentioned by Frank, the intention is over time to push down the debt into the businesses. The debt on the group level is established with a negative pledge in all of the underlying assets.
The debt then also kind of reflects the intention of pushing down the debt into the entities with three years or remaining two and a half year term loan with a credit facility of NOK 2 billion, five-year or remaining four and a half year credit facility. Also with a new loan that was put in place in order to finance the AKOFS Offshore acquisition, which was in case converting an operational lease, where we paid around $140 million annual lease costs. Taking over the AKOFS' vessel and financing it with a new loan of $125 million, a two years loan done with maturity in February 2017.
In addition to this loan, we have one loan in Brazil, partially funding or funding roughly 50% of the new plant in Brazil, facility of BRL 129 million. So far, we only drawn around BRL 20 million on that loan. Once again, the intention is to gradually push down the debt into the businesses and capitalize each of the business with an optimal capital structure. That's also taken into account in the terms and condition of the six existing loans. We may take on new loans with pledge in the businesses, but then the proceeds from that loan will be used to repay the term loan. In other words, we replace the term loan with new debt.
We may sell assets, any kind of assets, company or assets in the portfolio companies, but then 50% of the proceeds will be used to repay the term loan. In fact, only divestment that will trigger refinancing of all of the debt is in case we sell the shares in MHWirth. There's a stronger link between the existing funding and MHWirth and other of the assets. The overall debt level has now of course increased in the second quarter due to the acquisition of AKOFS Seafarer. We acquired that vessel for $122 million.
In addition to that, the debt level will most likely increase somewhat during 2015, due to the fact that AKOFS Offshore is still in an investment mode. Talking about the CapEx in Wayfarer, preparing the vessel for the operations in Brazil next year. And of course, also taking into account more uncertainty on the working capital in MHWirth. However, we will prioritize to avoid the debt load to increase too much. It's of course important to have financial flexibility going forward. This may of course also impact how proceeds from potential divestments of assets will be used, either repaying debt or paying dividends, share buyback. That was actually what I had prepared on the numbers.
Frank, we open up for some questions.
Yeah, hi, Mathias, DNB Markets. Can you talk a little bit about the flexibility you have in the cost base in MHWirth? In particular, how much of the total cost base is used for procurement and also outsourcing of fabrication and manufacturing?
Well, we have a quite flexible cost base in MHWirth due to the fact that we are outsourcing quite much of the manufacturing. Historically, we have also had 15%-20% of the employees as hired in that also create flexibility. Around 15%-20% of the cost base is indirect costs, so is SG&A and attributable costs. Of course, also a major part of the 4,000 employees in MHWirth are working directly in projects, R&D or customer-driven projects.
The pure variable cost in MHWirth is of course, all the material, all the procurements, all, the subcontracted work in the product part of the business. When we are now taking out around 750 people, reducing the cost base in MHWirth with around NOK 600 million, we are in fact taking down the total cost base with around 15% as an indication of our own cost base.
Do you think the people you have laid off already is sufficient given how you view the market over the next one to two years? Or should we expect that this is the first round?
We have reduced the workforce as if we are not getting any new drilling packages. Of course, we get new contracts all the time on service and some single equipment, but complete integrated drilling packages. If execution of the existing backlog goes on as planned, there shouldn't be any needs to reduce the cost base further this year. Of course, there is in today's market some uncertainty also on the backlog.
Just one last question. The 750 people that are fixed employees, that's not hired in people, right?
No, it's a mix.
It's a mix?
Yeah.
Thank you.
Okay. We have a question also back there.
Hi, it's Michael Braithwaite here at Barclays. Couple questions, if I may. Just on the lifecycle services in MHWirth, what pressure is your clients putting onto you? Do they have any possibility of de-scoping or de-timing, changing the timing of the work? Secondly, when you came into existence, clearly, the world was different. Your active ownership, I think most people at that stage probably thought it was through develop and divest these business. I'm just wondering if the market has made you change that approach, this isn't the time to be selling.
When it comes to the aftermarket, the five-year classing on rigs are a very important part of the aftermarket. Our equipment is very specialized, so we basically have close to 100% of the aftermarket on our equipment. It's also important to use this downturn to work very closely with the clients, so they get a good impression of us. We will be around the table when they, sometime in the future, will order new rigs. When it comes to the ownership strategy for MHWirth, we will not comment on our plans for that.
Okay. Any more question from the audience? I think we have one question from the web. Will we get that up on the screen? This is obviously a challenging opportunity. Which portfolio company has the greatest operational turnaround opportunity?
Well, where it is. If you start with AKOFS, where we have one vessel idle, if you can get that one into work, that will be a great opportunity. So.
Good. Okay. We will then move on to Kværner, represented by their President and CEO, Jan Arve Haugan, and the CFO, Eiliv Gjesdal.
Okay, good afternoon, everyone. Oh, very good. Okay, now I try again. Good afternoon. On the screen, you see a picture of our yard at Stord on the west coast of Norway. You actually see two of the three modules that we are going to deliver to the Edvard Grieg field development managed by Lundin, and the delivery is now in April. To the left, you see the utility module, and in the hall, the main deck and the process module is where the lifeboats are installed. This topside contract was actually won back in 2012, 34 months ago. It represents a typical delivery from our topside facilities. The contract was won on the back of two big jackets and also the huge contract that we won for Shell at Nyhamna.
Today, I will start with running through the operational highlights. Eiliv will take us through some of the key figures, and then I will try to guide you a little bit about the future. Before I go into the details, this is a picture showing Kværner's portfolio today. We are still a leading contractor to deliver complete offshore platforms and also onshore plants. Our focus is mainly on the upstream oil and gas industry. We deliver the substructures both in concrete and steel, but we also do hookup projects. We call it project completion or platform completion and of course, the decommissioning operations. We do have a proven track record. We are saying that we have 40 years of experience executing complex development projects.
Currently, we are 3,000 employees and above that, approximately 1,400 contract staff that are working now in eight different countries. We do have a flexibility when it comes to the workforce, and we are flexible manning up and down. As we continuously remind ourselves and also the market, a good HSE performance or safety performance that's a license to operate. That's for us as well. However, early last Saturday morning, or not last, but the 7th of March, I got the message that we had a fatality at our yard at Stord during decommissioning of the Shell Draugen platform or not the platform, but the offloading buoy. Such an accident is not acceptable. I hope that everybody understands me when I'm very emotional on this. We will, of course, investigate this.
First of all, the police will have an investigation, but we also have an independent investigation, including our main competitor when it comes to decommissioning in Norway. Overall effort is to try to find out what was the reason why this happened and what can we do to avoid something similar in the future. That is absolutely mandatory for us. We share this with everybody because safety work, that's not proprietary competence. During 2014, we produced for more than 20 million man-hours. 25% of that was our own workforce and 75% was done by subcontractors or partners.
In 2014, we recorded 18 serious near misses. Even though it didn't result in any direct consequences or harm, we have investigated all these 18 incidents and we have summarized them in lessons learned. We have shared that not only with our own company or colleagues, but also with all our competitors and partners. I can assure you that even though we had the tragic situation two weeks ago, I'm working very hard to continue to improve our safety performance. That is absolutely necessary for us. Over the last three years, we have accomplished a wide range of successful projects and project deliveries. Just to show some of them on this picture here. In this market with the many players, this is our competitive edge.
We have a group of people in our company with expertise and experience from many different projects and from many different regions where we operate. Efficient management and to handle all these thousands or probably millions of interfaces between the feed process, the detail engineering process, the procurement process, through to construction and finally completion and commissioning, that is our proven execution model or project execution model or PEM, as we call it. When we established Kværner as an EPC contractor back in 2011, we had an advantage that with our experience in this industry, we could set up an business model enabling us to utilize the flexible cost base. The flexible cost base is, of course, to control our projects and together with the expertise and execution, make sure that we continuously are a predictable supplier.
In this industry, you cannot, in the long run, have success if you only are attractive on the bid price. Over time, you also have to deliver as committed on the contract. I believe that the genes of our company is the predictability. The deliver as agreed, the delivered as specified quality, and there is no delays. I will just give you some highlights on the figures here now, because Eiliv will come back to some of the more details. The revenue last year was NOK 14 billion. If you add on the Hebron project, it's NOK 17.5 billion, which is actually the highest in our activity in the history of this EPC business. The EBITDA was NOK 828 million for 2014, and that's a margin of 5.9%.
At the year-end, the order book was NOK 16.5 billion, and approximately 50% of that is actually going to be done during 2015 and the remaining in 2016 later. As you have heard earlier today, and which I will also come back to, we now need a refill. Just very quickly, a close look at some of the major ongoing projects, all of them on track to delivery. We do have high activity at our yard at Stord, at Newfoundland, and at Nyhamna. However, a little bit more lower utilization rate at Verdal. The Edvard Grieg topside, as I just talked about when we saw the opening picture, that's now nearing completion. We are going to deliver this project to Lundin now in April.
It's a tight schedule, 34 or 35 months from contract award to final delivery, then again, completely completed when we deliver to Lundin. We are also going to use, co-participate in the offshore completion, we are well into the detailed preparation so that... The current largest project that we have is, of course, the expansion at Nyhamna. The contract was awarded pretty much in the same spring as we won the Edvard Grieg jacket, or sorry, Edvard Grieg topside, it was announced to NOK 6 billion. Currently, the value is more than NOK 11 billion. That plant is going to be upgraded together with full operation.
There's gonna be a shutdown now in the second quarter, and we are on schedule all the pre-assemblies and all the packages for to do the integration of the critical activities during that shutdown. The fabrication is being executed. The most complex ones are actually at our own yards, both at Stord and at Verdal, but also here in the U.K. and in China. At the Hebron project, which you see here at the top bottom right-hand corner, we are now currently completing the mechanical installation. Again, a typical topside could be close to 20,000-25,000 tons. Mechanical outfitting in that GBS is actually 8,000 tons, and it's a lot of pipe, pumping, pumps and, of course, control systems and also, steel structures. We completed the slip forming, major slip forming, the second-biggest after Gullfaks B, in October last year.
We have concluded all the detail design. Now follow-on engineering is being executed at St. John's. At Gular, where the picture is from, we are now completing to make sure that the domes are closed and the slip forming will start in approximately half a year for the remaining shaft up to the top of the platform. Finally, before I go into some of the financial details with Eiliv, since the letter of intent for two Sverdrup jackets was signed last summer in June, we have now committed the first one into an EPC lump sum contract, close to NOK 2 billion. Of course, it was an important step change for us to also revise the delivery model and in order to secure the performance of such a project.
We are, of course, subcontracted now more than we have done before. We have recently signed a subcontract with Dubai Drydocks in Dubai in order for them to both weld the big clusters, a huge amount of welding to be done, and also the flotation tanks. This is then for us to ready for assembly at our yard in Verdal. Early next year is the starting of the assembly period. That takes us through the operational highlights so far. Now I will give the word to Eiliv, who will take us through some of the key figures.
Thank you. Thank you, Jan Arve Haugan , and good afternoon, everyone. This business, our jacket, typically two-year execution time, a topside, three-year execution time, a concrete substructure, maybe four years execution time, and the Nyhamna onshore upgrade is a six years contract. I will start with giving you some of the longer-term development of Kværner to date. I will talk a little bit about the capital structure of the company and finally the outlook for 2015. If you look closer at the order backlog development, we started out in 2011 at a level around NOK 10 billion. We have since then both won and lost out on projects. In our segments, there are few large projects to be awarded every year, and you win or you lose. This of course create fluctuations.
In the winter of 2012/2013, we lost out on key tenders. We managed to fill up the backlog with other projects as well as growth in the portfolio. The backlog split at year-end was 50% for execution in 2015 and 50% for execution in 2016 and later. For those of you that wonders about what is 2016 and what is later is approximately 25% of that amount. Our business is, as I said, and you know, a portfolio of large projects, meaning that our activity level as well as results are defined by our project portfolio. Being a project business implies that every quarter and every year depends on the development of single projects, and the results we deliver are the summary of the portfolio.
The revenues and profitability have fluctuated in the past, and we assume some fluctuations going forward as well. We came from a level of quarterly revenues of around NOK 2 billion, and last quarter, we delivered more than NOK 4 billion if we include Hebron activity. The margin development has shown an improvement since early 2012. However, we have not been able to realize the full potential from an improved project portfolio and the scale effect of peak revenues. In the period of high activity, we have also seen some negative cost development in projects. Our working capital requirement is for all projects to be at least cash neutral at all times. The business should thus be cash positive at all times. The working capital has fluctuated within the band of negative NOK 500 million to about negative NOK 1.5 billion.
It will continue to fluctuate from quarter to quarter with the project phasing and the project portfolio as we have seen historically. As announced in connection with fourth quarter results, the board has proposed a dividend of NOK 0.67 to the general meeting in April. The proposal is in line with the announced frequency and targeted growth of 10% annually. The EPC business is capital light. In its core, it's a people business, and it's customer financed as the deliveries are tailor-made according to customer specifications. As seen on the previous slide, the working capital fluctuates significantly, and this is the main factor explaining changes in cash. However, you see that we have cash in excess of the negative working capital and net order non-interest-bearing assets. The main balance is the Longview claim, where we have received $48 million in a partial settlement after year-end.
As you have seen, the backlog at the end of 2014 was NOK 16.5 billion, providing us with a sound foundation for the next years. The revenues for 2014 were exceptionally high, as you also see from the chart. The activity at Stord will decrease when the Edvard Grieg topside is delivered in April. Verdal, the prefabrication of the first Sverdrup jacket, is not due to start until after the summer. For 2015, we aim at activity levels of NOK 10 billion-NOK 11 billion, including revenues from the Heathrow project. The first half of 2015 is expected to be challenging, with results temporarily on the low side of what has been delivered historically. This is due to the phasing of the current project portfolio and timing of new contract awards.
Internationally, we continue to focus on business development and tender activity, with cost contributing negatively to the results this year or actually last year and into 2015. The Sverdrup jacket is expected to reach 20% completion in fourth quarter, while new contract awards will have limited margin contribution in 2015. We do not recognize margin on projects until we reach 20% completion. All in all, this reflects that the EPC business is lumpy and fluctuations will have to be expected from quarter to quarter. Margin improvement in second half of the year is dependent on new contracts as well as successful execution of the current project portfolio. It's especially challenging to estimate developments in the current volatile market. You're over.
Okay, over to Q&A.
Yeah, I will.
No, no, sorry.
I promise to give them some update about the future and probably about the EPC topside business. That's why people are sitting here, so At least let me try. Thanks a lot. Okay, I have experienced a number of downturns in my part of the industry as well. Probably, I heard Evan talking about his experience earlier today. I remember I was also doing a lot of projects to try to be profitable at $10 some years ago. Well, many years ago, actually. Okay, I remember it. I'm not going to go into the details, but just to make sure that you understand that we are dividing the challenges up into a number of pieces as well.
First of all, when we lost the bids to Korea and to Singapore, but also to Europe for the decades, back in the previous high season for bidding, we immediately initiated cost-cutting programs based on the portfolio that we had of projects. In particular, we did what we call a aftermath recalculation of the Elk Hills project that we delivered last year and of course, on time delivery and with very high quality to ConocoPhillips. As you probably have heard, they started the oil production earlier this year as planned. We did the recalculation and we identified immediately just to remove cost or quality glitches, we can reduce the cost by 17%. We humbly called, said that by only doing improvements ourself, we can reduce our cost by 15%.
Of course, in order to continue to improve, we need to optimize our delivery model. I think that what you have heard about Drydocks World being our subcontractor for the jackets is a typical example for that. Our intention is to continue to drive a repetitive business with our subcontractors. We do have a number of other subcontractors as well, but of course, this is important step for us. Same with procurement. We do see that having been into a very, could you say, hot market period, we now see a little bit cooler market. Subcontracting or procurement and procurement of bulk is obviously improving going forward. And I think this was briefly said by Luis Araujo, and it was also covered with Karl, that you have to work together.
It's in the interfaces between the different players, you really can reduce cost in this industry. I think if we don't work together with the clients or the clients work with us and with the subcontractors, we will never be able to materialize or actually get new projects on stream. That's why we believe that the expertise and the competence that we are in possession of should be a very important contributor to future improvements as well. That's why when we talk about standardization, it's almost like people in Norway talking about the weather. Everybody talks about it, but just a few do anything about that. We try to at least convert, when we talk about standardization, we try to convert that into, okay, what we do.
Mainly we are focusing on standardized processes and repetition of different processes. Yes, it's obvious that for us, we need to look at further optimizing our delivery model. On this picture, you see a indication of how we can reach out to get even further low-cost fabrication through strategic partnerships. I can assure you that the disappointment that we had in February when it was announced that one of our competitors were much cheaper than us and won the drilling platform, we saw that, well, somebody else have actually been even more clever than us in cutting cost.
Of course, for us, we announced then that, well, we have to realize that we are not cheap enough, but we strongly believe in our delivery model, but we also have to challenge our own cost base, and based on that, we need to look further outside our own, let's say, standard, delivery model and find new opportunities. Again, Dubai Drydocks was one of those solutions for the jackets, and of course, we have to do that also for other delivery models, including the topsides. A differentiator for us is our flexibility, and we have had periods in the yard where it's been pretty empty, and we have managed to do other jobs. Currently, we have, the Nyhamna job, and of course, that is important for us.
When I look at little bit more into the market, we still believe that there is a need for our expertise. There is a number of uncertainties when the market will pick up again, whether it will be very quick or 10 years. We have analyzed the market, and in particular in our, let me say, home market, and we do see a need for new platforms and upgrading our existing ones. Also in the international regions, there are opportunities for us to continue to deliver products, and in particular, when the projects are schedule-driven. I think Karl pointed at that also earlier today. If you can reduce the execution time for projects, you do have a differentiator. We have, in addition to the riser jacket, we have a letter of intent for the drilling jacket for Sverdrup.
We expect this contract to be converted from a letter of intent into an EPC lump sum contract later this year, hopefully during the summer. We also realize that the Sverdrup project will need at least two more jackets. We are, of course, working very hard to see if there are synergies within the frame agreement to also promote that for the Sverdrup license. In addition to Sverdrup, there are a number of other prospects in the North Sea, and in particular, we were very positively, let me say, communicated some few weeks ago when Statoil announced that this unmanned wellhead platform, or we call it Subsea on a Stick, was chosen as a concept for the Oseberg future project. There are a number of projects, but due to competition, I will got to not go into the details.
Of course, the platform projects for, or GBS projects are just a few. We have started to develop some solutions for nearshore LNG terminals, and in particular for the Arctic regions. Again, in the current volatile situation, about both the geopolitical situation, but also the future in the Arctic is of course, the time is probably the biggest X factor in the future. Before I sum up, for us, it is overall most important to execute on the current backlog. Yes, it's a high uncertainty about the market, and in particular, throughout the next few months, probably half a year, we will see what the future will bring. I can assure you that we are working very hard to win new contracts based on our delivery model, but also optimizing the delivery model.
Of course, the cooperation that we have with KBR for the Sverdrup projects are still at hand, and we work very hard together. We do still believe that on our competence and the expertise is going to be valued in the marketplace, and we do see that we need to step up ourself, and we have also announced on the backdrop of the loss of the drilling platform that we need to do substantial manning reductions in order to be able to handle the future cost situation. We will continue to develop our business. Of course, again, HSSE is a core value for us, and in spite of the tragic fatality that we had, we need to continue to work relentlessly on the focus on that.
Our home market is obviously, without any doubt, our main priority, and we need to continuously look for a delivery model that reduces our cost base because we do see that the prime evaluation criteria is more and more cost and cost reductions. Again, we continue to train ourselves on hands-on management and make sure that everybody reports the deviation before they become problems. Based on that, I think now you are ready.
Okay. Are there any questions for Kværner? Frederik.
Frederik Lunde, Carnegie. Your dividend yield is 20%, which implies the market doesn't believe you'll keep paying the dividend. You do have a big cash position. What's your view on maintaining the dividend policy in light of the uncertain market and things like this?
I think clearly, the dividend policy as such is up for the board to decide. When I've received this question before, I've said that the bidding season always important also in that respect, because when we put in place the dividend policy, it was on a longer-term view for the company. Then this bidding season is important and it is a topic to be evaluated, I would think, after the bidding season. You are right, we are in a net cash position, so we have a healthy balance sheet. When we put in place the dividend policy, it was because we were going into what we call a transitional year.
Clearly, we have the funding, if we don't see the opportunities ahead of us.
Just a bookkeeping question, but the cash on Longview, has that been converted to NOK or is that in dollars still?
It's a timely question, and it has not been converted to NOK yet, but it's soon to be.
Very good. Thanks.
Okay. Any other questions? We will then have the last coffee break, and then we'll return at 2:00 P.M. for the two best performing companies in our portfolio, Hafslund and O'Neill.
Okay. Welcome back to the last session today. Now Ocean Yield represented by the CEO, Lars Solbakken.
Thank you. Welcome, everyone, to the presentation of Ocean Yield. The company was established by Aker in March 2012 with a portfolio of vessels all with long-term charter. Intention was to build a relatively large dividend yield company. After adding a few projects, we listed the company on the Oslo Stock Exchange in July 2013. The company currently have a market cap of about $815 million. We have a diversified portfolio of modern fuel efficient vessels, all with long-term charters, giving us a quite substantial contract backlog and thereby enabling us also to pay a stable and hopefully increasing dividend.
We have a growth strategy and have committed to investments of about NOK 1.3 billion since we started and expect to continue to grow our portfolio going forward. We're currently offering a very attractive dividend yield of 9.4%, and the earnings yield is currently 13.3%, which is quite attractive compared to peer. Looking at the portfolio, up to the left, we have the FSO Dubai, which was part of the initial portfolio we took over from Aker. Vessel was built in 2008 and entered into a 10-year contract in India to Reliance Industries. They own the field together with BP and Equinor Resources. The contract runs until September 2018.
But more important is that this vessel will just stay on the fields until the field is empty. It's producing gas, and the vessel is linked to the grid in India. Next vessel is the Wayfarer, which is on a long-term charter until 2027 to a customer. The customer has got a five-year contract with Petrobras starting in mid 2016. We'll do a modification of this vessel before that, and the cost of that is estimated about $90 million. Next vessel is the construction vessel, Livik Connector, which is a cable laying vessel on a long-term charter to Astra Holding, which is listed in Singapore. It's doing work in the North Sea.
It has had a framework agreement with ABB, and it's doing cabling work. Next project is two anchor handlers, was delivered, which we have on long-term charter to Farstad Shipping, built in 2013, and have a 10-year or 12-year contract to Farstad Shipping, 10 years remaining. We have the diving support of the construction vessel, SPM Installer, which is on a 12-year contract to SPM. On the right-hand side, we have six car carriers, which are on long-term charter to Höegh Autoliners. Höegh Autoliners is owned 62.5% by the Höegh family and 38.5% by A.P. Møller. It's two of the vessels are under construction and will be delivered in 2016.
We have three more gas carriers also under construction in China. We also own bonds in American Shipping, book value $181 and $194 million in nominal value. These bonds have a coupon of LIBOR plus 6%, and maturity is in February 2018. This was also part of the initial portfolio, which we took over from Aker. If we look at the employment of our assets, we see that we have very long-term employment in average, 9.5 years, a contract EBITDA backlog of $2.2 billion. This gives, of course, a very stable income. The new buildings also adds about 30% growth in EBITDA.
If you look at the counterparties, we feel that we have relatively strong counterparties, and we don't foresee any negative surprises in the short term. As an example for some of the projects we have done recently, picked here the SPM Installer, which we bought from SPM in December 2014. It's a diving support and construction vessel. We bought it for $150 million, a relatively attractive price. It's financed by $110 million non-recourse bank loan. Banks were willing to do that non-recourse to Ocean Yield because of the strong credits of SPM. SPM retained a 25% ownership in the vessel. It's on a 12-year hell and high water dayboat. They have purchase option starting after five years.
Another project that we did last year is a liquefied three liquefied ethylene carriers, which is under construction in China. These vessels are relatively advanced technically. They have the new MAN dual fuel engine, enabling them to run on ethane. Also new tank construction adding about 30% extra cubic. You see that the deck is higher than normal. Very fuel efficient vessels saving making substantial savings on the fuel. There's a 15-year contract, but it's a 10-year with fixed rates, and it's chartered to the Hartmann Group in Germany, but all based on the sub-charter to SABIC, which is the large Saudi Arabian petrochemical company.
It will transport gas from the U.S. to the U.K. SABIC has made a 10-year purchase contract of ethane for their cracker in Teesside. If you look at the growth in our portfolio, as I just said, we have added about $1.3 billion in new projects. Last year, we added $540 million new projects. We did three gas carriers, two car carriers, the wave power modification, we entered in an agreement with Akastor, which is about $90 million. We bought the SPM Installer for $150 million. Totally about 514 new investments.
We plan to continue to grow our portfolio in a prudent manner, with a strong focus on modern fuel-efficient assets, on long-term charter, to relatively strong counterparties. We target an equity return about 14%. Typically, our lease terms will be 10-12 years, but we're also looking at some projects with up to 15 years, contracts. Looking at the risks for this type of company, we have all our vessels on long-term charter. We're not directly market exposed. It's really counterparty risk that is the main risk for Ocean Yield. We have reasonably strong counterparties, so we don't expect any negative surprises in the short term. In long term, you can never know how the markets will develop.
Currently, we feel quite comfortable with our counterparties. With respect to operating risk, we only have operation on DHIRUBHAI-1, which is the FSO in India. There we took over the organization from running the vessel from Aker. And we have 13 persons in the office in Oslo following up the operation of that vessel. With respect to currency risk, we are a dollar based company. And we have some crown exposure, which we then have basically hedged. We have very limited currency risk. Interest rate risk, we try to hedge a reasonable portion of the interest rate risk. That is through interest rate hedge agreements.
We have some fixed rate loans, and we also do some of our leases with floating interest rate. There is adjustment in the, so we then push the interest rate risk over to our counterpart. With respect to financing risk, we typically finance the vessel as we do new commitments. Currently, the only open financing is for the gas carriers, where we have received very attractive financing offers, and actually much more attractive than we based our investment decision on. That we plan to do later this spring. We have residual value risk. As we do very long-term charters, it's a relatively low residual value risk.
The most important residual value risk is on the DHIRUBHAI-1, which is in end of the fixed charter in September 18th. We expect that vessel to stay on the field until the field is empty. We have not been guiding on our expectation for how long will that be, but we expect that to be beyond the fixed contract. If you look at the outstanding bond, we have a bond, NOK 1 billion bond outstanding. Our rating for Ocean Yield is for most investment banks, we have a shadow rating of double D minus of the company. Danske Bank just released new credit report with a clean double B for Ocean Yield.
The loan was done one year ago, NIBOR plus 390, and we did a tap issue in July at 365, NIBOR plus 365. Last trade is about NIBOR plus 463. Maturity of the loan is in 2019, so it's about four years remaining on that loan. Covenants, we have 25%. We have close to 40% equity ratio. Minimum cash is $25 million. We had $76.4 million at the year-end, but also undrawn $50 million in the credit line. EBITDA to interest expense was 2x , and we had 7.3. It's very comfortable margins.
We intend to continue to use the bond market for financing the company, and we'll probably over the next years issue more bonds as part of the funding. If you look at the results, EBITDA has developed quite nicely. It is a very stable earnings. EBITDA has increased from NOK 38 million in Q3 2012 to basically NOK 53.9 million in Q4 2014. Q4 was negatively impacted by a reclassification of the Wayfarer, which was earlier an operating lease, but because we extended the contract from 2020 to 2027, this the Wayfarer went from an operating lease to a finance lease.
That had a negative impact on the result of $3.4 million. We had to close down the Derby because of the cyclone Hudhud, that has a negative impact of $1.1 million. If you look at the net profit, we have had a very positive development from 2012, third quarter 2012 of $12 million, was $30.5 million now in Q4. There we had some one-offs of, adjusting for one-offs, it's about $27.1 million if we adjust for one-offs in Q4. Important to note here is that we have five new buildings under construction, and we have the modification of Wayfarer. When the new buildings are delivered, our EBITDA will grow about 30%.
There's no need to raise any additional equity to fund those investments. We have a very strong built-in growth in Ocean Yield. If you look at the adjusted net profits and dividend per share, you see that the adjusted net profit per share is stable, growing slowly, $0.81, and for the fourth quarter, we paid out $0.57. This gives a dividend yield of 9.4%, 70% payout ratio, and a very, very strong earning yield of 13.3%. This is way above any of our peers. If you look at share price development since the IPO in July 13, we see that in kroner, the share price had increased 79%.
If we on an accumulated basis of one and a half year. If we include dividends paid, it's about 102%. In dollar terms, share price has increased 35%. If we include dividends, 52%. You see that from last summer, because of the strong strengthening of the dollar against NOK, the share price in dollar is actually somewhat lower today than it was in the summer of 2014. If we look at the developments in dividend yield and earnings yield. On the dividend yield, which is the red, we're currently trading at 9.3%. Last summer, we traded about 7.5%.
It's, it is a combination of the strengthening of the dollar and increased dividend that have pushed up the dividend yield. Earnings yield is also at a very high level, 13.2%, which is substantially above where it traded last summer, which was about 11%. We just included this slide to show a little bit because we feel that often the share price sensitivity for this kind of company is often underestimated. We're paying now NOK 14.25 cents was the dividend for fourth quarter. With the 9.3%, we were have a share price of about NOK 50.
You see that, if we came back to the dividend yield we had six months ago, we would trade at about NOK 62, 7.5%, which is then NOK 62. If we can deliver on our dividend policy to continue to increase our dividends as in accordance with our policy, you see that there's very substantial upside in the stock. When we included NOK 0.20, which is our earnings for the fourth quarter. We see that that is about NOK 69 at 9.5%. It's about more than NOK 70 at the current yield. I think that this shows a little bit of the potential, then we will need to deliver on our dividend policy.
If you look at the outlook, although we may have some challenging oil service market in 2015, we do not expect this to have any negative impact on our earnings this year, as we have all our vessels on long-term charter to relatively strong counterparties. Current market may provide quite interesting opportunities for a company like Ocean Yield. We continue with our conservative investment strategy, the focus of investments in modern fuel-efficient assets on long-term charters. We feel the company has a capacity to continue to increase its dividends. We have increased the dividend every quarter since the IPO, and it's our plan to continue with that. We have 30% EBITDA growth from projects under construction.
We also have a quite strong balance sheet with about 40% equity, enabling us to add more projects without raising equity, should further increase our earnings. We have a payout ratio of 70%, which gives us room also to increase the dividend. Most of our peer companies are paying basically close to 100% or have a payout ratio of close to 100%. We feel comfortable that we can deliver on our dividend policy going forward. Thank you. I think we can open up for questions.
Are there any questions to Lars?
Hi, Lars. Theodore Burk from Carnegie. A quick clarification question on the DHIRUBHAI-1. Did you say that that was a life of field contract?
No, no.
Okay.
No, it's a firm contract, runs until September 18th. We expect it that they either exercise their option of $255 million in September 18th. That we agree on an extension to continue because it makes no economic sense to replace that vessel with any other vessel. It cost about $1.2- 1.5 billion to build such a vessel, and it would be too costly to basically replace it. It make economic sense to keep that vessel on the field for the life of the field.
Do you have an updated expectation of the life of the field?
No, we have not guided on our expectation of the life. We expect that to be longer than or to continue to produce beyond September 18.
Okay. Anne.
Thank you. Since the dividend yield is as high as 9.4% a year, at least the market is pricing in that it's a significant risk that it's not going to continue. Even though you comment about the strong cold departures, I wonder if you can elaborate a little bit about the contracts, if it's kind of a risk of termination of contract. If you have kind of a 12-year, 15-year contract, and the oil service company, for example, has no job for the vessel, three years from now?
Yeah. I think all our contracts, with the exception of the Dubai, where we have operations, so it's a different kind of contracts, are what we call high-end hell water bareboat contracts. That means that basically it would not be possible to terminate such a contract. It's more written like a loan agreement. The experience from earlier downturns is that it's not been any issue that such contracts are canceled. You know, there is no cancellation rights in such contracts. For Dubai, it's a slightly different type of contract because there is also operations. There we have an operating contract plus the bareboat contract. That is slightly different structure.
Thank you.
Okay. We'll move to the last company today, Havfisk. Please welcome the CEO, Webjørn Barstad.
Thank you. And good afternoon. I'm going to present Havfisk, a fishing company. We are basically targeting fish in the sea as opposed to many of the companies that are working on the seabed or below the seabed or on the surface of the sea. Our focus is slightly different from some of the other companies you've seen. First, a few words about the Norwegian fishing industry and Havfisk within the context of the Norwegian fishing industry. Turning to some key financial deliveries and a few words about what actually drives the value of our company. Finally, some outlook comments at the end. As you know, Norway is a small country.
We have a population of about two-thirds of the population of London. We have a relatively long coastline, and this gives us access to very big ocean areas. In actual fact, as a fishing nation, we are the 10th by volume in the world in terms of catches. As a seafood trader, we number two in the world in terms of export value, only beaten by China. Norway is actually quite a big player in the seafood industry globally. We have the world's largest cod stock. Cod is, as you know, a highly prized fish in the U.K. Also the Norwegian fishing industry has over the last, well, 20 years or so, gone through fairly significant strategic or structural changes.
Whilst amongst the EU 27 countries, there is now 127,000 fishermen fishing from nearly 80,000 vessels, landing about 4 million tons. This gives EU average catch per year of 31 metric tons per fisherman. In Norway, we have now just about 9,000 fishermen fishing from 4,000 vessels, giving catches per fisherman of about 255 metric tons per fisherman. It's, as you can see, it's an industry that has structured itself very well over recent years and now is well positioned for profitability. Norway is also a high-cost country, probably one of the most expensive places on earth when it comes to workforce costs and many other costs. High costs call for high-tech solutions.
We are working very hard on energy-efficient operations and also to man the vessels with as few people as possible and let the technology take care of production in the factory. We are very focused on the environment, on both with respect to emissions from the vessels and also with respect to management of the fish resources. All the major fisheries in Norway are now labeled under the Marine Stewardship Council eco-label, a seafood labeling system based here in London, which is by far the biggest certifier in the world on seafood. This is a slide showing the 35 largest harvesting companies in Norway. As you can see, Havfisk is on the left. We are about two and a half times the size of number two in revenue terms.
Obviously, Havfisk then is well-positioned within the Norwegian industry, and in the Norwegian industry being well-positioned within the global seafood industry. We are the largest harvesting company and quota holder in Norway, holding about 11% of the Norwegian whitefish quotas. We also have seven licenses for fishing shrimp in the Bering Sea and one license for shrimping off East Greenland. We have 10 trawlers in operation, three of which are new builds and were delivered in 2013 and 2014. We have now 390 people in the company, about 365 at sea. In addition to the vessels, we also have ownership to five fish processing facilities in the northern part of Norway. These processing facilities are operated by our sister company, Norway Seafoods.
We're an owner, but we're not actually operating them ourselves. Our shares are noted at the Oslo Stock Exchange, Aker holds 73 and a quarter % of the shares. The fleet structure is basically placed in three daughter companies in the north of Norway, in the region of Nordland and in the region of Finnmark. The head office is in Ålesund on the west coast of Norway. If you look at the route to market for our products, mainly the majority of our fish goes as frozen, headed, gutted fish, blocks into the export market for further processing abroad.
China is by far the biggest seafood producer in the world, so a lot of our fish goes to China, but also to various European countries and to the U.S. About 28% of our catches, this is the figure for last year, 28% went to fresh filets, as fresh fish, unfrozen, delivered to Norway Seafoods and processed in our factories in the north of Norway into various types of fish filet products. Another 15% is sold frozen to the Norwegian saltfish producer or bacalao producers. This is quite a strong industry in Norway, and normally this happens on the west coast of Norway.
At this point, I would have invited you on board the Goddess Neptune, our latest new build, unfortunately, the Wi-Fi speed is a little bit slow, I'm not going to be able to do that. I can just refer you to our webpage if you want to see what a modern trawler looks like today. Enter Havfisk.no or Havfisk.com, you can actually walk around inside of this wonderful vessel and check out the technology and also run a film showing how the factory works, et cetera. It's quite interesting if you find the time. Turning then to some key financial deliveries and also focusing on what are the actual value drivers in our company. Just some highlights first.
We had last quarter of last year, we had the record high EBITDA for any one quarter, and also we had the record high EBITDA for the year last year. We had the highest catch values per operating day in any quarter, and indeed for any year in Havfisk. We had record high volumes of catches last year. We continued to see a positive price trend, and indeed the price rises were actually highest at the end of the year. Also last year, we completed our new building program, three new vessels, increasing our catch capacity and our flexibility to participate in various fisheries, to a greater extent than we've been able to in the past.
Our turnover came in at NOK 1,049 million, just under GBP 90 million, giving a EBITDA of NOK 299 million last year. Profit before tax came in at NOK 260 million. At this point I should point out that this includes the reversal of a provision that was made in the accounts for 2013 and also for the, in the fourth quarters of 2014 for the so-called the Glitnir case. I don't know if you're familiar with that, we had a court proceeding that's been going on in Iceland for the last few years, involving a currency and interest rate swap agreement that Havfisk terminated in 2008.
The short version is that the administration committee of Glitnir sued Havfisk for currency earnings on this contract. They won in the first court instance in the district court in Reykjavik in December 2013. Havfisk appealed. The appeal was treated in the Supreme Court in March, 4th March of this year. The decision of the Supreme Court came Thursday last week. Havfisk won the appeal case, and consequently a total of NOK 195 million that we have made provisions for in the accounts for the two last years are now being reversed, giving this pretax profit of NOK 260 million.
If there was no Glitnir case, the pretax profit of 2014 would have been NOK 103 million for 2014. Obviously, this also gives us a very positive and favorable cash situation. The liquidity situation is now much clearer than it was last week. Obviously, that also gives an improved ability to pay dividends to the shareholders, which is a goal that we are working for. Total catches last year came in at just under 60,000 tons of head and gutted fish, and that's about 83,000 tons of live fish weight. Turning to the value drivers of our company.
We aim every day to optimize our operations so that we can maximize shareholder values. In doing so, we are paying particular attention to some relatively few key value drivers, which I will run through with you now. First of all, the costs, of course. High focus on operational costs. This is just a slide showing the six main cost groups. As you can see, personnel costs and fuel costs are the two most important cost factors. Personnel costs are actually related to how much income we have. The fishermen have what we call a share of the catch pay system. The higher the value of the catches, the higher the income for the fishermen. It is a fixed percentage.
Both for personnel costs and also for freight and packaging, it's actually a strong relationship between the revenues and the actual costs. For the remainder of the cost groups, it's more a question of how many days in operation, how much, for example, how much fuel do you use per day in a trawler, how much fishing gear is actually worn out and needs to be replaced, et cetera. That's more volume related than the two first groups. Two of the main value drivers for our company is the catch efficiency and the prices for fish.
If you look on the left part of this diagram, you can see it's an illustration of how we need to catch roughly 10,000 kilos per day on a trawler to break even, if you like. Anything above that level would give us a yield margin of around 60% at the EBITDA level. Last year, we averaged 19,200 kilos per day, roughly. On the right-hand side, you can see the significance of price. If, you know, the average increase in price of NOK 1 would give us about 0.6 increased EBITDA. Again, price and catch efficiency are very key to value development in our company.
This slide shows you the increase that we had in catch efficiency over the last few years, from 2008 up until now. Basically, we've had a very strong increase. This is caused by the changes in the fleet, taking out the older vessels and building new ones, and also, to some extent, the availability of fish. The last year is actually, well, it's even. The two last years on the same level. The cod quotas came down from 2013 to 2014, but we still managed to maintain the catch efficiency through targeting other types of fish. Cod is by far the easiest fish to catch, but when quotas come down, we have to compensate by other fisheries. We managed to do that within the same level of catches last year.
Obviously, the fleet renewal program has given us much more flexibility to take part in other fisheries and to be efficient there. Havfisk is, we're a part of the world. What you see here is another important, two important observations really. First, you can see in the period 2008, 2009, very severe price drop for cod, our main fishery, caused by severe financial downturn in cod eating markets, very key market for cod. The price was reduced to half of the top level. Again, in the end of 2012, just into 2013, the prices dropped quite a lot for cod. This was caused by a strong increase in the quota allocation for 2013.
The market obviously was afraid that there would be an oversupply of cod. That didn't happen, though. The fish was sold, and you can see how the price bottomed out in the first quarter of 2013 and is now rising relatively strongly. Still, you can see that the cod price is only back to sort of medium levels of the past. There should probably be some possibility to have further increases in the future. Turning then at the end to some outlook thoughts. I would say, well, it's also a value driver, but more in sort of a mega trend context.
If you look at the table to the right, on the bottom line, you can see how fish is incredibly, there's very low environmental costs from producing fish as a source of protein. Compared to any other food type, fish is very ethically correct. Fish is also healthy, so we're sort of riding on the health trend in addition. Fish is certainly the Norwegian fisheries are very well-managed, so we are a sustainable industry. Always taking care of the stock resources, not taking out too much fish, so that there will also be fish to catch in the future. In addition, you could say that the fishing industry has been much better at producing fish as a convenient food item.
You don't anymore get the big, round fish to go home and cut in yourself. It's ready-made meals and easier to prepare. All of these trends are favorable to the, to a company such as ours. Looking at, some revenue and earnings potential then for the near future. Quotas are at historically high levels now. The cod quotas were reduced by 10% from last year to this, and it will probably be re-reduced by another 10% next year change. Still, if you look at a graph covering the last 100 years or so, we are on very high levels, for the cod stock. This is just natural changes that they go through, every year, every period.
Haddock and saithe, two of the other more important species for us, is practically stability. Hopefully maybe we will see some increases in the haddock and saithe quotas given two or three years ahead. Prices are firm. Demand is good. There's no stock building, the market seems to be favorable. Our fleet renewal program has given us the capacity and ability to exploit our full portfolio of quotas better than in the past. We can now target shrimp, we can target red fish, Greenland halibut. We're working in international waters. We can do a lot more than just fish cod and haddock and saithe when these most important species are fluctuating. Also, in January, the government actually increased the quota ceiling.
They have a maximum permitted number of quotas per vessel. It used to be three. It was increased up to four quotas in January. Obviously, this gives us then an opportunity to take down costs by taking out vessels if we so desire. In the short-term, we are planning on rather using that opportunity to optimize our own, our internal portfolio of quotas better. We will take quotas from the older and smaller vessels and transfer them over to the most efficient vessels, and be able to fully utilize all our quotas. We will then use excess capacity to target other species like shrimp, like red fish. We will see how that works before we start taking out vessels because we still have a big quota portfolio to harvest from.
We're not gonna be too quick taking away capacity because the, it could be just as profitable to retain the capacity we have just now. If it doesn't work, we do have that possibility. We're also, working on, improving our performance on bycatches. Producing, chins and, tongues, et cetera, taking special products and also fishmeal from the new builds. Obviously, we are focusing on our costs, as I showed you earlier, and our key value drivers. I will leave you at that. A small piece of advice at the end. Eat more cod. It's good for your health. It's good for the fishing industry. In brackets, it's good for Havfisk as well. Thank you very much.
Okay. The last chance for asking questions. Yeah.
I have two questions, actually. After you won the good Glitnir case, you have a pretty strong balance sheet. With no more CapEx and with the rising cod prices, the outlook for strong cash flows is pretty good the next couple years. You said that the fleet renewal program was completed, but how likely is it that we are going to see you order new fishing vessels the next couple of years? Second, what are the dividend ambitions for the company?
First, last question first. We have had an ambition to pay dividends on the 2015 results. As I said, the Glitnir case has left us in a much more favorable position than we were in when that goal was set. However, I'm the CEO. It's the board that decides on dividend policies. I'll leave that to the board. When it comes to new builds, it is so that although we have completed the new building program of the three new vessels, we still have older vessels in our fleet and we need to continuously work with the renewal of the fleet. It is my intention to start a planning process through this year. We will not be making any decisions.
We have nothing concrete at the moment. We will not be making any decisions on that before we've done a full appraisal, gone through the experiences of the last new building program, and have decided on what type of vessels to build and how to go forward. At the moment, there's nothing concrete. Obviously we need to always be working with considering whether our fleet is modern enough.
Okay. Any more questions? Okay. With that, I thank you all for attending the Aker Conference of yesterday, and looking forward to see you next time. Thank you for coming.