AKVA group ASA (OSL:AKVA)
Norway flag Norway · Delayed Price · Currency is NOK
130.00
+4.00 (3.17%)
Apr 24, 2026, 4:25 PM CET
← View all transcripts

Earnings Call: Q2 2024

Aug 16, 2024

Knut Nesse
CEO, AKVA group ASA

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning and very much welcome to the first half presentation of AKVA group. I really hope you had a good summer break, and anyway, I like to go straight to business now. The agenda for this morning is introduction and highlights, which will be presented by myself, financial performance by Ronny Meinkøhn, our CFO, and then the Q&A session, which will be moderated. So in case you have any questions, please post them during the call. The highlights for the second quarter was that we had a record high revenue of, slightly more than NOK 1 billion. Also, that followed by improved financial performance and EBIT of NOK 63 million. Also acceptable order intake in sea-based of NOK 713 million, but still market in land-based.

I will come back a little bit to the order intake, certainly. And also we completed the acquisition of Observe, which is a very strategic, important acquisition for AKVA group. And I will also address the deep farming business as well. As mentioned, a record revenue of NOK 1,014 million, which is representing the best second quarter in the history of the company. EBITDA came at NOK 110 million, and the sum of the parts is Sea Based, very good, strong at NOK 106 million. Digital at NOK 6 million, and Land Based at minus NOK 1 million on the back of a relatively low activity. EBIT came in at NOK 63 million, and that's also marking our strongest Q2 ever.

For the first half, revenue of NOK 1.8 billion, that's on the back of a rather soft Q1, or at least very soft start of the year. Continue with a relatively strong momentum in the second quarter, gave in total NOK 1.8 billion. EBITDA of NOK 177 million and EBIT of NOK 83 million, which is also actually slightly the strongest we had for our first half. Then development in order backlog. Overall order intake of NOK 888 million, we consider that acceptable. Land Based at NOK 149 million, which is representing some progress compared to the previous quarters.

Just one important technicality when it comes to how we deal with the order intake for Sea Based. And our service business, which is typically 20%-30% of our business, that is not taken into the order backlog. That is a constant running business, just for your information. So if you, for instance, consider the current order backlog in Sea Based of NOK 816, the typically aging or delivery horizon is that 80%-90%. I haven't studied this in detail for the coming quarter, but in general, it's 80%-90%, which will be delivered and invoiced in the coming quarter. And then you can add the 20%-30% revenue from the service sector on top of that, in order to get to a good estimate.

Book-to-bill is a little bit more complicated than just comparing order intake and invoiced. In this context, we did 0.842 in the second quarter for sea-based. And if you apply the numbers I just shared with you and do the math, you will come to that. The third quarter should be fairly much at the same level as for the second quarter. It's a little technicality, but also important. All right, let's just go on with the more strategic and operational status.

First of all, I think many of you have followed the industry for many years, and we have seen a lack of growth for production and supply of Atlantic salmons in the last few years. And this is. So somehow you can make the statement that the traditional farming, the way we do it today, exactly the way we do it today, and including the licensing system, et cetera, et cetera, that we are somehow out of capacity. Then just for illustration purposes, the yellow or orange one is then just an illustration into the year 2040.

If we could supply 5% growth, which is likely possible from a consumer and consumption point of view, then you will even reach the 6 million. Of course, that will not happen because we are still limited by more traditional farming technology. So if you consider 1.5% as more likely based on traditional farming technology, then the light blue one is an illustration of the possible supply gap. Or we can also say the technology opportunity if you look at it more positively. So of course the orange-yellow one will not happen, but the question is more what can new technology bring to new additional supply?

Then this is just a very simple overview and a little bit our take on it or flavor on what could happen here. If you look at to the right first, which is more the traditional farming, including potential closed and also including post-smolt and what post-smolt can bring. First of all, we have all seen that new capacity issued by different governments will provide relatively limited growth. That is more sustaining and supporting the 1.5%, whatever is consensus there.

So if you want to grow, and if you are to grow more than 1.5% or whatever that consensus is, you need to do something on top of that. And we still believe that post-smolt is the more likely growth opportunity. If you are to drive growth in the next 5-10 years, we believe that post-smolt is the best investment and ticket to provide some growth. Our observation is that it's closed is taking time, and there are long lead times for scaling up significant volumes. But in our view, post-smolt can provide quite some volume growth in a 5-10 years perspective. Come back to that in a minute.

And then semi-exposed and semi-offshore, based on our understanding of the situation and talking with a lot of players, it will require a new kind of licensing system in order to get some significant momentum into semi-offshore. Because today you will need to take one of the existing licenses, and people will basically not do that. And offshore is also full offshore is also in limbo because of the threat of a future resource tax. So we think it's not likely that you will see big investment from there. So we think the conclusion in the next 5-10 years is that if you are to see growth, you have to focus on post-smolt. Then we have done a very interesting study.

We have taken data from BarentsWatch and over 5,000 production cycles, more than 10 years. We have downloaded those data, and then we have done a correlation towards both outbreak of PD, mechanical treatments, and also medical sea lice treatments. And then on the horizontal axis, it is the number of months in the sea before taking out, before the fish is harvested. So as you can see, if you take PD as one example, that if the fish is in the sea in less than 12 months, the PD is roughly 10%. But if it stays the full cycle, it's 2.5-3 times higher. And the same is also basically repeated by mechanical removal and removal or different type of mechanical treatments.

If less than nine months in the sea, it in 30% of the fish is treated. If full cycle, 70% or 2.5 times more of the fish is treated. So those are real empirical data. All the production in Norway, the last 10 years, we have done the modeling, as AKVA, and we asked Blue Planet as a third party to do the validation of the model. And now the University of Stavanger will make a scientific study of this thing, still to come later this fall.

I think it's fair to say that you can make the statement and the conclusion overall, based on 10 years' data, that for the industry as such, that long production time in sea is driving higher mortality and production cost. I think that's fair to say. So in that sense, our view is that a viable production strategy to reduce the production time in open sea is sea cage farming, will be to apply a post-smolt strategy. So that's the best tool we have today to get down to, let's say, 9 months in the sea.

And the other production strategy is, of course, to get away from the sea lice, and there we believe that the best commercial available technology to get away from the sea lice today is deep farming. And then talking a little bit about deep farming. I will not repeat the concept as such because I have done that, and the technology, because I have done that many times to you guys, but I just want to report the more, let's say, the more operational status. We have now, as we speak now, we have delivered, as AKVA Group, we have delivered more than 100 cages of this solution. That is now organized into 17 sites, which is currently being operated with Nautilus.

For the time being, those are the three key farmers for us: SinkabergHansen, Lerøy, and SalMar. Those are the three farmers behind those 17 sites. And overall, this is working well. It's not that you don't see sea lice, but you see very much less sea lice compared with the conventional farming. So we know that there have been, on a few sites, there have been examples of one sea lice treatment. But compare with the reference, you will have a 90%-95% improvement. It's not zero or 100% improvement, but it's a massive, big, big, big improvement. So we think it's evidence that it is working if you do it correctly with a correct site and follow protocols. On the commercial side-...

We sold a lot in the second half of last year. Those cages are now fully delivered, and we see a kind of ten- and we sold some new in the first half, but we see a tendency that we expect the sales season to be more in the second half of the year. So we have some expectations for the second half of the year, certainly. Unfortunately, I'm not gonna give you the millions, because we learned that also competition is watching. So I need to be a bit generic.

But on the operation side, it's working fine, significant reduction, and we think this is gonna be very interesting for us in the second half of the year from a sales point of view, and then to be delivered in first half next year. So the other thing, in order to improve significantly, one methodology was to get away from the sea lice, and the other big takeaway from our empirical study is to shorten the time in the sea. And that's back to post-smolt, depending on the strategy and the size, but you can easily apply a post-smolt strategy and get down to nine months in the sea or less. So reduced, less...

Reduced time in the sea means less sea lice treatments and improved fish health, because you have a certain accumulation over time, and that was what the empirical study showed us. Better also, a possibility here is better utilization of license, provide improved volumes with could be around 30%, but of course, that is dependent on the size of the post-smolt and other variables. We have said before that we have delivered many large post-smolt facilities, which are working fine with very good biological performance today. And the way I see it, if you consider the price paid in the last auction, 305,000 NOK per ton, it's pretty much on par level.

I mean, that's one way of buying growth, and the other way of buying growth is a post-smolt strategy. Basically, CapExes can be very much comparable to what people paid for new volume during the last auction. Also, I want to update you that we had an order intake of EUR 5 million. That was part of the order intake for land-based, and that was to Laxey in Iceland, the Westman Islands of Iceland. And they are now financed for the first part of this big master plan, which we can see on the illustration here. And I expect to roll out one more module each year in the years to come.

So the fact that we got into that customer, we think is a good strategic move for the future. NOAP p hase II has now started. phase I is now fully closed, including the financial closure, and phase II is initiated and will be executed towards the end of this year and into next year. And as said before, we also have signed a RAS contract for phase III, which NOAP needs to authorize the start of any point in the future. So then to summarize, land-based and activity level, order backlog NOK 1.5 billion. The guidance for the year is activity level of or revenue of approx NOK 600 million.

Soft second half, we expect the margins to be gradually improved throughout the year and also into 2025. And also, we are more in control of the cost side than before. On the market going forward, post-smolt market in Norway is still slow. We still hope to see some momentum towards the end of the year and into 2025. With regards to on-growing in China, there is a lot of attention there, and my best take on this, based on all the qualified discussions we have, I hope to see a signed contract for another project at NOAP in the next 6-12 months. That is what we are aiming for.

And also we see outside China on on-growing, we see more momentum there now rather than the last 2-3 years. Then moving finally to our digital solutions, we have basically 4 solutions here, which is Observe, Automated Feeding, come back to that. Fishtalk, which is basically the ERP system, the biological control system for on the fish side. We have a global market share of 60%. And Connect is about bringing hardware and software together. There we have also, like, for Fishtalk, we have a recurring business model, which is working fine, and Submerge is the new camera. Observe is very fundamental and strategic in order to have a complete digital platform for AKVA Group.

That's why we also decided to increase the ownership, to be fully in control and have full effect of the innovation taking place with Observe and within AKVA. So now we are merging those two activities... and that will simplify the operation. Before we had more a dealer arrangement with them, but now it will be fully integrated since we now own the company 100%. So, for the remaining 66.3% of the shares, we have agreed a total share price or consideration of GBP 13.7. Around half of that, 6.5, was paid by closing, and the remaining 7.2 will be paid over the next three years.

On top of that, we have some earn-out mechanism, and if everything is flying to the full extent, we will be happy, and then the total consideration will increase to 20.5. Then on Observe, Observe is basically, if you simplify it, we use HD camera, and the HD camera, you can have a digital plot of everything going on in the batch, including the feeding and the pellet. So you get millions and millions of data points, and then you also measure the behavior of the fish. So by doing that, and automating that, in a AI, too, you can basically take over what the fish farmer is doing and automate the whole thing. So it's about automation.

It gives a complete visibility and documentation, because this guy is working 24/7, and you can track and trace what happened last week. Was it a predator which came close to the net and stopped the feeding and disturbed the fish, et cetera, et cetera? You have a much better documentation of what's going on down there, basically what is the dark. Also, it's about efficiency. The biggest trend today is that farmers will bring feeding to land, take it from shore or from the site to land, from offshore to the land, sorry, and install feeding centers for either regions or even a wider region, even a country. There are no technical limitations anymore.

So this is what we see everybody's doing, and Observe will simplify and optimize this the setup of the feeding central. And then you make data-driven decision at the end of the day. So what we are aiming for is of course reduced FCR and increased growth. And that brings me very much to the end. Our guidance on the medium-term financial targets, revenue growth for 2024, which we have been guiding, we are not changing that. That's minimum 5% growth into a minimum of NOK 3.6 billion, and underneath, no growth in land-based. And that should bring a profitability for our 2024 of 4%-5% EBIT, and we maintain that guidance.

Long term, into next year, we expect a minimum 10% year-on-year growth. That's on the back of 5% for sea-based and land-based as of 25 of minimum 30%, and digital 10%-20%. So... And that should bring a minimum EBIT for 25 of 6%, and also improve the ROIs. What we have been talking about over the last quarters, we have been through quite some changes. I will call it a real turnaround situation over the last couple of years. We have been focusing a lot of operational excellence within the different parts of the business.

We have installed pretty solid cost reduction programs, and we are now planning for scaling the digital and the land-based business, also on the back of new contract management for land-based. And we see the first signs now that it's coming together. It's absolutely too early to claim victory, but we think we are in a good direction and with good momentum. So happy to see the progress. So I like to leave it there and hand it over to you, Ronny.

Ronny Meinkøhn
CFO, AKVA group ASA

Thank you, Knut. Good morning to everyone. We are, of course, very pleased to report both record high activity level in the quarter and improved profitability. I will give you some more details on the financial performance. I will start with the consolidated income statement. The revenue of NOK 1 billion, that's a record high quarterly revenue for AKVA group, and the revenue was NOK 74 million higher than Q2 last year. Year to date, we see revenue of NOK 1.8 billion, so we are on track to deliver the medium-term targets of minimum NOK 3.6 billion. EBITDA of NOK 110 million is 24 million higher than a year ago, and the improved profitability is a combination of the high activity level, which provides economies of scale.

We have improved project margins, and also we see the positive impact from the right-sizing process we did in Q4 last year. So EBITDA for the first half year of NOK 177 million, that's NOK 32 million higher than in 2023. Also on EBIT, NOK 63 million in the second quarter is NOK 25 million higher than last year, and EBIT for the first half year of NOK 83 million is NOK 34 million higher than a year ago. So we have high net finance costs in the quarter, which is driven by the high interest rates, which is not comparable to last year. So the NOK 29 million in net financial items consists of net interest, NOK 21 million. We have the IFRS 16 interests, NOK 6 million, and then last two million in currency effects.

So the book-to-bill ratio in the last 12 months is 91%, with order intake of NOK 3.1 billion and revenue of NOK 3.4 billion. Revenue increased by 8% in the second quarter compared to last year, and this is primarily driven by the sea-based business, which had a 15% increase in revenue quarter-over-quarter. Book-to-bill ratio in the second quarter of 88%, but as Knut Nesse mentioned, please note that the majority of the, what we call OpEx-based, sea-based revenue is not included in the order intake or the order backlog. So comparing apples to apples, the book-to-bill ratio in the second quarter is close to 100%, which we consider to be acceptable.

So we had a strong momentum in the Nordic market in the second quarter, with 20% higher revenue this quarter compared to last year, and close to 70% of the total revenue in the quarter is related to the Nordic market. On the other hand, we have somewhat reduced revenue in other markets compared to Q2 last year. So sea-based, 83% of total revenue, we have a strong reduction in land-based revenues of 21%, but we have increased revenue in both sea-based and digital. So acceptable EBITDA margin of 10.8% in the second quarter is of course driven by the strong EBITDA margin in sea-based of 12.6%. We see still low profitability in land-based.

It's mainly due to the soft activity level, but also to some extent, the closing of the NOAP phase I project in the second quarter. I will come back to that later. In digital, we have increased revenue, but we see that the cost base is still too high compared to the current activity level. The acquisition of Observe Technologies will improve the profitability, but the overall focus in digital is to further grow the top line. Last, with regards to profitability, we clearly see the impact from the rightsizing process we did in Q4 last year, which give NOK 45 million in annual cost savings, which will have full impact in 2024.

On the cash, we see increased available cash of NOK 9 million in the quarter, and we had NOK 292 million end of the second quarter, including credit facilities with DNB. Net working capital increase decreased somewhat from 11.3% - 10.4% in the second quarter. We still consider the net working capital levels to be a bit too high, so we have continued to implement actions to reduce the net working capital below the 10% level. On the covenant, the NIBD EBITDA, which has been a bit stretched the last quarters, we see improvement in the second quarter. It's down to 4.02 compared to the threshold of 4.5.

So despite increased debt related to the acquisition of Observe, approximately NOK 90 million, we still expect to manage within the headroom going forward. On the net interest-bearing debt, was reduced by NOK 39 million in the second quarter. EBITDA and the reduced net working capital contributes positively by NOK 132 million. On the other hand, we have the high interest costs of NOK 27 million, CapEx of NOK 33 million, a new IFRS liability of NOK 14 million, resulting in a net positive effect of NOK 39 million in the quarter. Year to date, we have increased net interest-bearing debt of NOK 159 million, where we can see the increase in net working capital. That's the big ticket, the NOK 143 million, together with CapEx of NOK 83 million and a net interest of NOK 45 million.

CapEx of NOK 33 million in the quarter, where 17, that's related to our three innovation agendas, one for sea-based, one for land-based, and one for digital, and another NOK 7 million that's related to our new global ERP project. So regarding the ERP system, we will go live in three of our operating companies early October, which of course will be a great milestone in this project. For the first half year, CapEx of NOK 83 million, where 35 is related to our innovation programs and another 26 on the new ERP system. With regard to dividend, the company has decided not to pay any dividend for the second half of 2024.

We aim, of course, to get back in a position to pay dividend on a regular basis, and we will make a new assessment for the first half year of 2025 when we do the Q4 reporting in February next year. And then some more details on the three business areas, and starting with the Sea Based technology. So overall, we are satisfied with the performance in Sea Based. 15% increase in revenue quarter-on-quarter, and EBITDA increased from 11.2% - 12.6%, this quarter. Also, order intake increased slightly by 3% compared to last year. So we are pleased with development. We have a sound product mix. We see when we get to the high activity level, it provides good economies of scale.

And as I mentioned, we also see the impact from the right-sizing process last year. The Nordic region was strong, with increased revenue of 26% and also increased order intake of 11% compared to last year. Americas is at the same level as last year, where we continue to see a decline in Europe, Middle East, with reduced revenue and order intake of 16% and 43% respectively. And as informed you during our Q1 presentation, the negative development in this region, that's related to our business in Turkey.

So both the 12-month revenue trend and order intake trend is now positive for Sea Based, so we have been on a flat line now with regards to the revenue trend for a long time, and it's finally good to see that, there is a positive trend, which of course, we focus to, to continue going forward. So the order backlog of NOK 816 million at the end of the quarter is at the same level as last year. And then on the OpEx-based revenue, which is not included in, with the major part, is not included in the, in the order intake or order backlog, it was 34% of the total Sea Based revenue in the quarter.

We continue to see a positive trend quarter on quarter, and the OPEX-based revenue was NOK 22 million higher or 8% higher than the same period last year. With regards to Land Based, the NOK 149 million in order intake, that's mainly related to Laxey and other smaller contracts during the quarter. We see that the revenue level remains low, and was 21% lower than last year. The startup of the new contracts for NOAP, the phase II, and Cermaq is a bit slow, but we will gradually see an impact from the two projects, and during the second half of this year. Profit margin is impacted by the low activity level and also to some extent, the closing of the NOAP phase I. We did that in the second quarter.

So the NOAP phase I contract is a fixed price contract signed in 2019, with no mechanism for price escalation. So this contract is the last and final contract to be completed finally in the project portfolio we, for several quarters, has referred to as old legacy projects, so it's good to put those projects behind us. Both the 12-month revenue trend and order intake trend illustrates the low activity level we have in Land Based, but as Knut mentioned, we see several prospects, both within post-smolt and full growout, which we hope will be realized on short and medium term. Because we need more activity, we need more projects to generate a decent profit from the Land Based business. Order backlog NOK 1.5 billion is four hundred million lower than last year.

Last, Digital order intake of NOK 26 million in the quarter, compared to the high NOK 63 million last year. Revenue continued to increase and increased by 6% this quarter compared to last year, while the profitability, EBITDA of 14.3%, is still on the soft side, as I mentioned, with the cost base is currently too high compared to the current activity level. The acquisition of Observe will improve the profitability and Observe will be fully consolidated for the third quarter. But the overall focus is to further increase the top line in Digital. We have the organization to manage and deliver a significant higher revenue than we are at today. The 12 months revenue trend is still positive.

It's a drop in the order intake trend, which we consider to be temporary. The order backlog of NOK 150 million is NOK 12 million lower than a year ago for Digital. So that was my financial update. I will give it back to Knut to close off the session with the outlook and the Q&A.

Knut Nesse
CEO, AKVA group ASA

Yeah. Thank you, Ronny. With regards to outlook, salmon prices is expected to remain strong, driven by reduced supply. Of course, you have the seasonality within the pricing of the salmon. But translated into our world, I would say we see normal behavior by salmon farmers in the various regions. Of course, if you take out the BC then there are normal. For our sea-based business, it will be normal behavior or normal willingness to invest. So we think that's a sound sign. We expect to see gradually a normalization of the post-smolt market towards the end of the year and into next year.

But there are basically three different attitudes here. We see some which are investing, that's group one. We see some which are waiting, analyzing the impact of the resource tax, which is a very complex animal to understand to the full extent. And we see a group three, which has basically decided to freeze their CapEx until after the election of next year. So three type of attitudes, I would say. So full steam in the post-smolt market, where probably group three will go to group one, will probably be only after the election, eventually then.

AKVA is aiming for a minimum revenue of NOK 3.6 billion this year, and a EBIT of corresponding EBIT of 4%-5%. Certainly, we will continue to invest in our innovation agendas. We have three of them, one for sea-based, one for land-based, one for digital. Digital, we also made a significant investment in July with regards to Observe and automated feeding AI technology. So, we are—we think this is now moving in the right direction, so we are fairly optimistic. Very good. Let's go to Q&A then. So let's start with the people here within the audience. Any questions?

Christian Olsen Nordby
Analyst, Arctic Securities

Christian Nordby, Arctic Securities. You say on Nautilus that you have 17 sites and that sea lice improvements are 90%-95%, but how's the fish growing when it's deeper down, and has the fish health in general for the fish that's down there?

Knut Nesse
CEO, AKVA group ASA

So when I said, I mean, what you can measure, at least what we can see, with regards to the 90%-95%, that's just to repeat what I said, that is measured by reduction in number of sea lice treatments, because that's you have very firm statistics there. So. And I think that's a very good indicator for that you have improved the sea lice situation a lot. With regards to growth, we have communicated earlier that SinkabergHansen they harvested a number of sites during 2023, and they had very good KPIs, both with regards to growth, the superior share was good, and quality was good as well.

We expect the two other companies which are operating on Nautilus to start harvesting fish in the second half of this year, and that then they will need to talk about it. But we have no indications that there should be any big issues there. On the contrary.

Ola Trovatn
Analyst, DNB

Ola Trovatn, DNB. Can you comment on how the acquisition of Observe will impact your numbers? You state that it will positively impact the EBITDA margin, and you will fully consolidate all revenues, but can you give some more details?

Ronny Meinkøhn
CFO, AKVA group ASA

Yeah, so accounting-wise, we have so far booked them according to the equity method. So we have booked the 33%, impacting our EBITDA from, from this company. But now we'll do the full consolidation of, of Observe, but it's a bit complicated because we have had a reseller agreement, so all the revenues are included in, in AKVA today, but, not, but we give away, I think, 65% of the revenue to, to Observe in the reseller agreement. But that part will then now be consolidated into AKVA again, so it will improve the EBITDA margin as a percentage, but not increase the top line.

Ola Trovatn
Analyst, DNB

Okay, thank you. One more maybe. I noticed you cut your revenue guidance on digital from 30% previously to 10%-20% now. Why is that?

Knut Nesse
CEO, AKVA group ASA

Now, we think. We have seen, in the back mirror, we have seen 30% in the last three years. But 30% on a low base is different from 30% on a high base. So 20% on a high base is still a very much larger number as in millions than what we have seen in last year. So probably we should have done it before, but we think it's still a good number. Just to give you a little bit more visibility, I've been traveling a lot to see if customers in also in Norway recently. And I'm very positive about the possibility to penetrate the share of Observe in Norway.

Currently, behind our 107 sites, it's not too much sites in Norway. Chile is by far our number one market. When I travel to Chile and sit down with the CEOs in Chile, they all know about Observe, and they see Observe as a strategic tool. Whereby in Norway is, for some reasons, it's less known. So we have not been clever enough in reaching out with our communication in Norway. So we are inside our own organization, or we are making some important changes in order to be more efficient in reaching out to our customers. So I think we...

This will take some months before we see the results of those changes, but at least into next year, I expect that we will make good progress. So it... I just wanted to give you a little bit more-

Ola Trovatn
Analyst, DNB

Mm

Knut Nesse
CEO, AKVA group ASA

... visibility on what's going on there.

Ola Trovatn
Analyst, DNB

Thank you, and final for me. Please remind us, is it correct that the Cermaq post-smolt contract and all of the phase II is cost-plus contracts, and-

Knut Nesse
CEO, AKVA group ASA

Say again, what... If it is a?

Ola Trovatn
Analyst, DNB

Cost-plus contract.

Knut Nesse
CEO, AKVA group ASA

Yeah.

Ola Trovatn
Analyst, DNB

How much of the land-based backlog is then not cost-plus?

Knut Nesse
CEO, AKVA group ASA

Yeah. It's always difficult with the definitions, but let's use the term. It's the nature of cost-plus. There are some combination of price targets, but it's a completely different structure than what we have seen before, and it's the nature of cost-plus, but some the price target mechanism on top. That's correct, and I will say 70%-80% is the nature of cost-plus, and then the remaining is so-called fixed, but with well-defined cost escalation clauses.

Ola Trovatn
Analyst, DNB

Yeah.

Knut Nesse
CEO, AKVA group ASA

We have zero old fixed price contracts. We are learning at least some.

Ronny Meinkøhn
CFO, AKVA group ASA

Combinations of fixed price and cost-plus.

Knut Nesse
CEO, AKVA group ASA

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Ronny Meinkøhn
CFO, AKVA group ASA

We have all kind of contracts.

Knut Nesse
CEO, AKVA group ASA

But I will say they are... I will rate them as fairly balanced contracts now.

Ronny Meinkøhn
CFO, AKVA group ASA

Mm, mm

Knut Nesse
CEO, AKVA group ASA

... and sustainable.

Ola Trovatn
Analyst, DNB

Perfect, thanks.

Speaker 5

Quick question on, on the Sea Based in the Nordics, which showed a very strong quarter. You say that the, the submersible farming equipment did not have, like, a fantastic sale in, in H1. Can you give some color on, on what's driving the growth in, in the Sea Based Nordics?

Knut Nesse
CEO, AKVA group ASA

We have to make a distinction between sales and revenue. So we sold a lot of deep farming in the second half of the year.

Speaker 5

Mm.

Knut Nesse
CEO, AKVA group ASA

And we delivered that in the first half, meaning that was generating revenue in the first half. So that was one of the drivers to the pretty strong uptake in revenue for first half. Whereby I'm saying we expect to sell or have order intake in the second half of this year to be delivered in and then generate revenue in the first half of next year. So we start to see a somewhat seasonal pattern there-

Speaker 5

Mm

Knut Nesse
CEO, AKVA group ASA

... the way I see it.

Ronny Meinkøhn
CFO, AKVA group ASA

Oh, and we also have the barges. We won four barges during the first half year, and at least two of them is generating revenue.

Knut Nesse
CEO, AKVA group ASA

Mm

Ronny Meinkøhn
CFO, AKVA group ASA

... which they did not last year because then we didn't-

Knut Nesse
CEO, AKVA group ASA

Mm

Ronny Meinkøhn
CFO, AKVA group ASA

... have any barges.

Knut Nesse
CEO, AKVA group ASA

Yeah.

Speaker 5

Thank you.

Knut Nesse
CEO, AKVA group ASA

Are there any questions from the call, Ståle?

Speaker 5

No, there are not.

Knut Nesse
CEO, AKVA group ASA

Then we need to get a few more questions from you guys. Okay. Well, anyway, if there are no more questions, I just want to say thank you and wish you a nice weekend. Thank you very much.

Ronny Meinkøhn
CFO, AKVA group ASA

Thank you.

Powered by