To this second quarter financial presentation for AKVA group. My name is Knut Nesse, and I am the CEO of the company. I will do the introduction. Normally, I will focus on the financials for the quarter and what happened. Since we are now presenting at AKVA North, I will take the bigger picture and leave the financials aside and talk about the long-term sum story, but just 30 seconds about the numbers for the second quarter. They are good, so we are very pleased. We had a record high quarterly revenue and EBIT. Revenue of NOK 1.167 billion and EBIT of NOK 89 million. Very, very pleased with that. Thanks to customers for trusting us and all employees for being part of the contribution there. Very much appreciated.
Acceptable order intake of a little bit more than a billion, NOK 1.052 billion, supported by the award of the EUR 20 million Laxey contract, land-based contract from Laxey. Also, we got another one from Laxey in July, which is not part of the order intake for the second quarter, and that was EUR 8.5 million. Overall, we have a full focus, sharp focus on driving the implementation and development of deep farming. I like to spend my time on the long-term salmon opportunities since we have people from the industry here today. First, a few words about AKVA group. The western statement of AKVA group is pioneering a better future. We have been driving innovation for more than 50 years. If you look at the picture there to the left, you see Hans-Peter Mallon in Bodø in 1973.
That was with the model and the pilot of the very first plastic cage. Before that, they tried different types of technologies, including wooden cages. They decided to try plastic and work together with Helgeland Plast, which is part of AKVA group today. In the picture to the middle, from 1974, you see Derstine and Olaussen being part of mounting the first plastic cage at the island Lovund. That was the very beginning of the plastic cage, which seems a bit basic to say today, but it was one of the more important innovations to modernize and industrialize the salmon farming industry. All the way to 50 years later, we are now busy with deep farming, which is a bit of a more advanced solution in all fairness. We have been a technology innovator over the years in different areas, like automated feeding from the 1980s.
Feeding is in the DNA of AKVA group. Deep farming, as I already mentioned, over the last five, ten years. We have been also one of the pioneers within smolt and RAS solutions, starting with flow-through and all the way to a full land-based solution today for on-growing. That's the next one. Also, digital, we have been really part of being pioneers there all the way back since 1981. If you take the high-level picture, the big picture of our industry, salmon farming industry, over the last 50 years, it took 30 years to come to the first 1 million tons of salmon produced globally. That was in 2001, so 30 years. It took another 11 years till 2012 to add another 1 million. Then another 10 years or so, nine to be exact, to 2021 to get to the 3 million.
Prior to this year, we have seen some sort of stagnation. There have been some sort of industry barriers, we call it, like fish health challenges. There have been issues with regards to regulation. Now I'm talking about Norway and Chile, not at least Canada, and basically all the salmon farming regions. In the industry, we have had some issues with the social license. At the end of the day, you need to accept from society at large, including the political community, in order to be allowed to grow your industry. There have been some issues. A little side remark, we are utilizing some of the biological potential better this year because of lower mortality, better production, and higher level of superior. That is good for this year. If we continue to look at the big picture, I think growth is still fundamental.
It took, as mentioned, 50 years to get to 3 million tons. There is still appetite for salmon. At least we believe that it should be possible to do 5% annual growth in a sustainable way with sustainable pricing from consumers on the back of salmon still being a mega trend. The question is how to double salmon production by 2040. How can we add another 3 million tons in just 15 years? We think that is possible, but that needs to happen on the back of new technology like deep farming, post-smolt, and grow-out. That is to overcome the industry barriers. Just diving a little bit more into that, the way we see the world. The base is that as of last year, we had 3 million tons of production from traditional fish farming.
We believe that deep farming holds the potential globally to add another 15% capacity done by reducing the lice and lowering mortality. Post-smolt, we have many big proof of concepts there. Post-smolt comes with the potential to grow your capacity with 30 %- 35% volumes. That is adding, in principle, 1 million ton on the base of 3 million. Land-based has the potential with maybe roughly 500,000 ton until 2040. That's at least what we believe. There are some other emerging technologies like new vaccines and others, which will add some as well. There are other emerging technologies, of course. It's not easy today to know what is working in 2030 and 2035. Fundamentally, we think those are the key building blocks, the way we see it today. Moving a little bit more into deep farming, as mentioned, potential to unlock 15%, we believe.
The positive driver is that the submerged cages are improving and by reducing the number of sea lice treatments with up to 80 %- 85%. That is proven. We have a lot of data because we have delivered more than 200 cages in the marketplace. On top of the direct growth as such, because you make improvements, we believe there is also an indirect potential there because some of the criticisms towards the industry have to do with mortality, et cetera. When you solve that problem, we think you will have a better agreement, a better social license, and you have more possibilities to grow your industry. That's the more indirect consequence of solving some of the core issues. That's why we believe that a number of 15% on the base, and the base is 3 million, is doable over the next 15 years.
On deep farming, AKVA group, we are the market leaders. We are the first mover when it comes to driving deep farming. We did the pioneering and the pilot together with the customer Sinkaberg. Today, we have a more big customer portfolio, five, six customers, and more customers are interested in this concept. I would say we have a strong pipeline there. As mentioned, 200 cages are already delivered. There is a lot of real production data out there. We believe going forward until the year 2030, we believe it's roughly a $6 billion total market opportunity. That is on the basis of roughly 600 active sites at the point in time in Norway. We believe that based on the depth required for this technology and the current and other local conditions, 50 %- 60% of the sites are suitable for this technology.
That means that if you do the math, then you can probably drive 50 sites- 70 sites a year. That's ballpark, a $1 billion market per year until 2030. We are the market leader, and we want to drive this development and capture value there. Moving on to post-smolt. Post-smolt is today a proven concept, producing a salmon, for instance, up to 1 kilo and then go to the sea, and by then reducing the production time in the sea down to seven months to nine months, it depends. The shorter production time in the sea gives more reduced exposure in the sea. It comes with fewer sea lice treatments, reduced mortality, and not at least better capacity utilization of your license. We have very good documentation from many farming regions. Faroe Islands went first and then followed by the Rogaland region.
Tuttlandsvik was one of the first movers there, and they have very solid production data, both on how to produce the post-smolt up to 1 kilo, but not at least the performance of the smolt in the sea. That is well documented by Grieg, Rogaland, and Bremnes. We think it's a potential to unlock 30 %- 35% volume growth. MOWI, they had their capital market day September last year. We have delivered the technology for MOWI Nordheim . I think that's the biggest post-smolt facility within MOWI. MOWI reported about the advantages to go from 150 g smolt to a post-smolt of 700 g. They are saying that their data is that it reduces the number of days in the sea by 200. It reduces mortality by 50%. The treatments, mainly the sea lice treatments, by 40% because of the fewer months in the sea. And 5% faster growth.
Those are amazing numbers. You could add the fifth KPI as well, and that's the additional growth in terms of better license utilization. It is, in my view, a very solid business case to drive post-smolt. AKVA's position within this segment, post-smolt, is that we are the only true global RAS supplier. I'm talking now the salmon farming industry. We have a footprint, big organizations, of course, in Norway, in Denmark, in Chile. We are actually the only RAS supplier with presence in Chile. We have also now built, the last few years, we have built a presence in China to serve a Nordic Aqua Partner. This segment, the post-smolt segment, has been through a kind of development.
You can see it as a stepwise evolution over the last 30 years, starting with the very basic flow-through solutions and then with small recirculation units from the 2000s and then the 2010s, driving technology into full recirculation, reuse, and then the post-smolt. It took some time with quite some challenges to start with. We believe over the last years that we have more fully documented and proven technology base. The aim for the next five years is to have a fully automated and intelligent fish farming. That's the next level of development. We think we are now ready to capitalize in what we consider to be a growth phase. I said it came with some challenges. We had to spend, over the last five years, we have not been earning money in land-based. We earned some money last year, and we are doing fine this year.
Before that, we actually spent NOK 300 million in different types of action, NOK 300 million, which was more about improving the technology platform, having R&D in place, having documentation and data behind. It was a big effort, big investment, but now it seems that it will be rewarded. Last year, we had a turnover of roughly NOK 600 million. This year, we will be closer to NOK 1 billion. We have 250 skilled employees and a pretty solid order backlog. On top of post-smolt, we also are participating in the development related to a full cycle on land. That's the land-based grow-out. That has been, it has been a tough birth in that segment as well over the last five, eight years. Last year, more companies started to handle this in a better way. It was produced 25,000 tons of salmon, large salmon on land.
This is now starting to work. We are very pleased to work together with the Nordic Aqua partner in China. They were able, and they are able now. They have 4,000 ton installed capacity based on AKVA technology. They're able to produce a large salmon of 7 kg with extremely low mortality, less than 2%, healthy FCR, and good superior, and also no maturation or extremely low maturation. We think we are getting very close and have, in principle, proof in concept in place there as well. Moving on to the third business platform, talking about sea-based, land-based, and now digital. We believe very much in the digital business. I will explain in a few minutes what it is about. Also there, we have made considerable investments in the last years.
Actually, we have invested as much as NOK 500 million, which is a lot of money for AKVA group in building the digital platform. The majority of the money was to acquire the AI company, the automated feeding company. I'll come back to that. Today, we have four different solutions there, and I will explain them in a few seconds. We are present in all the major salmon farming markets. We consider ourselves to have a complete platform there. To the left, you have fishtalk, which is the leading ERP system. It's about biological control, planning, and control. Six out of ten salmon in the world will be on our system. To the right, you have the control system, which is about bringing the barges, pan cameras, and connected to the steering software, the control system.
In the middle, you have submerged, which is an intelligent or smart camera, and together with Observe. That's about short-term decision-making, smart data, online data, which has been developing a lot over the last few years, five years, I will say. Focusing on Observe, Observe is a U.K.-based AI company, artificial intelligence, and it's about automated feeding. We acquired 100% of the shares mid-last year. We have been invested in the company for several years, but now we have 100% of the shares, which was an important decision for us. They have today more than 100 sites, salmon sites in the world, on their system, which is about moving towards automated feeding. We have done the investments, so it's a very scalable solution there. All investments are done, overhead in place. In financial terms, it's very, very beneficial when we scale this business.
We see a major growth opportunity also in Norway here. Coming to an end, we see the position and the profile as AKVA, as a global leader and a trusted partner. We have the three platforms I mentioned: sea-based, which is roughly close to 80%, 77% of our turnover last year, to be exact; land-based, 17% last year, but that's the fast-growing business this year. It represents the majority of the step up from NOK 3.5 billion turnover last year to NOK 4 billion. A lot is coming from land-based together with deep farming. Digital, which is lower in volume, but the strategic importance is very, very high. This is just a graph showing the investments done by the salmon farmers in the last eight years, from 2015 to 2023. Those are official public data from the fishery directorate, the Norwegian data.
It shows that the annual growth and the CAGR in investments in technology from the side of the salmon farmer is 12% year- on- year. It's important to notice that that is very much higher than the growth in the number of heads in the production volume because that's more like approximately 3% in the same period. There is a kind of overinvestment in technology versus growth in volume. The other graph here is then showing the growth of AKVA group over the same eight years. That happened to also be 12%. We are kind of growing in line with the industry. We are growing. The technology space is growing faster than the growth in production volume. That's the key message. That's basically what we expect to continue now. We have been through a few years of turnaround.
Until last year, we were pleased with the performance of last year, not the previous years. Now we turned the page. This year, we will see a pretty good step up from last year on the top line from NOK 3.5 billion to NOK 4 billion. Also, our EBIT will also improve from roughly NOK 180 million last year, a bit more, and then to a minimum 6% out of the NOK 4 billion this year. We are pleased with that development. We expect the 12% ballpark to continue. The target for 2027 is NOK 5 billion turnover. A lot of our business, like in particular the land-based and digital, but also to some extent sea-based, that is a very scalable business. We have done the investments. We have the people we need, in principle.
That's why we expect to see a pretty much higher EBIT on the back of a higher turnover into 2027. Concluding with the key investment highlights, we are, as already mentioned, we are fully invested. We have fully invested business platforms. I already mentioned we invested NOK 300 million in upgrading the land-based and NOK 500 million digital. Also, we make considerable investments in new innovation in sea-based. The way I see it, it's a kind of harvest time. We are positioned for growing and see profitable growth across the three business models. We have an attractive business model. Also, financially, we are strong. We have stability in our management team. It should be some good years ahead. That's our expectation. I leave it there. Then Ronny, the CFO, he will talk you through the finances for the second quarter. So far, thank you very much for attention.
Oh, sorry.
Good. Okay, thank you, Knut. Let's continue with the hard financial numbers. Overall, we are satisfied with the financial performance in the second quarter, both our record-high quarterly revenue and also our record-high quarterly profit. The revenue of approximately NOK 1.2 billion is 15% higher than last year. The increase in revenue is primarily related to our land-based business. EBITDA came in at NOK 145 million, which is NOK 35 million higher than last year. EBIT of NOK 89 million is NOK 26 million higher than in 2024. The improved profitability is mainly related to the higher revenue level, which provides strong economies of scale. For the first half year, we can report revenue close to NOK 2.2 billion, which is 20% higher than in 2024. We are on track with regards to our guiding, which is a revenue of minimum NOK 4 billion in 2025.
Profitability has improved significantly this year. We have an EBITDA of NOK 258 million and an EBIT of NOK 146 million. We have guided an EBIT margin this year of 6%. The first six months ended at 6.7%. It's comforting with regards to our full-year guiding. The order intake was also acceptable in this second quarter. Total order intake just above NOK 1 billion and approximately 20% higher than in 2024. We have NOK 81 million in digital. Land-based with NOK 316 million is supported by the new contract from Laxey of EUR 20 million. We have sea-based with NOK 655 million in order intake, which is approximately 15% lower than in Q2 last year. We still see high interest for deep farming concepts. However, we also see a seasonal profile with regards to this order intake with high tender activity in Q4 and Q1.
We also expect to see the same pattern this year with high tenders in the fourth quarter of this year and also in Q1 into 2026. We have a solid order backlog of NOK 2.7 billion, NOK 1.6 billion in land-based, and NOK 0.9 billion in sea-based. On this basis, we expect the Q3 revenue and also the financial performance in Q3 to be a repeat of the strong numbers we delivered in the second quarter. Some more details on the consolidated income statement. Strong revenue in the quarter, NOK 153 million higher than Q2 last year. For the first half year, 20% higher than in 2024. Total revenue of NOK 2.2 billion. We see improved profitability. We have an EBIT margin of 7.7% in the second quarter. For the first half year, the NOK 146 million in EBIT is NOK 63 million higher than a year ago.
We have net financial costs of NOK 33 million in the quarter, which is also NOK 45 million for the first half year. We are also satisfied with the profit before tax of NOK 57 million in the second quarter and NOK 102 million for the first six months of 2025. The book-to-bill ratio the last 12 months is good with 106%. We have an order intake of NOK 4.1 billion and a revenue of NOK 3.9 billion. For the second quarter, we had a book-to-bill ratio of 90%, positively impacted by this new contract from Laxey, the EUR 20 million contract. We were also awarded a new contract from Laxey mid-July with an estimated contract value of EUR 8.5 million. Obviously, we have a good momentum and progress with Laxey in Iceland. We are, of course, very pleased with this strong collaboration. We continue to see a strong market in Nordic.
Revenue was 22% higher in Q2 this year compared to last year. We also see a strong increase in Australasia, driven by the NOAP project in China. The revenue was reduced both in Europe and America by 7% and 23%, respectively. Our sea-based business represented 74% of the total revenue in the quarter. The increase in the overall revenue is more or less all related to land-based, with a 92% increase in revenue in Q2 this year compared to 2024. We consider the EBITDA margin, the 12.4% in the second quarter, to be respectable. It's an increase from the 10.8% in Q2 last year, driven by increased revenue and also economies of scale. We have a strong EBITDA margin in sea-based of 14.3%, supported by a very strong product mix.
We also see improved profitability in land-based, first and foremost related to the higher revenue, but also to healthy project margins. At the end of the quarter, we had the available cash, including unused credit facilities, of NOK 473 million. That's a reduction of NOK 27 million compared to the first quarter. Networking capital increased a bit from 8.9% to 9.4% in the second quarter. We are satisfied that we have managed to stabilize the networking capital below the 10% level the last four quarters. On the leverage ratio, we continue to improve in the second quarter. The NIPT EBITDA ratio was reduced from 2.47 to 2.3 in the second quarter, which, of course, is very comforting. Net interest-bearing debt, small, less unchanged during the quarter. We paid a dividend of NOK 36 million in April.
Year- to- date, we see a reduction in net interest-bearing debt of approximately NOK 130 million, which is driven by the net proceeds from the sale of our shares in Abyss Group back in March in Q1. On CapEx, we had total CapEx of NOK 34 million in the second quarter. 50% of this is related to our three innovation agendas, one for sea-based, one for land-based, and one for digital. Year- to- date, we have total CapEx of NOK 73 million. On dividend, we paid NOK 1 in dividends on April 15 related to the first half year. The board in AKVA group has decided to pay another NOK 1 per share for the second half year, bringing the total dividend in 2025 up to NOK 2 per share. I'll continue with some more details on the financial performance in the three business segments, starting with the sea-based technology.
The revenue of NOK 868 million in the quarter was more or less at the same level as last year. We have a reduction in order intake of approximately 15%. Strong EBITDA margin, 14.3%, driven by this high revenue, which provides strong economies of scale. We also have this very favorable product mix. The Nordic region experienced an increase in revenue of 12%. Order intake was down by 6% compared to last year. In America, both revenue and order intake were reduced by 27% and 26%, respectively. Last, we have Europe, Middle East. Revenue was down by 7%, but we have a decent increase in order intake of 35% compared to last year. Looking at the 12 months order intake and revenue trend for sea-based, we are pleased. We have seen a positive uplift the past few quarters.
The order backlog of NOK 900 million is acceptable, NOK 80 million higher than last year, which forms a basis for a very decent revenue level in this third quarter. With regards to the OpEx-based revenue in sea-based, which is a very important part of our sea-based business, it was at the same level as last year and represented 33% of the total sea-based revenue. Please also note that the main part of this OpEx-based revenue is not reflected in our order backlog, meaning this revenue will come on top of the NOK 900 million in order backlog. For land-based, we talked about the order intake, the NOK 316 million. The main part is the new contract with Laxey. We have this strong increase in revenue in the quarter, 92% compared to last year. Revenue ended at NOK 264 million.
On the back of this higher revenue, improved project margins, we improved the EBITDA by NOK 14 million compared to last year. EBITDA margin ended at 5.5%. For land-based, we continue to see a very positive development, both with regards to the order intake trend and revenue trend. Order backlog is solid, NOK 1.6 billion, which is comforting for the revenue level in the second half of 2025 and also into 2026. Last, we have digital, which had an order intake of NOK 81 million in the quarter, which was NOK 55 million higher than last year. Approximately NOK 25 million of this order intake is related to a contract awarded from an international customer regarding Observe. This customer had already installed the recommendation module, which is the step one with Observe, and has now decided to upgrade to the co-pilot module for automated feeding.
This contract was an important milestone to AKVA, a commercial breakthrough also for the co-pilot module. The rest of the order intake in digital, approximately NOK 55 million, is largely related to extension of contracts for fishtalk and not to new sales as such. Revenue was at the same level as last year. EBITDA margin improved from 14% to close to 22%. As we have talked about several times, the key focus in digital is to further grow the top line. We strongly believe that top line growth will have a significant scaling effect to the bottom line. We see this positive shift in digital, the order intake. Revenue still remains a flatliner. We have an order backlog of NOK 188 million end of the second quarter, which is NOK 38 million higher than last year. That was my financial update.
I will give it back to you, Knut, to do the outlook and the Q&A.
Thank you very much, Ronny. In terms of outlook, we expect to see still a good focus and commercial momentum on deep farming. As Ronny mentioned, there is some certain seasonality when it comes to the order intake. We expect during the next sales season, Q4 and Q1, to see some positive order intake from deep farming. With regards to the post-smolt market, we are rather hopeful to sign a few contracts there before the end of the year. Positive there as well. In general, we have a full focus on innovation on the three platforms, both for digital, land-based, and sea-based. As already mentioned by Ronny, we are aiming for a revenue above the NOK 4 billion mark for this year and with a corresponding EBIT of 6%.
We have a high visibility on that and a good comfort level. We expect to deliver in line with this guidance. I think we leave it there and want to move to the Q&A. We have some people in the call. We take, of course, a question from the call, but also from you being here, the audience. If you want to ask a question, you can raise your hand and a mic will be brought to you. Any questions? It's more encouraging with questions. Any questions from the call, Ståle? All the analysts are busy this morning. Too many. We have one. Good call.
On the digital, we see that there is a lot of competition, especially on this, what you call the very decision-making cameras. Can you say something about how you view the competition there and how you position yourself compared to the rest of the space?
Yeah, you are absolutely right. The smart camera has been growing very rapidly over the last five AKVA was probably a bit late to focus on that segment because we have been the traditional feeding company with the feeding cameras, which, by the way, is working extremely well for us this year, the feeding cameras. We decided a year ago to acquire a startup company, submerged, which had the same kind of AI capabilities like the two leading ones being UP2SCALE and AquaBite. We are clearly behind those two. We believe from a technology standpoint, because we have validated the technology of submerged, the company we acquired a year ago, we think we are now at a ballpark equal level. Our biomass estimation is validated at a very high level, 98%, 99%. Also, the sea lice counting is working.
We are now busy with developing the so-called fish health KPI dashboard. We hope and we expect to see a positive momentum with our solution. In that very specific space, we are the upper now. A very interesting segment. Please, one more.
One more on shielded technologies. You're big in the submerged cages, but there are also a lot of things going on with more shielded technologies. Are you doing any work there? What's your stand on those technologies?
We have a strategy to monitor. You know, in the last five, 10 years following this, the award of all the development licenses in Norway, there have been, I will say, between 20 and 30 different technologies being developed. Each and one of them, they have been investing a lot. We have decided not to go into that development race ourselves, just monitor who will be the successful one. We still believe it's a bit hard to pick the winner. Our idea will be when we see someone with proven technology, with real true proof of concept, more than three customers, not only one believer, but a little portfolio, then we will be prepared to consider to acquire this technology because we think the strength AKVA will be the scalability, dealing with supply chain contract management, our footprint on services.
We think we can be a good home for one of those technologies. So far, we have not decided to invest in any of them. We still believe that the biggest potential in the next three years to five years, we believe, is from deep farming. We are monitoring.
Thank you.
Any other? That's a bit too much light. Okay. Anyone from the call? If no more questions, thank you very much for showing up early in the morning.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. I'll talk for now.
Thank you.
Thank you for your time.