Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and very much welcome to the first quarter financial presentation of AKVA Group. The program of this morning is that I will give the highlights and outlook. Ronny Meinkøhn, the CFO, will do the financial performance. We will also run a Q&A afterwards. I invite you to post any questions during the presentation. Our moderator will read the questions during the Q&A. Let's go straight to the highlights for the first quarter of 2023. Order intake of NOK 1.17 billion, which is representing an increase of 12% compared to one year ago. We have already announced, I want to repeat the award of the new RAS contract with the Nordic Aqua Partners in China for the next 4,000 tons. Estimated contract value here is EUR 40 million.
Come back to the details a bit later. On the negative side, the market for the post-smolt projects in Norway is still on hold due to the resource rent tax. We will make a comment on that as well. Positively, we had a good commercial breakthrough of the deep farming concepts in April. I'm gonna go into the depth there as well. Also, we are progressing our innovation agenda. On the numbers, revenue came in at NOK 874 million, which is slightly higher than a year ago. EBITDA of NOK 59 million, which is lower than a year ago. you should reduce or adjust for the one-off sales of shares in the company Atlantis a year ago, which was NOK 33 million.
apple to apple or normalized, you should compare with NOK 69 million, but still below. The reason for the somewhat lower numbers is that we are still loss-making in the land-based segment, and that is related to low gross margin in old contracts and also some higher cost compare with the activity level and what it should be. Those old contracts will be finished in the 3rd quarter this year. It will still sit for another 2 quarters, and then we have a fresh start. Secondly, we had a relatively low turnover within the Nordic region, and that also did contribute negatively to the EBITDA.
EBIT NOK 11 million and the same NOK 33 million should go off when you compare. We compare with the NOK 26 million a year ago. Development of order intake and order backlog. We had a pretty good order intake of NOK 1,170 million. Land-based with NOK 527 million, where the majority was the EUR 40 million contract with the NUP, Nordic Aqua Partners, for phase two. For sea-based, we had NOK 613 million, which is lower than a year ago. The difference between this quarter and a year ago is that we did not sell any barges this quarter, and we did that for a substantial amount, NOK 150 million, a year ago.
Order backlog is on a reasonable level of close to NOK 2 billion. Around NOK 1 billion in land-based and NOK 861 million within sea-based. We still need to talk about the resource rent tax and the implication of that. First, some few comments around the activity level. Most of our solutions, products and services within sea-based and digital are really supporting the core activity for our farmers or customers in Norway. There we have a rather normalized activity level, relatively speaking. However, within the post-smolt segment, there have been no new contracts with AKVA Group, nor in the market as far as we know since September 28th.
Below here you can see what we said as AKVA Group with regards to the hearing of the proposed resource tax. Now we are likely in the very final stage of concluding the issue. There is a process going on in the Parliament. Given the actual situation, we want to make a comment or a statement, if you may, and I want to read that. What we like to say as AKVA Group is that the implication from the new resource tax remain uncertain. The government proposal for a tax rate of 35% is likely to be very negative for the necessary investments that promote also fish health and sustainability for the growth and innovation in our industry going forward.
I would place particular emphasis on one of the investment areas that has been put on hold, and that's the post-smolt area. Post-smolt is now a proven technology, keeping the salmon in a land-based facility up to 700 gram to 1 kilo. That greatly contributes to so many of the industry's sustainability challenges, both in terms of reduced sea lice and also mortality levels. That is in the back and on the basis of reduced production time in the sea. You typically go from 17-18 months down to 7, 8, 9 months because of the larger smolt. The post-smolt facilities where AKVA Group has been involved shows excellent results. The market for post-smolt is on hold, as already mentioned, and it was put on hold already after the government's first press conference on September 28 last year.
What is really happening is that we are now approaching a lost year in necessary development for sustainability. That is a development which cannot continue. AKVA Group therefore urges the politicians in parliament for a quick clarification and a broad settlement that reduces the tax rate, creates predictability for the future, and gets investments going again. That's our number 1 wish for next week. This was around the quarter, the first quarter and the comments around the financials. I like to also give some flavor on our strategic and operational agenda. First of all, the high level picture, and we focus on the supply side, since we supply technology in all the salmon farming regions.
The supply outlook until 2030 for Atlantic salmon is lower than looking in the back mirror. In the back mirror we had CAGRs of 4%-5% depending on which period you look at. Now going forward, there is a consensus around 2%-3% CAGR or annual growth. Personally, I've been in this industry for 30 years, and I've never seen more issues, more constraints in the different marketplaces, being in Chile, being in Canada, U.K. and Norway with regards to growing the industry. That's the reality and we have to respond to that one.
Anyway, the only conclusion from all those constraints and the rather limited growth is that we will for sure see a strong salmon price for the coming years, in line with consensus of all analyst reports. We believe that alternative technologies like farming in the open sea will for sure take time, but also growing on land will take some time. We expect to see and we hope to see proof of concept there during first half next year. Come back to that. This is our innovation agenda for the land-based farming, and we still have full focus. We are investing in this one, and we have a long-term focus.
Even though in the short term, we are affected by resource tax and the post-smolt market, but till date, we still keep up our capacity, number of people, our investment level, because we think and hope that common sense will resolve the issue. That's the balancing act where we are right now. With regards to the term proof of concept which is used in business, proof of concept is very much in place for the post-smolt concept. We as AKVA Group, we have made 3 major projects and installations in Norway, which is Tytlandsvik, it's Svarberget, and Ånes. They are running pretty well. We have many other smaller ones as well, but those are the 3 largest one.
Technology is proven, it's working. Also I can inform you that we are working with many prospects, because this is attractive investments in principle, at least before the resource rent tax. We have a solid pipeline there, and we are organized for growth, as I said. The flip side is, and Ronnie will comment on that, is of course, we have a higher cost base than we should, given current activity level. We keep it because we still believe in the future there and future growth. Second part of proof of concept is about on growing. Here I would like to update you on the situation with regards to Nordic Aqua Partners.
We have been busy with executing phase one, and that is what you can see on the picture here. Phase I is 4,000 tons of capacity. This is in Ningbo outside Shanghai in China. We will complete the installations in Q3 this year, and first harvest will take place in the first quarter next year. What we believe will happen and what we are looking for is that proof of concept for large, relatively speaking, 4,000 tons, large quantity of salmon, based on AKVA RAS technology will be there during first quarter and first half next year. We expect to see a further uptake for this segment.
With regards to phase two, which we announced, we got awarded a new contract for another 4,000 ton, worth EUR 40 million for us. The other status is that engineering has started in that project two, or phase two. We will start working on ground in China later this year with regards to installation for phase two. Furthermore, we are also awarded a so-called phase three contract, which is for another 12,000 ton. Likely that contract will be started somewhere next year. I like to draw the attention on our innovation agenda for sea-based. We focus on marine infrastructure, precision feeding, digital and deep farming.
Now I like to put emphasis on digital and deep farming, starting with deep farming. This is very important for us. We already said in the highlight that we had a commercial breakthrough in the month of April, where we did sell those deep farming concepts. Generally, we believe a lot more can be achieved within traditional farming. Farming in the fjords to reduce the sea lice issues. In late April, we did sell deep farming, mainly Nautilus for 150 million NOK in the Norwegian marketplace. The buyers were both some of the largest and also mid-sized salmon farmers in Norway.
We have also sold Tubenet to Nova Sea and OptiCage to Northern Light as part of this total sales of the NOK 150 million in deep farming solutions in April. Because of the size of this, we consider this as a commercial breakthrough after actually many years with development and testing. As earlier explained, we have worked together with Sinkaberg-Hansen for several years with the Nautilus solution. The Nautilus solution is basically, as you can see in the illustration to the left here, you do farming 30 meters underneath, 30 meters in the deep below the sea lice belt, and the fish stays there for the full cycle, the full generation, and oxygen is supplied through the air dome. That's the yellow thing you can see on the picture.
That's the concept. That has been tested in full commercial scale during 2022, Sinkaberg-Hansen harvested several sites with excellent biological results and no sea lice treatments for the entire generation. We now see a great potential for further commercialization of Nautilus, and we are very pleased with those new contracts. Then I should explain focusing here on Nautilus, what could be the magnitude of the total market here. That's not really not black and white, but we have made some considerations when it comes to the potential market for Nautilus.
First of all, because you bring the fish down and the ceiling, the roof is 30 meters down, then you have the cage itself. It requires a minimum sea depth of 60 meters. 60 meters is the bare minimum. Based on our mapping, 40% of all the sites in Norway have this depth of the minimum 60 meters. There are also some limitations when it comes to or related to ocean current as well. Our estimate is that around one third of active sites or around 150 sites in Norway at the point in time will be suitable for Nautilus. If you consider one site, which is one location, on average will have eight cages.
to one site. And you invest roughly for the eight cages, you invest roughly NOK 30 million-NOK 40 million per site for having this solution. Then you multiply the NOK 30 million-NOK 40 million with 150. And that gives you a total market of NOK 5 billion-NOK 6 billion in total market for this new technology over the next 5-6, 5-10 years, depending on the scale up and the speed of it. One important disclaimer here is to realize this market. We know that the new customers, there are five of them, five or six of them, that they will test this technology themself.
Of course, we have very good data and documentation from Sinkaberg-Hansen, other farmers, they like to prove it themself and validate it. That's gonna happen now over the coming months and a year, up to a year. When they see the results of that and the technology is validated, then we can expect a further scale up during 2024 and the following years. That's the dynamic of it. On our current digital solutions, first looking at AKVA Observe, which is our AI, artificial intelligence solution around automated feeding. We have a recurring business model there to back this business. Today we have installed AKVA Observe at 64 sites worldwide, and we added another 10 sites in Q1 2023, which is pretty decent development.
AKVA Fishtalk, which is our ERP system for planning of control, for the biological control and the production of the salmon. There we have a global market share of 60%, so 6 out of 10 salmons, farmed salmons in the world are on our system. Thirdly, AKVAconnect, which is about steering, literally bringing hardware and software together, so steering and control system. Also, that is based on a recurring business model. Here we have 233 installations based on this business model, we added another 66 sites during the last quarter. Then coming to my last slide, which is about the guiding for next year.
We guide on a NOK 4 billion in revenue for 2024, on the back of 8% EBIT for next year and a return on average capital employed of 15%. Of course, one important disclaimer is that we are banking on a normalization of the post-smolt market after the summer. We need to come to a good conclusion or a fair conclusion there before the summer. That there will be uptake of post-smolt projects after the summer in order to get to this target. That's one important disclaimer. Okay, that brings me very much to the end. I like to hand over to Ronny Meinkøhn, the CFO. Please, Ronny.
Thank you, Knut, and good morning to everyone. I will give you some more details on the financial performance during this first quarter, and also on the financial position to AKVA Group. I will start with the consolidated income statement for the quarter. First, for your information, in Q1 last year, we had this one-time effect regarding the sale of our shares in Atlantis Subsea Farming, and this transaction had a positive impact on both revenue and profit of NOK 33 million. To compare apples with apples, I will in my presentation adjust the Q1 numbers last year with the NOK 33 million in effect from the Atlantis transactions.
Adjusted for the, for the sale of Atlantis, the revenue of NOK 874 million in Q1 this year, that's an increase of NOK 58 million compared to last year. We are not satisfied with the profitability. It's below our expectations, and EBITDA ended at NOK 59 million, while EBIT came in at NOK 11 million in the quarter. Compared to last year, EBIT is reduced by NOK 48 million. Adjusted for the Atlantis, the reduction in EBIT is NOK 15 million. We have reduced the profitability in all our three business areas, and I will comment more on this later in my presentation.
Depreciation and amortization in the quarter of NOK 48 million, that's NOK 4 million higher compared to last year, and the increase is all related to the digital business area, which we invested significantly last year and are still investing to further improve our digital solutions. The finance costs of NOK 12 million in the quarter, that's more or less in line with last year. The higher interest rate on our credit facilities was offset by increased market value of our investment in Nordic Aqua Partners and also by some currency effects. We had a record high activity level in Q1 with NOK 874 million in revenue, and adjusted for this Atlantis transaction, that's an increase of 7% compared to last year.
We have an acceptable book-to-bill ratio the last 12 months of 104%, with an order intake just above NOK 3.5 billion and a revenue of NOK 3.4 billion. Compared to last year in Q1, we have increased the activity level in all our three business areas. Looking at the various markets, the increased revenue in Q1 this year compared to last year, that's related to Americas and Europe with increase about 30% in revenue. The increased revenue in Americas, that's driven by higher activity in North America, while the increased revenue in Europe is related to high activity in our companies in Spain and Turkey.
Our largest market, the Nordic market, had a reduction in revenue of 6% compared to Q1 last year, adjusted then for the effect of the Atlantis transaction. Overall, the Sea Based business represented 75% of the total revenue in the quarter. We continue to see a strong development, strong revenue growth within digital of 26% compared to last year, while Land-Based was 27% higher than a year ago. After a very challenging 2022 with regards to profit, we see a positive trend, but the profitability is still below our expectations. EBITDA came in at NOK 59 million compared with the adjusted NOK 69 million last year, which is a reduction of NOK 10 million, while EBIT came in at NOK 11 million compared to the adjusted NOK 26 million last year, which is down by NOK 15 million.
As we commented during our Q4 presentation, the lower profitability in Land-Based, that's partly related to the high cost base compared to the current activity level, and partly to low profit margins in part of the project portfolio. I will comment more on this later when I talk specific about the Land-Based business. The profitability was also somewhat negatively impacted by the product mix in Sea Based. We have variances with regards to profit margins in our service and product portfolio, and the portion of revenue with higher margin versus portion of revenue with lower margin will fluctuate from one quarter to another. In Q1 this year, the portion of revenue with lower margin was higher than a year ago and is resulting in a lower overall profitability.
The available cash was reduced by NOK 102 million in the quarter, and at the end of the quarter, we had NOK 629 million in available cash, including credit facilities with DNB. This reduction in available cash, that's mainly related to the increase in net working capital, which increased from the very low 6% at year-end to 8.2% at the end of this quarter. That's an increase of NOK 74 million and is primarily driven by higher inventory levels of NOK 54 million. The NIBD, EBITDA covenant is tight, and at the end of the quarter, we came in at 4.27 compared to the threshold of 4.5.
The 12 months rolling EBITDA we use in calculating the covenant is adjusted with NOK 138 million in non-recurring costs in agreement with DNB made back in Q3 2022. We expected a tight covenant situation in Q1 since we had this positive impact in Q1 last year from Atlantis, the NOK 33 million, which we did not replace this quarter. We are, however, confident that we will manage within the bank covenants in the foreseeable future and also expect headroom to increase the coming quarters. Net interest bearing debt increased by NOK 91 million in the quarter. The main part of this increase, that's the net working capital part, the NOK 74 million. Also CapEx activities of NOK 64 million and last payment of interests of NOK 19 million.
The CapEx was relatively high in the quarter of the NOK 64 million, 19 out of the NOK 64 million, that's related to our new ERP project, which we will continue to implement in the entire AKVA Group over the next few years. Currently, we have 11 different ERP systems, and we are really looking forward to realize the benefits of being on the same common ERP platform in the entire AKVA Group. Last NOK 18 million of the NOK 64 million, that's related to investments in our 3 innovation agendas, one for each of the business areas. Due to the slow financial performance, the current return on capital employed is low and was negative of 5.8% at the end of Q1. We still believe in our medium-term target of 15% by the end of 2024.
However, as also Knut highlighted, an important assumption to this is that the resource tax will not exclude or significantly postpone investments in post-smolt facilities. A normalized market for post-smolt in Norway is a key assumption in reaching our financial targets in 2024. As we informed in our Q4 presentation, we have decided not to pay any dividend for the first half year of 2023, and we will make a new assessment on dividend for the second half year in front of our Q2 presentation in August. Then some more details on the financial performance in our three business areas, and I will start with the sea-based technology. Overall, for the business area, adjusted for the Atlantis transaction, the revenue increased marginally by 2% in the quarter.
EBITDA, also this one adjusted for Atlantis, was reduced from 9.5- 8.5% in Q1 this year. This somewhat lower EBITDA margin is explained by the product mix in the quarter. We have variances with regards to profitability in our product and service portfolio, and you should expect fluctuations in the overall profitability level for the sea-based business going forward. The order intake was somewhat slow in the quarter. The NOK 613 million is a decrease of 19% compared to last year. Our largest region, the Nordic region, had a reduction in revenue of 7% compared to Q1 last year, and reduction in order intake of 20%.
On the positive side, we have seen a strong start to Q2 with regards to the order intake, with the award of several contracts for deep-sea farming. In the region of Americas, we have a strong revenue growth of 25%, which is driven by higher activity in North America. The reduction in order intake is, however, significant of 34%. The reason for this reduction, that's related to the award of 3 barges in Q1 last year, which did not repeat itself this quarter. Last, the development in Europe is still positive with strong increase in revenue, 26%, and also a strong increase in order intake of 34% compared to last year.
I stated earlier, this positive development is driven by a very high activity in our company in Turkey. After our peak in Q4, with regards to the order intake, the trend is now declining. As mentioned, on the positive side, we had a very promising start to Q2 with regards to the deep-sea farming, and we aim to continue a positive development throughout this quarter. While the backlog of NOK 861 million is NOK 74 million lower compared to Q1 last year. On the recurring or OpEx-based revenue in sea-based, it was 33.8% of the total sea-based revenue in the quarter. That's a decent increase of NOK 35 million or 18% compared to last year.
The activity was also high at our service stations in Norway with an increased revenue of 17% compared to last year. Overall, we see a positive development in our recurring or OpEx-based revenue, which is a very important part of our sea-based business. On the land-based technology, order intake of NOK 527 million in the quarter, where we have this new contract with NOAP for phase II. That counts for approximately NOK 475 million of the order intake in the quarter. The revenue increased by NOK 39 million, that's 27% in Q1 this year compared to last year. The profitability is, however, still low, and the EBITDA in the quarter was negative of NOK 2.5 million.
As we discussed also, during Q4, the lower profitability is partly related to the higher cost base compared to the current activity level. We are still working on our cost-saving program. At the same time, we strongly believe in both the post-smolt market and the market for full grow-out, and we need to keep that in mind when we are working with cost-saving measures. Secondly, a significant part of the revenue in land-based in Q1 is related to contracts with lower profit margins. The profit margin in this part of the project portfolio were written down significantly in both Q2 and Q3 last year, mainly due to high costs related to inflation. As we also explained about this during our Q4 presentation, these contracts are old and without any mechanism for price escalation.
The remaining work on these contracts, which is representing approximately 25% of the total order backlog, will be completed by the end of Q3 this year. The rest of the order backlog, the main part of the order backlog, the 75%, that's related to contracts entered into the last few years, which have all mechanism for price escalation, and these contracts are running with normal profit margins in the quarter. We have a positive development both on revenue and order intake for land-based, the last 12 months. This contract with Nordic Aqua Partners, of course, have a big impact in Q1 this year. The backlog of just about NOK 1 billion, which is 23% higher than last year.
Last on digital, we have a steady and positive development in our digital business, and we continue to build a more robust base for recurring revenue. Revenue increased by 26% in the quarter compared to last year, and the main part of this increase is from the region Americas, which had an increase in revenue of close to 60% compared to Q1 last year. The EBITDA margin is acceptable of 21.8%. The revenue development is positive with an increase of 26% in Q1 this year compared to last year. Somewhat flat development with regards to the order intake, we consider this to be more about timing as we are working on several interesting prospects.
Order backlog of NOK 106 million at the end of the quarter is an increase of 25% compared to last year. That was my financial update, and I will give it back to Knut now to close off this presentation.
Okay. Thank you very much, Ronny. Like to conclude the presentation part before we go to the Q&A with outlook. Order backlog is sound, and it forms a good foundation to execute our organic growth strategy. Salmon prices are expected to remain strong, driven by the reduced supply. As already elaborated, the implication from the introduction of new resource tax are still uncertain. The medium financial target remain unchanged, and AKVA is targeting a minimum of NOK 4 billion revenue for next year, followed by 8% EBIT in 2024. As we have said, that is under the assumption that there will be a reopening of the post-smolt market in Norway after the summer this year.
The annual cost-saving program of NOK 100 million are implemented to improve profitability, only minor outstandings within the land-based area. AKVA, we really believe in our future. We will continue to invest and improve our solutions both within sea-based, digital, and land-based technology. That's very much the end. We like to go to the Q&A session.
Thank you. We, we don't have any incoming questions, for now, but we're gonna leave and wait perhaps a little bit.
Give it a little time then. You are invited to please post any questions. Okay. If there are no questions, we like to thank you very much for listening in, so, and wish you a nice weekend. Thank you very much.
Thank you.