Yeah, I think we can just kick it off, Marie.
Okay. Well, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for joining us. This is the second quarter presentation from ArcticZymes , and as you know, I'm Marie Roskrow, Chairman of the Board. This morning, I'm going to give you a brief corporate update, and then we'll be followed by Børge, our CFO, who will walk through some of the numbers. Before we get started, there's a few technical things I'm supposed to tell you. Everybody who's online this morning, thank you again for joining. If you're online during the presentation, please ensure that you're on mute, and that the video function is not on. We don't want to see anybody in their pajamas. Thank you.
When it comes to the Q&A session after the presentation, if you want to ask a question, and we'd welcome your questions, please turn your mic on, but again, not the video. Finally, if you're calling in by telephone, apparently, if you want to unmute yourself to ask a question at the end, you need to press star six. I hope that all works. Let's kick off then. First slide. Thanks, Børge. Next slide. Basically, the second quarter pretty much of this year has continued much the same as the first quarter for us from a sales perspective, as you can see from both the revenue and the EBITDA numbers. This is really in line with what the company at least expected. The business faced, and continues to face, headwinds in the market, and we all know about these.
Secondary to macroeconomic uncertainties, including, for example, high inflation and rising interest rates, both of which have contributed to a challenging environment and slowed economic activity globally, particularly in China, where their economy has grown at a frail pace as demand has weakened, both at home and abroad. biopharma spending has been weaker than expected, particularly associated with biomanufacturing, as such companies have tightened their belts in order to preserve cash. Destocking is still ongoing, and we talked about that in the last quarter, and continuing to influence our customers' buying patterns.
Of course, it's not just companies as small or as big as ourselves that are being influenced by these factors, and significantly, I think, if you look, for example, and analyze the second quarter earnings results from the large cap and growth companies, large growth companies in the life science tool sector, many of whom are our customers, it's apparent that the factors I've just mentioned are biting hard. Across the board, the large cap tools companies, including, for example, the largest, Thermo Fisher, Danaher, Agilent, Illumina, Sartorius, I could go on, all of them, have, without exception, reduced their revenue guidance for this year. Several of, several of them missed their second quarter earnings, and at best, their annual growth rates are expected to be flat or low single digits, and some of them are even expecting negative growth this year.
obviously, the performance of our customers strongly affects their buying patterns, and this is significantly influencing our revenue stream, and I think will continue throughout this year. I'm going to come back to what I think lies ahead in the next second quarter from a market perspective, and I'll do that in the summary at the end. having said that, let's move on to what the company has actually been doing in the background for the last three or four months. Next slide, please. I think the most significant thing, particularly for the future of this company, is that we ran a very successful CEO search in conjunction with Coulter Partners, who did a fabulous job. As you know, Jethro's effective date of leaving was the 30th of September. we were very pleased to announce recently that we've hired Mr.
Michael Akoh, who I'm sure many of you have looked up on LinkedIn, You will see that he is an excellent fit for ArcticZymes, and we were really pleased to have attracted such a high caliber candidate. Importantly, and very good for us, Michael will start on the week of September 18th, which is earlier than was reported in the press release, because he was able to start work earlier than we'd, than we thought. That's very good news. To support Michael, in addition to the senior management team already in place, we have two new members of that senior management team. We have, for the first time, a vice president of corporate development, and that's Jeremy.
In addition, we made an internal promotion to a VP of Regulatory Affairs, and that is Grethe. Next slide, please. A quick word, a quick update from R&D. You've seen this slide before, and at the beginning of the year, these were the products that we were hoping to launch during the year. We've now launched, as you know, the Proteinase HQ in April, middle of April, and then most recently, we've launched a generic enzyme called Taq or AZTaq. As I say, this is a generic enzyme, and lots of companies have similar enzymes, but it is one of those workhorses that enzyme companies do require. There are two ways to do enzymes, as you know. You either make them yourselves, or you do a deal with an external company to bring that product inside.
In this case, we decided, started during the lockdown, we decided to build our own Taq DNA polymerase, and we've just launched that. This is an important product. Although it's generic, it's still very important, because it's the first step, basically, in providing a whole enzyme package, particularly in the molecular diagnostic space. It's supported this product by our own internal buffers and protocols, and we'll be using it particularly in the applications lab. The next two products that we hope to launch, will be launching later this year, the SAN HQ, which is being produced under GMP quality, and that is the product that's being supported by the DMF, which I'll mention in just a couple of minutes. We're expecting to launch that in the fourth quarter of this year.
That's really important from many perspectives, but this is the first product that we are producing under GMP quality. For anybody that knows anything about GMP, that's the very highest quality that is required for use in human therapeutics, and although obviously this isn't a drug, this is a component in a workflow to produce, for example, an AAV or any sort of viral vector, many of the components these days have to be produced or ideally produced under GMP situations. GMP is an incredibly high standard, and I think our manufacturing team under Marit, many of whom you've met, has done a terrific job in getting our facility to that standard in order to be able to produce such a product, and that will be launched later in the year.
Finally, we're producing, launching another product called T7 RNA Polymerase, and this importantly is the first product launch that will be supporting our RNA enzyme therapeutic strategy. The company has taken the decision that generic enzymes, whilst we worked on them, particularly during the lockdown period, moving forward, it makes more sense for us to do transactions to bring generic enzymes into the company. Now that we have Jeremy, as obviously VP of Corporate Development, part of his job will be to go out and look for the generics that we need and bring those into the company under whatever structure is most suitable for us. Therefore, we can divert our R&D resources into focusing on the more innovative, let's say, sexy, novel enzymes, including a suite of RNA, RNA enzymes to bring to the market.
Thank you. Next slide. There's bits... Oh, thank you. So these are a couple of the enzymes that are part of this whole RNA processing enzyme strategy. I've just mentioned the T7 RNA Polymerase, and that hopefully will be launched in the fourth quarter, and that is a really key enzyme that we need. Behind that, we have a more novel, which was a 2023 prototype, and hopefully it'll go next year into becoming an NPI. I know we throw these terms around, assuming you know what an NPI is. Well, an NPI basically just stands for New Product Introduction. When you put something into an NPI, it becomes a project where there are multiple disciplines involved to get that product basically to the launch pad.
This is a specific, sequence-specific RNA ribonuclease. There's a few details on the left-hand side. This will be novel, this is exciting. Currently we have a number of companies, who obviously I can't name, under CDA, who are working with us and doing some sort of beta testing on the prototype. Depending on the feedback, obviously, and our own internal work, we'll determine if and when and how we proceed with that enzyme. That, at the moment, is looking quite promising. Behind that, we have a suite of other novel enzymes, which next year will be from discovery, moving into prototypes, and then we'll move them through the same process that we've done with the SAN one, as mentioned above. Thank you. Next slide. Again, I showed this slide last time.
As you know, we've beaten the bushes about this because it was really a massive focus of ArcticZymes, the last quarter, the second quarter, it was really everybody hands on deck to get this over the line by the 30th of June, and, you know, not to exaggerate, but this was a real undertaking. Based on the success of that filing, i.e, the success of filing it to the end- to the FDA on time, that's the basis on which Burgner and I decided to promote Greta from her position as to be the VP, because she led the team that did that, and everybody did a terrific job working on this. So it was submitted on the 30th with our partners, PharmaLex, to the FDA. It's actually 30-60 days, I had...
did say 30-60, but just says 30. These are calendar days. As of today, we are on day 47, so we haven't heard anything back from the FDA yet. This is not set in stone, this is guidance. Obviously, being summer, it may take slightly longer, but we are expecting to hear back from the FDA in the next few weeks. This is not to say that they've looked at it and everything is perfect, this is that they look at it and they tick the boxes, has everything been included in the filing that they need to see? Have all the papers been submitted? Is it what they're looking for in terms of the submission? It's not the quality, it's the actual components of the submission.
On the basis of that, we'll get a unique DMF number, and the process, as you see outlined here, will proceed. Just to be clear, having filed this huge file, that's not the end of it, that's sort of the beginning of it. There's still a massive amount of work that needs to go into this, but I think getting that filing in was a really substantial step for the company. Thank you. Next slide. Sorry, I'm turning my papers as we speak here. This is coming to that product, the SAN HQ GMP, that's the product that is supported by this whole DMF. You've seen these graphs before, but well, you haven't seen all of them. You've seen the one on the left, and that's really the USP.
USP, one of those silly things we throw around, for those of you who don't know, that just means unique selling point. I.e., what is the standout feature of this product? Obviously there it is on that main graph. That's the ability or the activity of the SAN HQ in high salt concentrations. As you can see, if you look at the X-axis along the bottom, that's the salt concentration, and our enzyme works optimally between 400 and 500 millimoles. We've got 100% activity, whereas the competitors have fallen away to almost, well, practically nothing. Why is that important?
AAV, adeno-associated virus, which is one of the viruses, the key viruses used in the cell and gene therapy space in the clinic, works, as you can see, optimally, at that salt concentration in the processing of that virus. That's a really important key differentiator. We've also done, obviously, a lot of other quite simple but important comparator data generation, this will be used in our product support document. When we go out pre-marketing, which we've already started our pre-marketing campaign for this product, along with the DMF, to potential customers, they want to see data, obviously. This is very science-driven. We're producing a 20-page product document, which we will use as marketing, as support, and in order to do that, we've been working in the lab to generate some examples here, of which you see.
B, C, and D are really just comparator data, temperature response, pH response, and Tween 20, and Tween 20 is a common processing agent that's used in various workflows. Obviously, the differentiation or minimal differentiation in some cases, is important or less important, depending on what processes you're talking about. You know, the difference in temperature, for example, is not important in some people's processes, but it is for others. You can see there, and I'll just touch on that one because that's quite interesting. If you look at that top graph B, and that's the temperature response, you can see that the SAN, which is the black line, the optimal 100% activity is about 37 degrees. What's important is also you can deactivate the enzyme.
It falls right back to 0 at higher temperatures, so the ability to deactivate it is clearly differentiated from those other two products. Even at lower temperatures, looks slightly higher, but it is significant in some cases, 10-15% higher activity at the lower 15-20 degree range. You know, both of these factors, the heat deactivation and the low activity, are product advantages. Some may say relatively minor, but again, they're not minor, depending on what the processes you're looking at. The Tween 20 response, Tween is a detergent that's used, it's a non-ionic detergent. It's widely used in industrial biotech, and it's well-tolerated, as you see. Our enzyme is at 100% activity, despite the concentration between 0-10% of Tween 20.
Most people are using between 0 and 2% in their process, you're looking at the left, the far left-hand side of that graph, and as you can see, we are around still 190, 100% activity, whereas the competitors are significantly lower. You can always pick this data, you can always find parameters where our SAN HQ is either equivalent or different, or maybe not to an advantage in some cases. As I say, the most important thing is the differentiation within the salt environment. There is more data, of course, and once the product brochure is available, I'm sure that I'll have some of you asking to see it, and we will be able to send that to you in due course if you're interested in all those details. Thank you. Next slide. Sorry.
As I said, for the first time, actually, in ArcticZymes' marketing history, we've decided to go out with a huge marketing campaign, which is both obviously online, predominantly online, through webinars, through improved website, through the product brochure, et cetera, et cetera, to pre-market this SAN HQ GMP. We've had the flyer out, you've seen it on social media, in order to generate interest. I'm not a marketing person, very clearly, but we do have a marketing expert that works for us, and he gives me these facts and figures from the web. I understand none of it, but the basic message is that we are having a lot of clicks, clicks, you know, become views, and views potentially become interest. He thinks those numbers are very significant.
We have to see, obviously, if that translates later down the line, and I'm not talking flicking the switch of the fourth quarter, I'm talking into next year, as to whether all of this pre-marketing will actually result in sales for the SAN HQ GMP. Obviously, there are many potential customers that won't be interested in looking at the DMF. Not everybody wants to look at the DMF because they don't have to look at the DMF, but they do want high-quality GMP material. Let's see how that goes, but this has been a first for us. It's been a learning curve, and I think that at the moment, we're getting very positive feedback on this product. Yep. As I said, this product is being produced in Tromsø at the moment, in our own manufacturing facility, which many of you have seen.
We've had to upgrade parts of that, and in order to be able to produce it under GMP standards. The bottom paragraph on the left here is internal GMP audit. You can't just start new processes and expect people to just take your word for it, has to be audited. We were audited by a third external party, and basically got the rubber stamp to say that what we were doing, that we were compliant with the regulations, and that we were producing to the right standard. The regulations, you know, there are books of regulations. There's not half a dozen, there's hundreds of regulations that we need to stick to. Again, a shout-out to Marit and her team for doing such an excellent job and really getting that process to that standard. Thank you.
Next slide. From Dirk and his sales and marketing team, you know, things are tough, and I'm not making excuses. There's no excuses to be made, it's the reality of the situation. His team are working extremely hard. It is analogous to pushing rocks up hills right now. I don't want people to think that, oh, you know, sales are soft because people are not trying hard. Couldn't be further from the truth. You know, we've hired a new salesperson with great relevant experience on the East Coast to support Jennifer. You know, we hope that we'll reap the benefits from that in the second half of the year.
When you are fighting against these headwinds, you know, however hard people want to buy, if they haven't got the capacity to buy the volumes that we're used to seeing, it's not going to happen. In the meantime, it gives us the opportunity to develop further relationships. We have gained 27 new customers in this second quarter. We gained a similar number in the first quarter. You know, the first half, we've picked up another 50-odd customers, and when the markets turn and when conditions are better, these people have the wherewithal and the ambition to make bigger orders. These are not sort of teeny-tiny, micro-cap companies. Some of these are significant companies that there is the potential to get larger orders, probably next year. That's been a positive in that sense.
We've also been able, for the first time, to secure a standing order from one of our largest, our very largest customers, and that was good work from Dirk and his team. They often... These companies don't like to commit to standing orders, particularly in the market conditions that we face. Of course, from their perspective, the advantage is that they can negotiate a better price. If we can lock them in for a certain volume, then, you know, it's quid pro quo, as we say, right? They get a better price, we have some security as to the orders. We were very pleased to secure that, I think that gives us a little bit in our back pocket moving forward. As we announced at the end of the first quarter, we've kicked off the partnership in China.
China, at the moment, in terms of sales, is pretty dead, I have to say. Again, if you look back at the commentary from the large caps, from Thermo and Agilent and Sartorius, what are they all saying? China's dead at the moment. That's okay. It gives us, again, the opportunity to develop our distributor networks, to develop our B2B relationships, with our, our person on the ground, Grace. Once the markets pick up, and they will pick up because they always pick up, right? It's just a matter of time. We will be very well poised to move much more expeditiously in China than we have done in the past. What else on that slide? Not really much. We went to a couple of conferences.
We don't go to that many conferences anymore because they're not that well-attended, simply because they're very expensive to go to. You have to set up a booth, you have to fly people out, it's multiple days, and really, you've got to analyze retrospectively, what do you get out of that? Again, in these sorts of conditions where people are really ratcheting back on expenses, they're not going in huge numbers to these conferences. We are being highly selective about the few that we go to, without wasting time and money. Next slide. The voice of customer, obviously, is, as, as we've said before and repeatedly, is what helps drive our business, and that feedback is critical. You know, I'm not gonna read all of these. You can read them, or you can not read them. You know, in... Excuse me.
In the U.S. and in the U.K., we've had a number of customers that basically, they want to talk to us, but they want to talk to us specifically about reducing our prices. One of our biggest customers came in and said, "You know what? We just want a 50% reduction in price." You know what? I said, "No." You know, we can do deals with customers, and we're very open to that, depending on volume, of course, but we're not just going to say, "Yeah, okay, you're not doing very well. We'll just give you a 50% reduction," because that's not good for us either. Obviously, people try it on. You know, we have a good bit of a banter and a negotiation, and we, we, we, you know, we, we come to a, an understanding, but they don't get 50% off.
Some people are just a bit cheeky. We've had that from, from, from numerous customers, and that's a sign of the times, I think. That that is a, a, a real concern, the price of the enzymes. They also understand that if they want the sort of quality that we're producing, they have to pay reasonable money for those. As I said, China is pretty dead at the moment. There's lots of projects that are being canceled or delayed, so we're hearing, but as I've just explained, what we're doing in China.
Again, you know, people are coming back and saying, "You know, we want to continue discussions, we're very interested, but, but, but, we can't buy in volume right now." You know, there's nothing different than we're hearing personally from our customers than what is the general sentiment in the market. You know, when you read analyst reports, as we all know, we don't believe everything that analysts say. You know, when we're hearing things from the horse's mouths of our own customers to confirm what we read on paper, then I think there's no better voice than the voice of the customer. Next slide, please. Maybe there are no more slides.
No, I think that, that was it.
We'll come to the summary after, Børge is going to walk us through the numbers. Thanks very much, Børge.
Okay. Thank you, Marie, and thanks for that kind for that introduction. I will run you through the second quarter results and the financials for the first six months. As Marie said, it's more or less the same as we kind of experienced in the first quarter this year. I'm gonna first move into kind of the sales area and moving into the molecular tools area. As you can see, we achieved quarterly sales of NOK 15.3 million in the quarter, and this represents a decline of 7% compared to the first quarter this year, where we had NOK 16.4 million. You can say we are basically on the same sales this quarter compared to the second quarter last year, where we had NOK 15.5 million in sales in Q2.
For the first six months of the year, sales are at NOK 31.7 million, compared to NOK 45.6 at the same period last year. As you might remember, in the first quarter last year, we had COVID-related sales of NOK 14 million. If you adjust for this factor, then comparable sales for the first half year, then sales within molecular tools are actually on exactly the same level, and it's a 0% change compared to that quarter, that first six months. Molecular tools had a 54% contribution of total Q2 sales, and this is similar to what we have seen in previous quarters, and in the first quarter this year, we had a 52% contribution.
Also what we can see that, as in the first quarter, our research customers has more or less returned to the normal purchasing patterns that we had- we saw, we have normal purchasing patterns and not, as we saw in the fourth quarter last year, where basically all our research customers disappeared or they didn't, they didn't buy anything. Sales within the two different segments in molecular tools are at 34% within the research or 30% within research and 24% in, in the diagnostic segment, respectively here. I'm gonna move over to the biomanufacturing side here. We can say quarterly sales are at NOK 12.9 million, which is down from NOK 14.9 million in the first quarter this year.
Also down from the $14.8 million that we saw in the last year, in the second quarter last year. For the first six months, sales are at $27.8 million, compared to $33.6 million, and this accounts for a 17% decline compared to the same period last year as well. Of course, biomanufacturing contribution to the second quarter was 46% of total sales, which is a little bit lower than the 49% we experienced in the first quarter, and also the 69% we experienced at the end of last year as well.
You can say, even though we did not experience growth in our figures following the pandemic follow, similar to what we have experienced over the last year, we believe, of course, this is part of, kind of, a little bit and part of the inherent fluctuations we have in the business, but of course, the challenging market conditions that Marie also touched upon plays a crucial role in this. Of course, as, as Marie also said, within the biomanufacturing side, we filed now- finally, filed the DMF now at the end of last quarter, at the end of Q2 as well, which was a significant milestone for us.
Look a little bit on, on, on the trends in our business, where we kind of have taken out the quarterly fluctuations and adjusted a little bit for COVID-related sales. As you can see from the table here, or the growth has been flat to slightly negative over the last year, where we have moved our quarterly average rolling sales from NOK 31.3 million to NOK 29 million in this quarter now. Also, we had NOK 29.5 million in the first quarter this year when we did the same comparison. Even though the trend is negative for the last nine months, nothing fundamental has changed. We are still in growing markets with attractive and novel products.
Numbers of orders are slightly down in the second quarter, with from 408 orders in Q1 to 343 in this quarter, and with a comparison of 372 orders in the second quarter last year. Also, as Marie said, we had 27 new customers in the second quarter, with nine in molecular tools and 17 in biomanufacturing, and also with the first quarter, where we had 28 new customers. We have, you can see, a total of around 50 new customers for the first half of the year. As you said, of course, many of these customers are buying samples or and buying samples and small orders.
Hopefully these will grow to the larger accounts down the road as they kind of see the qualities and that see the need for our products. Also it is important to highlight also that the markets are challenging. There's economic uncertainty out there, the constraint capital markets, customers continue to destock their inventories, and we have seen a significant slowdown in the China region as well. Moving into a little bit on the relative contribution of sales in the different region, and as we talked about in the past, isn't, the European region has been the dominant territory for Orexams, followed by the American region, and then the Asia Pacific region.
Also for both the Q1 and the Q2 quarters here, the dominance has shifted towards the, the American side. Also, this is natural because we have an overweight of B2B customers buying our SAN products in this region, whereas the molecular diagnostics region is more, within the European region. Of course, APAC continues to be a, a region where we see great potential for future growth, especially after we signed a collaboration agreement with, for China, with, with Genovis. Also, we believe this agreement will deliver value for both us and them, down the road. Of course, right now it is a little bit, it's a tricky market where with China slowing down and everything, but hopefully down the road, we are, we will be able to generate significant value here. Currency impact.
Of course, as we talked about in the past, we are in a global market. Our revenues are impacted by currency fluctuations, especially as our sales are primarily nominated in both USD and euro. Of course, the Norwegian kroner plays a small part in our sales, but of course, it makes a much, has a much bigger impact on our expense side. For the second quarter this year, 79% of our revenues were in the U.S. dollars, and 21% were in euros. Of course, based on the fluctuations we've seen in exchange rates over the last year, this has an impact on our profit and loss statements as well.
Based on the USD and the EUR we have in our bank accounts, this resulted in a loss of NOK 0.1 million for the second quarter, compared to a profit of NOK 0.1 million for the full year of 2022. Also for the first six months of the year, we have a NOK 0.4 million in profit on our currencies in bank accounts. Our trade receivables are also impacted by currency fluctuations, and this can be seen now under other operating expenses. For the second quarter, our operating expenses were reduced by NOK 0.5 million due to the weak control towards both the EUR and the U.S. dollars.
For the first six months, our expenses are reduced by NOK 1.6 million, which is slightly higher than the same period last year, where we had a NOK 1.4 million reduction in our expenses. Also, we, we if you are to, to look at the underlying growth in the business, excluding currency fluctuations, and we keep our currency, we have constant exchange rates for our currency, both in 2022 and 2023. Our second quarter sales would have been NOK 3.7 million lower compared to 2022. Also for the first six months of the year, our revenues would have been NOK 7.3 million lower if we had the constant exchange, same exchange rates as in 2022.
As I talked about, and in the past, currency will always fluctuate, moving forward as well. As you if you might remember, then we had in 2021, we had a loss of NOK 11 million when we did the same comparison, and we had a profit of NOK 8 million in 2022, when we did the exact comparisons. Of course, as a general principle in the company, we try to limit the amount of foreign currency we have in our bank accounts and, and also try to limit what we have outstanding from our customers to, to reduce the risk as much as we can. Looking at moving into the, the expenses and, and a little bit on the profitability side for the quarter in the first 6 months here.
This is a slide that we have showed both at the Q4 presentation and the Q1 presentation. As you are aware of, personnel expenses is kind of, personnel expenses have grown significantly over the last few years. Of course, this has been in alignment with our strategy and our organic growth ambitions. In 2022, we had a 30% increase in our employees. We had 61 employees per end of the year last year, and we had 0 new, 0 net new employees in the first quarter this year, and we had 1 new employee in the second quarter this year. We do expect this number to go up a little bit. We have a few new hires that are coming in now in the second quarter. Some are replacements and some are new.
We still believe that we will not grow this number significantly throughout the year here. As you can see on the pie chart on the left-hand side here, R&D accounts for almost 30%-40% of our total resources. Commercial is around 21%, operations are at 24%, and QA/Regulatory, 7%, and our administrations are a little bit less than 10%. As I said, looking beyond from where we are now, we do not plan to expand the organization as we've done over the last few years. 2023 will still be a year where we will reconcile the investments we have carried out over the last few years to, to make us become an effective and productive organization. Talk a little bit on the bottom line here.
We continue to deliver positive contributions towards the bottom, bottom line, and the second quarter was no exception to this, to, to what we have delivered over the last few quarters and, and years. Our second quarter EBITDA ended up on NOK 6.8 million versus NOK 9.5 million in the same quarter last year. For the first six months of the year, we ended up on NOK 13 million, compared to NOK 37.4 million last year. Of course, as I said in the beginning, we had NOK 14 million of COVID-related sales in Q1, 2022, and if we do an adjustment of this, EBITDA would have been NOK 23.4 million, which is kind of the, the, the better comparison to, to, to compare apples to apples, basically.
Our operating expenses are up by NOK 0.6 million, from NOK 20.8 million to NOK 21.4 million, driven of course, by personnel expenses and other operating expenses. Year-to-date expenses are up by NOK 4.3 million from NOK 42.1 million to NOK 46.4 million. Personnel expenses were at NOK 13.1 million for the quarter, or equal to what we had in the second quarter last year. For the first six months, personnel are at NOK 28.7 million, slightly lower than expected, actually, due to some reversal of national insurance contributions in the first quarter, and that we have capitalized some of the our personnel expenses that we had related to the DMF year.
We do have a, as I said, we do, however, have a few more new people starting in the second half of the year, so I expect the number for personnel expenses to be higher in the second half of the year compared to the first half of the year. Other operating expenses were at NOK 7.5 million, which is NOK 1 million higher than in the same quarter last year, but this is in alignment with what we have with the guided reduction from the NOK 32 million that we said we had last year. Year to date, other operating expenses are at NOK 15 million, so just below half of the NOK 32 million that I said we're gonna be below at the end of the year.
Looking at the graph on the left-hand side, you can also see that we are improving our EBITDA margin after some challenging quarters. We had a 24% margin for this quarter now. Looking at the cash flow, the cash balance and the change in cash were kind of in alignment with what we normally see in the business, and change in cash, cash and cash equivalents were NOK 7.3 million for the quarter. Of course, this is also driven by that we had a NOK 2.6 million capital increase related to option exercise in the organization.
For end of June, our cash position was, NOK 239 million, I'm still confident that we are able to grow this, cash position moving forward as we continue to deliver positive results in the future as well. I think with that, I think we're gonna hand it over to Marie, who can say a few more words on what to expect for the, for the last part of the year.
Thank you. Well, I'm not going to really read this slide because you can all read, I'm sure. I just want to say a few words about what I think or what we think the rest of the year looks like in terms of the markets and how that might affect us. Obviously, this is my... our view. If you look at what analysts say, obviously they all have slightly different views. You can take from that whatever you like. Frankly, I think being on the more positive side, I think there are some green shoots that are emerging. If you look, for example, at early-stage investments in biopharma, particularly in the private sector from the VCs, those investments are picking up at the moment.
Obviously, the result of this, for an example, is that the number of early-stage clinical trials, if you look at cell and gene therapy, is again picking up. There was a lull, and now it is picking up. The reason for that, clearly, is funding. You know, the innovative products and the innovative clinical trials are being started in the smaller companies in general, but they are expensive. Whilst there's been a couple of quarters at least, where funding has been tight, very, very tight, in fact, impossible for many companies, there does seem to be some glimmer of hope that the VCs are opening their purses again, and funding the really innovative companies. It's been a bit of a triage in a way, in that small to midcap biotech sector, We've seen this in the past.
Companies that were not at the top of their game couldn't attract funding, and they fell away. I don't think that's a bad thing for our industry because the stronger and the better companies do emerge. When you look at the second quarter, there's certainly been a pickup in early-stage investment, and I see that as a positive. However, if you look at the public financing environment, the secondary markets, I think those will continue to be very challenged, probably throughout the end of this year. There has been, you know, so there have been, rather, some in our sector, some secondary financings, but not a whole lot. In general, as you know, the IPO market is still pretty much dead.
If companies can't raise money on the secondary market, then as we've talked about earlier, they tighten their belts, and that strongly influences their buying, and our, our ability to sell to them. Do I see the situation changing in the next six months dramatically? No, I don't. I hope I'm wrong. I really hope I'm wrong. At the moment, that's what I read into it. Some are slightly more optimistic perhaps than me. I'm probably in the middle of the road. As I say, you know, we're moving into September now, so it's only a few months really till the end of the year, and I cannot see anything dramatic happening to, to change that situation.
The de-stocking issue that we've talked about, does continue, but I, again, I think listening to what our customers have been telling us, I do have confidence that this will be out of the system predominantly by the end of this year. Some companies, it will move into the first quarter, but I think for the majority, of our potential customers, we'll see the... and our existing customers, the de-stocking issue will be largely gone, by the end of 2023. That will also be helpful, obviously, for us. I think overall it's a mixed bag. I think sales are going to be difficult, in the third and fourth quarter for everybody, including ourselves, including the large cap buyers, right?
You know, we have to see what 2024 brings. In the meantime, you know, there's no question that ArcticZymes remains focused. We remain optimistic about the business. We have a very strong underlying business that continues to grow. You may not see all of that on the surface, but believe me, there are lots of things happening in the background. There's lots of positivity within the company, particularly now we've got Michael coming to join us very soon. We're very confident that he has the expertise and abilities and lots of positive energy to take ArcticZymes to the next level.
I look forward to returning to my semi-retirement and my garden. Obviously, I will be spending considerable time handing over the crucial bits to Michael and introducing him to you, our investors, when we meet again at the beginning of November. I'd like to thank the entire team of ArcticZymes Technologies and obviously to you, our investors, whether you've joined us today or whether you can't join us, haven't joined us today. Thank you very much for your continuing support and enthusiasm. We look forward to answering any questions that you may have. Q&A is now open. Thank you. Can't hear you, Børge.
Hi, Peter.
Thank you.
I think you have a question.
Yes, thank you. Just a very brief initial one. The NOK 105 million in OpEx that you expect for 2023, how much of that is related to the work for the DMF? What I'm worrying about is that, or is this the level, the base that we should continue to forecast from? Will 2024 will it be slightly less expenses in 2024 and going forward, or should we use another base to forecast from? 'Cause I guess that you used quite a number of consultants and such when you did the DMF work.
Yeah, I, I maybe I can try and answer that one, Peter. You can say the 105, I think that's, that's a good assumption also. You have to remember that for the DMF, we have capitalized most of that work, so you, you don't really see it on the, on the P&L today.
Okay. Okay.
It's, it will be more, it's more kind of on the investments in the intangible assets, basically. That's where you would see it.
Okay. Okay, okay, great. Thank you for that clarification. I move back to the queue .
Other questions?
It's all gone quiet. No. Okay. If anybody thinks of anything, then please shoot us an email later, and we'll be delighted to answer. In the meantime, thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for joining us, and look forward to seeing you soon. Have a good day. Thank you. Bye-bye.