Good morning, and welcome to the Bakkafrost presentation of the first quarter 2022. First, we will summarize the quarter and then look into the markets and the segments before Tróndur Olegaard will take us through the financials and the achievements, and then finally the outlook for the market and the company. In this quarter, Bakkafrost harvested in Faroe Islands record high volumes in the first quarter, and actually for the third consecutive quarter. 17,459 tons compared to 14,025 tons last year. Also, we saw highest feed sales in a first quarter, 26,192 tons versus 23,717 tons last year. In Scotland, however, harvest volumes were low, 3,973 tons compared with 7,003 tons last year.
The market balance is tight as supply of salmon is low in the first half of 2022. Our feed operations sourced new raw material in the quarter, 77,971 tons, which is up from last year. In this quarter, we are proposing or the board of directors is proposing a dividend which has been approved by the annual general meeting and will be paid out shortly. There were positive EBIT in the farming in the Faroe Islands and the processing segment, but negative in the VAP and in farming in Scotland. The farming margin in Faroe Islands was 36%, close to 40% in the first quarter versus 14.10% last year. The combined farming and VAP margin in the Faroe Islands was record high in this quarter. All-time high actually, 33.79%.
However, in Scotland, the margin dropped to DKK -17.67 compared with DKK 1.34 last year per kg. The total volumes harvested in the first quarters increased 2% from 21,432, 21,422 from 21,027 combined for the group. The Faroe Islands farming division delivered 24% growth to 17,459 compared with 14,000. Overall average weight in the Faroes, however, dropped 5% from 5 kg to 4.8 kg. Especially Lambavík came out low in this quarter at 3.8 kg versus 4.3 kg. The other sites were all about 4.7 kg, especially Froðba came out good at 6.4 kg in the quarter.
Smolt transfer in the quarter was 2 million at 352 grams, slightly lower than last year in the same quarter. Temperature regime in the Faroes developed in line with previous years. In Scotland, we had a low harvest, and the main focus in the quarter was on growing fish. We hold back in order to keep fish for the second quarter. The harvest was mainly from areas which had compromised biology from the fourth quarter. This led to lower average weight, some sites at 4.1 kilos, but most sites around 3.5, 3.8 kilos. Gravir, for example, at 4 kilos. Smolt transfer in the quarter increased to 2.3 million versus 1.6, and also slightly larger sizes, 102 grams instead of 89 grams last year.
The results from investments from Bakkafrost is not really yet materializing in really upscaling the size of fish yet. This will be more visible during next year. The operational EBIT from the farming division in Faroe Islands increased 229% to DKK 471 million versus DKK 143 million last year. In Scotland, the operational margin dropped to DKK -53 million versus DKK -7 million, corresponding to -22% versus -2% versus 2% last year. The operational revenue in the Faroes increased 86% to DKK 1.1 billion versus DKK 645 million. In Scotland, revenues dropped 27% to DKK 235 million versus DKK 322 million. Temperatures in Scotland developed more or less also in line with previous years, however, slightly higher temperatures.
In the Faroes, we see a strong margin on back of good biological development and all-time low sea lice numbers. Strong growth and good price achievement in the market. In Scotland, the operation had huge issues in second half of 2021, and some sites were impacted into first quarter 2022. In order to get back on track, we decided to hold back on harvested fish in the first quarter to grow the fish to more optimal harvest sizes in the second quarter and aim to get better sized fish to harvest. Low volumes has obviously impacted production cost in Scotland in the first quarter on the wrong side. Altogether, this led to a weak margin in this quarter with the intention to pay off in the second quarter. The turn-around plan in Scotland is progressing. Procedures and operation have been updated.
It has been a challenging period since last summer, but our focus is on securing the operation now while we are investing in the operation with modern technology all over the line, but this takes time. Eventually, we are going to see results. We have, in this quarter, started the operation with Aqua Kvaløy for freshwater treatment, which means that we now have enough capacity to operate within safe measures, with the issues that we see from the environment in Scotland. In areas where we have stocked new fish under our new operational strategy, we see good biology. All stocking are now with our new farming strategy. A real test of our operation in Scotland will again be through the third and fourth quarter this year. We are now much more confident with the operation.
However, we believe that large smolt will be a very important step for us to protect our fish with only one summer in the sea. The VAP segment sold 24% more volumes in the first quarter versus last year. The revenue increased 37% from DKK 305 million to all-time high DKK 418 million. The operational EBIT dropped from DKK 75 million to -DKK 29 million due to high internally sourced raw material prices. Internal buying are traded in line with spot price development from farm and sold on contracts. The EBIT per kilo dropped from DKK 18.56 to -DKK 5.65 in the first quarter, 2022. 38% of the volume in the quarter were used internally in our VAP operation, flat from last year.
Bakkafrost fish feed department Havsbrún increased EBITDA 79% in the quarter compared with last year to DKK 86 million versus DKK 48 million last year. The margin increased to 20% versus 15% last year. Volumes of fish feed increased 10% to a new record in the first quarter at 26,192 tons. Raw materials sourced were good in the first quarter, 78,000 tons. By the end of April, we have sourced more volumes year to date than all last year, 152,000 tons. Blue whiting season started late this year, which meant that we had better catches coming in during the first part of this year. Fish feed in the first quarter was record high, and 96% of the feed is sold internally.
We now see the benefits also from our Scottish operation in the feed segment. The market prices for feed raw materials have increased significantly during the first quarter 2022, mainly on vegetable ingredients. The share of local sourcing of raw materials for our feed operation is about 50%, which we think is a strengthening position of our operations. We consider this to be a competitive advantage during the instability we see in the global markets these days. We produce all fishmeal and fish oil internally and source pelagic fish and offcuts from local fishermen and pelagic operations. This is both a driver of a strong position on using high quality raw materials and also differentiation in the market of the product and taste, and a good biology in our farming operations. Now, Høgni Dahl Jakobsen will present the financials.
Revenues in this quarter for the group increased by 39%, in excess of DKK 1.6 billion. Our operational EBIT for the group grows by 87% to DKK 418 million in this quarter. The fair value adjustments of the biomass amounted to DKK 177 million, and revenue tax increased to -DKK 58 million. This is of course linked to the high salmon price that we have seen, but also the higher harvested volumes in the Faroes in the quarter. We also had -DKK 31 million in onerous contracts in this quarter. This is also linked to the very high spot prices on salmon, as our contracts are produced by our VAP segment in the Faroes.
As Regin mentioned, the raw material prices for those contracts are delivered, or the pricing is linked to the spot price. Profit after tax was more or less the same as in the first quarter last year, and came out at DKK 405 million. If we look in historical perspective, look five years back, quarter-over-quarter, we see that this quarter, the operational EBIT is higher than in any of the previous quarters over the past five years. Our adjusted earnings per share in this quarter was DKK 4.82. Moving on to the balance. Property, plant, and equipment increased slightly, and amounted to DKK 4,943 million in this quarter.
The biological assets increased by DKK 188 million to DKK 2,637 million. Whereof, DKK 782 million were fair value adjustments. There has been an increase in working capital in the quarter. Receivables have increased by DKK 85 million. Inventory and receivables have an increase by DKK 48 million in the quarter. Those two amount to DKK 794 million and DKK 872 million respectively. Cash and cash equivalents reduced slightly by DKK 64 million to DKK 445 million, and equity increased by DKK 103 million to DKK 9,451 million. The equity ratio was unchanged at 64%. The cash flow from operations have improved and was DKK 151 million.
Cash flow from investments were minus DKK 175 million, and cash flow from financing came out at minus DKK 40 million in the quarter. If we look at the net interest-bearing debts, we have a slight increase of DKK 65 million in this quarter compared to last quarter. This is caused by net investments of DKK 175 million. The changes in working capital that amount to DKK 336 million, and the positive cash flow from operations amounting to DKK 446 million, which gives us a net interest-bearing debt at the end of the quarter amounting to DKK 2,191 million.
In the fourth quarter, we got commitment from our current banks, group of banks, for a re-financing of the group, a sustainability-linked facility agreement, which was closed in the first quarter. With this, we have nearly DKK 3 billion in undrawn credit lines. On top of that, we have DKK 150 million in an accordion option. Brief update on the ESG. We have released our fifth sustainability report in this quarter, which is available on our webpage. Some headlines from that report will tell you that we have managed to decrease our carbon intensity per ton of produced salmon in the Faroes by 38%. This is 2021 last year I'm referring to, which the report is covering.
We had in Scotland an overall decrease of 16% on our greenhouse gas emissions. We continue to source locally, and this is both in the Faroe Islands and also in Scotland. Around 60% of all services and products sourced are done locally. We also provide in the report a full year review of our award-winning biogas plant, which is now up and running and producing a significant contribution to the green renewable energy in the Faroes. Regin will go through the markets and outlook.
In this quarter, we saw a significant drop on the supply side in the market. 7% drop, which is mainly driven by the volumes in Norway and Chile, and U.K. These three combined dropped their supplies 45,000 tons in the quarter. On the feed sales, we also see in this quarter a significant drop on 6% in the European biomasses. In Chile, it is more or less unchanged, maybe slightly 1% up maybe. Harvest weights in Norway in this quarter was more or less flat at 4.6 kilos. Chile was slightly down, 4 kilos, 8% down, and Scotland was also 8% down to 4.2. Faroe Islands was 11% down from 5.3 to 4.7.
If you look on the demand side, we see a drop of course on the same 7%, but the prices increased 47% on the back of this 7% volume drop. Indicates a strong bargaining power on the demand side, no, on the supply side, and strong players on the demand side being able to pay high summer prices these days. Probably also linked to the high prices on food in general in the markets these days. The U.S. market increased their volumes by 1%, where EU, for the first time in a very long period, dropped their volumes by 9% in this quarter.
Maybe also linked to the fact that many of the big processors in Europe have difficulties with these very high prices and challenging conditions, in fact. The markets also, at least in the beginning, there were some restrictions, which also created some constraints. China, Hong Kong, had big impacts from this, right now, but increased in the period, on the back of very low numbers last year. Now we see also better capacity for air cargo for Asia. Of course, the numbers for Russia and Ukraine are very much impacted by the war. On the outlook, we see a low volume here in the first half of the year, and that's both from Europe and also from Americas.
This is a year with two halves where especially the first half is very weak, but second half is not that high, around 2%-4% increase in volumes on the back of very low in the first half. Overall for the full- year, we will see around 1% drop of supply compared with last year. In 2023, it looks like around 4%-5% supply growth as it stands at the moment. Slightly higher in the first half of the year than the second half. Bakkafrost, we see our volumes this year coming out at 103,000 tonnes compared with 98,000 last year, quite flat, slightly up in Scotland. The smolts released are also quite flat, 25.7 compared with 25.5.
We are investing on building smolt capacity in Faroes that will be in production by the end of this year into next year. That will eventually give us a better lift in our smolt weights. On the contract side, we have contracted around 32% of our total volumes into VAP products, both in Faroes and Scotland combined. We expect to produce and sell around 130,000 tons of feed this year, and already now we have sourced more raw materials than last year, or more or less the same, which is a good indicator for our fishmeal, oil, and feed operation.
Most of the production in the first quarter will stay in stock to supply the feed for the rest of the year. On the business development, investments are made in line with our message on our capital market day last September. Investments in our new freshwater capacity in the Faroes is progressing according to plan, and that is in Glyvradalur and Norðtoftir mainly. We expect to start groundworks in Øynarvík in Suðuroy, that's a new site for a hatchery during this summer, and building operations next winter. In Scotland, Applecross project is progressing according to plan, and the building phase four will start operations by end of this year or beginning of next year rather. Phase five and six will be finalized and start operations by end of 2023.
We have secured building ground for the second site in Scotland, similar as Applecross in size. Work to secure authority licenses at the moment to start the building process, which we hope to start in the second half of this year. Our feed plant Havsbrún is expanding the capacity during end of this year and will somewhere in 2024 we expect to have doubled the capacity to around 275,000 tons of feed compared with 135 at the moment. Contracts have been signed with suppliers of the new factory. All in all, we follow the plan that we communicated to the capital market in September for investments for our five-year investment strategy.
Our focus is to reduce the biological risk, to improve the efficiency, and to create organic growth. We believe that we can use a lot of things learned in the Faroe Islands to improve the operations in Scotland. It takes time to upgrade the whole value chain, especially to build new hatcheries. We are confident and strong in our belief in the future. This is a photo of the site at Applecross taken last week, where the phase four is progressing and this will be in operation by end of this year. Thank you. Now I am open to take some questions.
Yes, thank you. Two questions. First on the cost side. Yeah, we see the cost inflation. Can you just comment a little bit on your expectations both for the upcoming quarters? Then, yeah, we see that fish feed prices have exploded over the last couple of weeks. It appears that you have the same contract coverage now that you had in the last quarter. Is that your decision or is the physical contract market not the same as the fish feed market?
Yeah. Thank you, Odvar. The cost inflation has developed quite rapidly during the last couple of months. I don't think we yet see. It takes 30-some months, 35 months or 32 months, whatever, to produce a salmon. There will be a long period to absorb the cost inflation in the value chain. For Bakkafrost, a bit more than 50% of the feed is sourced internally. Feed cost is 50% of the farming cost. We buy raw materials with our local pelagic sources and have good access to these. Fishmeal and fish oil are also increasing, but maybe not yet as much as the vegetable costs, which we have seen increase significantly.
Around 30% of the wheat is produced in Ukraine and Russia, and this has to be sourced elsewhere. Bakkafrost is not selling and not buying from Russia since the war started. That means that we have to move around a bit on where we are sourcing. This has an impact on costs and will gradually be seen. However, we believe that with our strategy on marine ingredients, this will be kind of a protection or at least give a better position on the cost side.
During the first quarter, we saw some increased costs in our farming operations, and this was mainly due to the fact that the first big batches of large smolt had higher mortality than what we see now in the operation. There were some adjustments made after the first batches of large smolt, and these adjustments have brought down the mortality rate. That will come down again. There are two different factors here, both the cost inflation, but mainly this impact of the mortality rate, which was on the batches that were harvested in the first quarter higher than what we had seen previously. That has an impact of something like DKK 1 per kilo. As you mentioned, fishmeal prices have exploded.
Fishmeal prices and the spot prices are affecting a part of the market, and that's mainly the food service, which seems to have a very high buying power. At least the contracts with retailers have not developed the same way yet. There will be a positive or an increase of those prices during the year. Many contracts have been committed for six-12 months. Many of those contracts are committed by the end of 2021, and that means that the number of 32% is with full year contract coverage. These are not new contracts. There will be some new contracts eventually during the year, because many of the customers are rolling over. Many of those we have been working together with for 10 years, 15 years, even up to 25 years.
We believe that the long-term relationships are also important. There must be a balance, not only short-term thinking. That's also important. There will be a balance, and we will see contract prices coming up. We will see some of the old contracts might also be renewed, and fulfilled, and extended. There will be new prices on these coming during the summer and early autumn. We stick to our strategy that around 40%-50% of our products are sold on long-term contracts or relationships which are rolled over from year to year. The majority of this is value-added products. Any follow-up question?
No. Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you. I have a question first on your harvest profile for the remaining of the year. What should we think here?
Maybe say your name first.
Christian Olsen Nordby at Arctic Securities. I have a question regarding the harvest profile. What do we think regarding second quarter, Scotland, Faroes, and also for the remaining quarters of the year?
Thank you, Christian. As I mentioned, in Scotland, we have held back harvest in Scotland in order to move into the second quarter. Now, in the second quarter we are ramping up harvest profile in Scotland, which means that in Scotland we will be a bit flat for the rest of the year. In the Faroes, we will probably be a bit lower in the second quarter, and then ramp up again in the third and fourth quarter, which will be higher again.
Thank you. On cost development, you asked about some of the inflation stuff.
Yes.
I'm thinking more about year-on-year effects now for Faroes, for example. How is the cost at the moment, the farming cost?
Yeah. As mentioned, there were some impacts with the first batches of large smolt, but these seem now to come slightly down again. There are two different factors which works two ways. One is the cost inflation, which of course will also impact us. There is a cost inflation on more or less everything these days, and that will also impact salmon farming. But the issues that we had with the first batches of smolt, where we saw slightly higher mortality rates. The average mortality rate for us has been around 14%, but we want this to come down to around 8% again or below 8%. We are,
We see much better numbers now with large smolts, and we see that Strond is outperforming all historical numbers that we have seen with the fish that has been stocked since last summer. We are confident that the amendments have been good. We did not have any big issues with the start-up of Strond. That worked very well, but we had to make some adjustments on the production profile. Of course, these are good learnings as we are upscaling now, both Glyvradalur and Norðtoftir, and eventually also Applecross and the new site in Scotland, where we can use these learnings on the profile.
On the inflation, I believe that salmon is benefiting from the fact that generally with cost inflation, with a low feed conversion ratio, salmon is versus other proteins a much more competitive protein than beef, pork and poultry. Generally we should expect that salmon should stand out good in a competitive situation like this with cost inflation. This is the first time we have seen this big impact in a short time in not modern times.
Thank you.
Hi. Alex Morton from DNB. Two questions. The first, you said you had record low levels of sea lice in the Faroes. Any comments as to why? The second is, on the CapEx side, you have an investment program for the next four years of more than DKK 6 billion. How much is already committed or fixed price, and how much will be susceptible to cost increases?
Thank you, Alexander. Yeah, that's a good point. First, on the sea lice, record low numbers. If you look at the average numbers in the Faroe Islands for the last five years. Five years ago, we are counting all pens in Faroes every 14 days by independent counters. That's the only region in the world where we are doing that way. Other places, it's farmers themselves that count. Faroes is done in by independent counters. Independent. Five years ago, the average numbers were around one adult sea lice for all countings in the year. The levels have came gradually down, and last year, the number was zero point four. Right now, as we speak, the average number is less than zero point two. On all Bakkafrost farms last week it was zero point one four, which is all-time low.
We have been at 0.25 before, but not below 0.2 in Faroes, and Bakkafrost was 0.14. There has been a very big focus on reducing sea lice numbers. This is also a balance, as everything else, because you cannot farm salmon without sea lice. With an increased focus comes more intensified treatments, which can be negative. This is a balance that needs to be carefully managed, but we think that with our good tools available, we have a good position to handle this. In August, our new vessel, Bakkafrost, will come to Faroes, which has a huge capacity, 10,000 cubic meters, whereof 3,000 is freshwater, 7,000 is seawater.
Can produce 6,000 tons of freshwater per day, where we can handle the sea lice with this vessel. Seven hundred tons of treatments we can put, we can treat up to 2,000 tons per day just with freshwater. We believe this will also strengthen our position going forward. On the CapEx, we have at the moment DKK 1.1 billion.
Now just short of DKK 1 billion.
Okay.
Yeah.
Around DKK 1 billion is committed, contracted. There are around DKK 5 billion of this investment program, which has not been secured. We saw steel prices exploding the first two weeks after the war, the first two months after the war, but it seems like now, like steel prices are coming down somewhat again. There might be a first reaction and then things will settle out. Of course there are a lot of things that we don't know yet about. There might be some supply chain disruptions in this. We see at least the supply or lead time in deliveries are extended. Things that used to take 12 months, in some cases now take 15 months.
I guess also that there will be some improvements as we go on through the year. Hopefully, things will come a bit back into some kind of new normality.
Okay, thank you. Just one follow-up question on the contract side. Did I understand it correctly that if you have a 12-month contract, fixed price contract, you're currently able to renegotiate that fixed price- up before the end of the contract?
Yes. There might be a mutual interest between the parties to find a new solution to balance a bit out between the years, so that there will be a more gradual development in price development. That might be possible, especially I think for the second half of the year.
Thank you.
Yes, Ola Flåten, DNB. Just follow up on the sea lice situation. What kind of average harvest weights do you expect for Faroes, given the improved situation there?
That's a very good point. Because the trend is that with, you know, if you request a zero tolerance on sea lice, that would mean that you will not be able to farm salmon. The balance between a low sea lice number and high operational performance is somewhere up in the air. We have seen in the Faroe Islands that over the last two years, our average weight of harvested fish has come somewhat down. That is also part of the explanation that sometimes you just need to harvest the fish in order to avoid treatments. At the moment you see that we are at somewhere around 4.7 kilos.
I hope that we can come back to higher levels. That's the balance that we must be careful on. I don't have a clear answer on the question. That's why we are also with the new Bakkafrost, we are confident that we are in a better position as we enter into the second half of the year. Of course, it will take some time also for us to get the results with this new tool into our operations.
Thanks. One follow-up comment on average harvest weights in Scotland as well. What to expect for second half of the year?
Yes. That is, you know, that's what I told about the test. I see the second half of the year to be real test of our operations. Now we have good tools in Scotland. We have two vessels where we can treat with fresh water every three weeks now. We are confident that we have good tools. At the same time, we know that the smolt has still a low weight, so the fish needs to be two summers in the sea, which is a bit challenging. Depending on the development, we are at least focusing now on trying to improve the average size, because that's where we see the huge advantage with our strategy.
At least we are coming up and, hopefully, above 4.5 kilos.
Thank you.
Welcome.
Martin Kaland, ABG, another follow-up on Scotland, where we see that the mortality has normalized less extraordinary mortality towards the end of the quarter. Are there still some fish or size left that could have had some issues through last year that's not harvested out, so that we could still see some of those being harvested in Q4, for example?
In Scotland, we harvested majority of the fish in the first quarter with these issues. In the second quarter, there should be healthy fish. You know, there are sometimes in Scotland things coming up very shortly with a short notice. At the moment, we see healthy fish over the full line in Scotland. Fish is able to grow. Especially, as I mentioned, with the new stocks that we have in the sea, we are seeing record good performance, all-time high growth rates. Normally, the TGC in Scotland was below 2.5. Now we see TGCs above 3.3, which has never been seen in our operations in Scotland before.
That's a good sign because that will shorten the time the fish stands in the sea for several months, which is crucial in Scotland. It is more risky in Scotland, and that's why we need to shorten the time in sea and to have good capacity of tools to avoid biological issues.
Okay, good. Is it possible to say some sort of allocation, how large share of the fish current biomass in Scotland is these new batches and these old batches?
I don't have a number in my head, but I would say that at least all stockings last year are with the new strategy. The new strategy, there are a number of KPIs in that strategy which have been implemented, which has a positive impact on the biology.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you very much.