Good morning, everyone. Thank you all for taking time to watch this quarter-one presentation for Icelandic Salmon. My name is Björn Hembre, and with me today I have Jónas Heiðar Birgisson and Jörður Mettusson. After the presentation, there will be a Q&A session, and you can send questions to the mail address questions@arnarlax.is anytime during the session. First, a brief overview of Icelandic Salmon. As most of you probably know, the company is listed on Euronext Growth Market in Oslo and in Reykjavík on the Nasdaq First North. The company is the sole owner and parent company of Arnarlax ehf. All operational activities of the group are performed in Arnarlax ehf. We are present throughout the value chain, from smolt to sales. We have four smolt facilities with a current capacity to produce 25,000-30,000 tons of head-on gutted salmon.
We have farming operations in eight sites in three fjords in the Westfjords of Iceland, and all our production in sea is AIC certified. The total maximum allowed biomass for the company is 23,700 tons. We also have our own harvest plant in Bíldudalur in the Westfjords of Iceland with a capacity of 30,000 tons per year. The production there is BRC certified. We have our own internal sales team that sells our products out in the domestic and global markets. Now let's take a closer look on the highlights from the quarter. We faced a challenging biological situation in seawater in first quarter 2025. This was mainly related to infectious diseases in combination with low temperatures. We continued to harvest from the 2023 generation. In the quarter, we harvested 1,100 tons compared to 2,800 tons in first quarter last year.
There was a superior share of the harvested volume of 82%, with downgrades mainly related to smaller wounds on the fish. The average weight was low on the harvested fish due to that harvest was initiated to safeguard the fish welfare. The EBITd for the quarter ended at negative EUR 3 million, down from negative EUR 0.2 million first quarter last year. The cost level reflects the low harvest volume, which gives low capacity utilization in addition to biological challenges that were faced in the first half 2024 that resulted in lower overall production and thereby a higher cost per kilo. To mitigate further cost increase, we paused harvesting and temporarily removed most employees at the harvest plant from the payroll.
The remaining employees in the harvest plant were focusing on necessary maintenance and contributed in other departments of the company to catch up on projects that previously have been delayed. The temporary layoffs have now ended, and the harvest plant is in operation again. We saw a satisfactory performance in our smolt production and were in a good steady-state production there and are on track to deliver an all-time high smolt output in 2025, both when it comes to number and average weight, and a general good biological development in the smolt stations over the first quarter. Our biggest smolt this year will be around 800 grams, and the average weight of the smolt output will be 240 grams.
If we look at the license situation, a 10,000-ton license for sterile salmon in Ísafjörðardjúp was revoked in quarter three last year by the Environmental and Natural Resources Board of Appeal. Both the authorities and the company ourselves are working on mitigating measures to get the license approved, according to the feedback from the before-mentioned board. We have good expectations that this will be in place but do not have a clear timeline for this. We have applications in approval process. We have been in the process to establish larger sites for better MIB utilization in Arnafjörður. The application was put through environmental assessment, and the report is under review by the governmental agencies now. This process has taken longer time than anticipated, and we do not expect a final decision before the end of year 2025.
We hopefully have the approval in place then, but full utilization of these sites will take a bit longer time. Our application for 4,500 tons in Arnafjörður was also put through the environmental assessment and is still under review by the authorities. However, there is a risk that biomass could be auctioned out by the government, and then we will be in a good position to take part in that process with a finalized environmental assessment for the growth. The new government has expressed its intention to introduce an updated version of the new law proposal in Althingi during September 2025. That will have a focus on ensuring a sustainable development of the salmon industry and sustainable growth. The signals from the government are that they want growth in the salmon farming in sea to strengthen the value creation in Iceland.
Until a new law is in place, we and other companies in our industry will continue, of course, to operate according to current legislation. Salmon farming has become a significant contribution to the Icelandic economy and represented 6% of the value of all goods exported from Iceland in 2024. The new law proposal will be crucial to ensuring continued sustainable growth of the industry. An update on sales and marketing. We had a low volume harvested in quarter one, and the market was very different than we saw over the first quarter of the recent years due to significant more volume into the market globally. We harvested in January before the prices dropped fully, but our average weight was 3.6 kilos on the harvested volume, and prices were lower on the smaller sizes.
Due to low average weight, we had a low part of the volume going into the North American market that was approximately 9% and into the Asian market with only 2% of our production. For the North American market, we are still able to utilize sea transport of the fish, so 91% of the exported volume to North America was transported by boat. The contract share in the quarter was 10%, and the contracts gave a positive contribution to the price achievement. We are, of course, concerned about the new toll tariffs implemented by the United States. We, with our low volumes in quarter one, did not experience challenges for the present sales, but are very concerned about how this will affect the salmon consumption and price achievement in the U.S. market over time.
This tariff will increase the price to the end consumer in the United States and thereby potentially reduce the consumption. I will then give the word to our CFO, Jónas Heiðar Birgisson, for a financial update. Jónas.
Thank you, Björn. Good morning, everyone. I will now provide a quick overview of our key operational and financial developments for the first quarters. Following a quiet period with low harvesting volume, the balance sheet developed largely as expected, with continued build-up of biological assets and steady investment activities. During the first quarter, total assets decreased by EUR 3.8 million. The main driver was a reduction in the fair value of our biological assets by EUR 3.5 million, and a drop in trade receivables after a low harvesting period. At the same time, biological assets at cost increased, reflecting biomass build-up in the period and mortality impact for reduction. Prepaid expenses increased and were mainly related to operational services at SeaWater, including Stingray that was taken into operation during the period.
Investments in the quarter totaled up to EUR 4.4 million and were mainly related to site preparation for two of our sites and continued improvements of our freshwater capacity. The group's liability remained stable during the quarter. Net interest-bearing debt increased in line with ongoing investments and biological build-up. The equity ratio was broadly unchanged during the quarter. The primary reason for the increase in our net interest-bearing debt is driven by our continued investment to support further growth. The investments we made this quarter are primarily aimed at expanding our production capacity. We are currently preparing the Hringstaðir site for our fish output, and we have finalized the freshwater facility at Laxábrú. The Laxábrú facility is now in operational state, and we plan to start transporting fish there this summer.
In the quarter, we also paid EUR 2.1 million in resource taxes related to last year's harvest volume, and we saw a EUR 2.1 million increase in our working capital as we have been building up our biological assets. The period was affected by mortality of EUR 1.6 million, which affected the group's EBITDA. Our net interest-bearing debt, including lease liability, amounted to EUR 97.8 million at the end of the quarter, reflecting an increase of EUR 11 million. I will now hand the presentation back over to Björn Hembre to go over outlook updates. Here you go.
Thank you, Jónas. In 2025, it's planned a significant build-up of biomass over the year. This is due to better MIB utilization, especially on our 12,200-ton license in Patreksfjörður and Tálknafjörður, because we took a new site into operation there, Vatnæri, that was started last year. We expect to start harvesting there in quarter three because we reached the maximum allowed biomass in the license. It is always exciting to start operations on a new site, and we see very satisfying biological results on Vatnæri so far and expect a reduced cost of production when the harvest starts there. For full year 2025, we expect a lower cost level than 2024, and this is driven by increased volume and lower feed cost. The spring in Iceland has been a normal warm, and we see a good effect on the growth of the fish.
The temperature is and has been over the last month approximately one degree above normal. The volume guidance for 2025 is maintained at 15,000 tons, and we expect higher volume in quarter two than in quarter one. Our harvest profile for the year will be backloaded into the second half. We expect the contract share for the year to be approximately 10%. Sorry. The expectation is a continued more challenging market in 2025 compared to 2024 due to good biological performance in several regions that are producing salmon. We do not expect the impact on the second half to be as strong as in the first half. We are confident in the solid position we have built and our ability to deliver and support Iceland in its efforts to become an even greater seafood nation.
Our long-term ambition and potential is to increase the production within existing licenses and current regulatory framework to 26,000 tons per year. In 2025, we expect a significant increase in biomass over the course of the year, followed by a much better MIB utilization. This can be achieved because we are building a company with a robust corporate culture and with a committed and highly competent staff. We have also patiently enhanced our value chain to address and overcome challenges related to smolt capacity, production in sea, harvesting capacity, and sales. Although the market is characterized by global uncertainty and increased volumes, Icelandic Salmon continues to experience strong demand for our product and expect lower global supply growth in the second half of 2025 compared to what we have experienced so far. I will then thank you all for taking time to join this presentation together with us.
We will now shortly head over to the Q&A session, and you can still send questions to questions@arnarlax.is. I hopefully see you in a few moments.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining this Q&A session for this quarter. My name is Jörður Mettusson, and I'll be managing the questions that come in today. You can still send in questions to questions@arnarlax.is, and we will do our best to answer the ones that are sent in. Björn, can you comment on the lice situation and the toolbox and capacity Arnarlax has to fight lice this summer?
Yes, I can do that. We feel that we are well prepared. We are, first of all, using preventive measures like lice skirts on all smolts put into sea this year.
We will use lumpfish, which we saw quite good results of last year on one of our sites, where we think it would be very suitable to use lumpfish. We also have started to use stingray lasers on one site with positive development on the lice levels there. We also have access to a well boat with OptiLaser, which is a thermal treatment in cooperation with our neighbor farming company. We have a good capacity on the non-medical treatment side. We also have the option to use medical treatment, which is, of course, the last option we use. If we need, we can use medical treatment as well. I feel that we are very well prepared into the season with controlling the lice.
Oh, that's good. Here is a question from Christopher Höglund. Is it reasonable to expect a smolt release of six million smolt this year?
We will not reach 6 million smolt this year. We have adapted the production plans in the smolt station to get a better biology in sea. We have increased the average weight more than we anticipated for maybe two or three years ago. We have continuously increased the average weight and also limited the time period we put smolts into sea so that we reach a sufficient average weight on the fish going into the winter to mitigate this challenging that we obviously faced again this first quarter. This is an important part. We have also reduced the input of eggs to optimize the production in the smolt facilities to be sure that we have a really good quality on the smolts. As it looks now, the smolt quality this year looks very promising. We have big expectations.
We actually start to put out smolt today, and we see a good temperature in sea. It should be very good.
Yeah, excellent. Excellent. Another question from Christopher. You're guiding on harvest for Q2 to be higher than in the quarter two 2024 harvest of 700 tons. How will Q2 harvest be compared to quarter one this year?
We expect to have approximately a double volume in quarter two compared to quarter one. Yeah.
Okay. Okay. One question here more from him. Are you expecting the harvest weights in quarter two to be at the same level as it was in quarter four?
No, of course, no. We are in quarter two, and I know the numbers. We will have an increased average weight of the fish in quarter two and expect a further increase in the average weight in the second half of the year.
I have one question here to Jónas. Can you comment on the Coppetti plan this year and next?
Yeah, we have been emphasizing on the smolt production, and we reached the capacity there now. Going forward, the focus will be on seawater production, on site preparation, net sketches, and there for increased capacity.
Okay. One question here back to you, Björn. What changes are we expecting in the Icelandic farming this autumn? Is there anything?
Of course, the law proposal that was on the table last year is the one that is coming up again with some modifications. Kind of the core of that proposal was that there should be room for growth in the industry if the performance when it comes to no or low escapes, control on the lice, and the mortality in sea. If you kind of perform within some key performance indicators there, that should initiate growth. I think that will be the core of the message this year as well. What concerns us the most is, of course, how things develop with the tax, which is a challenging issue in a quite young industry that is still growing and still investments needed.
That is kind of one of the main messages, of course, to the politicians and the government now that we need to let the industry build up and keep the tax level so we are compatible in a global market with salmon when it comes to cost.
Yeah. I think these are very good final words. It looks like we've covered most of the questions. Thank you all for being here with us and have a lovely day.