Welcome everyone, and thank you for taking time to watch this Quarter Two Presentation for Icelandic Salmon. My name is Bjørn Hembre, and with me today I have our CFO, Edvin Aspli. After the presentation, there will be a Q&A session where you can ask questions by raising your hand in Teams or typing the question in the chat. First, a brief overview of Icelandic Salmon. As most of you probably know, the company is listed at the Euronext Growth Market in Oslo and the First North market in Reykjavík. The company is the sole owner and parent company of Einolax AHF, which performs all operational activities in the group. We are present throughout the value chain. We have four smolt facilities with a current capacity to produce 25,000-30,000 tonnes of harvest volume in sea.
We have eight farming sites in the Southern West Fjords of Iceland with a total maximum allowed biomass of 23,700 tonnes, and all our production in sea is ASC certified. We have our own harvesting plant in Bíldudalur with a capacity per year of 30,000 tonnes and has a BRCGS certification, which is a food standard certification for the harvesting. We have our own sales team that sells all our fish out in the global market and also the domestic market. Now let's take a look at the highlights from the quarter. The financial result of the quarter was strongly affected by high cost of production on our 23rd generation and an extraordinary item related to adjustment of biomass value on one of the sites of the 24th generation. The EBIT for the quarter ended at EUR -9.4 million.
The 23rd generation was harvested out in the first week of quarter four and will therefore not affect the quarter four numbers materially. We see that in the quarter had a very positive development on several other items of the value chain, for example, cost of harvesting and a good job done by the team in the harvest plant. We also saw a strong price achievement compared to an in general rather low market price in the quarter, especially low early in the quarter, and also a positive effect of having bigger sizes of the fish than the market in general. High temperatures contributed to high production in our seawater operation, and at the end of the quarter, we saw 1.5 degrees higher temperature than what is normal in average. This supports the indicated increase in harvest volume for next year.
This leads us to a close to 100% utilization of the maximum allowed biomass in our Patrekssandhólar and Fureyri license at the end of the quarter. This is for the first time for the company and driven by the fact that we could start to use the new site Vatnayri for our 2024 generation last year. The smolt output in 2025 was the all-time high and is finalized. We put out 5.3 million smolt with an average weight of 230 grams, ranging from 100 grams-700 grams. This is approximately 500,000 more smolt than previous year. We see a satisfying performance on the 2025 generation so far, and the smolt output is adapted to good utilization of the maximum allowed biomass going forward. In the quarter, we harvested 3,800 tonnes compared to 1,800 tonnes in quarter three last year.
This quarter, we also reached an agreement with our banks to extend and adjust our loan terms, ensuring that we remain compliant with the loan agreement at the end of quarter three. We also see a significant increase in production tax for year to date in 2025 compared to year to date in 2024, increasing from EUR 1.4 million in 2024 to EUR 2.8 million this year. This increase is partly because of higher tax level, but also due to higher volume. Summarized, a challenging quarter for Icelandic Salmon, but also many positive developments in the whole value chain. I will then give the word to our CFO, Edvin Aspli.
Thank you, Bjørn. I can continue on the bank financing first. As Bjørn mentioned, we reached an agreement with our banks to amend and extend the loan agreement. As of the reporting date, we are in full compliance with the new terms. The most important changes are found in the covenants regarding interest ratio and leverage with their waivers extended through fourth quarter next year. There is also a new covenant on minimum liquidity of EUR 10 million, including cash, the revolvers, and the overdraft facility. The covenant on equity ratio remains unchanged at 35%. Finally, the facilities are extended one year to November 2028. Overall, these new terms and extension take the pressure off the short-term covenant situation we have had and gives us room to stabilize operation and bring leverage back down.
When it comes to the balance numbers, the total assets were up EUR 4 million to EUR 268 million in the third quarter. It is driven by an EUR 11 million increase in liabilities, but offset by a reduction in equity, where the equity ratio came down from 47%- 44%. We had a positive fair value adjustment of EUR 2.7 million, offsetting some of the net loss in the quarter, driven by higher price expectation and low remaining biomass from the high-cost 2023 generation. The net interest-bearing debt, including leasing, ended at EUR 123 million. Finally, the total available liquidity for the company was EUR 52 million at the end of the quarter. On the next slide, we have the development of the debt. As we can see, it increased by EUR 9.7 million, and it is mainly due to the operational losses.
We also had this production tax bill from the first half, as well as high interest cost in the quarter development. The same, the leasing came down EUR 1.1 million. Investments look almost flat in the quarter, but that is mainly because of a large portion of refunded CapEx from July related to a canceled workboat contract. That concludes the group financials, and I'll give the word back to you, Bjørn.
Thank you, Edvin. If you look at the sales and market update, the market in quarter three was strongly affected by high volumes in the global supply of salmon, especially early in the quarter. For quarter three 2025, compared to quarter three 2024, the sea salmon prices were EUR 0.87 per kilo lower. Our contract share was very low, it was at 1%. In the quarter, we sold 21% of our volume to the North American market and 23% to the Asian market. This relative high share to the North American market shows that we so far see limited consequences of the 15% tariffs to the United States. This can, of course, also be related to that the effect is limited due to, in general, low market prices. The long-term effect of the 15% tariff is still worrying us.
The sales to Asia and North America have a positive contribution to our general price achievement, but we also saw a positive trend towards price achievement for the European market in quarter three, which still is our biggest market. In quarter three, it represented over 55% of the total volume. If we look at our outlook, we see a good biology going into the winter and are well positioned for our financial recovery in 2026. We expect a decrease in cost level in quarter four 2025 and going forward into 2026 due to increasing volumes and lower cost of the stock from our seawater operation on the 2024 generation that we started harvesting on in the beginning of October. Cost of biomass in sea decreased due to better biology and, over some time, decreasing feed prices. That is the two main drivers there.
For 2026, we expect to see a good cost effect of better capacity utilization with increasing volumes on, for example, harvesting and wellboat capacity. The volume guidance for 2025 has remained at 13,000 tonnes. We will continue to build biomass to optimize the MIB utilization and expect a significant increase in biomass during 2025. This is the fundament for increased volumes for 2026, and the volume guidance for 2026 is 21,000 tonnes. We expect to continue with a low contract share for quarter four at approximately 1% and 2% for the full year. The outlook for the salmon market has become more positive lately, but we still see a strong global supply pressure, and we are uncertain on the tariff implications to the U.S.
We do, by the way, expect year-over-year supply growth to decrease in quarter four, and this should lead to a more normalized price level, as we have seen lately. We expect a stronger market in 2026 than we have seen in 2025, supported with good price achievements from our sales team compared to market price. Icelandic Salmon aim to reach 26,000 tonnes on the existing licenses still, and most of the CapEx is made to prepare for this. Over the quarter, there have been no changes in the company's license portfolio, and there are still applications for 14,500 tonnes of MIB in the process within the authorities, in addition to extension of sites for better MIB utilization. The Ministry of Industries has given a signal that a new aquaculture law will be proposed in Althingi in February 2026.
The company has an active role in giving input into this process in good dialogue with the authorities and industry colleagues. It has given a signal from the sitting government that there is an aim to encourage sustainable growth within salmon farming in Iceland. We, as an industry, are clear in the communication that growth in the industry needs to see competitive terms, also when it comes to tax, for example. I will then end the presentation. Thank you for listening to the presentation, and we will move directly into the Q&A session. Please raise your virtual hand or type your question into the chat, and Edvin will guide you with the questions.
For the questions, you could either raise your hand or indicate in the chat, and then you will be able to be unmuted. Or as Bjørn said, you could type your questions in the chat. The first one so far is from Ola Trovatn, with the first question being, do you expect an average cost in box full for year 2026 above EUR 6.1?
Of course, we don't guide on cost, but somewhere around that.
The second question is, how much smolt do you release in 2025, and how much do you plan to release in 2026?
As I said, we released 5.3 million in 2025 and expect a slight increase in 2026.
The third question from Ola, can you quantify the expected fixed cost per kilo reduction from higher volumes in 2026 versus 2025?
I don't think we can do that in the way that we don't guide on cost.
Over to the next one from Kristoffer Höglund. What smolt yield is implied in the 2026 harvest guidance?
I can probably answer that, Bjørn, but I do not have the exact number with me for now, but I can follow up on that. So far, I do not see any new questions, but we can give it a bit more time. Okay, if there are no more questions, then we can call it a done and.