Good morning, and welcome to Q1 presentation of Icefish Farm. My name is Guðmundur Gíslason, and today with me is Róbert Róbertsson, our financial chief. We will go through the results of Q1. To start off, yes, we had around 4,000 tons of harvest in the quarter, but it was challenging. We had a generation and in Fáskrúðsfjörður, and we fortunately had experienced winter wounds on the fish, and also we needed to accelerate harvest and lower harvest rates. But still, we managed around NOK 28 million in EBIT in the quarter, and we managed around 7.1 NOK per kilo.
On the other hand, the biomass in the sea is growing, and compared to 2023, we are up to around 30,000 tons versus 6,200 tons in the end of the quarter. And we also see quite dramatic and good results on the smolt production at the end of the quarter, giving us optimistic improvements on both number of fish and the condition of the fish that we can put out in 2024. We are also looking at the Icelandic market regarding the listing the company in the Icelandic stock market. So we'll do a list. The company will still be in the Norwegian growth market, but also now do a listing in the First North.
This will happen on the twenty-eighth of May during our Capital Markets Day, that we will keep, invite our investors to come over in Eskifjörður on the East Coast and experience, and see the sights and, and get the presentations from the company and general, outlook, going forward. The outlook on the other hand, going forward is really, really impressive. We see, a possibility to have around 21,500 tons in the year, which is a huge increase from last year's around 4,000 tons. We expect improvements on, on the, biology and, and the health of the fish that we're harvesting in, in Q3 and Q4, with better harvest rates.
The increase of smolt compared to last year and also the condition of the smolt is really exciting, and we're looking forward to starting the smolt transfers this year. I now hand over to Róbert to go through the financials.
Good morning. Thank you, Guðmundur. I'm Róbert Róbertsson, the CFO of Kaldvik, and I've prepared a brief overview of the Q1 financials. First of all, our financial health remains robust, with around 66% equity ratio, which is consistent with previous quarters. Total assets increased by 200 million NOK, 200 million NOK during the quarter, and total liabilities by 70 million NOK, mainly due to investment in CapEx and working capital. The book value of our biological assets remains consistent or stable from last quarter and amounted to around 1.3 billion NOK at the end of the quarter. And here you can see a high-level overview or an analysis of our net interest-bearing debt throughout the quarter.
Net interest-bearing debt increased by 136 million NOK in the first quarter. EBITDA reached 62 million NOK. We harvested 4,000 tons, which was slightly below what we guided in Q4 presentation. Our site in Fáskrúðsfjörður was harvested out during the quarter, like Guðmundur mentioned. And, these sites have been influenced by winter wounds and low harvest weight, which negatively affected our cost levels and price achievements in the quarter. However, this was partially neutralized due to seasonal price increases. The price achievement reached 85 NOK per kilo, which is an increase from last quarter, which when it was around 77 NOK per kilo. Net investments in working capital, particularly in biological assets, reached 47 million NOK.
Our CapEx investments amounted to NOK 64 million, and we are keeping our guidance of NOK 290 million in CapEx investments throughout the year 2024. Financial items amounted to NOK 38 million, mainly due to interest expense of NOK 32 million. Finally, currency fluctuation impacted our interest-bearing debt and increased the net interest-bearing debt by NOK 49 million during the quarter. Icefish Farm is fully financed throughout 2025, with a bank facility of EUR 156 million, and the net loans from the bank syndicate amounted to EUR 117 million at the end of the quarter.
We here at Icefish Farm are very pleased to announce that we intend to carry out a listing of our shares on the Icelandic or Nasdaq First North market in Iceland. Like Guðmundur said, this is done in addition to our current listing on Euronext Growth in Oslo. The dual listing is expected to be approved on the same date as the planned Capital Markets Day on the 28th of May, and the first day of trading is expected the day after, on the 29th of May. In connection with the dual listing and the contemplated dual listing impact on the total numbers of shares outstanding in the company.
Here on the right-hand side of the slide, you can see the agenda for the Capital Markets Day, which will be held in Eskifjörður on the East Coast, and will also be streamed live from our website. That's it for me for now. Thank you.
Thank you, Róbert. It will be an exciting event. I'm going over to operations on land, and as I said earlier, I'm really pleased with the results in land. And the improvements that we've been going through last years and built up top-of-the-line smolt facilities are now showing better results on the farming of the salmon itself. So the built up and better production plans and yeah, heavy training of our employees and quality controls have improved the production. We are still improving and on the left side, you can see a picture of the smolt facility that we built up last year in Fiskalón.
Those facilities have really calmed down the environment for the fish and also the employees and better control of feeding and water qualities and densities and all the important factors to have a good, healthy smolt. We certainly can see the improvements with the tests. We have a quality team in each facility to test the fish and see how they are, and we see great improvements on the skin health and the fins and gills and other important factors for fish to survive and thrive in the Icelandic conditions. So we are also on the East Coast, or Land North in Reyðarfjörður, the facility we built up almost from ground up again in 2020.
We are still improving facilities there with the new house that has a delay due to winter conditions and other factors there. But in general, now it's in full action. The snow has melted and we hope to have fish in this house in the autumn. And this is an important step, both increasing the volume of smolt we can produce on the north side, on the Land North, and also the all-in, all-out strategy and better condition for the fish to have a good growth and really deliver what is capable of the salmon.
Therefore, the release of Generation 24 is coming up, starting up in the next two weeks, and we are seeing good qualities and really looking forward and compared to the 5.4 million smolt we put out in 2023, we see an increase this year. And that was last year's step down. We had earlier gone up to around 6.5 million, but due to quality and other factors, we took it down, and now it's going up again and with a much more robust smolt that we are looking forward to go and transport to sea. Then on the other hand, on the sea, we were experiencing quite normal winter. It was...
Temperature were quite normal, and the conditions also regarding storms and such were normal. No, we didn't have any, like, extreme events this winter. But unfortunately, due to, we would say, most likely, smolt qualities in the beginning, the generation we were harvesting out at that site in Fáskrúðsfjörður had not shown good results from start. And fortunately, we needed to step in earlier and harvest wounded fish with smaller lower average weights, as we indicated in Q4. And we are, yeah, looking forward to start to harvest better qualities going forward.
And the program also from the smolt side, we are adapted our vaccine, and also we are still using the ISA vaccine to protect that part. And we have 7.4 million fish in the sea. This is a great increase from last year, so 5.6. Those are good generations, and we are going forward on the outlook that we are starting harvesting generation 22 autumn, and then also the spring generation 23. So the big smolts we put out in 2023, we will, they've been in the sea around, yeah, 10 months now, and we start harvest them in Q2 and Q3. And we expect improved biological performance on those.
But still, in Q2, we are cautious both on cost and due to the volume and also the just end of the winter and the cost and price attainment. We are cautious on that one. But looking forward to Q3 and Q4, second half of the year, wrap up of production through 2024 is expected to be positively on our cost. So competitiveness on cost will kick in in Q3 and Q4, and the utilization of our organization with all the equipment and specialists and team and harvesting plant and well boat and facilities on sea to maintain the high standards and structure to reach the 30,000-ton harvest and our investment program and production strategy.
Then on the harvesting and sales side, the station was updated quite heavily last year. So we managed to reach up to around 27,000 fish in a single shift. And we are also increasing now the capacity to have enough capacity for the volume increase in Q3 and Q4. Sales, we strategically secured fixed sales contracts for about 40% of our Q2 production. That's mainly to keep up the flow of salmon to the customers as they demand weekly shipments. Then on the quality side, we have our certifications for our retailer in the U.S. and had also the certification for sustainable salmon since 2014.
We also have been implementing ASC during the winter, and the audits look quite good, and we expect to have that certified in Q3. That really opens the door for many customers that have started to demand ASC, and this was not too much of a job for the company to implement it, as we've had these standards from start. But there are items there that have now been implemented, such as stakeholders and communication with the people that are living around us and to have a good dialogue with the environment and the stakeholders.
So to sum up, yes, the market has been great for salmon and at least the spot prices have been really good, and they look good going forward. The future growth, we have a license application still in Seyðisfjörður of 10,000 tons, which are now more optimistic to reach, as the licenses that were given out on the West Coast in Q1 and start of Q2 have indicated that the process is now in action, and we are next in line to have that in place. The investment, as Róbert mentioned, is end up around NOK 290 million this year, and that's a part of the investment program to reach the capacity of 30,000 tons.
Outlook, as mentioned before, 31,000 tons, that's up from 4,000 tons last year, and minimum harvest in Q2 to allow the fish to grow and have good sizes in Q3 and Q4 and onwards. Sustainable farming, as I mentioned, certifications and to be a responsible farmer is a key factor to have good communication with the stakeholders. Finance and business development, we're really pleased to open the doors and invite investors on the East Coast down to Eskifjörður, to see the operations and have some presentations and a chat about how we are doing and where the future is going. Then the dual listing in Iceland, we started listing the company back in, yeah, it was 2020.
And we have now seen that there is quite interest from the Icelandic investor environment for salmon farming. As salmon has really proved that it's an important pillar in the economy of Iceland. Total goods sales last year amounted to 4.2% of total with salmon. So and that's... We are just around 40,000 tons last year, and we have an intention to go above 100,000 tons in total. So this is important part, and we are also located in areas that have possibilities for growth, both equipment and people and good farming sites. So we've seen...
The interest grow and also just to be more accessible to the Icelandic investor community as there are different types of customers that are or investors, there are pension funds and long-term funds that really would appreciate that we have the company listed in Iceland. And also main operations are in Iceland, so dual listing is a natural step in the right direction. We would hope and really look forward to see the interest going forward on the 28th of May. And that sums up, and if you have some questions, please use the chat or speak up. And yeah. I have an opening. I have a question from Sander Lie: Can you say anything about now how much smolt expect to release to sea this year?
We are a bit cautious of giving out the number of smolts, but we see that the goal of reaching the stable seven to eight million smolts is getting closer. And the situation in the stations are looking good.
We have a question here. What's the estimate harvest volume split between Q3, Q4 in 2024?
Yeah, we haven't given that out yet, but it's quite evenly reaching around 2,000-3,000 tons harvest volume per month. So, that in total is around 6,900 volume, but the split on Q3 and Q4 we are not giving that out at the moment. Superior share was low in Q1. The amount of wounds was high and also we saw that the market for fish that was not superior was quite, yeah, quite a lot of that fish in the market.
So we were, yeah, we have on hand, we're not too sad about the price we achieved on that fish, but in general, it was too high, and we don't want to repeat that one.
There is the question: How much is your quarterly fixed cost not being allocated to biomass in sea?
All fixed costs are allocated to the biomass in sea. And regarding the long-term cost per kilo target, the cost level in the company has been stable and in line or very close to the normal cost level, which is yeah, the normal cost level in Norway, if you will. But we expect the economics of scale to play a big part, especially after or in Q3 and Q4 and onwards. So we expect the cost level to be normal. And I don't think that I can go into specific numbers here, but we haven't seen yet the full effect of the economics of scale. Any more questions? Okay.
That seem to be more questions, and I thank you all for participating today. This is a great journey we are on, and, and looking forward to meet some of you in, in, in Eskifjörður, as many as possible, and the dual listing, part going forward. We invite Icelandic investors to join the road going forward. Thank you for today, and see you again next time.