Hello. Welcome to Ice Fish Farm first quarter 2022 results. My name is Guðmundur, and with me is Róbert, CFO. We will go through key highlights. In Q1, we harvested 2,712 tons compared to 1,496 tons in 2021. Quite a good increase of harvest. Unfortunately, this was small and we had some wounds on it, so it was not superior salmon. We therefore lost NOK 4.8 per kilo on EBIT compared to NOK +4.4 in 2021. We have a total of 7.2 million smolt, 330 gram smolts, for the generation of 2022, and all will be premium salmon and based on Ice Fish Farm certifications and premium prices.
We can really look forward to harvesting out this fish in next year. One farm site in Laxar Fiskeldi was detected with ISA last weekend, and we are working on harvesting this fish out as fast as possible. Strategic update on combined company. We are having an EGM on 30th of May this month, and we are also having a good dialogue with financial institutions to refinance the company, and we foresee that the company might benefit from being larger scaled company.
Yeah. Good afternoon, everyone. Just a quick overview of the financial report results for the first quarter of 2022. As Guðmundur mentioned on an earlier slide, the harvested volumes in the first quarter almost doubled compared to the first quarter last year, which resulted in increased revenue. Revenue in the quarter reached to NOK 155.5 million compared to NOK 90.2 million of the first quarter last year. This revenue in the first quarter is almost half of the total revenue of 2021. We did not achieve full price for a large portion of the fish due to its size. We had to harvest early due to wounded fish after the transfer in autumn of 2021.
This resulted in a negative EBITDA of NOK 1 million. Operating EBIT was negative of NOK 12.9 million this quarter compared to NOK -6.6 million in the first quarter of last year. The first quarter is usually the most challenging quarter in the operations due to its cold weather and thus slow growth of the fish in sea. It's expected to see a negative fair value change, which was the case in this quarter. That combined with high harvesting volume. Net financial items, including share of profit of associate, was NOK 3.6 million, which is mostly contributed to profit in Búlandstindur harvesting station. The loss of the profit amounted to NOK 13.4 million.
We are harvesting limited volumes in the second quarter of this year, but we'll resume harvesting in August. The balance sheet is strong with equity ratio of roughly 66%, similar to the year-end. Total assets decreased slightly, mainly due to decrease in biological assets and low investments in the quarter. There's a slight decrease in total liabilities due to decrease in biological assets and thus lower biomass loan. Current liabilities are increasing, and non-current liabilities are decreasing due to changed classification of the biomass loan, which matures in 2023 and is therefore now classified as short-term. Net interest-bearing debt is also affected by the decreased biomass and net interest-bearing debt is decreasing slightly.
Yes. We'll go through the combined growth plan. Long-term effects of combining companies will pay off. We'll have strong equipment, strong people, strong fish going forward, and full control of the area. If you look at this slide as we had last time, that we have updated or gotten a new license of 7,000 tons and one new fjord. We are on track in our license approval going forward. Total volumes of license, we have 43,800 tons to use for production. Our goal is to reach stable yearly production of 30,000 tons+. We'll release 7 million-8 million smolts over 300 grams. This will be done in a reduced biological risks.
Bigger smolts reduce time at sea, reduce exposure for risks. We have sites and fjords to spread generations and have them not interacting with each other. We harmonize limits to secure the fish during harsh winter storms and et cetera. Strong operational team and to optimize use of resources. We have a good harvesting station that can harvest up to 30,000 tons a year. Looking at Laxar, we have gone through what they have. They have 60,000-ton license, and they were harvesting up to 9,000 tons last year. They have a good smolt stations that can deliver up to 4 million 400-gram smolt, and 30,000-ton cubic tank capacity. They own 1/3 of Búlandstindur, so combined company will have two thirds.
This has been a challenging year in 2021 for Laxar. Also as we informed that their second site was discovered with ISA just last week. We will harvest out these fish and try our best to get good value for this fish that we're harvesting. Of course, the market has been quite strong, so we can expect reasonably good prices for this fish, even though it's not an optimal size. Regarding the SPA, ISA is an operational risk which applies similarly on both sites, and no specific regulation in the SPA is therefore provided. ISA outbreak in Reyðarfjörður was known when the exchange ratio was agreed. ISA considered to already be reflected in the value relative valuations.
This is a long-term merger, combining this will reduce risk of both parties. You can see on balance sheet of Laxar, they have assets up to NOK 85 million. License part is on cost and property and plant is equipment in sea, boats, and the smolt stations and all the equipment they have been gathering the last years and fully capable of producing a lot of smolt salmon and good quality. Share capital, they had a capital increase last year in spring 2021. Therefore the equity went down due to accumulated losses for 2020, 2021. But it was supported by the shareholders on the other side.
Equity is about EUR 33 million at the year-end. The debt level is end of the year was EUR 52 million, and most of that is related to assets and then biomass. Therefore the equity ratio is around 39% end of 2021.
Yeah, just to mention these numbers for 2021 are unaudited. These are draft numbers.
Going through this combination rationale. Economical scale going forward, using the assets better. Operational improvement, we will have 100% control over production in the area, both on land and sea. Regulatory, we have a united front to develop regulations and applications and licenses and procedures, how we farm in the area. Bigger smolts will reduce the time at sea and lower risk. Both companies have big smolt stations to produce big smolts. Then sales and marketing, brand building, and a key factor there is to have one type of salmon, premium salmon, that we can maintain high prices on our salmon going forward. This is ambitious, but we see huge possibilities for premium salmon.
As we can see, other producers have been quite efficient in producing premium salmon and achieving higher prices. Initiatives to improve performance as we are facing issues and we need to confront them. We are certainly putting our best people and adding in people to help us on this process. The smolt strategy, production area, full control of East Coast, better utilization of crew and equipment, same harvest station, and better utilization of fish transport. These are all key projects that we are working on. Regarding ISA, we are having surveillance and monitoring the sites. We harvest out all fish that has ISA ASAP, and new generation will have no interaction with those sites.
We have now separated the pre-production area, production areas, and we will have separate boats for servicing the sites, both nets and cleaning the nets and taking care of daily operations. There'll be no traffic between those areas. Better control of external boats, also the feed boats and et cetera. Start using ISA vaccine when approved. We are working on this one to be able to vaccinate the fish for ISA. Bigger smolt that shorten the production period and that we could get through ISA better in the future. We also hired Vidar Aspehaug, who's Founder and former CEO of PatoGen.
He has helped [Svend- Erik] and will help us on the key operations with the smolt and taking good care of the fish, and we do the right things and measure how the performance of our production is step by step. We have all the certifications in place, and with the new add-on from the smolt stations of Laxar, we aim now to certify all that fish that is going out this spring. We can look forward to selling that fish with certifications and higher prices. The outlook for the market is, of course, been extremely strong. Sadly, we don't have too much fish at the moment. We are optimistic that the prices will stay pretty strong going forward.
Sadly the harvest outlook for this year needs to come down to 9,000 tons from 12,000 due to early harvest of the fish with ISA in Laxar. That's a downside of that one. The smolt output, 7 million-7.2 million smolts, 330 grams on average, and we can expect to harvest this fish in quarter three, 2023, sorry. We are working on financing the combined company and one major milestone of that is to finalize the acquisition of Laxar.
We have on 30th May AGM to combine the companies, and then we have a better situation to go forward with refinancing, and we are in talks with our financial partners to develop a plan for next 2-3 years in a growth period. We are updating our investment program at the moment. It is due to the ISA in Reyðarfjörður, we will not need as much investments for 2023. Therefore we are updating that one, and we will come back on that one in Q2. This is basically the outlook for the looking in the mirror how Q1 went and how we are going to go forward. We are in full speed of building up a good sustainable production.
We have had setbacks, as you all know, and we need to continue improving and make sure we get our fish to the box and have a good end of 2022 and fantastic 2023. If you have questions, please go ahead. Is there nobody?
No, it's okay . Martin Kaland], he asks, you have quantified the impact of the ISA outbreaks for harvest volumes in 2022. Could you also comment on the potential impact for harvest volumes in 2023?
Yeah. We estimate, as I said earlier, the outlook is around 2,000 tons less this year. For 2023, we have not given out the harvest numbers. Part of this fish was supposed to be harvested in 2023.
[Gislason], do you have a question?
Well, question here about contract share in Q1. Q1 was approximately 100%. That was able to put in the contract, as it was not all superior. For quarter two we are not harvesting much. But in quarter three and quarter four we have a contract, new contract with higher prices. The contract share is around 50%. Round about. Depends how much we will have in the autumn of harvest volume.
There's a question regarding the timeline of remaining license applications.
Yeah. Seyðisfjörður, we have an indication from the government that this will be done later this year. Hopefully before end of 2022.
Question regarding the superior salmon harvested in Q1.
Yeah, if I remember correctly, it was just above 60%. The mortality was not too bad.
Thank you, Guðmundur. Okay.
Are there any other questions?
Okay, here's one. Will you need a long following period before you are able to release fish into the fjord again, Reyðarfjörður?
We have the standard procedures as in other farming areas that are believed to be around three months. Everything will be cleaned and disinfected before we put out fish again and wait for this period. When we start to use ISA vaccine, that is up to the government. We cannot comment on that one. We are doing our best to ask them to speed the process up, but we don't have an indication when that could happen. If there are no more questions, thank you for attending and have a good day.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Right. Okay. Thank you. Bye-bye.
Bye.