Yes, good morning. I see that some are coming in at the moment. I'd like to welcome everybody to Ice Fish Farm and second quarter 2023 results. My name is Guðmundur Gíslason, I'm CEO. With me today is Róbert Róbertsson, our CFO. We go through Q2 highlights. Harvest will start in Q3 as planned. Generation 22 is 5.4 million fish at sea, and the biggest fish is around 4 kilos end of June. Currently, this group is reaching over 5 kilos. Generation 23, we planned release of 5.4 million smolt, and the survival rate is better than ever so far. We'll go in more detail on that on the slides. Operational EBIT of NOK -23, as suspected, and subsequent offering was successfully sold out.
You can see on the right side, we have a picture of the feeding center, top of the line tech, and they are really busy feeding now, breaking records every day about feeding amount.
Morning. Here we have a overview of the Q2 results. As expected, there was no harvest in the first and second quarter of this year. Following the ISA incident last year, we've been building up biomass and enhancing our biosecurity. However, this is the last quarter with no harvest as we resume harvesting in the second quarter. And as expected, operational EBIT was negative, mainly due to the fact that we are not harvesting any salmon in our harvesting facilities. However, the most of the revenues come from the harvesting station, external sales or services in our harvesting station. So all in all, the quarter is going as expected, planned.
Regarding our balance sheet, we have a strong balance sheet with an equity ratio of roughly 70% at the end of the quarter. This is increased from 62% equity ratio at the beginning of the year. And this is a direct result of the refinancing, private placement, and subsequent offering. On the asset side, main changes there have to do with the biomass buildup. Biological assets ended at around 810 million NOK at the end of the quarter. We've been focusing on our biomass buildup, and that has been going well.
The total value increase in biological assets amounts to around NOK 470 million from the beginning of the year, and the increase in the second quarter was around NOK 270 million. Furthermore, we did some investments in fixed assets, CapEx, during the quarter. The investment amounted to NOK 44.5 million, bringing the total investment in the first and second quarter to roughly NOK 84 million. The budget anticipate a investment of around NOK 200 million for the whole year, 2023, and that is mainly focused towards improving our land stations, and Guðmundur will go into that in more detail later on.
Net interest-bearing debt has also been decreasing as a result of the private placement and subsequent offering and refinancing, and net interest-bearing debt amounted to NOK 911 million at the end of the quarter. So a total decrease from the beginning of the year of roughly NOK 220 million. So main story here is that the biological or biomass buildup is going well, and we are seeing effects from the private placement and subsequent offering. And to go a little bit further into the refinancing and subsequent offering, the initial drawdown on the new syndicate loan facility was done in the second quarter. Mainly used towards settling existing term loans, CapEx loans, as well as to help with the biomass buildup.
The total bank facility of the syndicate loan is 156 million EUR, roughly, and at the end of the quarter, the net loans from the bank syndicate was around 72 million EUR. The subsequent offering, we performed successfully a subsequent offering during the quarter. The subsequent offering was to ensure that shareholders that did not participate in the first private placement during the year would have a chance to subscribe for new shares at the same subscription price as was in the first equity increase. So total equity increase from the subsequent offering was around 50 million NOK.
So following an operational reset, where we have been focused on building up biomass and improving our biosecurity, as well as fully financing the company through to 2025 with the private placement, subsequent offering, and refinancing.
... We feel that we are in a great position, too, and are confident that we will reach our operation goals. Yes, and then we go into operation for post-smolt on land. Small transfer has to done during summer, and we have improved this year, especially from North, where we have, like, a second year running. And we see excellent results from north and then the south. We have bigger fish, and it's a bigger challenge, but the rates or the survival is better, and the fish is eating well. We have an estimate of reach around 5.4 million, as we for earlier indicated, around 300-gram average size. We are vaccinating for ISA. That's going as planned.
We'll have it partly for this year, the output this year, and then 100% next year. And then we've been working on a new, improved vaccine for our fish, and it looks positive that we can start in Q3. That's coming in September. And then the fish will have a better protection from the environment on the east coast of Iceland. We have taking water samples and looked at strains in the water, and the current vaccine is lacking some of them. And we see that with a new vaccine, we can have a better protection going forward.
So this is a huge improvement, and our fish health manager has been working hard on this, and we are happy about that. And that could improve the conditions for the fish, going forward. Land production at the land has been developing fast through the years, and now we are rebuilding a land south that was built on older houses and facilities. And we have done, like I mentioned earlier, third-party audits and thoughts how we can build new facilities there. And the result is we are building now, and it's in the last stages, the safe house in Bakki, and we installed a new vaccination machine in the quarter.
This is speeding up the vaccination and making sure that every fish get the vaccination. Then we are starting to build a new start feeding house in Fiskalón. This will be pretty similar to the house we have in North. That's shown excellent result from cabinets to receive the eggs and then the house for start feeding, where the fish starts its life at eating and thriving going forward. And with that, we will hopefully see same as improvement as we had in North, that the higher survival rate and bigger fish and fitter fish for going onwards. And then we are also building a freshwater site at Laxabraut, where we have our post-smolt tanks, and to do the smoltification and later on, vaccination.
So, this will improve capacity and keep growth good. We can see that we can increase growth on land. Land north, there we have even more houses to build. A new house in Rifós that is gonna be like a middle step from start feeding to the vaccination and smoltification to secure biosecurity. So each group has its place, and there's no touching the next generation ahead of it or behind it. So pretty much the same as we're doing in sea, to have each generation separated from each other. And then we are building more tanks in Kópasker. We're currently drilling for increased water, and that looks good.
Then we can have greater capacity as we are only putting out this June until September. So the window is quite limited, so we need to build up biomass on land. And with the water access we have, we see that that's possible, and now we're building more tanks. And the smooth operations from tank to wellboat to transfer it to sea is looking really good, especially at the north. And at sea, harvest has been on good roll, and 6.8 million fish in the sea with 8,200 tons end of the quarter.
Biggest groups have reached over 4 kilo, as I mentioned, and that's only in 13 months, and that's due to our big smolt program that we received from land. This fish was in sea in June last year, and end of June this year it was, yeah, 4 kilo. So we are really proud of that and make this possible to start harvest now in the quarter. We have improved survival rate on the first half, but we want to improve even further. The main issues have been Parvicapsulosis and Moritella, and we are improving that with new vaccines and smolt facilities and improved operations. All these items are on top of our list and improving the conditions for the fish to grow well.
Then, outlook for farming. Second half is the best growth season in Iceland. Currently, we are seeing the fish eating well and looking good, breaking records each day on feeding amount. So we are really positive on this period. And we see also challenges. It's like a jellyfish season, middle of August until end of September, and then currents can be slow after an easy summer months. Then the storms can start to come up in October and during the winter. So we are learning and developing skills on this continuously. Improved the cages and nets last year, and they showed good result in the first half of this year.
But on this, we have outlook of expect to produce around 17,000 tons live weight this year, and this is 1,000 tons less than forecast. Harvest for the quarter is estimated at around 300 tons. Looking into, yeah, harvest 300 tons is not much in the quarter, but we are starting up slower. We, as Robert said, we are quite well financed and can build up biomass. So we are letting the fish grow, and Búlandstindur is also being updated. We are improving biosecurity there and the level of security for increased capacity. So we have built up a new box factory at Djúpivogur.
So we're not moving the boxes all the way from Reykjavík. So the boxes will be cleaner, and now we have an automated system that is bringing the boxes to the factory floor to the grader. So it's completely clean and nice going when the fresh, fresh fish is being popped in and nice and the box is closed. Then we're also securing that the fish is really cold and the blood water tanks have been installed with sub-chilling, and that will mean that fish is chilled earlier.
We have a sub-chiller that we installed in 2017 that's really kept the fish fresh to our customers as we are shipping the fish with boat to USA and Europe, and that's up to 7-8 days. So we need to have a really good shelf life, and that's like top priority in harvesting now is get the really good shelf life and have the fish ready for the journey and all the way into the happy customer. Sales, we have contracted sales for Q3 until Q1 2024, about 30% of the volume at premium prices. We aim to reach at least 50% of total harvest contracted, and we are pleased that our customers have been patient with us.
We managed to keep all contracts that we did over the last year. And so we have a good relations and starting to sell again as early as we harvest. And logistics to USA are favorable. And as you can see on the right side, Iceland is beautiful. There are a lot of tourists coming, and the planes are going back and forth, and so we have quite good space to transport the fish all over the world. And then we are preparing for ASC certification. We have had certifications in the company since start, and so we are used to certifications, and ASC is one of them that we feel that we can implement.
This is a really important part of our DNA, is to be a responsible farmer and be able to certify that with certifications from third party, and our customers really like that. Then to summarize what we've been going through, the global market for salmon is good, as we know, and we feel it's also nicely good for premium salmon. Contracts are up to 50%. We're optimistic on that. We keep our harvest outlook of 6,000 and 20,000 for 2023 and 2024, and smolt output 5.4 million, as we indicated earlier, and then 7 million for 2024. And finance and business development, we are fully financed out 2025. And growth, we are mainly focusing on improving quality and performance of all the operations.
And then we are waiting for a license for Seyðisfjörður, that is, pending in late this year or early next year. Investments, NOK 223 and NOK 210 in 2024, and this program is, with the goal of reaching a stable capacity around 30,000 tons. And then sustainability and responsible farming, we are, continuously improving there and also have, certifications, in place and also in goal to reach, in 2024. So if you have some questions, please fire away. Thank you for listening. We have a chat there and also possibility to speak out. Yeah, so we have a question here from Ola: "Is your contract price negotiated Q3 to Q1, above $10?" We cannot comment on that, but we are looking at the premium prices going forward.
And then what superior share do you expect for Q3 and Q4, given the situation with winter wounds? We have been following quite closely the fish. We have a new system in the sea that we can monitor how the fish is looking, and those ratios are looking good after a hard winter. The fish has been healing, and it's almost unbelievable to see the IT possibilities at the moment. So we can be a bit positive on that side. Now, in this season, the fish is eating well, and the temperature is good, so this is a time for the fish to heal and grow. But the mortality rates... For instance, any comparable figures last year? We...
Well, over the years, we have had quite the big incidents. So, we didn't have that last year or this first half of the year. So, we are really happy about that, not have, like, a hit on the fish. So, in general, we see like normal mortality rates during the first quarter, and... But the challenge is for Moritella and Parvicapsulosis. So, there and there we are working on improving vaccines, and that is not quality, quality. Then, can you comment on what you expect for net working capital in second half?
So we can't comment on specific numbers, but we can say that we are in a, like I mentioned in the presentation, in a build-up period. We're building up our biomass. So net working capital will be evolving in line with that, I would say. So we start our sales in September, we start harvesting and in Q4. So yes, net working capital will be increasing through the year, but no specific numbers.
We are really excited for the next months. We have, yeah, good fish in the sea. It's growing well, and we are optimistic. Of course, we will update the market further in Q3 report, when we have, yeah, the biggest months, and then middle of the growing season. Iceland is, like, a really good autumn time, then we see things moving. So we will update that further in the Q3 report going forward. So if there are no other questions, then we really thank and appreciate your time and looking forward to meet you again in Q3. Thank you.
Thank you.