Good morning, and welcome to Lerøy Seafood Group's Q2 presentation. My name is Henning Beltestad. I'm the CEO of Lerøy Seafood Group, and with me today I have Sjur Malm, CFO. First of all, you've seen this value chain before, but Lerøy is a fully integrated company of both whitefish and red fish, and our goal is to create the world's most efficient and sustainable value chain for seafood. The large and extensive investments we have made over a long period of time are now starting to yield results. First of all, some highlights in the quarter. This is a record- high quarterly revenue with NOK 6.5 billion in turnover.
It's a quarter with extreme price development, and which has, of course, been positive for the upstream assets but also a challenging quarter for our downstream operation. The EBIT is NOK 923 million compared to NOK 583 million same quarter last- year. In this quarter, we paid out two and a half NOK per share in dividend, and the net interest-bearing debt end of the quarter is NOK 4.9 billion. It's been what should I say? A challenging quarter for some of our activities, but our long-term outlook is unchanged and positive. Q2, we harvested 33,000 tons of salmon and trout. We have a catch volume of close to 19,000 tons.
Revenue of NOK 6.5 billion, and an EBIT of NOK 923, and ROCE of close to 18%, which is our long-term target. Lerøy Seafood Group, we are reporting in three segments: farming, wild catch, VAP, Sales and Distribution, and I will take you through some highlights for each of these segments. First of all, farming. It's been an extreme quarter when it comes to price. For Lerøy as an integrated company, fully integrated company, also with our VAP and sales and distribution facilities, it's been a quarter which is affected by 46% contract share. The biomass growth is expected in
The biomass growth has, as expected in the Q2, been good, but we've seen somewhat lower growth than expected so far in Q3. We take down our guidance for the total 2022 volume is then slightly reduced. Compared to same quarter last- year, we see a increase in cost. Main reason for that is low- volume but also inflationary trends. Excluding inflation, we see a clear operational improvements across farming units. The EBIT in farming is NOK 29 compared to NOK 10 in the Q2 2021. Farming volumes, last- year we had in Norway 186,000 tons. This year we have a guidance of 185,000 tons in Norway, 40,000 tons in the north, Lerøy Aurora, and 68,000 tons in Lerøy Midt, and 72,000 tons in Lerøy Sjøtroll.
We expect in Norskott Havbruk that we have 46,000 ton, and our share, 50%, is then 23,000 ton. A total of 203,000 ton for this year, which is at the same level as we had last- year. When it comes to wild catch, the fishery and also the industry part of the whitefish value chain, it's been a record profitable for first half- year. NOK 93 million in the Q2 compared to NOK 65 million in the Q2 2021. It's been a strong price development. It's of course positive for the profitability on the catching, while challenging for the processing activity.
We see improvement in the processing activity, and it takes time, you know, for the value-added products to increase the prices at the level of the spot prices. It's an efficient operation in the trawling fleet, and gradually more signs of operational improvements for the land-based industry. Of course, we also see a significant increase in fuel cost, and that's up NOK 60 million compared to same quarter last- year. The catch volumes, I think we take the half- year volumes close to 14,000 tons cod, where we have a remaining quota of 10,000 tons.
Saithe 7,400 tons remaining quota 8,800 tons, and haddock 8,700 tons, and a remaining quota of 1,000 tons. Shrimps, we have fished 6,200 tons, and we expect that in the Q3 that we will have about 3,000 tons. Approximately around 9,500 tons of shrimp totally this year. VAP, Sales & Distribution, it's been a very challenging quarter. Extreme price development on all input factors take time to transfer through the value chain, and it's challenging to grow volume in start-up facilities. Especially we have a start-up facility in Spain, in Italy, and also in Sweden.
We see a significant negative impact on earnings short-term, while the long-term outlook is not changed. We have a record high EBIT last- year, and that's more about our performance and where we are. We believe that this segment will improve going forward when the price is stabilizing. Our vertically integrated value chain and being a reliable supplier has strengthened our long-term position in the market. We have had the spot prices of NOK 62.50 in the Q2 2021, and this quarter, there's been a spot price average in the quarter of NOK 105. That's a 40 NOK increase, and that's hard for this segment to handle.
The EBIT is for the first time negative in this segment with -NOK 64 million, compared to NOK 160 million Q2 last- year. This is our setup. We have a significant network of processing facilities all over Europe, global reach and sales to more than 70 countries. Significant industrial activity within trading, processing, sales, and distribution of fish, including whitefish species. Like we said, it takes time to adjust prices through the value chain. Okay. I give the word to Sjur.
Yes. Thank you, Henning. Now Henning has already touched upon the key drivers. Obviously, if you look on absolute level, profitability in this quarter is strong in historic context. Also, we know that particularly the salmon prices have been at all-time high. Had we had all volume on spot, obviously result would be higher. Those contracts are a reflection of the strategy of building the world's most efficient and sustainable value chain, and those contracts were entered in 2021 and has a significant impact on price- realization in the quarter. On this slide, we see key drivers for profitability. We've harvested 10% less volume of salmon and trout, and we see the margin is up, in that cost is also up. We are up around 2 NOK per kilo due to feed.
We are up NOK 2 a kilo approximately due to basically energy cost, fuel cost, and electricity, which are key cost drivers. Still margin is up due to higher price- realization, although that is much impacted by contracts. Within catching activity, good catch volume also increase both in cost and price, but we see that the increase in price is bigger than increase in cost and an increase in margin. In sum, operating result up 58%, and a return of almost 18% annualized in the quarter, which we believe is a healthy profitability. On the balance sheet, key changes from last- year is Norskott Havbruk, our joint venture's acquisition of Grieg's assets in the UK, which is the increase in financial and current assets.
I will return with some comments on that, and the other key factor is the increase in working capital items. Higher feed cost is the key driver for the increase in biological assets or the value of the inventory at sea of fish. Other inventory is up, not because we have more goods, but because prices of those goods are up, receivables are up, and it's a big impact of the general inflation trends we are seeing. That is very visible and also in the cash flow. I will focus on the year-to-date numbers. We have a healthy and good profitability, around NOK 2.2 billion in EBITDA.
We see the impact of working capital, where we have NOK 1.1 billion almost in build-up this year, and we see that last- year we released NOK 400 million, and that was then related to lower prices. But that working capital build-up will not continue from quarter to quarter. For the year, we don't foresee, obviously dependent on price development, we don't foresee big changes going forward, and that profitability will be reflected in reductions of net interest-bearing debt going forward. CapEx around NOK 600 million, of which NOK 123 million is related to acquisitions of licenses. Best estimate today is that we will reach some around NOK 1.4 billion for the year. It will be a bit dependent on project starts, but in that range. We have distributed one and...
Well, NOK 1.5 billion in dividends, and then net interest bearing debt is close to NOK 5 billion end quarter. This slide shows a bit of the stability in our business model. We are not only in farming, we are also in whitefish and downstream. We see that in farming, driven by prices, we have substantially higher profitability, while also we see the challenge of moving those prices to the end consumer and the result in a value-added processing operation. That gives us less upside short- term when prices move up. It gives us also less downside when prices go down, but it's an indication of the stability. Overall, we see that the inflationary trend basically so far is positive for our profitability, and that is also our expectations going forward.
Looking at the operating segments in each region, Lerøy Aurora is far north, and we see that there is a limited increase in margin despite spot prices going higher. There are several drivers behind this. The most important one is the fact that the harvested volume is very low, and this is approx. 10% of the annual volume. Cost level this quarter and contract share this quarter is not a reflection of the level we will see for the full- year. This quarter, we have some cost increase, but as this chart show, we do not see the massive uptick in price realization as we see in the spot market due to contract shares.
Still, given the basically minor volume harvested this quarter, at least our key takeaway from Aurora is the development. We have seen some years with challenges with winter Aurora ulcers. We are seeing significant improvements this year. As of today, our expectation is that those improvements will continue and that we will see lower cost- level, obviously a higher- harvest volume going forward and a positive development for Lerøy Aurora. Central Norway, this operation is, I would say, developing quite steady. It's a steady performance, and we are gradually getting a bit better. Also we are seeing the inflationary trend, which is a key driver for cost increase as expected in the Q2 compared to the Q1 .
As of today, our best estimate is that we will be around this cost level for coming quarters. When it comes to operations, we had strong growth in the Q2, but in July and also start of August, we've seen slightly lower growth than what we had forecasted, so there is a minor adjustment to guidance there to reflect that. Also, we have built a new post-smolt facility in Central Norway. We started it Q1 . We see there is a need of some rebuilds. Those have been carried out. We have expectations that this site will deliver according to our expectations, but that will take half- year extra before we start seeing the impact on harvest volume for the group or for this company.
On Lerøy Sjøtroll, this is a healthy quarter. We are seeing gradual improvements in Lerøy Sjøtroll following investments in post-smolts following a lot of operational efforts. We are gradually getting better. This quarter, we have a healthy profitability, but still, when we look at cost level in this region compared to the other regions, there is a potential for improvements, and we are working hard every day to take advantage of those or utilize those. As of today, we expect slightly lower cost the second half than what we see in this quarter. Also in Lerøy Sjøtroll, we have seen slightly lower growth than we expected so far in Q3. That is the reason why the minor adjustment in guidance from 74,000 to 72,000 tons.
Within whitefish and wild catch, we have a good catch efficiency, positive price development, so the earnings in the trawling fleet is significantly up, while somewhat muted by the increase in fuel cost. For the land industry, it also takes time to adjust prices. Still, we have invested a lot, both when it comes to CapEx and also in organizational development in the land-based industry the last five years. It is positive that we are starting to see such improvements, not in profitability, but in operating KPIs. That poses well for the future. Record profitability year to date, and a good first half and a good quarter. We've already touched upon the key drivers within our downstream operation.
It's important here that, according and following our strategy, we are not selling whole fish in the capital of Oslo. We are selling a lot of processed goods in the end market, and that means that in addition to increases in the spot price of salmon, which is a challenge, we are impacted by increases in energy cost, transportation cost, et cetera. It's been an extremely challenging quarter. For us still, we have supplied on all our contracts. We have been a reliable supplier, and we believe our position in turbulent times, like we've seen so far this year, in general, we strengthen our position. We expect as of today to see a gradual improvement in coming quarters.
Q3 will also be impacted, but gradually, we will see improvements through Q3 and into Q4. When it comes to our joint operation in UK, there's still a lot of work and efforts on integrating the acquired asset, Scottish Sea Farms, into operation. That is going according to plan, and we continue to expect to see positive synergies going forward. This quarter is impacted by the fact that there were biological challenges in this region second half of last- year, which is impacting harvest volume and cost in the quarter. In Q3, we expect a slight reduction in cost and a further decrease in Q4. Guidance is unchanged at 46,000 tons, and we are positive on realizing synergies and operational efficiencies in this region going forward.
Henning, I give the word back to you.
Thank you. I will go through some supply and demand and our expectations of the future. First of all, we start with this slide showing the supply side, the global supply. We can start with 2022 and expectations. We see that in Europe, we expect minus two, almost minus two percent reduction in the volume. Norway is down 1.3% and is taken down a little bit since the last reporting from Kontali. We see Americas is down almost one percent and a global reduction of 1.4%.
If we look at next year, we see a global growth of 4.4% and Europe 5.5% and Americas 2.4%. Not a dramatic growth in the short- term or in the long- term supply. We also believe that the expected volumes from Kontali is a little bit high compared to our expectation, and we believe that we will have a reduction in volume in Norway between 2-4%. We normally show you this price trend, and you know the extreme fluctuations that we normally have between 80-40 NOK.
Now we are at a new level, and we need to expand the scale here and up to over NOK 120. We see that in the Q2, we had FCA Oslo price of NSI of NOK 105 compared to NOK 63 same quarter last- year, so extreme development. Of course, this has been extremely challenging for our downstream activities and our processing factories. We see that the prices are coming down into the Q3 , and so far this quarter is NOK 80, and the trend is that it's going a little bit further down and more normalizing prices again. If we look at the harvest volumes in Norway, there is no big growth.
We see a negative growth in July, and also in Norway. It's been a growth of minus 5% so far this year, and no significant growth in the months to come. We believe that it probably will be a little bit lower also than the growth that you see on this graph. If we look at worldwide, it's the same picture, no growth for the second half. Of course, if we look at the first half, you know, it's been a global reduction in the supply, which is the main cause of this very high salmon prices that we have seen in the first half and especially in the Q2.
If we look at the consumption side, we see that EU is down 3%, others 8% and USA 3%. We see that U.S. is still taking a bigger market share of the salmon. We expect also that there will be a growing demand going forward in this market. To summarize, if we look at farming, we expect 203,000 tons salmon, which is at the same level as 2022. Our contract share for the salmon in the Q3 is 35%, and we expect lower cost in second half compared to first half 2022.
For the wild catch, we expect a reduction in the quarter, for Cod and Haddock, of 20%. Saithe of +15% and Saithe salt of +19%. The final decision will be made in Q4 2022. For the VAP, Sales and Distribution, we expect gradually that this segment will improve again and be back to normal results. I will say that, you know, it's not about performance, the operational performance. This is all about extremely high price level that's caused the result in both Q1 and Q2 . We believe that VAP sales and distribution will soon be back on the normal track. Okay. That was all we had.
Thank you very much.