Welcome to the fourth quarter presentation for Lerøy Seafood Group. My name is Henning Beltestad , CEO in the Lerøy Seafood Group, and with me today is Sjur Malm, CFO. First of all, I will take you through the highlights in the quarter, then Sjur will take you through the key financial figures, then I will come back for the last points, outlook, look at the supply of salmon. Fourth quarter has been a good quarter with the EBIT before fair value adjustment of NOK 948 million. Harvested volume is a record high, 49,414 tons. EBIT all inclusive of 18.1%. Contract share in the quarter of 33%. Net interest-bearing debt end of the year of NOK 2.5 billion. Harvest guidance we keep at 174,000 tons. Proposed dividend is NOK 2 per share.
Lerøy Seafood Group have had a good development in the turnover and for year 2018, close to NOK 20 billion. We see that the fourth quarter is a fairly good quarter also compared to the past quarters, even though we feel that the potential should be a little bit higher than NOK 950 million achieved in fourth quarter. We report in three segments, farming, wild catch, and VAP, Sales and Distribution. We can start with the farming highlights. The spot prices in the fourth quarter is higher than last year. The NOS spot price is NOK 55.40 fourth quarter 2018 compared to NOK 49.30 in the fourth quarter 2017, up 12%. It also is up NOK 1 compared to the third quarter and NOK 6 up compared to the same quarter.
The trout price achievement, unfortunately, has been very low in this quarter due to significant challenges with downgrades due to matured trout. The quality of the trout has not been as it should be. The color and the meat has been too low, and that has given us a much lower price achievement than the salmon. The contract prices are above spot prices in the quarter. The cost is down compared to the third quarter and also compared to the fourth quarter 2017. If we look at the biomass at sea, end of 2018 was 110,000 tons, and that's 2% down compared to 2017 where we had 112,000 tons. If we look at the farming volumes, as I said, we keep our guidance for 2019.
If we look at the conclusion for 2018, we had about 37,000 tons in Lerøy Aurora, about 66,500 tons in Lerøy Midt, and 58,800 tons in Lerøy Sjøtroll. A total of 162,000 tons. If we look at Norskott Havbruk and Scottish Sea Farms, our share is 13,700 tons. A total of close to 176,000 tons in 2018 and 189,000 tons in 2019. The wild catch. It's been a fairly good quarter. Harvested volume of 11,500 tons compared to 12,300 tons in Q4 2017. There's been a decrease in the catch of cod for the year. The average price in the quarter is 11% up, and the price for cod is up 20%, haddock 17%, and the saithe up by 10%. On the industry side, it's been more challenging, of course, with the adjustment of prices and increase in raw material price.
It's a challenge for the processing units in the group. If we look at VAP, Sales and Distribution, it's been a positive development in the quarter. It's been a challenging year for this segment, especially the first three quarters, but the fourth quarter has been very positive, and we see gradually more and more positive effects from being a full-fledged and integrated supplier. We see that our investments in downstream activities are improving step by step, and EBIT for Q4 2018 is NOK 134 million compared to NOK 122 million in Q4 2017. I give the word to Sjur, which will take you through the key financial figures.
Yes, I will talk us through key drivers in our financial figures. We think ourselves we should have done a little bit better this quarter. I think looking into deviations, one is on trout. We have downgrades on trout of NOK 12 on 8,000 tons of trout, which is about NOK 100 million. On top of that, we had slightly lower growth than what we had expected on the autumn 2017 generation, which also has a significant impact, which impact our harvest volume this quarter, but also our cost this quarter and also first half next year, and particularly in Central Norway. Looking into the figures, main drivers are still in our redfish business. We can see harvested volume in the quarter is, as Henning has pointed out, up 17%. This is the highest quarterly harvest volume we've ever seen. We have a lower cost position.
We have a slightly better price achievement, but disappointment on trout, which is why the profitability per kilo is not more up. In sum, we see that our operating profit is up 23% compared to last year. We continue to have a steady flow of income from associated company. Net finance is down, and our pre-tax profit is then up 25%, as well as our EPS in the fourth quarter. Overall, a good quarter and overall among the best quarters in our company's history, but it should've been slightly better. Looking at the year as a whole, we harvested the highest volume of redfish ever in the company. We are seeing a positive trend on cost. Price realization on salmon is about the same level as last year, while we're down NOK 6 on trout, which is why our EBIT kilo is not up despite cost decrease.
In sum, this gives us the operating profit not too far from last year, down 4%. Income from associate is about the same level. We've reduced our financial cost, and in sum, you can see that the profit per share is exactly at the same level as last year. Looking into our balance sheet, I'd like to point out two key factors. One is the substantial investments we are doing in fixed asset. Those includes a new factory in Central Norway. It includes new smolt facilities in Hordaland and new smolt facilities in Northern Norway. These are substantial investments which are not helping our profitability in 2018 but are investments that will spur growth for the future. That's why tangible fixed assets are up from last year. Another point is the inventory side. We are increasing our business within whitefish. Redfish are more fresh volumes.
In the whitefish value chain, there are more inventory and more frozen products. Given positions we have taken in our whitefish business, we have a higher inventory level going into 2019 than into 2018. We are happy with those positions, but they do impact then inventory level and then also our cash flow. We see overall we have what at least we believe is a strong balance sheet, net interest-bearing debt of around NOK 2.5 billion. This shows the amortization schedule and covenants, and we believe we have a good schedule and we're well within our covenants. Looking to cash flow, key points this quarter relates to we normally would've seen a higher working capital release as we saw last year. This relates to the inventory build I just commented upon.
We can also see our CapEx is significant this quarter, in sum that we reduced our net interest-bearing debt by just over NOK 500 million in the quarter. Looking at the year, it's been a good cash flow year. We can see that we have paid NOK 850 million in taxes. We built working capital and more other than in the inventory side. We have invested more than ever before in projects we believe will have a good return. We paid the highest dividend in the company's history. Comparing end 2017 to end 2018, we have a slightly higher debt position, but level we are happy with. Looking on return on capital employed, Lerøy stated target was 18% when listed in 2002. Company has been averaging above that since the early 1990s.
This is still our aim, and we believe the investments, particularly larger investments we're making in smolt plants at least, has potential. Looking on dividend. Proposed dividend is NOK 2 per share. Significant increase from last year. You can see on the left-hand side the absolute amount of dividend, which is steady and increasing, which is also part of the aim of the board. Dividend yield is around 3%. Looking at volumes. Henning has showed the revenue development in Lerøy, which clearly shows that Lerøy is growing. Sometimes we read that Lerøy is not growing and hasn't grown since 2012, and that's not true. It's true that the redfish business, which is the consolidated volume shown here, has been pretty stable since 2012.
It's also true that we made the largest acquisition in our company's history in 2016, which added what is shown here in catches and quota, some close to 70,000 tons. On top of that, added 40,000, 50,000 tons of third party volume from Norwegian coastal fleet. In sum, Lerøy is handling some 350,000-400,000 tons of raw materials. Some 100,000 plus from third parties. That makes us the largest exporter out of Norway and one of the larger players in seafood in Europe. We believe we have a strong raw material base. We also believe we've taken significant steps in developing relationship with key strategic customers over recent years. We believe we have the framework for value creation also in the time to come. Henning has touched upon this.
What we can see is that the reason why we make more money this year in Q4 is due to higher profitability in farming. Looking into each segment, this is another healthy quarter from Lerøy Aurora. Costs are lower than in Q3, but higher than last year, but in line with expectations. I would say a healthy year for Lerøy Aurora. I think by far the most dramatic thing in Lerøy Aurora happened post end of 2018, and we saw a fire in the company's smolt facility in February of this year. Unfortunately, one employee working for a subcontractor saw a fatal accident, and obviously everything else is difficult to comment compared to that. Looking into the operational impact, we also lost 2.6 million smolts, and there was significant material damage. We are well insured. We will see slightly high cost in the first half of 2019 due to this fire.
We have started rebuilding, we've been able to gather most of the smolt to replace what is lost, albeit we might see a slightly later release. We were originally planning to release in April. Now it might be May or June. In sum, the impact on the financial and operational side is not huge. We were planning to grow some 10% in 2020 due to smolt investment. That is likely postponed to 2021. Best indication today is that we see a level in 2020 on par with 2018 and 2019. In Central Norway, we have seen a positive cost development through 2017 and 2018. Costs now in Q4 are slightly higher. That relates to the fact that we've seen a slightly lower production of biomass in the autumn 2017 generation.
Costs are a little bit higher, not much, but a little bit higher than what we expected. We have a little bit less fish to divide the cost on in this quarter and also then first half of next year. We do expect to see then higher cost first half than second half, but there is potential for improvement in costs also going into 2019. In 2018, we also opened and started what is at least what we believe is the world's most technology-advanced processing facility for salmon. The aim is that the fish should not be touched by hands. We are not there yet. This facility has been in startup in 2018, and we do expect to see, and we are seeing improvements now going into 2019. Hordaland, we do have a positive development in cost. We have the lowest cost for quite some time.
Unfortunately, we had then challenges in quality on cod and maturing fish, meaning it loses color. That has a substantial impact on profitability this quarter. Bigger changes in Hordaland is a new smolt facility, which we started three years ago. Soon finished, we start seeing the first fish out of it now. First half 2019, we will also start seeing significant releases of larger smolt towards end 2019. In 2019, on salmon smolts, more than 25% of fish released in Hordaland will be larger than 500 grams. In 2021, dependent on the mix between trout and salmon, 40%-50% will be salmon, will be larger than 500 grams. Looking into wild catch, it's difficult to look quarter to quarter, kind of looking on annual trends is probably easier.
We can see that we have a slightly higher EBITDA this year compared to last year. We have higher amortization, among others, because of the new boat, Nordtind. We see that the operating profit is in line with last year. Key drivers on the catching side is that there's lower quota on cod and haddock. That has been replaced by higher catches of shrimps, where the new boat has been important. We also see that there's been higher prices in 2018 compared to 2017 on a lower volume. On the catching side, this has been a good year. Looking into the land industry, Norway Seafoods, it has been a challenging year given the fact that there's less volume available and the prices are higher, and those prices take time to move on to the end customer.
In sum, a year, I would say, in line with our expectation. There is significant work to be done, significant investments needed in the land-based industry. We are doing those step by step. We are targeting clear what should be made in each factory, and we have clear improvement initiatives in some of the larger facilities. We do expect to see gradual improvements during 2019. Scottish Sea Farms, Norskott Havbruk , another good quarter. Healthy margin at NOK 24. Good production. Slightly higher harvested volume in 2018 than previously communicated, but all in all, a satisfactory result. We are building a new smolt facility also in Scotland, and we will see first release autumn 2019. Another good quarter from this, I would say, stable performing operation. Downstream, Henning has already touched upon. We have a high activity level in 2018.
We have a lower profit level than what is our aim. It is very positive that in Q4 we have a significant lift in profitability and margin, and this quarter is better than last year. We expect to see a better 2019 compared to 2018, building it up step by step, quarter by quarter.
Okay, I'm going to take you through the outlook. First of all, we start with the supply side, and this is new numbers from Kontali. If we start on Norway, we see that there will be increase in Norway this year, or growth in Norway this year, of close to 6%. We see that U.K. is coming back now and increase of close to 70% after a year, 2018, where we had a negative growth of 13%. A total growth estimate for 2019 of 7.3% in Europe, and globally increase of 5.6%. Yeah.
The update on the quarters. We see very volatile prices going back the last three, four years. We see that we had a price in fourth quarter 2018 of around NOK 55, and we see that it's been a good start in 2019. Per week seven, it's a price of NOK 58, which is lower than first quarter 2018, but we will see getting closer to Easter now. It might be that we will see a positive trend in prices for the rest of this quarter. If you look at the monthly volumes worldwide, we see it's fairly stable volumes. We start the year with a harvest of a little bit over 200,000 tons, and it will be stable around this level until August, September. It will start increase, and we will be close to 250,000 tons the last three months.
If we look at Europe first, also fairly stable levels until August. Americas, it's very stable for the whole year. That's good. Norway, we will be from 90,000-100,000 tons the first half, then we will increase to about 120,000 tons the last five months. A total increase of close to 6% in volume. On the consumption side, we see fourth quarter a growth in consumption of 5%. We see EU up 3%, U.S. 5%, and other markets still taking a higher share of the growth and with 8%. If we look at the full year 2018, a growth of 6%. We see EU up 4%, other markets 8%, USA 8%, very strong growth in the U.S., we also believe that this growth will continue. We see Russia is up 25%. We also believe that we will see a relatively higher growth in other markets than the other markets going forward.
The conclusion, we believe that the demand for seafood remains strong, and there is a very positive outlook. The harvest guidance for salmon & trout, including associates, is estimated to be around 190,000 ton. The expected contract share in first quarter will be around 40%-45%. We see a significant potential of improvements in whitefish and also higher prices. 2019 quota for cod is down 6.5%. Haddock is down 15%. We expect that we will have a lot of improvements in the land industry gradually going forward. That was all. Thank you very much.