Good morning and welcome to Lerøy Seafood Group's First Quarter Presentation, 2020. My name is Henning Beltestad, and I'm the CEO of Lerøy Seafood Group. Together with me today, I have CFO, Sjur Malm. First of all, I will take you through the highlights of the quarter. Then Sjur Malm will take you through the key financial figures. And then I will come back and talk a little bit about supply and demand, and also the outlook for our company.
First of all, I will start with this picture. It's our value chain that we have developed the last 20 years. And our goal is to create the world's most efficient and sustainable value chain for seafood. The company has invested heavily in all parts of the value chain. And now it's time to take out the potential of the fantastic value chain that we have made so far.
There is a lot of improvements to be done and a lot of potential to take out. That's good. We have some positive things to work with going forward. I will come back to the value chain later in my presentation. Lerøy Seafood Group, we report in three different segments: the farming, wild catch, and VAP. First, I will take the highlights. First quarter has been a fairly good quarter with approximately 860 million NOK in EBIT compared to 692 million NOK in EBIT last year. In this quarter, there was a very strong start with high prices. Gradually, we were affected by the COVID-19. The prices going into the quarter were close to 80 NOK, and the prices going out of the quarter were close to 50 NOK. Of course, we have been affected by this situation.
And also, we have had a high share of the volume in March, the end of the quarter. End of the quarter, we have 3 billion NOK in net interest-bearing debt. The board proposed a dividend per share of 1.5 NOK for 2019 and requested permission for additional up to 0.8 NOK per share by end year. So we hope we keep the dividend that we estimated earlier. The total we are on track on the growth plans that we have. We keep our guiding at 183,000-188,000 tonnes for 2020 and 200,000-210,000 tonnes for 2021. And we expect the whitefish this year to be around 65,000 tonnes. We harvested 39,000 tonnes in Q1 this year compared to 32,000 tonnes in first quarter last year. And the catch volume is 5,000 tonnes higher. And we increased the turnover from 4.7-5.3 billion NOK.
So the top line is in place, and also the EBIT is better than last year. If we look at the farming, we see that there's been a quarter with energy prices, very high energy prices compared to last year. So it's up NOK 7 compared to first quarter last year. Our price realization is significantly impacted by downgrades as well as timing of sales, as I mentioned earlier. And the total price achievement is below the 7. The contract share is 38%. And the price realization on spot and contract is about the same level. Compared to fourth quarter 2019, the cost is up. And the EBIT per kilo in farming is about 14.3 compared to 15.8 same quarter last year. The guidance per region for this year is 38,000 tonnes in Lerøy Aurora, 67,000 tonnes in Lerøy Midt, and 67,000 tonnes in Lerøy Sjøtroll.
A total in Norway of 172,000 tonnes. Our share of Norskott Havbruk, Scottish Sea Farms, is 30,000 tonnes. A total of 185,000 tonnes guided volumes for 2020. The wild catch, a very positive quarter, catch volume of 25,000 tonnes, up 22%. The EBIT per kilo on wild catch is almost 11 NOK. In first quarter, we also got a new trawler, Kongsfjord. I'll mention this in the last presentation. Yeah, Kongsfjord has really, really done a fantastic job getting the efficiency and positive development on the quality of catches. It is a good investment, and we are very happy with that. If we look at the price development, we see there's been very high prices in first quarter: 38.4 NOK for cod, 29.4 NOK for haddock, and 70 NOK for the saithe. All species [are] going the right direction.
Catch volumes for the different species, the cod, 12,500 tonnes, haddock, 5,200 tonnes, saithe, 3,600 tonnes, and shrimps, 142 tonnes, and others, 3,500 tonnes. And the remaining quarter in 2020, it's 10,300 tonnes, cod, 4,500 tonnes, haddock, and about 12,000 tonnes of saithe. So a total of 26,100 tonnes. And in addition to that, we will also fish some shrimps. So we expect, like I mentioned, we expect 65,000 tonnes total catch this year in Lerøy Havfisk. VAPS sales and distribution, it's been a challenging quarter with the COVID-19 and especially with the channel to Horeca, which suddenly was closed down. And so it's been very challenging to operate in the different markets, keeping the value chain open to our customers. But still, we managed to do that in a good way. But of course, the cost has been higher. And profit-wise, we are affected by this.
So this quarter is about 54 million NOK compared to 79 million NOK, same quarter last year. Thank you. Yes, thank you, Henning. I will walk us through our key financial figures. I think what this quarter started with fantastic prices and fantastic profitability. Then the outlook changed rapidly during the quarter. So towards the end of the quarter, obviously, earnings were far less than what we had expected going into the quarter. I still think it's important to highlight kind of like the underlying strategy in Lerøy Seafood Group. We have and we will have a strong balance sheet, which gives us good opportunities in both upturns and downturns. Also, we are not only a salmon company. We are a seafood company, also in whitefish. So we are not dependent only on one segment. So what these figures will show you is that we have a portfolio of products.
We have a strong balance sheet. We are prone to the times we are currently facing. Looking then into key figures for this quarter, key drivers for profitability is shown. At the bottom of this page, you can see that our harvested volume of salmon is up 22% compared to last year, as Henning and the profitability per kilo is down. That is surprising, and it's also disappointing given where quarter started, but also given the benchmark spot price in the quarter. This quarter, we have seen significant downgrades on particularly whitefish from northern Norway. That gives us price realization actually this year, which is on par with last year, even though benchmark prices are significantly higher. So price realization is a significant reason to why profitability is not higher despite the high benchmark price.
That also then means that our cost level is slightly higher in Q1 this year than last year. Looking then also in whitefish, you can see that our volume on whitefish is up 22%. A good quarter, high profitability. Here, the seasonality is higher. So we shouldn't expect this level of profitability going forward. But still, it's showing that whitefish is a significant part of operation with the strong earnings this quarter. In sum, this leads to our operating profit of 816 million NOK, which is up from last year, but is then obviously less than what it would have been without the COVID-19 situation. Activity level has been good. Revenue is up 12% from last year. And other than that, associates, which you can see is down compared to first quarter last year, is much related to our operation in the U.K., which I will return to.
That financially is much impacted by VAP and currency effects, temporary, so underlying, no big changes and return on capital employed at close to 17%, which is below our target of 18%, but still pretty healthy given the circumstances. Looking then into our balance sheet, as Henning showed on one of the first pages, we have invested significantly in our core activities recent years. Those investments are related to wild catch and farming, large investments in smolts. Those investments are currently being finalized in Hordaland. We will finalize them in Aurora, northern Norway, this year and then there's a project still ongoing in central Norway, but still, those investments have an impact on our balance sheet, but we haven't seen the full impact in our profitability yet, which is what we're going to realize the coming years.
Q1, we also received or took in our control a trawler, new trawler, fantastic boat, good performance. Those investments are kind of like the key reasons to why our tangible fixed asset is up. On more current asset, you'll see that our biological asset is up compared to last year. That is driven by the fact that with the new smolt facilities, we have more fish on land. That you can see in the notes of our accounts. Further, there's a shift of mix. We have had a good performance in Hordaland and a weak performance in northern Norway, which means that we have a higher share of our biomass in southern Norway than northern Norway, with a higher cost point than what we had last year. Finally, we have an average weight, which is about 100 grams smaller, which is at a higher price.
So that's the reason for the increase in biological assets and the cost level of them. Inventory, no big changes, high inventory level seasonal-wise. And receivables, activity level is up. So no surprises there. Obviously, risk of receivables is higher with the current situation, but we believe, given the situation, that we're handling it well. And in sum, we have a net interest-bearing debt of just over NOK 3 billion. We believe we have a strong and healthy balance sheet. And as you can see, we also have a strong cash position. Yeah, this is then our cash flow. And here is showing basically the effects of what I already pointed out. So working capital is up, biological asset is. And you can see the drivers for that. That is also seasonal, and we expect that to be lower in working capital release in coming quarters.
On the CapEx side, it is the investments in the trawler, which is the biggest investment this quarter, and with that, you can see that our net interest-bearing debt is up by NOK 360 million compared to going into the quarter, then I'll get more into details in the different segments. I think in here, we are comparing with last year. Given benchmark prices, obviously, our farming operation with a higher benchmark price and a higher volume should have been more profitable than what you can see here, so that's something we get back to, and while you see whitefish is performing well, sales and distribution, there are some extra costs with the COVID situation, but farming, looking into Aurora, we are not that pleased with our operation this quarter. Last year, we had NOK 25 margin at a much lower benchmark price.
This year, we've been significantly hurt by winter wounds on a high share of our fish. We highlighted this in a previous quarterly report, and development in the quarter was worse than what we had expected, so that's the key driver for the lower EBIT per kilo, and price realization is much impacted by that. Also, this situation leads to an earlier harvest than planned, which is a smaller and more expensive fish. Going into the coming quarter, we will have a low volume in Q2, which will be also then driving high costs, and then we expect a high volume, much better cost position in the second half. The smolt facility is going according to plan. In central Norway, we had a challenging second half of 2019 that is still impacting our cost position, but development this quarter, costs are down compared to Q4.
We have a reasonably good or good development of production in sea. Things are going according to plan. Margin this quarter is about the same level as last year. Yeah, we expect about the same cost level short term with potential down the road for cost reductions. We are building these days a large post-smolt facility in Belsvik. Lerøy Seafood Group, Vestlandet. Yeah, it's been a good performance this quarter in terms of production in sea. It's been good growth. We have harvested, not this quarter, but in early Q2, we harvested the first fish of the new smolt facility with good performance, good quality, high yield. That's positive. There are definitely some positive developments in this region, which is a region where we struggle with the higher costs for some years.
If the current development continues, we will see a significant lowering of cost late 2020 and into 2021, but it's still a little bit early to conclude. Typically, summertime is a period of the time where we see more challenges, but there is definitely potential for lower cost, and we are clearly seeing impacts when it comes to harvested volume and production, so yeah, reasonably good, a good quarter, and you can see profitability level about the same level as last year, then wild catch and Henning has highlighted the key points when it comes to volumes and prices, so we'll not repeat that. It's been the best quarter in the history, and we have inventories, which we will have sell later, which will give profits also later this year. We've received a new trawler, Kongsfjord, which is performing well, so it's been a good quarter in whitefish.
On the land side, we are seeing improvement from last year. Then, UK operations. We had a challenging end of 2019, and the unfortunate part of our business is that those events hurt us for some time, so this quarter has been good growth in sea, good development, but still, we are harvesting fish then, which was impacted by challenges last year following a high price level, now a high cost level, so performance, as you can see, is much down from last year. Positive side then, production in sea as highlighted, and also the fact that we are putting a lot of fish and smolt stocking from a new smolt facility, which is working fine, so we have expectations for improvements during this year and there's a significant potential for growth going into 2021, then our downstream operation, very good start of the year.
And then challenges with COVID-19 and keeping the value chain open, which is driving costs. We are proud to be able to keep our value chain open. And there's been a lot of hard work, but it's come with some costs. As this slide showed, there's a good activity level, some pressure on margins. We will see some pressure on margins also in second quarter. But overall, we believe our position with key strategic customers is improving also during these challenging times. Then I give the word back to you, Henning.
Okay, yeah. Then I will take you through the supply and demand and also go back on the projects that's running and how we focus for the future. But first of all, we take the supply side. We see that in 2019, globally, we had a total supply growth of 7.1%.
This year, we expect a total supply growth of 3.7%, so half of what we had last year. We see Europe is up 2.9%. America is up 5.1%, so not a strong growth this year. If we look at the prices, of course, we are facing challenges with the situation that we've had the last two, three months. We had the first quarter, which was very good, with NOK 68, but with a very high price in January and half of February. And then with a lot of price pressure end of the quarter and also into second quarter. And we see so far per week 17, the price is about NOK 52. And then we will talk a little bit later about what's the expectations going forward, even though it's hard to predict at the moment.
But if we look at the supply first, we see that in Norway, there has been a zero growth in January and February and 4% growth in March and a negative growth in April. And also with negative growth, we have seen also negative price development in April and so far in May. But going forward, we expect between 2% to 9% increase on a monthly basis and a total of about 3% in Norway. If we look at Europe, low volumes in U.K. and also Faroe Islands in January and February affecting the prices positively in these two months, but a growth of 2% in March where we have seen a negative price development. America's good growth in January, February, 17% and 16%. And so it must have been a challenging time, especially in Chile in this period, building some stock of frozen salmon. Yeah.
On the pretty stable volumes in the first seven months, then the increased volume from August until November and then a little bit down in December in the total. But then a stable growth the rest of the year from 3%-6%. If we look at the consumption side, this is where we have seen the challenges the last months. But if we look at the EU, the first quarter, it's been pretty okay, a growth of 2%. Also U.S., 5%. And then we see on other markets that we have had challenges, and that's especially the Asian markets with a reduction of 6% in first quarter. If we go into the details on other markets, we will see that it's been extremely challenging in China. China were the first market affected by the COVID-19. And it was good for four or five weeks.
Then, after Chinese New Year, the market totally stopped. So there was almost zero volume going into China for five, six weeks in February and the beginning of March. But then gradually opening again. And at the moment, the Chinese market is very good, high volumes, and they are really back after a very challenging situation. Another country I would like to mention is South Korea. It's been 33% growth in South Korea. They've really been handling the situation in a good way and kept a high demand for salmon in this quarter. So very strong performance for the Korean market and is still strong into second quarter. And then you have all the smaller countries in this segment. We see a huge, they're really affected by the demand in this market. They're really affected by the COVID-19.
At the same time, we also see that these markets are the markets that are recovering fastest. Like China is really back. We see also other Asian countries are coming more and more back to normal volumes. That's positive. To predict what's going to happen going forward, it's very unpredictable. We are following the markets very closely at the moment. We see a positive trend the last week, especially in Europe, that the markets like Italy, France, Spain are improving. They are opening up a little bit on the restaurant Horeca segment, which has been extremely difficult in this situation. All restaurants have been closed down in Europe almost. Now it's opening. We see that customers that have been without any supply for two months now are starting to demand or to ask for salmon again. That's very positive.
So we really hope that this situation in May, that it will gradually start to open up again. And we believe that after summer, we will get more and more into normalization of the market and the different market channels and opportunities and a good demand for seafood globally. Yeah. In the long term, we expect significant growth in harvest volume in Lerøy and lower cost from the investments in smolt facilities. Come back to that afterwards. And we expect the contract share for salmon and trout in second quarter of 35%-40%, which is good to have with the situation that has been challenging in the spot market at the moment. So it's good to have some kind of base already done. And we see significant potential in whitefish.
But then back to the value chain and what we have done the last 20 years building this fantastic value chain. Our goal is to create the world's most efficient and sustainable value chain for seafood. We have a huge potential of improvement and a lot in all steps of this value chain. But we have what we have. We have done huge investments. And now it's to take out the potential and to run this value chain in a better way, in a slimmer way, and in a more cost-efficient and sustainable way than what we do today. Just some examples. This trawler, Kongsfjord, started first fishery in February this year, so in first quarter. This is a trawler, a very efficient trawler built with fish tanks prior to sedation and slaughtering to improve further quality.
It's the world's first demersal trawler built with a battery hybrid solution, so doing it more sustainable to fishers. And also using a triple trawl and extremely high catch efficiency on this boat compared to the other. So we are in this investment making a more efficient and sustainable value chain for this part. Then we have the smolt investments. We talked a lot about the smolt investments in the north of Norway. We're getting close to the end of the investment now. It will be finished in the fourth quarter of 2020. So it's soon there. And this will increase our volume, make it even more sustainable, and also a more efficient way of producing higher volumes. And that is, yeah, very soon we're there. Then we have the new small facility in Vestlandet that was finished last summer with a 4,000-ton capacity. And it's not a marketing picture.
It's taken by some of the people in the production, but this is the first fish harvested from Kjærelva, and this was put into the sea in April and harvested in April this year with an average size above five kilos, and with a good quality, and so we really believe that these investments will make a difference in this region, then we have the new small facility in Belsvik 2, and it's now on track and will be finalized after summer next year and will make an impact on the harvest volume and efficiency for 2022, and then we have the new factory in Lerøy Midt. It's not brand new anymore, but this is the most modern gutting filleting factory in the world so far, definitely.
It's a full-flow factory with no buffer and with a lot of automation within, so reduced water use, less people, and extremely high efficiency with high capacity. And this is a small unit. It's not a huge factory, but it's a lot of new technology within this one. So here we really pushed the limits, and we are really happy with this one. So then we have a strong European distribution. The last 10 years, we've done a lot of investments, building startups in all key markets to be better connected with the end customer, making our value chain more efficient, more flexible, and to give a high service level towards our key partners in the different markets. So now it's to take out the potential of all the investments that we've done in these markets. A lot of opportunities.
Then I want to talk a little bit about Lerøy Midt, which is an efficient and sustainable value chain for salmon from egg to final product in the shop, and we've done a lot of investments both in Åkvik on the row and Belsvik. We have done huge investments in 2012, 2013, so Belsvik 1, and then we do Belsvik 2. The farming side, ASC Farms, Jøsnøya, very efficient and sustainable and innovative factory for gutting and filleting, and then we have Sjømathuset, doing the fresh packed seafood for retail, and then we have retail with NorgesGruppen as a key partner in the end, and we are following the value chain all the way to the shop, and the goal is to reduce variation, create predictability, establish standards, and work with continuously improvement, what we call Lerøy Way.
Our goal is to create value for our customers with innovation, perfect flow, and control through the value chain. This is what everyone in Lerøy focuses on to make a more efficient and sustainable value chain. And this is probably one of the most efficient and sustainable value chains in the world, I believe. But we have made a video starting in the shop right next to the head office here and going all the way back to Åkvik. And I will show you this film now. So enjoy. And after that, thank you very much for your.