Welcome to Lerøy Seafood Group's second quarter presentation 2019. My name is Henning Beltestad, CEO in Lerøy. With me today I have Sjur Malm. I will take you through the highlights of the quarter. Sjur will take you through the key financial figures. I will come back and have a look at supply and demand of salmon and also outlook from the company perspective. Highlights second quarter. We achieved EBIT before fair value adjustment of NOK 774 million, harvest volume of 37,000 tons, EBIT per kilo all-inclusive of NOK 19. The contract share for salmon of 38% in the quarter. Net interest-bearing debt end of the quarter of NOK 3,745 million, so NOK 3.7 billion. Harvest guidance of 168,000 tons for a full year. This quarter is a little bit better than the first quarter.
In total, EBIT and is NOK 19 per kilo is also a little bit better than first quarter and also third and fourth quarter last year. A bit lower than second quarter last year. Main reason for that is the lower prices of salmon and some higher cost in the production of the salmon. Lerøy Seafood Group reports in three segments, farming, wild catch, and raw sales and distribution. I will start with some highlights from the farming. As I said, the spot price this quarter compared to last year, this year the NOS price is NOK 62 compared to NOK 68.50 second quarter last year. This quarter is up NOK 1 compared to first quarter this year.
The trout prices is below the salmon also in this quarter but we feel that the quality of the trout and also the growth and performance at sea has been very good compared to first quarter and fourth quarter earlier this year and end of last year. The contract prices is in line with the spot price realization. Cost prices at the same level as first quarter 2019. The biomass at sea is up 12% from 90,000 tonnes- 101,000 tonnes. We have good performance at sea and good biomass into second half of this year and also first half of next year. We are positive in the biomass that we have going forward. If we look at the farming volumes, we have taken down the guiding from Lerøy Aurora from 36,000-34,000 tonnes.
The main reason for that is the algae outbreak that we had in the north of Norway in May and June. We didn't have a high mortality but we had to starve the fish for a period and we lost some growth of the fish, so we have taken down the guiding from Lerøy Aurora. Lerøy Midt is 71,000 tonnes and Lerøy Sjøtroll we have also taken down the guidance by 3,000 tonnes and main reason for that is lower smolt yield. If we look at the wild catch, we have harvested 13% lower volume compared to second quarter last year, so close to 16,000 tonnes. We have prioritized catch of the shrimps in this quarter with higher values. The prices is up by 14%, cod up 7%, haddock up 4%, and the saithe is up by 34%. Very good development for the saithe.
For the industry side on land, it still is challenging. We are doing a lot to improve the situation for the whitefish factories, increase the raw material prices is delaying this improvement a bit. If we look at the remaining quotas for [demersal fish], we see that for the cod, we have about 10,000 tons left compared to 11,000 tons lost last year. 6,700 tons lower. For haddock, we have 3,000 tons remaining compared to 2,000 tons last year. For saithe, we have close to 17,000 tons compared to 10,000 tons last year. It's a positive for the saithe that the price are increasing with the quotas that we have left. A total remaining quota of 38,000 tons. If you look at the VAP sales and distribution segment, it's been a very good quarter.
I think this is probably the best second quarter in history with NOK 130 million in EBIT compared to NOK 62 million in EBIT second quarter last year. Okay, Sjur will take you through the key financial figures.
Yes, thank you, Henning. I'm going to walk us through key highlights of our financial figures for the second quarter of 2019. Looking into the figures, we can see that the activity is up, that's mainly downstream, and our revenue is up by 6% compared to last year. Currently, our red fish business is key to profitability and the main driver. Looking into the drivers of that, we can see that the harvested volume of red fish is in line with what we did last year, down 2%. We can see that the profitability per kilo is down from 23- 19, which is NOK 4 a kilo. Half of this is price realization, half of it is cost. That brings us to our EBIT operating result of 774 compared to 1 billion NOK in the same quarter last year.
Looking into associates, this includes our farming operation in the U.K., which is a joint venture with SalMar. Also operation in Denmark. It's another good quarter, although slightly lower profitability in U.K. I will return to that. Pre-tax profit, NOK 776 million compared to just over NOK 1 billion last year. In sum, I would say that profitability in this quarter is as much as we expected going into the quarter, but we believe the potential in our business model is higher than what we are showing in current quarter. Year to date, key figures, we see that we have harvested a low volume of whitefish. We have a slightly lower profitability per kilo, again, price and cost, and EBIT of close to NOK 1 billion compared to close to NOK 2 billion last year. Balance sheet is much impacted by implementation of IFRS 16.
I will refer to our report for the details. This brings a new asset class, which is right of use assets. You can see that the total non-current asset is quite up from last year. This is partly driven from those operational leases but is also much driven by investment in our core activities. Those includes investments which I will touch upon later, but much in larger smolt in farming. Biological asset is up compared to last year, driven by higher biomass and also the composition of the biomass in which region it's situated. Looking to other inventories, it's flat with last year, and we have a higher receivable with higher activity. In sum, we believe we have a strong balance sheet equity ratio of 59%. Looking into change in net interest-bearing debt, I will focus on numbers for first half year.
We see that our EBITDA is down. We paid a lower tax bill this year compared to last year. There is some growth in working capital, partially from higher biomass and partially also from the fact that the whitefish value chain includes more frozen materials than the red fish, which means also typically more inventories. Our change in net interest-bearing debt from operating activities is down some NOK 400 million compared to last year. We have invested less, so net interest-bearing debt from investment activities is significantly down from last year. Last year, we invested in total just about NOK 2 billion, and this year the figure will be lower. We have maintenance CapEx of some NOK 800 million. We are doing some more than that this year, finalizing some projects, and there are some projects up for decision.
Most important is a new and larger smolt facility in central Norway farming region. We will go over that on a later stage. We paid a high dividend for 2018 and for 2017. In sum, our net interest-bearing debt is NOK 3.7 billion, and our expectations are today that we will reduce that level going forward. This shows operating result in different segments. We can see that farming is down and whitefish is down, while sales and distribution is up. I'll go into more of the details. Our farming operation in Norway consists of three regions. This is the northernmost, which is Lerøy Aurora. We had a fantastic second quarter last year. This year has been more challenging. This relates firstly to fire at the smolt facility which gave us quite some extra work and some extra costs.
That is now rebuilt, and we've been able to buy the necessary smolt. In the second quarter, there was an impact of toxic algae in parts of the region Lerøy is operating. That also led to higher cost and also led to less feeding of the fish. We lost some 2,000 tons of growth in that period. In one way, we could say we were unlucky. We can also say we were lucky because there were massive mortalities at sites around us, which we were able to avoid. Following, we have lowered the production guidance in Lerøy to 34,000 tons, that gives us a good biomass exiting there and a good basis for growth into the coming year. We have a higher cost base in first half than what is normal in this region, and we expect it to fall second half and fall into 2020.
Production right now in Lerøy is very good. Lerøy Midt, the operation in central Norway, has been faring as expected in the quarter. There are no big changes. There are no big investments in smolts, which will change the picture going into next year. We expect to see gradually a lower cost also in second half or lower cost on average second half than first half. Hordaland or Lerøy Sjøtroll which is the operation in the west. It has been a challenge for some years. It remains a challenge. This is where we farm trout in addition to salmon. The trout production has fared decent in this quarter and well. We have seen some challenges on salmon, and we are reducing the expected yield per smolt, which means that we will reduce our production this year from 66,000- 63,000 tonnes.
We have now been kind of stable at profit levels, which is inferior compared to other operations. That's not at all taking out the potential of the business in this region. In 2016, we made the decision to build one of, if not the largest, one of the largest smolt facilities in the world. Construction is coming to an end, and we've already released the first fish at 160 grams. We will release the first fish at around 500 grams these days. That fish, we expect, will give us better performance gradually during 2020. It's a very interesting year ahead in Lerøy Sjøtroll and we are very eager to see the results of the new smolt. Wild catch is already touched upon by Henning.
This quarter, you'll see that there's lower catches of cod compared to the same quarter last year, which is the highest value catch. We have prioritized catching shrimps and less saithe, catch volumes are down. These drivers also impact the quarterly result in the second quarter compared to last year. Last year included asset sale of a boat with the impact of NOK 35 million and underlying the prices have been good. It's been great prices during second quarter. It's a good quarter for the trawling business. We have good access to quota for the remainder of the year, performance should be good. On the land side, in the land-based industry, the increased prices is a challenge, which leads to pressure on gross margins and a pressure on profitability. It's a weak quarter for the land-based industries.
We are doing several investments here to add new activity, which is less seasonal and more stable, and we expect that to gradually show impact on the figures from this segment during 2020. Norskott Havbruk or Scottish Sea Farms, which is our joint venture in the U.K. It was a great quarter last year. There's been some more challenges this year, in particular with CMS which causing some increased mortality and causing slightly lower harvest rates. Here, we are building a new smolt facility, which we have expectations for. In this operation, there is room for growth. We continue our guidance of 30,000 tons and the potential in the future is higher than that. Our downstream business.
We were not pleased at all with last year, and this year we've been able to have better capacity utilization, more stable operations, and we also see impact from investments in new downstream units. That is a good quarter. There are some seasonal effects in that second quarter normally is better than third quarter, but on average, we believe for a good performance in this segment during this year and there is further potential going into 2020. With that, I give it word back to you, Henning.
I will take you through the outlook. First of all, the supply and demand and also outlook for some main projects that we have in Lerøy. If we look at the supply side and look at the 2019 numbers, we see that Europe there is expected growth of 6.6%. We see Norway is 4.3% and U.K. is 16.6%. If we look at Americas, the expected growth for this year is 4.7%.
Chile is about 4.4%. A global increase in the growth of close to 6% compared to 5.5% last year. Yeah. If we look at the expectations for 2020, we see a European growth of 3.6% and Norway is about 3.3%. We see Americas 4.2% and a global growth next year of 3.8%. For the pricing, we see it's still fluctuating. If we look at the yearly prices from 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019, we see 2016 was NOK 62, 2017 for NOK 59, and 2018 NOK 59, and so far this year, NOK 60. In a way, the four years is really a stable level, even though the price is fluctuating by week. If we look at the harvest volumes from Norway, we see that the change from last year, so far it's up 5.2%. A total harvest of 604,000 tons.
We see July is up 5%, August up 1%, and September is up 2%. If we look at September, we see it's a much lower volume in September than in August. We also expect the industry and the markets to be back on track from September. We expect a better situation for pricing in September compared to August. In October, November, and December, it's a growth between 3%-6%. If you look at Europe, it's pretty the same picture. If you look at the Americas, we see September up 10%, October down 1%, and November and December of 8% growth. Worldwide, we see a stable volume through the year. Nine first months of a stable volume around 200,000 tons, and then we have a peak in the last three months, fluctuating between 225,000-250,000 tons on a monthly basis. Yeah.
If you look at the consumption side, Q2, we see a very strong growth in EU, up by 8%. Global consumption is up by 6%. EU in this quarter is really taking a market share. We also see that the other markets is up 10% and also increasing their market share. The U.S. is up 3% and Russia is down 11% and Japan up 3%. Both EU and other markets is really performing well in Q2 at a high price level. If you look at year-to-date, EU is up 6%, other markets up 7%, and U.S. up 5%. The 1st half, U.S. is keeping the position and EU is taking a share and also other markets.
If you look at other markets year to date, the first half, we see China is continuously growing and it's for the first time over 60,000 tons the first half-year. It's really strong. Also Brazil is over 50,000 tons and are taking market share in the global market. We expect, especially that China, with the normalization of the situation with Norway, we expect a good growth in China in the period to come. Outlook, we see a strong demand for seafood in general. We have a guiding of 183,000 tons for 2019. We will have a good biomass situation into 2020. We expect a lower release from stock cost in second half of 2019 and also going into 2020. We expect the contract share for salmon in Q3 of 25%-30%. We still have a significant potential in the whitefish.
We see increased demand for white fish. We focus a lot on improvements in the factories in north of Norway. I think we are on a good track with the white fish, both fisheries and on the land side. Lerøy is a fully integrated company of both red fish and white fish. This gives us a huge potential and also it is kind of complex working with this full value chain. Still, we see a huge potential of improvements and are working and focusing to improve every step of this value chain. Some examples for this, we start with the new smolt facility in Kjærelva, among the largest and most modern smolt facilities in the world. This picture is from last week. We are now ready to put the large smolt 500 grams into sea. The total biomass is 4,500 tons.
First output of 160 gram was in April 2019, we expect harvest of this first quarter 2020, so we're getting close. First output of 500 gram will be in August 2019. So far everything looks fine. New factory of Lerøy Midt opened last year. Highly automated slaughtering and filleting factory. A huge capacity of 70,000 tons on yearly capacity per shift. In this factory we are focused on sustainability, quality and efficiency. There is throughflow factory where fish is swimming from the wellboat into the factory and has a good flow through the factory and we have a huge capacity to fillet. 70% of the fish in this factory can be filleted. At the moment we are running at one and a half shift in the factory and it's really running well at the moment, and it's a really nice factory.
We have Norway's largest trawling fleet, nine trawlers running now, and we have one on the way, and that's this one. This one will be ready in mid-January. Based on the same concept as Nordtind. We have done some improvements. This will be the first Demersal trawler with live fish tanks prior to slaughtering, which we believe will improve the quality of the white fish. It's also the first demersal trawler built with a battery hybrid solution. We also have a triple trawl for shrimp and delivery mid-May, and really looking forward to get this out fishing. Lerøy Norway Seafoods. We have done large investments across the factories. We are specializing products and production in each factory.
Strong focus on product and category development and strong focus on utilizing the whole fish, like the fish burgers and the fish cakes that you see on the right side. We open a new factory in Stamsund, April 2019, specializing in production of ready-to-eat products. We will be one of the largest producer of fish cakes, fish burgers, and these kind of products in Norway in the next year. Strong European distribution. We have invested a lot the last 10- 15 years. We now feel that we have a very good base with all our distribution facilities. As we saw, we had good results in this segment, second quarter, and we have a huge potential to take out of all these facilities going forward with still high capacity available. This is some other products we do at our facilities out in Europe.
This is from Spain. We also started with the same products in Portugal. We do it in Norway, in Finland, and in also some other markets. At the end, I will show a short film from our factory in Stamsund just to give you a look into what we are doing in one of our white fish factories. Thank you very much.