Welcome to first quarter presentation of Lerøy Seafood Group 2019. My name is Henning Beltestad, CEO in Lerøy, and with me today I have the CFO, Sjur Malm. First of all, I will take you through the highlights and quarter, then Sjur will take you through the key financial figures, and then I will come back and have a view on the future for both the supply and demand, and some outlooks from Lerøy. First of all, highlights. First quarter, we had an EBIT before fair value adjustment of NOK 691 million.
The EBIT in this quarter is reduced by NOK 51 million related to intercompany elimination, which is a delay of realization of profits for the whitefish. The harvest volume in the quarter is 32,000 tons, which is down about 5,000 tons from last year. The EBIT all inclusive, exclusive wild catch is of NOK 7.7.
The contract hshare for salmon is 41%, which is in line with what we guided with the last presentation. We have a net interest-bearing debt of 2.9 billion NOK. A harvest guidance of 173,000 tons in 2019 in Norway. If we look at the quarterly historic figures, we see that the total result is below first quarter last year, also below what we had the fourth quarter, mainly because of the volume and a little bit higher cost. If we look at the EBIT all-inclusive per kilo, we see that we are in line with the fourth quarter, but some lower than the first quarter 2017. Lerøy report in three different segments, the farming segment, wild catch, and VAP sales and distribution. Lerøy is a fully integrated company both for red fish and whitefish.
After the investment three years ago, we have had three years building up a unique value chain also for the whitefish all the way to the end consumer. We believe that we have a very strong position into building efficient and sustainable value chain for both segments. First of all, we start with the farming highlights. The spot price is slightly above last year, NOK 61.30 compared to NOK 59.50, which is 3% up, and the price is 6% up compared to the fourth quarter. The trout prices is well below the salmon in this quarter. One of the reasons is downgrade on the trout because of matured trout. The contract prices is slightly above the spot. The cost is up from fourth quarter, also guided in last presentation. The biomass in sea is 6% up.
We are close to 105,000 ton end of the quarter compared to 99,000 ton in first quarter 2007. The underlying production is good. The guiding of the volumes, we expect Lerøy Aurora to be at 36,000 ton, Lerøy Midt 71,000 ton. Lerøy Sjøtroll about 66,000 ton. A total volume in Norway of 173,000 ton. In Scotland, the volume will be around 30,000 ton and our 50% share of the company gives 15,000 ton. A total of 188,000 ton. For the wild catch, in the first quarter we harvested about 20,000 ton, down 8% compared to the same period last year, mainly because of lower quota for cod and haddock. The average prices of the whitefish is up 6%. The prices of cod is up 40%, haddock 30%, and the saithe up by 1%.
It's been a quarter with some challenges, of course, for the Lerøy industry because of increased prices and a hard fight for the raw material in this quarter. If we look at the remaining quotas for whitefish, we catch the 8,800 tons of cod. Remaining quota is 13,500 tons. haddock we catch the 5,200 tons and remaining quota is 3,800 tons. For saithe 3,200 tons and the remaining quota is about 14,000 tons. We started also the fishery of shrimps in first quarter and continue this fishery of shrimps into second quarter. We expect good volumes of shrimps this year to compensate for the lower volume of other species because of the reduced quota. VAP Sales and Distribution had a good quarter. The result in Q1 is NOK 79 million, compared to NOK 65 million in the first quarter, 2018.
Sjur, you will take the key financial figures.
Yes. Thank you, Henning. I think the key elements in this quarter on red fish is that we've harvested, as Henning has pointed out, a low volume, which is impacting the cost situation in the quarter, cost a bit above normal and as expected. In the whitefish segment, there's a lower quota with a lower volume available in markets and a higher demand, giving high prices. It's been a good quarter for the trawling fleet and a challenging quarter for the land-based industry. Downstream, we've seen positive development in this quarter.
Another point to highlight is the internal elimination between segments, that is that our figures this quarter is impacted by a NOK 51 million elimination, which is related to the fact that our Wild Catch segment is selling a higher degree and is actually up the double amount first quarter this year compared to last year. Not all of that fish is sold out of the group, which is giving that elimination of NOK 51 million. Meaning that excluding that elimination, had we had kind of like the historic trade pattern and sold to market price externally instead of internally, the operating result would be NOK 51 million higher this quarter. That will be realized later. It's sort of a delay in realization. Looking into the P&L, revenue's down. There's a lower red fish harvest volume explaining that.
Looking at the EBITDA, that is significantly impacted by the new IFRS 16, and please see our note 1.3 for a detailed explanation. In short, all our rental obligations are entering the balance sheet. Instead of being OpEx, that obligation is then described as a depreciation amortization and as a finance cost. Note three shows you the exact figures, but in short, our EBITDA has a positive impact and is not fully comparable with last year's figures. D&A is higher than last year's figures due to this. There's marginal impact on EBIT, and there is impact on net finance. Looking at the EBIT key drivers in the red fish business is a low volume and a lower margin. Lower margin comes from a lower price realization and derived from trout, and also a higher cost figure.
Overall, these are the figures, not too far from what we believe. We guided for lower volume, we guided for higher costs, so the difference from expectations are not that large. Obviously, given low volume, the actual figure is low compared to last year. Looking into our balance sheet, this is again impacted by IFRS 16, and we have the new asset class, right-of-use assets, which is the sum of both financial and operational leases. Other than that, there is not that big changes comparing to last year. The strategy of selling whitefish internally is increasing inventories. We believe we have a strong balance sheet. Looking then on changes in net interest-bearing debt. As said, the EBITDA is positively impacted by IFRS 16.
That positive effect is the four-degree adjusted then in financing activity installments on leasing liability, which is shown down there. Pay tax, we pay our tax mostly first half. You have changes in working capital, which is a high figure this quarter. That relates to the fact that we've harvested less, meaning that there's lower biomass release this quarter than comparable quarters historically, and is also much related to some specific items. One is the fire in the smolt facility in Laksefjord, which I will return to. There was a fire at the smolt facility. We lost 2.6 million fish, and we started rebuilding the site. Those costs are still not covered by insurance claim, meaning that that is one item impacting here.
Impacting the fact that we have a higher smolt production onshore, and there are some other short-term debt, which are more kind of like time adjustment posts. This will be normal during the year as a whole, with some impact from the fact that the more whitefish we do, there will be a higher inventory. CapEx is significantly down from last year based on the fact that we finalized the building of the new site at Jøssang and also we come far in finalizing the site, a large smolt site in Hordaland.
Net finance and that line are much impacted by IFRS 16. In sum, this is not the quarter we generate the highest cash flow, but everything is expected, so we are not worried on this development. This shows the different segments. Here you can see the elimination of NOK 51 million, which wasn't there basically last year.
Following that, you can see that the segment where profitability is down is in the farming segment. That's derived by low volume, slightly lower price, and a higher cost. Starting with Lerøy Aurora, operation furthest north. This operation, we saw a fire in its own and only smolt facility in January 2019. 2.6 million smolt were lost, there was a site needed to be rebuilt. There's been a lot of work on this matter in the quarter. Obviously some acute matters, planning for rebuilding, planning for getting the smolt necessary to continue production. We believe we've done that well. Rebuilding is well underway. Getting new smolt is done. It's been a very hectic quarter, maybe of not the reason we had expected first quarter. This matter is impacting, as I said, the cash flow.
It's also impacting with some cost, giving a higher cost per kilo this quarter. This together with also one site not performing as good as normal in Lerøy Aurora will impact cost negatively with the higher cost in Q2 compared to Q1. Second half, we expect to be back to the normal cost level in Lerøy Aurora. Also following then a different stocking plan on smolts. We, as of today, expect that we are lowering the volume guidance this year by 1,000 tons to utilize our MAB in a better way. Central Norway, we said in our previous report that we had some growth constraints in fourth quarter, which would impact costs Q1, Q2 this year. That has, as expected, materialized. One positive note, we are seeing very good growth of new generation and a good growth this quarter.
Actually one of the matters impacting cost negatively this quarter is the fact that we are at or close to the MAB roof, and we have lower harvest weights than what we normally have. We expect again cost figures to be lower second half than what we will see first half. Lerøy Sjøtroll is our operation in Hordaland. We stated last quarter that the challenges seen on maturity of trout would continue into the first quarter, and they have. Realized price in trout is some NOK 9 below salmon, which is impacting the margin in the quarter with trout at 36% of volume. On the positive side, the decision made in 2016 to build a new smolt facility is coming to an end in the construction phase first half 2019. We have used the facility alongside building it.
We released the first smolt out of the facility at 160 gram in April this year. The smolt has performed well in the site and well in sea so far. Also this facility will deliver both 160 grams and 500 grams smolts. During the year and in coming years, we will have a significant share of smolt going to sea as larger smolts, which we believe will positively both impact our operating costs, but also then the production volume. The wild catch, I think it's already covered the volumes. Here you can also see the prices. There is lower quota this year. That giving lower volume in the market together with the good demand has given an increase in prices, meaning that the volume decrease is much offset by prices in the catching side.
Land side, the higher prices and lower volume is a challenge as it's always challenging to transfer higher prices to end consumers. That's been a challenging quarter. In sum, profitability is about the same level as last year. Going forward, Henning has shown the remaining quota and with less quota of the regulated fisheries, the shrimp fisheries or the free fisheries for shrimps will be more important this year. This is our associate company in U.K. A lower volume than last year, but a decent and good performance. It's a satisfactory result due to historic smolt stocking. We've not harvested at Shetland this quarter. Good performance and also here is the construction of a new smolt facility well underway, with first release of smolt in the autumn of 2019. Value-added processing, sales and distribution.
As Henning already highlighted, it's a better performance this year compared to last year. Underlying positive development in most markets. We expect to see better profitability for the remainder of the year than what we saw last year.
With that, I give it back to you, Henning, to talk a bit about the outlook.
Thank you. We start with the supply side. These are fresh figures from the 10th of May, there's no big changes since last report from Kontali. We see that Norwegian production is up 5.4% this year. U.K. is up close to 17%, Faroe Islands 12%, Ireland up 18%, Iceland up 67%, with a very small volume. Europe is up 7.5% in total. If you look at Chile, it's up 5% this year compared to up 20% last year, our estimate for this year is around 700,000 tons. A huge volume in Chile this year and a global growth of 6.6%. We also see last year we had a growth of 5.5% and the year before 6%. This at the stable average price level.
If we look at the numbers, we see that in 2016, 62 NOK, 2017, 59 NOK, and in 2018, 59 NOK. So far this year, around 63 NOK, but with a lot of fluctuation from month to month and week to week. Yeah. A high price level the last three years with a growth of 5%-6%. That's basically good. If we look at the Norwegian numbers, we see that we had a 2% growth in January, 8% growth in February, and minus 3% in March. The main reason for that is that Easter is later this year. We see increase of volume in April to up to 7%, and we expect 2% in May. The rest of the year, it will vary from 2% to 11% from the different months.
If you look at Europe, it's very much the same picture. If you look at Americas, I'm impressed about the stable volume that we see in Chile at the moment. They've really done a good performance, building a stable production through the year. Yeah, that's really good from the Chilean side. They will vary from about 70,000 tons-90,000 tons, depends on the lowest month and the highest month. Worldwide, also relatively stable over there from 200,000 tons and up top months in October, November, December, up to maybe 250,000 tons per month. If you look at the market side, we see a growth in consumption of 4% worldwide in first quarter. We see EU is up 4%, so they're keeping their market share. U.S.A., 4%, so the same for them.
We see that other markets is taking some market share and is increasing the consumption by 7%. If you look at the other markets, we see that China is still growing. It's a fantastic development in China the last 10 years, actually. It's up 12%. We also see that we have Canada and Norway and South Korea is up more than 10%, 12% in Canada, 15% in Norway, which is really good. We see South Korea is really increasing the volumes and is becoming a more and more important market for Atlantic salmon and especially from Norway.
There is also some really small markets which is increasing, and we also have to take care of these small markets to develop the future global market for Atlantic salmon, which has a huge potential. At the end, some outlook. Lerøy believe in seafood of course.
We are a seafood company. The demand for seafood remains strong and the outlook remains very positive both for whitefish and for red fish like salmon and trout. The harvest guidance for 2019 is 188,000 tons in Norway and a total of 100 tons in Norway and in Scotland. We expect a contract share of 35%-40% in this quarter. We see a significant potential in building the value chain for whitefish. That was all for now, and thank you very much.