Good morning, welcome to Lerøy Seafood Group's first quarter presentation 2021. My name is Henning Beltestad, and I am the CEO in Lerøy Seafood Group. Together with me today, I have Sjur Malm, CFO. First of all, I want to, again, talk a little bit about our fantastic value chain. We have done huge investments the last 20 years to create this value chain, integrated in both red fish and white fish. Our goal is to create the world's most efficient and sustainable value chain for seafood. We are not there yet, but we are sure we have the organization, the people, and the value chain through our investments to reach this goal. First of all, I will take us through the highlights of the quarter, and then Sjur Malm will take us through the key financial figures.
Then I will come back and talk a little bit about the outlook for the rest of this year. Lerøy Seafood Group reports in three segments: farming, wild catch, and VAP, Sales & Distribution. First quarter, we had EBIT pre fair value adjustment of NOK 455 million. The result is reduced by NOK 43 million by intercompany elimination. This will come back when we sell this stock out of the value chain the coming quarters, second quarter and third quarter. We had an EBIT per kilo all inclusive of NOK 740, and we have a net interest-bearing debt of NOK 3 billion, and the proposed dividend is NOK 2 per share. This quarter also, we have had some challenges with the winter wounds, which is the same as we had especially in Lerøy Aurora last year, but we also see that we are affected in some of the other regions.
We expect volume for this year to be around 2,005 to 2,010 ton. We estimate further growth beyond this. The expected white fish volume is 73,000 ton for 2021. If we look down to the right, we see that we harvested 42,000 ton salmon and trout, caught close to 26,000 ton of white fish, had a turnover of NOK 4.9 billion and an EBIT of NOK 455. If we look into the farming, we have a fairly okay quarter. If we look at the prices, which was NOK 68.50 last year, it is NOK 52.10 this year. The price is down by NOK 16. The trout market is so far this year more in balance, and the prices of trout are more in line with the prices of salmon.
The contract share in this quarter is 25%, and the price realization of the contracts is higher than the spot prices.
The cost is increased from Q4 and in line with Q1 last year. The EBIT in farming is NOK 6 per kilo compared to NOK 14.3 in Q1 2020. If we look at the farming volumes and our guiding, we keep our guidance at the same level as we reported last quarter. We have 47,000 tons in Lerøy Aurora, 70,000 tons in Lerøy Midt, and 75,000 tons in Lerøy Sjøtroll, and a total of 192,000 tons in Norway. Our share in the Norskott Havbruk is 18,000 tons, a total of 210,000 tons. A very good growth compared to 2020. As I said, we also expect further growth into 2022. We have that in the right direction in the salmon farming. The wild catch highlights.
Like I mentioned, the price realization in whitefish is much lower than the same period last year. The catch volume is 25,700 tons. The quota situation for the remainder of the year is very good. I'll come back to that. The seasonal coast fishery was delayed this year. That affected a little bit the land industry. The performance in land industry has been approved a lot compared to first quarter last year. The EBIT in this segment is NOK 185 million compared to NOK 270 million in 2020. For the catch volumes, we have caught 11,000 tons of cod, 4,000 tons of saithe, 6,000 tons of haddock, and a total of 25,700 tons. The remaining quota is 16,600 tons for cod, 11,000 tons for saithe, and 6,200 tons for haddock.
Especially the remaining quota for cod is very good, where we have more than 6,000 ton more than what we had last year. That will affect the results, especially second half of the year when we take the remaining quota if we compare to last year. A good situation going forward for Lerøy Havfisk. Sales and distribution. A good quarter. We see improvements in many of our operations where we utilize the capacity better than what we did last year. The results this year is NOK 101 million compared to NOK 54 million last year. Also for some of the facilities, it's been challenging, especially the factories specialized in HoReCa distribution have had a very tough period first quarter this year.
We see some improvements going forward now and see that the HoReCa segment is step by step opening up in many parts of Europe. We expect especially for second half of the year that these factories which are specialized in this segment will come back at a normal level. Sjur Malm will take us through the key financial figures.
Yes, thank you, Henning. Last year has been obviously a lot impacted by restrictions from the COVID-19 pandemic. The key question has been how will demand for seafood develop? At least the key learning before looking into our numbers is that the demand development through first quarter has been fantastic. Driven a lot by Europe, driven a lot by retail. We believe that with our integrated value chain, with our significant downstream operation, that we have excellent position for the future. Looking into the numbers and looking on the key drivers on the latter lines, we can see that the harvested volume of salmon and trout is up from last year. As we have reported previously, we had a good production in 2020, giving growth in 2020 and further growth in 2021. This is seen in the harvested figures.
Looking at the profitability per kilo, there is a new production tax in Norway at NOK 0.40 per kilo, which is included in this figure. Excluding that tax, our release from stock cost is down. Including it's about the same. We have cost levels around last year. The reason for lower profitability is lower price realization. Spot prices are down NOK 16 from last year. On a relative basis, performance is better this quarter compared to same quarter last year. Looking into whitefish, it's the same dynamics. The key driver here is lower price realization, as Henning has already commented upon, and that drives a lower profitability on our whitefish operations. Looking then on the financial figures themselves, we see revenue is down. That is driven by price effects and underlying activity has been very strong.
We've talked through key reasons to why EBIT operating result is down from just over NOK 700 million last year to around NOK 450 million this year. Associates we will return to. Our U.K. operation in Scottish Sea Farms is the most important asset. Net finance was much impacted last year from volatility in the currency markets. In sum, our earnings per share is NOK 0.58, which is down from NOK 0.91 last year. Looking at the balance sheet, there's a lot of numbers. On intangible assets, we bought some license capacity from the Norwegian state. Right of use asset is impact from bringing on balance all rental lease agreements. We've added some new wellboat contracts. Tangible fixed asset, the biggest investments ongoing is in the build-out of a new post-smolt facility in central Norway. Looking at biological assets, fish in sea and on land.
We can see that the number is up 2%. Looking into the notes following this report, we can see that the biomass is up 4%, so at least some indication of a lower cost point. Other inventory is down, an indication that we are not building inventory. Demand is good. Receivable is down due to lower price realization. In that, we see the working capital release, which we look into in the cash flow. We believe we have a strong balance sheet. We have reduced net interest-bearing debt significantly in first quarter. That's shown here on the cash flow. We've already commented the key drivers behind the seasonal build down in working capital. Investments or CapEx is lower this year compared to last year, as last year we had a new boat in first quarter. Beyond that, there are no big changes.
Net interest-bearing debt is down from NOK 3.5 billion to NOK 3.1 billion end quarter. Going forward, we expect CapEx today to be around NOK 1.3 billion. On top of that might be the new planned investment in Årskog, which is more post-smolt capacity related to Lerøy Sjøtroll. When it comes to working capital, we expect to rebuild the biomass going forward. When it comes to receivables, that will obviously be much impacted on view on prices. Looking at profitability per segment. What we can see here compared to last year is that profits in farming and whitefish, as wild catch is down. That is price driven.
We see that we have a substantial improvement in downstream operation, VAP, Sales & Distribution, almost a doubling, which is positive and which is highlighting the increased activity level and increased utilization rate of several of the investments we've done over the recent years. Positive development there. Looking at Lerøy Aurora, which is our farming operation in Northern Norway. We had a challenging start of 2020 with significant downgrades due to winter wounds. Post that, we have done a lot of analysis, we have done a lot of measures, but unfortunately, we have not been able to solve this puzzle yet. That is then impacting our operation in first quarter and will impact operation in first half. Looking at 2020, we had a significant improvement in second half with high harvest volumes at a much lower cost point, and that is what we expect also in 2021.
What we've done this quarter is to harvest fish sooner than what we had planned for. That gives higher cost. With the winter wounds and downgrades, that gives low price realization and low profitability. We will have limited volume in second quarter. We're building the biomass, and we expect to see a completely different performance in second half, which will be 70% of the annual volume. However, this challenge is obviously a key challenge for Lerøy Aurora and our group to solve, and it has the highest priority. We will see a weak first half. We expect to see a substantial improvement in performance in second half. Looking at Lerøy Midt, which is operation in central Norway. This quarter has been impacted by, among others, a very cold winter.
That is impacting growth, but we see we have overall performance basically in line with what we have planned for. This quarter, costs are down compared to similar quarter last year, but up from fourth quarter. We expect to see about the same cost level in Q2 with a lower cost base in second half. Looking at the investments that is currently ongoing here, it's a new post-smolt facility, which we expect will substantially increase harvest volumes basically then from 2023. With that increase, that we will see a scaling of the cost base. Overall, quarter basically in line with expectations. We will see also here a lower cost second half. Lerøy Sjøtroll, which is our operation in western Norway, has been challenging for many years, but as we have commented on through 2020, we are starting to see improvements.
We are starting to see effect from operational focus, from investment in post-smolt, from vaccine strategies, and a lot of measures and efforts made to improve the operation. It's positive to see that this is continuing into Q1. Obviously, no improvement is a straight line, but the trend remains very clear. Also on positive side is the balance of the trout market. Looking at the trout market, it was oversupplied basically with a big increase in volumes last year. This year, much more balanced, which gives a price point much more equal to salmon. We see that with the NOK 16 lower spot price for salmon, earnings per share now, EBIT per kilo here is only down NOK 3.5. That is also supported by a significant reduction in cost.
For the year, we continue to expect to see continued growth, and harvest volume guidance for this year is 75,000 tons. There is growth potential beyond that following the post-smolt investment in Kjærelva, which is already in place. On wild catch, Henning has already commented upon key drivers. Last year, we did not fully catch the potential on haddock, so we have focused on haddock in the start of this year, which gives a slightly different catch mix than what we saw last year. Also with the higher quote on cod, we have a significant potential for cod more than Q1. We have much more remaining quotas on cod at this point in time this year compared to last year. It's a different seasonality in the harvest mix. In light of that and in light of the price reductions, this is a decent quarter.
On the land-based industry, we have seen challenges, and that industry has been challenged for decades. We are focusing on operational improvements, making the right product at the right place, better cooperation between sales, production, and the value chain. We are starting to see small improvements. A more positive profit level in land-based industry first quarter this year compared to last year, which is positive. Our downstream operations, we have some which have a high share of sales historically to retail, which have had a challenging quarter. We have some which is focused on retail, which have had a fantastic quarter. In some, we believe that we are starting to see the investments we've done in capacity recent years yielding growth and yielding profit with the high capacity utilization.
We believe we have a very strong position for the coming decade with our downstream focus and with the integrated value chain. First quarter this year, almost a doubling of operating profit, and we expect for the year to see higher profits than what we saw last year. U.K., Scottish Sea Farms. It looks almost like a Swiss clock when you look at the profit per kilo. We also know prices are down and albeit price realization in general in U.K. is less down than in Norway. This chart also shows a significant cost reduction this quarter compared to the same period last year. Smolt investments have been done also in Scottish Sea Farms. They are yielding good results.
This is a decent and good quarter, and we are on track to reach the guidance for 36,000 tonnes in 2021, which is substantial growth from recent years. Henning, I give the word back to you.
Thank you, Sjur. I will look into the outlook for markets and Lerøy Seafood Group going forward. First of all, we take up the supply side of Atlantic salmon. We also have numbers for 2022 here. If we look at 2021, we see a global growth of 2.2%, Europe of close to 10%, Norway 8%, and we see increase of 14% in U.K., 23% in Faroe Islands, and 47% in Iceland. In Americas, we see a reduction in volumes of 10%, and especially Chile is reducing their volume drastically in this year with a 15% reduction. If we look at the spot prices from quarter to quarter, it's going up and down like normal. We had a very tough fourth quarter this year with NOK 43, and then we see first quarter of NOK 52, so a good increase of NOK 9.
Going into second quarter, we see that the prices is increasing a lot. We had a huge volume in first quarter, I will say that the demand with a price level of NOK 52 is surprisingly good for first quarter. The start in second quarter is very good, mainly because of lower supply, but also because the HoReCa market is starting to open up again. It looks promising for the second half of the year. If we look at the monthly harvest volumes for Norway, we see that we will have an increase of the rest of the year of 2%-10%. We expect when the HoReCa segment open up again, it will take this growth in a good way and demand will increase for second half. Same pictures for Europe.
If we look at the consumption side in first quarter, huge growth of 14%, and with a price level of 52. It seems like the market for Atlantic salmon is extremely strong. We had a 90% growth in EU, 11% growth in other markets, and 8% growth in USA. We are the world's largest producer of trout, so we also need to take up the supply side of growth. Like we mentioned earlier, the price level relative to salmon has improved a lot for trout. The main reason for that is lower volume this year, and globally, we expect a 12% reduction in the volume. In Norway, we expect a 15% reduction. Also the second-largest producer of trout globally is Chile, which is down close to 40% in 2021.
We believe that we will have a much better situation for the trout going forward than what we had in 2020 and 2019, where we had a significant growth, especially in Norway, of 22% in 2019 and 18% in 2020. I will say good. We believe that trout will. It's more a niche product compared to the salmon, but a fantastic product that we really believe that we can continuously develop a good market for. If we look at the COVID-19 restriction that are making everything more unpredictable than before, even though I think the situation was worse one year ago regarding predictability. Of course, now we know more about how to handle this. We know more about how the market has reacted, and we know that the markets will open up step by step.
We see it in Italy, we see it in France, we see it in other European countries, we also see it in Norway. We see that for our distribution company in Oslo, focusing on the HoReCa segment, it's been a very challenging period going back. Now we see also Oslo restaurants are opening up again, and that we start to increase the sales again into this segment. That's very positive, and we expect that maybe not back to normal for second half, but closer to normal for second half of this year, which might affect our performance in the downstream activities. Also, hope of good prices for both whitefish and salmon and trout in second half. We keep our guiding for 210,000 tons totally of Atlantic salmon and trout.
We expect a contract share of 30% in second quarter, the harvest volume in the second quarter will be below the harvest volume second quarter 2020. We continuously see a significant potential in the white fish. Both we believe in the demand side for the white fish, and we believe that our operation and performance in this part of the value chain will improve going forward. We are now trained for three years, and we will step by step get better and making also this part of the value chain more efficient and sustainable. Yep. We see a significant potential for the further development in the downstream value chain. If we look at that part of the value chain, we have developed a fantastic distribution network in all major markets all over Europe.
This is done over the last 20 years and especially the last 10 years. I think we are very well-positioned in the most important market for Lerøy, of course. 55% of our activities is in Europe, all these facilities will help us have a better service level, being able to deliver higher quality for the customer and more stability for the customer and doing a better job working together with strategic customers and to add value to their part of the value chain and to make growth for our strategic customer. By being a specialist in seafood and a specialist in the category development and the product development and to understand the trends in each market. Some news. We have Seafood Danmark, where we own 33%. We now took over, we have 78% of the share in this company. A fantastic, well-driven company with local management.
Covering a wide range of seafood categories, fresh products, fresh packed products, value-added products like breaded products and whitefish, and also handling a lot of local auctions in the Hanstholm region, doing distribution of local Danish fantastic seafood. This company performed very well. Turnover of DKK 1.2 billion and an operating result around DKK 70 million. A very good performance in Seafood Danmark, and we believe that we can continue the positive development in this market with the position that we have today. We have a new fantastic factory in Madrid, just finished. We are starting to move into this factory.
We invested the first time in Madrid in 2011, and this old facility that we had became too small for us and we had to invest in a bigger facility, and it's so good to see the picture of this factory. It's too bad that I can't go down and visit right now, but I'm really looking forward to going down and meet the people, the organization, and to see this modern factory. I think this is probably the most modern seafood center, specialized in products with a short shelf life like sushi, ready meals, but we have can do filleting frozen and fresh packed product and gives us a very strong position in the Spanish market with the facility in Barcelona, in Valencia, in Alicante, and the new factory in Madrid and Lisboa and Las Palmas.
The key here is to have the Madrid factory will be the motor in this area and delivering to also the other facilities, and the head office will be in Madrid. I'm extremely happy with what we have done in this market the last 10 years. We have an organization which believe in this market, which believe in the people, believe in the ability and what we can do together, we are really, really proud of having this new factory in the center of Iberia, being a good logistic hub for also the other sites. 10 year after we start up in Spain, we also do the same in Italy, this also has been a dream or a goal, and now we are there. From outside maybe not the most beautiful facility, but internally in the factory, it's totally renovated.
We have built up a good organization in Italy, and we have the equipment to do a very good job for our key customers and especially specialized in fresh packed consumer products. I would say that the Italian market for these kinds of products is underdeveloped. It's not like it's in France or in Spain or in Norway, where this trend started much earlier. Here we can be a key partner with the tools, the knowhow in category development, product development, and good knowhow from other markets and to be a good partner giving extra value to our key partners in the Italian market.
I'm really looking forward to the challenge that we have in developing the Italian market for fresh and fresh packed seafood with sustainable value chain behind, giving predictability, high service level, and giving traceability all the way back to the fishing boat or to our farming operation. To the Italian team, good luck in the work that we have to do now. Now we can't blame that we don't have the facility. It's here. Now we have to take out the potential. Back to the first slide again. Our fantastic value chain, fully integrated in whitefish and red fish. The good thing with having the value chain is that we can control all steps and to take out the potential, make improvements in all steps, and so the customers get a value from working with Lerøy Seafood Group, a fully integrated seafood company.
Our goal is to create the world's most efficient and sustainable value chain for seafood. We are not yet there, but we will be there hopefully very soon. Thank you very much.