Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our Q4 webcast and presentation. My name is Christian Riber. I'm CEO of Norcod, and I will be presenting today together with my colleague and our CFO, Arne Kristian Hoset. The agenda for today is that I will go through the Q4 highlights and the yearly highlights of 2023. I will also give an operational and market update on where we are currently. After that, Arne Kristian Hoset will take over and give a financial update, and I will, at the end, give a little bit of an outlook. After the presentation, we will have a Q&A session, and you are already now welcome to post your questions in the chat, which will be answered by the end of this session.
So for the fourth quarter of 2023, we had a revenue of NOK 83 million, which is up 61%, sorry, from the Q4 of 2022. At the same time, we've had an operating loss of NOK 47 million compared to NOK 32 million in Q4 of 2022. We have significantly increased our harvest volume to 1,600 tons, up 90% from previous year. And also, we've had a great production with very satisfying biological results, with a feed conversion rate of 1.05, being very important for us as one of our biggest cost drivers is our feed. Also, that has enabled us to invest further in our biomass, having a net growth in Q4 of 2,300 tons. Post the quarter, we've also had a bit of a commercial breakthrough. We've been working hard on new markets, both in North America and China.
In January, we landed a new contract for about 10% of our production of 2024 with a Chinese client at favorable terms, which will see us having profitability on this contract. A couple of highlights for the year: our yearly revenue is closing in on NOK 270 million, 58% up from 2022. Also, we've harvested just over 6,150 tons, again up 60% from last year, so a significant increase in our production and harvest. Also, unfortunately, it has resulted in an operating loss of NOK 233 million, heavily impacted by our first half with our accelerated harvest. But still, it's been an unacceptable result with the situation in mind. Again, very favorable production and biology, and we've had a biomass growth of 4,600 tons in the year.
On the operational side of things, we have fully implemented Kråkøy, our own harvest facility, and all volumes in Q4 have been harvested. Almost all volumes of Q4 have been harvested at Kråkøy, now being fully focused on harvesting farmed cod. Also, during Q4, we've implemented a new line to significantly increase our harvest capacity. Again, we've seen good growth, robust fish, and a good production across all our sites with low feed conversion rate, again at 1.05. But also, at the same time, we've seen a very, very high quality of our fish being harvested, over 90% in average, actually 93%. As mentioned before, we've had a good increase in net growth of our biomass, now getting close to 8,000 tons at sea, which is a total of 52% of all biomass at sea in Norway.
The volume we harvested in 2023 was 6,150 tons, giving us a total market share of just over 70%. Our main markets during 2023 have still been Western and Central Europe. But now, starting 2024, we are now shipping product both to Asia and North America at a significantly different price level. This is a big part of our future strategy: opening new markets, recognizing the value of our product. Just to highlight some of our significant biological results, on our production on land before our sea phase, we've seen a 52% increase in growth on our juveniles. So it's grown in the same time frame. It's grown 125 grams this year compared to 82 grams last year. That's a significant increase and gives us the ability, on the same production time, to put a larger juvenile to the sea phase.
We mentioned it a couple of times, but our biological FCR has been very, very favorable at 105, showing that our fish utilizes the feed in a very, very good manner, and we have very, very good feeding control. So we have taken our feed conversion rate from 1.16 last year down to 1.05. And last but not least, we've seen a very, very high percentage of high-quality fish coming out of our production and out of our harvesting facility, giving us a 93% superior part of our production, which is very, very satisfactory. On the market side of things, we are still seeing a very, very strong market for Atlantic cod. We're seeing a decrease in the wild availability, and at the same time, we're seeing an increasing demand from more or less all markets, both Asia, North America, and Europe.
There is an imbalance in supply and demand, which definitely favors our company. The customers are now starting to recognize our value proposition, having stable, high-quality fish on long-term contracts in the market. We've been harvesting since end of September every week, which will continue throughout the year. Many markets and clients are starting to recognize the advantages for them as well in our product. As already mentioned, we've opened new markets during the quarter, both in China and North America. As you can see below, it's at a completely different price point, where it shows that for them, they understand the value of the product and the opportunities it gives them and are therefore also willing to pay a completely different price point. Quarter-over-quarter, we are increasing our sales prices, which we are expecting to continue throughout the coming quarters.
We already now have contracts and sales in place, which will show us profitability. Our job in the coming quarters is to lift our main volume from the lower-paying markets and segments into these correct markets and segments across the world. I'll give the word now to Arne Kristian, our CFO, who will take me through some of the highlights of our numbers.
Hello everyone. My name is Arne Kristian Hoset. I am the CFO in Norcod, and I will present the key financials. During the quarter, total harvest volume ended at 1,611 tons, whole fish equivalent. Production cost per kilogram before harvest, freight distribution, ended on NOK 48.3/ kg whole fish equivalent. We expect that this will decrease during the next quarter as we are harvesting the remainder of Jamnungen. Total revenues came in at NOK 83 million. Cash at hand ended on NOK 19 million, and available credit ended on NOK 7 million, making available funds ending on NOK 26 million. As mentioned initially, our net growth during 2023 is 4,600 tons, whole fish equivalent. However, to continue biomass growth, we have, as also described in the quarterly report released this morning, identified a working capital need to fund our growth of approximately NOK 100 million-NOK 150 million.
Our ambition is to finance this through a private placement of new shares in the company. Our ambition is to carry this through during the first quarter. The asset side of our balance sheet mainly consists of equipment used in our production and biomass at sea. Total biological assets ended at NOK 280 million, and biomass at sea ended at 7,800 tons. Production equipment is classified as non-current assets and quite stable over the quarters. Our biomass at sea is somewhat a little more subject to changes over the quarters as the fish is growing and at the same time our harvesting on other sites, Jamnungen specifically, during Q4. We have somehow moderate expectations to sales prices for the remainder of Q1, which is wild fish season. We have therefore adjusted our biomass valuation, which has a profit and loss impact in the quarter.
Despite that, sales prices are expected to increase during Q2 and for the remainder of 2024. As also Christian mentioned initially, we are working continuously to switch more volume to more favorable contracts, especially in Asia and North America. During 2023, our book equity is significantly impacted from the capital initiatives during the second and third quarter. However, it is offset by the net loss for the year. In total, for the fourth quarter, operating revenues ended on NOK 83 million, up by 61% from NOK 51 million in Q4 2022. During the quarter, we have made capacity adjustments to align future production with a somehow revised growth strategy. We have recognized one-time items, so NOK 21 million, related to these capacity adjustments. EBIT excluding these one-time items ended on -NOK 47 million, down from NOK 32 million last year.
Total EBIT ended on -NOK 105 million, up 46% from -NOK 196 million last year. EBIT for the full financial year ended on -NOK 217 million, up 23% from -NOK 281 million last year. Even though our revenues and net results are heavily impacted by the accelerated harvest during the first half year and also by one-time items recognized during Q4, those numbers are far below our ambitions. But we are already seeing increased sales price potential on harvested volumes, on new contracts, and positive market opportunities lying ahead. I'm not going to comment too much on the balance sheet. Main components, as I discussed previously, are our biomass at sea, our cash position, and our book equity and financial liabilities. And in that respect, I would like to recall the private placement that I also mentioned, that we have an ambition to carry through during the first quarter.
Then I would like to switch back to Christian, who will share the outlook with us.
Thank you, Arne Kristian. Looking a little bit ahead, we've now reached a point in our company where we are what we call at a steady state. We are now producing and harvesting on a regular basis, monthly, the same volume. So we've built the biomass to a level now, which we have invested heavily in, to a level where we consistently can produce between 10,000-12,000 tons on a yearly basis. Our focus now is to make this production profitable. We now have a year's supply to our clients, delivering every week, every month, which is a very important part of our business strategy. We've also implemented a new maturation regime, and we also have a framework in place now as an industry together with the Directorate of Fisheries.
This has resulted in we've now completed in four weeks, we've completed a full harvest at our Jamnungen site with complete control over maturation. This is very important for us. We are developing new markets, again, mainly North America and China being new markets, but we're also further developing our existing markets being Southern and Western Europe. Again, across all markets, we are seeing very, very big demand. But we need now to lift up our sales into the correct price categories, which we have demonstrated is possible. At the same time, as we can see here, the wild cod quotas are going down, and it's expected at a lower level in the future. So there's no doubt there is a huge demand for Atlantic cod in general, but also healthy and sustainable protein.
If we look at the end product, you can say often a cod fillet compared to a salmon fillet is at least at the same price or often even more expensive than salmon in the supermarkets, which gives us big expectations to see a significant price increase in our raw material, where today there's a significant difference between salmon and cod. On the production side of things, we have a very, very stable production across all our sites, strong biology, good growth, very good feed conversion rates. So biologically, we are very, very positive, and we'll only see this developing in a good direction in the coming years. So to sum it up, we now have a very efficient production, as efficient as the salmon industry. We have a great product that's been very greatly received in the markets.
Everybody that's buying our product wants to rebuy and want more, which is a very positive trend. Price is going up quarter by quarter. We have a very, very big market awareness across all markets. And we have a production which we can very easily scale up once we see profitability in our production. That summons up the presentation for now. We will now switch over to a Q&A. So if you have questions, please feel free to put them in the chat, and we will answer them the best way possible.
I will start now here with Knut-Ivar Bakken. He's asking regarding the prices on slide six, are North America and Asia prices calculated back to farm or including transport? These prices are delivered to the market prices.
Another anonymous guy is asking how much volume in 2024 do you expect the U.S. and China market to take? Well, by now, we have an 800-ton contract in China, which is 10% of our total production in 2024. And we're seeing a stable supply into the U.S. market that we are expecting to grow during the year.
Arne Kristian, we've been asked what is the reason for reduction in production cost from Q3 to Q4, if you can elaborate on that a little bit.
Yes. The reason for the reduced production cost from Q3 to Q4 is that in Q3, we had very little harvest volume. And we also recognized some increased expenses to juveniles and fry, or yeah, the earlier part of the production phase during the third quarter. So the harvest volume during Q3 was only 144 tons. That's why.
Thank you. Now we've been asked by Knut-Ivar Bakken, can you comment on the planned juvenile releases in 2024? Yes, we already now have juveniles in production on land. So we will do one full release as planned in the spring and one full release in the fall, again, giving us a stable volume of these approximately 10,000 tons per year. Again, once we see profitability on our production, that's when we will see an increase in our production.
An anonymous guy is asking when do you expect to be profitable? As we mentioned in our company update earlier this year in January, we are expecting to see still a negative result in 2024, but significantly lower than what we just showed here in 2023. And then in 2025, we are expecting to see a positive result. The reason why we can say that already at this point in time is we have now that much control over our production and biology, and we got control over our cost base. So we can see the fish that we're putting at sea here in both the spring and the fall will be profitable, depending on market price, of course.
Knut-Ivar Bakken is also asking here how much of the biomass in the sea end 2023 is from the 2022 juvenile release. We put both Jamnungen at sea in 2022 and Frosvika and Labukta and Mausund in 2023. That's our combined biomass. So I think if there is no further question, we will finalize our Q4 webcast and say thank you very much for participating.