Good morning and welcome to the First Quarter Presentation of Solstad Offshore ASA. It has been a while since we had our last investor presentation, but I must say it's good to be back again. This presentation will be held by myself, Lars Solstad, who is the CEO of the company, and Kjetil Ramstad, the CFO. There will be a Q&A session after the presentation. Please forward your questions in the chat if you have any, and we will answer as best as we can. I would like to start by looking at some of the key numbers on financial highlights on slide number three. The numbers you see in brackets are the numbers for 2020. Keep in mind that those numbers were prior to the restructuring of the company that was concluded in the fourth quarter last year.
Also, keep in mind that in the first quarter numbers, the settlement agreement that we did for the Norman Maximus with Saipem last week is also included. When looking at some of the key numbers here, most of them are moving in the right direction. The exception is the backlog, but I will come back and explain that a bit on a later slide. The cash position is significantly improved. We are back in positive equity, and our debt level has been significantly reduced. Moving to slide four and looking at the business itself and the operations, we see that it's a fact that the first quarter is the first full quarter after the restructuring. We are now changing focus to deliver on operational excellence in addition to winning new contracts, and of course, also deliver on the restructuring agreement.
The company now owns and operates one of the largest offshore fleets globally, and we had an average of 75 operational vessels in the first quarter, and those achieved a utilization of 79%. This is in line with what we saw last year, but we see that the rates in average for the first quarter this year are a bit lower than we had in 2020. We have also activated three vessels from layup in the quarter, and all three have been activated based on new contracts that we have signed. One is for the Norman Fortress, for working in the offshore wind. We achieved the contract for Vestas. The Norman Ranger was activated because of a contract we got in Australia, and the Sytella was activated based on a new contract we got in the U.K.
We also see that there are other vessels being mobilized as we speak, but I will come back to that a bit later on. Operationally, we, as most others, experience that the COVID pandemic is still creating some operational challenges. Most of them are linked to crew changes, and we also see that it's costly, and we have booked a cost of an additional OpEx of around $30 million related to COVID in the first quarter. On the next slide, five, I will share a few words about the Norman Maximus and the settlement agreement we did last week. As many of you will remember, we had a dispute with Saipem from the fourth quarter last year over a termination fee for an early termination of the vessel on a contract with Saipem. That dispute is now solved, and we reported that to the market last week.
That termination fee of around $44 million is booked in the first quarter, as I mentioned. We also have an ongoing dialogue for the long-term financing arrangement for the vessel, and that is ongoing. I refer to the first quarter report for additional information about that process. The Norman Maximus is currently working in Mexico and will do so at least until the middle of June. We are working with several alternatives thereafter, and one of the alternatives is a further extension in Mexico. We see that there is an increasing interest for the vessel. As the market improves, we see that the bidding activity is quite active, and that goes for project work, and it goes for longer-term work. Where the vessel will end up after the Mexico contract remains to be seen, but there are a few options there.
Looking at the fleet update on the next page, we have a core fleet in Solstad Offshore of around 90 vessels. Those vessels are working with oil and gas and offshore wind operators and clients around the world, and mainly in our main geographical areas, which is Norway, U.K., Brazil, and Australia, but also other places. In addition to the 90 vessels, we also have several vessels that are in the process of being sold. These are, in general, the smallest and the oldest vessels of the fleet, and the majority of them have been in layup for quite a long time. The status of the 90 is that we have per quarter end, we have 75 vessels in operation and 15 vessels in layup.
After the quarter end, we have an additional five vessels that have either been activated already or are in the process of doing or being activated. All those five, same as the three we activated in the first quarter, all those are activated based on new contracts we have done. On the sales side, we have communicated earlier that we are selling out 37 vessels. During the first quarter, six of those vessels were sold and delivered to new owners. We have had 31 vessels left held for sale. After the quarter end, a further two vessels have been sold and delivered, and we are in negotiations to sell several more. The vessels are being sold. We are negotiating now to recycle quite a few of the vessels.
We are selling to non-oil and gas operators, and we have sold some vessels to geographical areas where we have limited access with that type of vessels. In addition to selling off, we are also focusing on upgrading vessels to new standards. First of all, that is to battery hybrid solutions, where we are now upgrading our vessel number eight to battery hybrid. There are many more processes going on in that term. That is in discussions with clients, and we expect that there will be a few more vessels being upgraded already this year. Looking at the market on the next slide, we see that there are a lot of positive signals in the market. We see it on the bidding activity. We see it within oil and gas, but also in offshore wind. As we see it, it looks quite positive, especially for the CSV fleet going forward.
The CSV fleet has the benefit of being in demand both from the subsea clients and from the offshore wind clients. In addition, this segment is not as oversupplied as some of the other OSV segments. It's also good to see that we are signing new contracts, and we are doing so in the first quarter, also after the quarter end. It's in oil and gas, it's in wind, it's in all vessel segments, and it's in our main geographical regions, as mentioned, Norway, U.K., Brazil, and Australia. Having said that, there are also pressure on the day rates still. That is basically because of or due to the high number of bidders and the high number of available vessels, especially within anchor handlers and PSVs.
We believe it will take longer to come back to decent rate levels on those two segments than in the CSV segment, which will probably come back to okay levels at an earlier stage. Next slide is the backlog, and I mentioned that a few slides back. We have a relatively open contract structure, which in a growing market is an improving market, is not too bad. It's comfortable to see that we have maybe 60% of our backlog already in the next 12 months. We see also that we are already starting to build backlog in 2022, and we'll continue to do so in an improving market. There's a lot of talk and a lot of activity also about offshore wind. We are doing more and more in the segment. In 2020, we had around NOK 500 million in revenue from offshore wind.
We expect that to be on the same level or better this year. We should not forget the oil and gas activity either. It's coming back, and we see many opportunities. I expect that there will be many opportunities within oil and gas the coming years. By that, I hand the microphone over to Kjetil, who will take us through the first quarter numbers.
Thank you, Lars Solstad, and good morning to everyone. If we go to the income statement slide and looking at the activity level for the first quarter, we see that we have revenues of approximately NOK 1.3 billion in the first quarter of the year. That is, of course, as you can see, a little bit up from last year, which was NOK 1.2 billion. The adjusted EBITDA is NOK 432 million versus NOK 284 million compared to last year. In these numbers, the settlement with Saipem is included. As Lars Solstad mentioned, approximately $44 million, approximately NOK 370 million. That will be a one-time effect from Norman Maximus. The activity, and we had approximately 75 vessels operational in the quarter, with the average utilization of 79%, which is in line with last year. Day rates have been somewhat weaker compared to last year.
On the OPEX side, we have been able to adjust the level of OPEX with the activity level. That is good to see. As we see also today, the OPEX numbers are influenced by COVID-19 additional costs that we experience on the projects and on the vessels where we are working around the globe. The admin expenses, as you see, are in line with last year. There are still some restructuring effects that we still experience. That is approximately for the quarter, NOK 12 million. In reality, we are actually even a little bit better than last year. If we go further down, we see that we have an operating result before the depreciation of NOK 423 million. Then we have the depreciation, a small impairment. We have sold six vessels in the quarter. It's good to see that our book values are in line with the market.
So immaterial effect on those sales. If we go down to finance costs, we have in the quarter a finance cost of NOK 346 million, which you can see is substantially lower than we had in the previous quarter. That was prior to restructuring. It's good to see that that has come down quite significantly. If we split that a little bit up, we see that the interest charges are approximately NOK 245 million. The currency effects in the quarter are an unrealized currency of NOK 82 million and NOK 20 million of realized currency. I think that what we look at here, that is probably the run rate that we will see going forward for us and also in the coming quarters. As you see, we had an ordinary result before taxes was negative NOK 308 million. That is again substantially better than last year.
If we go to the balance sheet, I will go through some highlights from the balance sheet as well. As you can see, the tangible fixed assets have decreased, and of course, that's the main cause of depreciations and currency effects. On the right of use assets, that is mainly due to impairments on Norman Maximus. That has decreased from NOK 4 billion to NOK 2.4 billion. If we go further, if you look at the total assets, we have now a total asset of NOK 25.7 billion. Go to the liability side. As you can see, and also last year I mentioned, the equity has been significantly improved from a large negative number to a +NOK 3.9 billion of equity. If you also look at the debt level, then you have to look at the long term and the short term a little bit in combination.
We see that the long-term debt has increased to NOK 17 billion versus the over NOK 30 million that we had that was classified as short term under the total current liabilities. Like I mentioned at the start, the net interest-bearing debt that we are looking at at the moment is NOK 19.5 billion versus approximately NOK 34 billion in the quarter last year. That's good. Cash has been strengthened. We have a cash position of NOK 2.1 billion versus a little bit less than NOK 1 billion last year. All in all, if you look at also the equity ratio of the company, we are now from a very negative position to approximately 15% equity ratio. That is the balance sheet. As you can see, it has been very much strengthened since we looked at the first quarter in the last year.
With that, I will hand the word back to Lars Solstad to take you through the rest of the presentation. Thank you.
Thanks, Kjetil. I would try to sum up on page 11 of where we are and what we see. There's no doubt that we are starting to see some early signs of improvements in our market. Also, our experience is that we see that there is a bit more optimism in our segments. We see that it will be a benefit for our company that there is a growth both in offshore wind and in oil and gas, where especially the CSVs will benefit from that going forward. Also, keep in mind that there are still a lot of vessels around, especially in the anchor handler and PSV segments. That will continue to have a pressure on the day rates in those segments. It starts with utilization. We will come back to a decent utilization earlier on the CSV segment than in the other segments.
That will sort of influence the rate level going forward. Very positive to see that activity is improving. I will also mention that we see a huge benefit that we as a company have access to the important markets in Brazil and in Australia, especially given the type of vessels that we have and where it's possible to get long-term contracts for, for example, anchor handlers. To be able to deliver local support, local content solutions in areas like Brazil and Australia is a huge benefit. That will be positive for Solstad Offshore going forward. By that, we conclude our presentation and we move over to the Q&A session. We have got a couple of questions already.
One of them is from Roger Sterne asking about a comment that was given by Aker in their first quarter numbers in relation to what Solstad Offshore's position within offshore wind could be and in cooperation with other Aker companies. What I can comment on that is that we see it as very natural that a company like Solstad Offshore are taking a firm position in the offshore wind segment. We are already very active there. We have about 10 of our vessels that are already working within offshore wind. We are discussing with the Aker companies and with other companies of how to take this further. That is an ongoing discussion. That's all I can say about that at this stage. Another question is from Svein Roar asking about what is the future assessment of write-downs and ups. I mean, it's difficult to predict, of course.
What we are seeing when it comes to vessel value is that it looks like they are more or less flattening out, I would say. Normally, that is an improving market will also be positive for the vessel values. How that will affect our accounts going forward is hard to predict more than that statement of vessel values. There is another one from Dipesh Punetta asking about the sale of vessels and the proceeds. I will say that the sales we have done in the first quarter are on a very low level. It's reflected in vessels that have been held for sale, have been written down to close to zero. The effect in the accounts is limited. There is one vessel that was valued higher and sold lower. That's where the impairment of $45 million comes from. It's related to one particular vessel.
On the Norman Maximus settlement and the $378 million, it's asked if that goes into the EBITDA. That's confirmed. Yes, it does in the first quarter. Going forward, I mean, we are not guiding, but normally the first quarter, given our North Sea exposure, the first quarter is normally the weakest. We already see, as I also mentioned, that we will have more vessels working in the second quarter and onwards. We also see that we are moving into the high season, at least in the North Sea, which will have a positive effect on our revenue going forward. On the cost related to payments, Kjetil, can you look at, can you answer the question three and four?
Yeah. That is on the cash flow. That is related to the lease payment of Norman Maximus that has been postponed in the first quarter.
Okay. There we got another question from Roger Sterne asking about, is it possible to say which vessels you reactivate? Is Norvaliant an option? The other eight vessels we are reactivating year to date, it's one subsea vessel, as I mentioned, going into offshore wind. It's one large anchor handler that we mobilized to a contract in Australia. It's one smaller anchor handler that is in Asia that we are mobilizing for a project in Southeast Asia. The remaining five are PSVs that will start on contracts here in this part of the world. Is Norvaliant an option? It's a question. It's not among the eight, but it's a vessel that we see will suit very nicely into offshore wind. We also have some tender activity going around that vessel too.
I will not be very surprised if we see that vessel working within offshore wind within the next 12 months or so. That was the last question. Thanks for joining us. We will come back with an updated quarterly presentation in August. Thank you very much.