Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the fourth quarter presentation for Solstad Offshore. The presentation will be held by CFO Kjetil Ramstad and myself, Lars Peder Solstad. There will be a Q&A session after the presentation, but feel free to send in your questions during the presentation. It has been a quarter with the very high activity. We have had solid operations, and our view on the future offshore market has been further strengthened. The picture on the front page of the presentation shows the CSV Normand Baltic, a small size CSV, but this vessel and other vessels of the same category are now enjoying a very strong demand from oil and gas and from offshore wind.
The vessel is now working in the Asian project market at rates we earlier could only dream of. This having said, a tighter market also influences the cost, which should not be underestimated going forward. I will come back to all this on the coming slides. Take a quick look at the disclaimer on Slide 2 before we continue to Slide 3, financial highlights. It is nice to see that most of the key indicators we measure have a positive development. Revenue continue upwards. Same goes with EBITDA and EBIT, and not at least the backlog. This quarter, the currency effect also came in our favor, giving a positive net result and contributing to the booked equity. Kjetil will come back to all this when going through the numbers later in the presentation.
We then take a look at the business update on Slide 4, we have had a very active quarter, with high utilization on our fleet, and we see that the commercial terms on contracts improves across all regions. This goes for rates and contract durations, but also contractual terms regulating risk and cost. The EBITDA compared to same quarter in 2021 is up with about NOK 160 million to NOK 554 million, and about NOK 2 billion for 2022 in total. It is also very good to see that 25% of our EBITDA in 2022 came from renewable energy projects, meaning that our fleet is and will continue to be an important part of the ongoing energy transition.
We had 80 vessels operating in the quarter. They achieved an average utilization of 88%, which is also better than a year earlier. In terms of new contracts, fourth quarter has been the best quarter we have ever had with NOK 3.3 billion in new contract value booked. The new backlog has healthy margins and are with solid counterparts. We also have to keep in mind, as I initially mentioned, that what drives the market activity also drives the cost level. This goes for OpEx, such as labor cost, spares and supplies. It goes also for CapEx, mainly linked to dry docks.
After quarter end, we have sold the CSV Normand Jarl with a profit of about NOK 420 million that will be booked in Q1 2023. This indicates that the ship values are on the rise and that there are buyers willing to pay premium numbers for the right vessels. Moving on to the market on the next slide. Both tender activity, utilization and contract awards give strong signals of improving demand for offshore vessels. Our vessels are in high demand from oil and gas and renewable energy clients all over the world. Looking at the investment plans our clients have, there are signs of a strong market that could last long. When I meet with clients all over the world, many of them are concerned about availability of vessels, and they are right. They should be.
Particularly this goes for the high-end vessels. Technology, cost, financing capacity are some of the reasons why it will take years to bring a meaningful number of new built vessels to the market. It's likely that we will see longer contracts at higher rates, and we will see a project markets where vessels are being mobilized to all corners of the world for shorter and for longer work scopes. We have spoiled our clients for the last seven, eight years with having all types of vessels being available at all times at a low price, and these days are now over. Moving to the next slide, and have a look at a few of the contracts we have done lately. I start with two of our subsea vessels fixed to Norwegian clients.
Normand Vision, a large subsea construction vessel, has been with Ocean Installer since 2014 and is now extended to end of 2026. Normand Ocean, also long-term with DeepOcean since 2014 and working in the Norwegian IMR market, that vessel has now been fixed to end of 2025. On the PSV side, we did the three long-term contracts in the U.K. We are bringing the first battery hybrid vessels to the U.K. market and entered into five year contracts for three of our PSVs with Total and Equinor UK, Lastly, our flagship Normand Maximus is fixed on two projects in 2023 at premium rates, utilizing the full capacity of the vessel.
When available, by the end of the year, the Maximus is perfectly positioned for the 2024 market, where we expect further increase in the field development or field installation market globally. We are already bidding on contracts for the vessel for 2024 and beyond. Moving to the next slide, to take a look at the backlog. We had a record high order intake in fourth quarter with new contracts with value of NOK 3.3 billion signed, giving a book-to-bill factor of two. This is the seventh consecutive quarter where we have had a book-to-bill factor of above one. The firm backlog is now NOK 9.2 billion up from NOK 5.6 one year ago.
If options are included, and in a tight market, the options are normally exercised, the total backlog is NOK 17.7 billion. More important, this is quality backlog with healthy margins. Also very important, we still have quite some available capacity, as I will show when we move on to the next slide. On the slide, I'll we'll It's the purpose is to show that yes, there's it's good to have an, have a large backlog, but it's also very important to have available capacity. If we include options, we have in excess of NOK 6 billion booked for execution in 2023, and this equals to about 90% of our 2022 revenue.
We have about 25% available days divided between the three vessel segments we operated. There is a solid earning potential on top of the booked backlog in 2023. When taking a look at 2024 and 2025, we still have a nice backlog, especially in 2024. More important, there is a huge potential to roll over lower margin contracts onto higher margin contracts in a market we believe will continue to be strong. We see the highest potential for the CSV fleet, but are more and more positive also to the anchor handling fleet. Not only in the traditional rig move market, but more in a global project mooring market.
Mainly oil and gas now. As floating wind develops, the anchor handlers will be central to build floating wind parks. In other words, the CSVs and the anchor handlers will be very important in the energy transition we are in the middle of from oil and gas production to a more production from renewable energy sources. With that, I hand the word over to you, Kjetil, to say, go into the more details on the numbers.
Thank you, Lars, good morning to everyone. If we start with the fourth quarter, it was a fourth quarter with high activity, giving revenues increasing by 26.6% to NOK 1.6 billion. Also giving a 56% increase in EBITDA to a little bit more than NOK 450 million. Saying that cost is as Lars also mentioned, under pressure, both on the OpEx side, vessel operating expenses, but also on the interest side.
If you see on fourth quarter, we also have a large positive effect from unrealized currency in the quarter of approximately NOK 1 billion. The interest is around half a billion NOK, so giving a net result for the quarter of NOK 525 million. For the year, also improving activity, 20% up on revenue side to almost NOK 6.5 billion, and almost NOK 2 billion of EBITDA, which is an increase from last year of approximately 30%.
If you look at the graph on the right-hand side, the EBITDA adjusted, we see that all segment is has been performing well during the year with good improvements year-over-year. Both anchor handling and the PSV segment shows that the margin has been improved, enter into new contracts that gives better return. If you look at the subsea, you can see that there is a decrease there. The shaded box that you see in the middle, that is from the termination fee that we received on the Normand Maximus.
If you exclude that one time effect, also the subsea margins has shown an improvement of almost doubling. Glad to see that renewable margin that we are able to make a good margin on the renewable projects as well as the subsea projects. During the year, the contribution and the EBITDA from renewable has almost tripled. That's good to see. You see the distribution also on the graph below that the CSVs are the largest contributor from the fleet.
You see also, there is a good margin, especially in the summer season, or in the middle of the year from the anchor handling fleet. As you see the PSV fleet is more steady during the year. If we then go to the balance sheet, and we see that the fixed asset is, it's a little bit up and, we are down on the asset because of the ordinary depreciation. Then we have a right-of-use asset, which is the Normand Maximus that we enter into a new bareboat in the fourth quarter.
That is the reason for the increase of the right-of-use asset. The cash it's a little bit down, approximately NOK 300 million from last year. The main driver for this is increased interest cost. We go to the equity and liability side of the balance sheet. We have an booked equity of NOK 1.7 billion, which is almost half of what we had last the same period last year. I will come a little bit back to the drivers on equity, but it's good to see that we have improved from the last quarter this year.
Debt is also a little bit up on the long term. Again, we'll come back to that on the next slide and we'll touch upon also a little bit on the short-term debt. If we go to the next slide, we see that we started the year with a book equity of 3 billion NOK. Then as we have touched upon, there is in this year a large unrealized currency effect of approximately 1.2 billion NOK. Of course, also the result for the year is taking the equity down a little bit.
That, but the main driver is unrealized currency, which takes the equity down to NOK 1.7. On the long-term debt, as you, as we saw, it's increasing from last year. Again, the main driver there is also related to unrealized currency of more than NOK 1.5 billion. Of course, that's due to 70% of our debt is nominated in US dollars.
You also see that there is a lease modification and that, as you remember from the asset side, there is also, that's also related to Normand Maximus entering into the new bareboat charter there. See, we have been paid, been repaid approximately NOK 550 million of long-term debt and also almost NOK 250 million of lease obligations. That takes the debt to NOK 22.8 billion at the end of the year. If we just look into the debt structure and as mentioned before, we have a maturity date coming up first quarter of next year on what we call the fleet loan.
The fleet loan then that's the fleet of the 73 vessels per the end of the quarter. The refinancing process with the lenders to refinance the company has been initiated. We are looking into the different possibilities as we go along in the first part of the year. Normand Maximus has mentioned, we enter into a five year bareboat with AMSC in the fourth quarter.
That we have a long-term financing in place for the four vessels that we have in Brazil, was also finalized in the fourth quarter. That is good. The super senior facility is at the moment fully or is under loan per end of the year. Then, we have some facilities with five standalone or five vessels that are being financed on standalone basis. That's the overview of the debt. I think with that, I will give the world back to you, Lars, to wrap up.
Thanks, Kjetil. If we take a look at the summary slide, I will try to sum up our fourth quarter presentation. As I said, it has been a strong quarter, despite being in the low season in many parts of the world. We have had high utilization. The commercial terms continue to strengthen, and this goes for all vessel segments, and it goes for all geographical regions. We continue to build a healthy backlog with NOK 3.3 billion in new orders in fourth quarter. At the same time, we also have available capacity to harvest further in 2023 and beyond. The improved numbers also show the effect of new contracts signed earlier in 2022 that now starts to...
The effect of those contracts start to show in our accounts. It is a fact that additional capacity to the market will be very limited the coming years, which should be very favorable for a company with a high-end fleet like we have. Finally, we believe that the offshore activity will continue to be high the coming years, driven by high energy prices, energy security focus, and the ambitious goal for renewable energy. Thanks for listening to our presentation, and we now move over to Q&A. Have we got any questions, Kjetil?
Yes, we have. I can start from the top. The first question goes to you, Lars. The question is, with the activity in Western Africa picking up, more drilling rigs are on the way to the area, is Solstad considering having a pool of ships, for example, in a nearby area, to take a more active role?
The simple answer to that question is no. The reason why is that we think for example, now we have two anchor handlers doing mooring installation in West Africa, fully paid mob and demob from the North Sea, to do that. That means, and I was touching on it a little bit in my presentation. I think we will see that vessels will be, let's say, we have the North Sea will be the main hub, and we will see vessels going also for shorter contracts in areas like West Africa and go back again. I don't think it's gonna be necessary to be permanently in the area.
Thanks. Next one, in the current market, do we expect that options are being utilized? Are options usually priced at a higher rate than the firm period?
The simple answer is, yes and yes. We think that the options are normally exercised. Most of our options in our case at least, is, the optional price are higher than the firm period.
Thanks. Next one. To understand the earning capacity of the subsea fleet, can you indicate the current leading edge, market rates on the main categories of subsea tonnage?
It depends very much on the type of vessels, but I don't think I will go in to the exact numbers, but we see rates now on all categories of subsea vessels that are on a higher level than we have ever seen before. We are higher on the rates in all subsea segments than we saw in any of the previous peaks we have had.
Okay. Next question. Anchor handling project activity was high in 2022, especially in the North Sea, 2nd and 3rd quarter. How do you see this playing out in 2023?
I think we will see a very active project market. We already see it. There's a lot of bidding going on. We will either re-get the contracts or those, I don't know. The effect, I mean, it will take vessels out of the North Sea. There are projects in Africa that are in the US Gulf, that are in the North Sea there as well, and that means that you will be able to get healthy rates on the projects. It also leaves North Sea with the shortage of tonnage, meaning that we should expect a tight spot market for the vessels are that are in the spot market as well.
It's, it has a double effect and I think it will be a very active project market also this year.
Okay. Next question. With lack of vessel capacity, about to emerge in all segments, do you see oil companies or subsea construction companies considering very long co-term contracts, and also considering new builds?
Um, I, I, I mean, all, uh, for all types of, types of vessels, it's, uh, it's natural when the, when the market, uh, gets tighter, that, that clients are looking at, into, uh, to, to, to longer contracts and also in the subsea segments. And, uh, and we are bidding on, on quite a few, uh, at the moment. Uh, so, so, um, um, I think we will see, we'll see more con- or long-term contracts being, being signed in the segment, not necessarily us, but, but, but, but for the, for the, for the segment. Um, and on new builds, uh, there might be some, uh, d-during the, during the year, but it's also gonna be a... It's gonna be a... It's gonna be expensive. It's gonna be, it's gonna be a challenge to, to... On the financing side, uh, for some.
We might see a few, but I don't think we will see a massive new build program coming the next years. There are various reasons for that, but I don't think we will see that.
Next question is, the company sold the Normand Jarl in the first quarter. Can we expect to see more vessel sales in like that in the coming period?
Well, Normand Jarl wasn't actually for sale. From time to time, there are offers on the table that we really have to strongly consider. This was one of them. We will book a very nice profit on the vessel in first quarter. We have still a few vessels in lay up and they will. It's very likely that those vessels will be sold. We're talking about the five, six vessels. I think we have been clear in our communication also earlier on that.
We will if it makes sense, there might be some more, but on the other hand, we don't have any firm plans to divest other vessels.
Thanks. There is a question about the cost level. Is the cost level in the fourth quarter of 2022 representative for what we expect in 2023, or can we expect a further increase?
I think it's something we have to. I mean, there was an increase in 2022 that the inflation continues. We should be prepared for or we have to be prepared for a cost level that continue to be challenging, and then we have to see what we can do to prevent it. It's gonna be one of the challenges following a tight market is that you also get the pressure on the cost side and that we just have to work closely on it and see how we can deal with that in the best possible manner.
Okay. I think we are getting to the end. Then the last question, are there a lot of prospects, long-term prospects or other prospects on the Normand Maximus going forward?
We are, we see that there is, I mean, we managed to get some nice contracts for the vessel now in 2023. That contract will start, the first contract will start by the end of March, second part of March, and keep the vessel busy until end of the year. We see already now that we have that there are interest for the vessel beyond that, both on longer term contracts and more on a project by project contracts. We believe that 2024 is a good timing for us to come available.
As we read the market, the field development, field installation work is gonna grow further in 2024, so we are very comfortable with the Maximus situation.
Okay. With that, I think we will conclude the presentation.
Thanks for listening in, and have a nice weekend. Thank you.