Record quarter this morning with strong performance across all key financial metrics. Presenting today will be Jan Erik Tveteraas, the CEO of Soiltech, and joining him, Tove Vestlie, the company's CFO. My name is Nicolai, and I will have the pleasure of moderating this session. Please note that if you have any questions to the management, please use the chat function at the bottom of the screen t hen we will get back to them during the Q&A session after the presentation. With that said, I'll leave the word over to you, Jan Erik and Tove.
Hello, and good morning, everyone. Before we begin, I would like to remind all parties that some of the statements we will be making today are forward-looking. These matters involve risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from those projected in these statements. Our comments today also include non-IFRS financial measures. Additional details and reconciliations to the most directly comparable IFRS financial measures can be found in our fourth quarter and full-year earnings press release, which is on our website. With that, I turn the call over to Jan Erik.
Thank you, Tove. I will initially, if you go to the next page, I will do a high-level go-through of the numbers in the fourth quarter. I will leave the word back to you, Tove, to go into the details for the quarter as well as the full- year later on in this meeting. We say that this quarter was a defining quarter for Soiltech, but I'd also like to add that the start of 2025-2, with the key contracts secured, also forms a part of that. The reason for the quarter to be that we call it a defining quarter is that we were able to demonstrate in this quarter the potential of Soiltech, or some of the potential at least.
The results in this quarter, I would say, reflect the work that we have done over the years to position Soiltech in the market by developing unique technologies and solutions that really meet our customers' demands. Going back to the numbers, again, we had record highs on all fronts. We had high revenues. First time we passed the NOK 80 million mark in the second quarter. I think the highest we had before was around NOK 70 million. We had NOK 80.7 million of revenues this quarter. We also came in with an EBITDA of NOK 25.8 million, which is also definitely the highest we've had in a single quarter. The adjusted profit before tax ended at NOK 15.8 million. This is definitely what we would be bold enough to say is a strong quarter. We'll go through later on the reason why it was so strong.
The reason for this result is a strong operating performance. The operations is the heart and the basis for Soiltech. We definitely saw an increase in the solid waste handling services or cuttings handling, if you may say so. We had a growth of 57% in that quarter compared to last year. We also saw decent growth in fluid waste management, which is the STT, with about 14% growth year- on- year. Also, one reason for a good quarter was that I would say we had high activity on all projects. The clients were busy, and we were busy. We had several people out on the different operations, and our equipment was in more or less full utilizations on the project that we had. This means that we had high personnel utilization. As you know, we are in the growth phase. We are investing in personnel.
That means that we have to invest in or employ people before we actually are starting up open contracts. This quarter was a high activity, and we also benefited by that by having a high utilization of the people that we have on board. This is something we monitor closely because it is very important and it is a driving factor for the gross margin in the company because that is a major part of the operating cost that we have. We talked about the goods. We talked about the quarter. We definitely need to mention the start of the year, which has been fantastic for us. We have been working with these clients for a long time during 2024 in order to negotiate these contracts and secure these contracts.
It's something that we have indicated in previous presentations, and we're happy to be able to announce that we have been awarded these contracts. In total, these contracts will be adding more than NOK 100 million to our top line as they start up during 2025. We'll come back to when we think these contracts will start up w hich is good is for all these contracts. W e're going to use equipment already in stock. The only equipment that we don't have in stock is the cuttings receiving tanks on the PSV, which we previously have mentioned that we have been invested in. It says to be delivered in Q1. They have been delivered earlier this month or last week, and they're on their way to Romania to be put on the Transocean Barents vessel. They are all financed through the Eksfin facility that we have.
With this as a background, we think that we're in a very good position to continue the growth that we have seen over the years. Also, when we are summing up 2024, we see growth opportunities. When we talk to the two potential clients across the full service portfolio, we see that the demand in Europe, which we say is kind of our home market, including Norway and other geo markets are increasing for the type of services that we deliver. In particular, we've had a strategy for many years to grow the solid waste handling business, and that is, I would say, bearing fruits now. We have now come up to a level where we expect, where we have kind of built a track record, and therefore expect that we'll be able to grow that business further on in the next years.
Why are we getting these contracts? We are in a very competitive market. We have strong competitors, and we have demanding clients. We are on the critical line in operations. I can only refer to the feedback that we are getting from our clients, which is they appreciate our operations. T hey appreciate our ability to keep all the equipment working during critical operations. We are online; if our operation stops, the drilling operation stops. Also, the fact that we differentiate ourselves on the technology. This is a key driver for Soiltech's success, is the technology that we continuously develop and continuously improve. This is what the clients like because we are the player in the market, which is leading the technology in improvement, if I may say so. All right, that is kind of the introduction here.
We can move on to slide six for just a quick review of the contracts that we have secured. This is not something new, but still it's good to include some information on this. We did receive a call from Equinor late last year. I'm happy to say that we were able to start that up very shortly after that. We had good activity on Statfjord in the fourth quarter, and this is expected to be a long-term contract for Soiltech. That was the contract we got in the quarter. We are on to the most recent contracts. The OMV Petrom contract is in the Black Sea, and it's a very interesting project for us. It's the first time that we have the full contract portfolio, which means that we have added the transporting on the PSV vessel itself.
Previously, we have been on the rig doing a complete service with all handling and treatment of waste on the rig. Now we are moving into a very interesting segment, which is also to take care of the containment of the drilling waste on the vessel, which means that we own the tanks that you see on the left-hand side. This is actually the tanks that were built for the OMV project, and it is placed on the PSV, being transported from Tananger to the Black Sea. This is something which is very nice for us because it opens up opportunity to becoming a full service provider. We are very happy that OMV has given us a vote of confidence by awarding us this contract.
We have also a very interesting contract with the Deeps ea Bollsta, which is the first time we had a contract with Northern Ocean. This is Odfjell Drilling, who is being responsible for the operations. We have an extensive relationship with Odfjell Drilling. We know them well. We are on four or five of their rigs. We are very happy to work with them and Northern Ocean for this project. It is a very long-term project. It is for two years plus five one-year options. The rig is going to work for Equinor. The expected is the second half. Going back to the OMV, I forgot to say that we have started to mobilize some equipment, as we spoke about. With regards to the startup, we have to rely on OMV Petrom's decision for it. We have been pretty broad saying 2025.
We are under the impression that work is progressing well to have a startup perhaps in the first half, but I don't want to speculate in that. We received a call from Equinor again for the Grane oil field. You know that we have a long-term contract with Equinor up to 2034 with options. This contract is very exciting for us too. It's the same as with Statfjord B . It's going to be a long-term contract over many years. There are going to be operations on that field very, very long, t hat we do our job and perform well. I'm happy to say that we are about to start on that one. We have mobilized equipment, and we'll start very soon on that in this quarter is the current plan. Those are the contacts.
It is something also which I think can have a potential or potentially a strong potential for Soiltech, which is the partnership that we just set up with Estedama. Estedama is kind of a Soiltech type of company in Saudi. They do not have the technologies that we have, but they have all the, what can I say, the resources in terms of onshore facilities that do onshore treatment, soil remediation. They do transporting of waste for Aramco. We think that we are a perfect fit because they have all the local content, the local connections, and we have those specified technologies, specific technologies that we would like to introduce to Aramco and together with Estedama build a very strong unit there. There is a big change in Saudi Aramco for achieving more environmentally friendly solutions.
Estedama has a very strong profile within being a serious and strong technology-focused provider there. We will see. We have some initiatives together with Estedama, and hopefully we can report back later on there. We will see what happens. Okay, I think we can move on to just an overview of the contacts that we have. I think I counted that we have 20 contacts with 20 vessels in Norway. It is a mix of fixed installations. W hat we call them, it is on the top there, which is Equinor rigs where they do platform drilling or production drilling, really. The only exception for that is Njord B, which is an FSU. We are on a call out there. We go in and out when they need us. We kind of stand by there.
All the contracts on the upper half there are contracts that under the frame agreement we have. Equinor has exercised the first option under that agreement. We have a fixed term until 2026 for all of those. They have several two-year options until 2024. If we do a good job, continue to do a good job, we hope obviously to be there much longer. We have been on Oseberg B, that's the longest running since, I think, 2016, 2017. Once we're on board, we tend to stay. We have a variety of rigs. You can see the rigs that we have with Odfjell Drilling. We have with it with Transocean. We have two rigs with Transocean. We also had the Barents, which is coming on the next slide.
This is, I would say, an interesting portfolio for us because for these rigs, we are on either we do fluid treatment or we do both fluid treatment and cuttings treatment. Most of these have fluid treatment, but only six of them have cuttings or solid waste handling. Obviously, that's a target for us to increase our position within cuttings or solid waste handling on existing contacts. This is something that we definitely are working on as part of our long-term strategy. If you turn to the next page, we have the contracts that we have international at the moment. These are also three of them are long-term contracts. Three of them are short-term contracts. We have the Swift 10, which has its until 2026.
We have the Mariner again with Equinor, which is the contract is with Odfjell Technology, but the way that works is that we believe it will follow kind of the frame agreement methodology of contract extensions, really, even if the contract is via Odfjell Technology. We have the Barents. You can see we have put it up started in the second half. We will see what happens there. We have three other contracts with Noble Resilient and Noble Absolute. The contract is both with Petrogas and we have one with Shell in the U.K. They're longer, cut shorter term. That's typical for the U.K. market, but also the Dutch market in general. We need to work on extending those contracts. That's the normal business for Soiltech. All right, so good. We have to move on.
I'll leave the word back to you, Tove, to go through the financials in more detail.
Thank you, Jan Erik. I'm also very excited to walk you through Soiltech's strong performance this quarter. I will start by providing an overview of our full-year results before getting into specifics on our fourth-year results. All numbers addressed today are presented in NOK. Full-year 2024 revenue of NOK 274 million, which grew 20% year- on- year. This increase was primarily driven by significant demand for our solid waste handling services, including projects on Transocean Spitsbergen, Oseberg B, and Noble Resilient, which accounts for most of this growth. This is entirely organic growth and mostly driven by projects in Norway and in the U.K. A strong adjusted EBITDA of NOK 63.3 million, up 24% year- on- year, with an EBITDA margin of 23%, up 1% year- on-y ear.
Once the newly announced contracts are up and running, we have an ambition to increase the EBITDA margin towards 25%. Profit before tax adjusted of NOK 27.8 million, up 9% year- on- year. I will, on the next slide, go more into details what these adjustments are. Turning over to the fourth quarter results, record high fourth quarter revenue reaching NOK 80.7 million, up 39% compared to last year. The strong performance was driven by a significant growth in the demand for our solid waste handling services. Adding then high personnel utilization further strengthens this quarter's results. Generally, there was a very high activity across all operations in the quarter. As a result, the adjusted EBITDA came in strong with NOK 25.8 million, up 90% year- on- year, with an EBITDA margin of 32%, up from 23% in 2023.
Notably, in addition to the contribution from the record high revenue in the quarter, there was a positive one-off effect of NOK 3.7 million in Q4. This one-off effect was related to the reversal of accruals for working hours and overtime made during the quarter or made during the year. Excluding this one-off effect, the adjusted EBITDA for the quarter would have been NOK 22.1 million, with an EBITDA margin still very solid at 27%. Profit before tax adjusted of NOK 15.8 million, up 151% year- on- year. Again, on the next slide, I will go more into details what these adjustments are. If you then move to the next slide, Nicolai. Earlier on, as we now have gone through the revenue and the EBITDA, now let's look at the profit before tax. Profit before tax for the full- year 2024 amounted to NOK 11 million.
Profit before tax full- year 2023 stood at NOK 32.3 million. However, there were two one-off effects both in 2023 and 2024 impacting the results. We have to exclude those effects in order to compare apples to apples. I will draw your attention to the table below the income statement to address this. As you will see from this table, the adjustments for 2023 are related to the acquisition of Sorbwater, where the basis for a contingent liability towards the selling shareholders of Sorbwater assumed in connection with the Sorbwater acquisition was not fulfilled.
Therefore, a gain of NOK 15 million was recognized and a goodwill of NOK 5.1 million was impaired. This gives a positive net impact of NOK 9.9 million. This again then gives an adjusted profit before tax of NOK 25.4 million in 2023. For 2024, the adjustments were mainly due to merger and IPO cost of NOK 17.8 million.
Including that, we then get an adjusted profit before tax of NOK 27.8 million and a net profit margin of 10%, as you can see from that table. Again, both of these adjustments are one-off cost. If we then move on to the fourth quarter numbers, we had a record high profit before tax adjusted in Q4 of NOK 15.8 million, up from NOK 6.3 million in 2023. This is a result of the high activity in the quarter. If we then move on to the balance sheet, we see that the equity ratio continues to be strong at 47%.
I would also like to add that leasing, we entered into new leasing agreements in 2024 of NOK 47.8 million for investments in waste management equipment. This again impacts both the asset side and the lease liability side. Net interest-bearing debt was NOK 159 million as of year-end 2024 versus NOK 111 million year-end 2023.
Increase is due to investments in new equipment for new projects. Net interest-bearing debt over EBITDA as of year-end 2024 is 2.7, which is well within our covenants limit of 4. Now we turn over to our liquidity. In 2024, we generated NOK 39.4 million of cash flow from operations. Cash flow from investing activity was NOK 39 million. This is mainly due to investments in solid waste handling equipment.
Cash flow from financing activity was NOK 7.5 million and includes a net cash inflow of NOK 12.8 million from the merger with Oceant eam. Cash at the year-end was then NOK 34.7 million, including then the unused portion of loan facility of NOK 39.6 million, which we have with Rogaland Sparebank. Available cash reserve at year-end was NOK 74.3 million. I will thank you for your time, and I will now turn it back to Jan Erik for the discussion on the outlook.
Okay, great. Thanks, Tove. We need to leave some time for questions here, so I'm just going very quickly through that. We have been through these points. I just would like to say that the overall driver for Soiltech is the driving for more sustainable solutions. It's a high focus from our clients, but also our ability to develop new solutions for them, more effective handling solutions for them is a key. We believe that we are in a very strong position because we have an attractive technology portfolio. We believe because of this increased focus on sustainability and effectivity, and we are introducing new technologies, we are very optimistic about the market outlook. We don't necessarily have to follow the rig markets up and down because we see a trend that no matter where the market is, there's an increased demand for our specific services in Norway internationally.
We have strong financials, and we have a strong contract pipeline, and we have some interesting partnerships that I think will help us drive this growth forward in 2025 and the years after that. By that, our presentation is concluded, and I'll leave the word to you, Nicolai.
Yeah, very nice. That concludes the presentation of the results, and we will now move over to the Q&A session. As a reminder, if you have any questions, post them through the Q&A chat function, and we'll try to cover as many as possible. Starting off, can you say something about the average day rates you achieved on STT and cuttings handling equipment respectively during the quarter?
Tove, are you able to discuss that?
To give some insight into the day rates on the equipment? Yes. Yeah.
I think if we look on the STTs, we are on an average, and it varies, of course, if it's international, if it's in Norway, and again, on negotiations, but on average, the daily rates are approximately NOK 23,000 to NOK 25,000 per day. On the cuttings handling, I think it's more difficult because it varies so much on the scope. I think it's more difficult to say a more specific because there are so much different equipment included in each contract. As Jan Erik said, now we have with the Transocean Barents, we have the full scope, and then for others, we might have solely a skip and ship solution. On others, we have six tanks, 12 tanks. I think it's more difficult to say something about that.
Understood. Thank you. Moving on, how did your utilization or the economic uptime look like during the quarter?
I can answer that. We had full uptime commercially. We invoiced every single penny that we could under the contracts.
Okay, thank you. Some questions relating to equipment and your assets. First of all, can you give some insight into the lead time for investments in new equipment?
Y es, this varies which type of equipment we are talking about. I would say that it varies between four and nine months. This is what we see. The longest lead time we have is on the fluid treatment unit or the STTs, whereas most of the equipment in the solid waste handling has leaning towards the short end of that or four months' aside. It varies. I would say that delivery times have been pretty much stable the last couple of years.
Thank you. On assets deployed with your newly announced contracts, how much of the NOK 100 million in unemployed assets would you estimate is remaining for future contracts?
A pproximately 50%. A little less maybe, but yeah, 40%-50%.
Okay, clear. Do you expect to make further investments in assets in the coming periods?
We hope to get more contracts and we definitely have. We are in a very good position because we have several STTs, and we also have cuttings handling equipment, which is also not so expensive. I think we have a very good position to be able to kind of utilize the equipment that we have already, and I do not see the immediate need for investing in new equipment.
Okay. When can we expect our first dividend?
It is a good question. I was waiting for when you were going to comment on that.
We see definitely a strong growth for Soiltech going forward. I think we'll see a good increase in our cash flow. Also, we're already there, but we see that when the new contracts are starting up, we will start generating new cash flow. What I can say is that the matter of dividend is definitely something we're looking at and at some point in time that we should do. What I can say is that we will revert to the market when we have news on that.
All right. Moving on, in the beginning of the quarter, there were risks related to potential delays on project startups in the U.K. How did that turn out?
I think it turned out well. I think we got rid of those delays during the third quarter. In the fourth quarter, we've seen that we are on track.
I think with the new projects, I also feel that we are on track. I do not see any delays currently. It is not on our table.
Okay. A few questions related to the new contract wins. Can you please elaborate on the product offering on these new contracts?
Y eah, we can do that. We can start with the Grane contract, which is a cuttings solid waste treatment contract. On that rig, we have a cuttings handling system or what we call a skip station with waste carriers, skips. We also have cuttings holding tanks on the rig. Yes, we are on that rig with the key solid waste handling equipment.
We also have installed pipelines there to transport the cuttings from the shaker where it comes up to our skip station and also to the tanks and from the tanks or the skip station to the collection point for the waste. There is currently no fluids handling on that one. On the Bollsta rig, we have all of that, what I've just described. We have cuttings. It's not yet to be signed with two lines under the answer. The way it looks, we will have the same as we have on Grane, plus we'll have fluid handling as well. That's basically that scope. On the OMV Petrom contract, we'll have the same. We had the full portfolio. We'll have the fluid handling . We'll have the cuttings handling with the rig tanks with the skip station as a backup.
In addition, we have 48 receiving tanks on the PSVs. The PSV can take 16 tanks, so there are 16 on board at all times, but you need to have three sets in order to follow the schedule. Those are those three contracts in scope of work.
The new sort of the boat tanks, they are a new product line. What day rates and margins do you expect to achieve on this new product?
When we have these contracts, we have all contracts typically consist of various equipment, which are priced individually. The tanks are priced individually. On a general basis, I can say that our equipment is on average paid back in around three years' time. We follow that principle more or less over the whole fleet. We're talking about the same levels.
I cannot go into details on the specific day rates due to competitive reasons.
All right. A final question relating to the partnership agreement with Estedama in Saudi Arabia. How has this sort of development been so far? Can you say something about the possible growth potential in that region?
Definitely, it's a huge growth potential in the region and also with Saudi Aramco. We have been in that market a long time in Abu Dhabi, and we also know Aramco very well. I think we have found a model now which they like with the local partner. By the way, we do not use any agent. You avoid having to use the agent. We are just having a straight with Aramco.
What we're doing now is that we're looking both to opportunities for the fluid treatment and for the solid waste treatment handling. What I can say is that as a partnership, we are in the qualification process with Aramco for that. We see opportunities within fluid treatment and also within the solid waste treatment. Primarily offshore is what we look at, the checkups. Finally, we're also moving our cuttings treatment solution, CTT, the unit that we have there, which is a unit for treating the waste or the cuttings, taking out the oil of it as an alternative to a thermal treatment. This unit is on its way to Saudi at the moment. We're going to place it on Estedama yard . We're going to start cracking on testing cuttings there. Once we're ready, we're going to offer that in the region.
Okay. Sounds promising.
If no questions come in last minute now, I believe we've reached the end of the questions. I would like to thank you all for contributing with questions. Thank you for letting us host your quarterly presentation, Jan Erik Tveteraas. Perhaps you would like to say some concluding remarks.
I would like to say thank you to all participants. Also, I just want to say that we continue to do a hard job to create shareholder values. That's what we like to do. We had quite a bit of a rough start, I would say, on the Oslo Stock Exchange. It's a matter to get out on what we're doing. We are working hard on it. We have been working hard. We're going to continue to work hard in our investor relations to kind of communicate the Soiltech story.
Perfect.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Okay. Thank you. Bye.