Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining. I am Kristiina Tamberg and I welcome you all to this Tallinna Vesi webinar. This webinar will be hosted by Aleksandr Timofejev, Chief Executive Officer, and Taavi Gröön, Chief Financial Officer. Firstly, Aleksandr and Taavi will introduce the highlights of the third quarter of 2024. The presenters will also speak about Tallinna Vesi's operational and financial results of the first nine months. Aleksandr will give an overview about some of the investments made in the third quarter of 2024. Right after the presentation, you will have the opportunity to ask questions. It is also possible to type in your questions during the presentation, but these will be answered in the end part of the webinar. To submit your questions, please use the question box on the right side of the screen. Now, I will hand over to Aleksandr and Taavi.
There you go.
Thank you, Kristiina, and good morning, everybody, and welcome to our webinar. As Kristiina mentioned, I will do a quick overview about our results, and then after that, we'll give over to Taavi. So if we speak about the third quarter, then our results were very good. If we speak about the total revenues, then as you can see in the third quarter, there have been EUR 16.2 million , and the positive impact was done due to the change of the tariffs from the 1st of July 2024. Our net profit in the third quarter was EUR 3 million, and so EUR 3.9 million, and we are moving with the similar target towards the end of the year.
In the third quarter, we invested over EUR 15 million in our assets, and if we speak about the nine months, then by today, it is already over EUR 35 million in our assets.
Our plan during this year is to invest in our assets approximately EUR 60 million. If we speak about our best estimation, then we believe that approximately EUR 50 million of that will be spent this year, and some projects will be completed at the beginning of next year. Drinking water quality was very high. The third quarter was challenging for us as the temperature of the lake water was high, and because of that, we had some samples that were not compliant with the regulation. During the third quarter, we took over 700 samples from the taps in the city of Tallinn, Saue, and Maardu municipality, and only eight of them were not according to the standard. Of course, after maintenance done, the quality of the water was according to the standard, but still, we have to inform that eight of them were not compliant.
Wastewater plant is working very well, and our effluent is according to all standards, so we outperform the parameters that are coming from the law, and I have a very good mood because of the very low pollutants that we discharge to the sea. Our working environment is safe, and till today, in 2024, we had no working accidents. This is very positive that starting from this autumn, our water treatment plant of Ülemiste uses district heating in its facilities. This will improve our contingency and will give us an opportunity in the future to be sure that the heating power is 24/7 in the facilities. Previously, we used natural gas.
As on previous years, we mentioned that at the moment we have a huge project that is related to the smart meters, and I'm happy to say that by the end of the third quarter, 57% of our customers had smart meters in their houses. Our plan is to complete the project in two years, and by the end of this year, we feel that the objective of 60% will be achieved. If we move on to the next slide, then I will give you an overview about some big projects that we have in our service area. So if we speak about the network, then this year we plan to reconstruct approximately 45 km of pipelines. By today, approximately 36 km are completed.
You can see also from the slide what we can see also from the slides of what streets were in progress during the first quarter, and I'm happy to say that we did a lot of cooperation with the City of Tallinn and also utilities and reconstructed pipes together. A lot of pipelines have been reconstructed using the no-dig technology or no-trench technology, and this is a modern way how to improve the network in the City of Tallinn and also how to disturb our customers as less as possible. If we speak about our treatment plants, then of course, a lot of investments are done in there as well. We have a lot of reconstructions at the wastewater treatment plant at the moment. During the third quarter, we did some works on the aero tanks.
Also, a two-year-long project with the digesters or the methane tanks have been almost completed. Today, both tanks are working, and we produce biogas from what we produce: electrical energy and heating power. The secondary clarifiers project is also ongoing. This is the long three-year project. The cost of that is approximately EUR 9 million, and it is moving in accordance with the plan. During next year, we will install also additional screens in the main pumping station, and we'll start the renovation of the screens in the wastewater treatment plant. The idea of that is to improve the wastewater treatment and improve the efficiency of the mechanical treatment. In the water treatment plant, at the moment, we have also a reconstruction that is related to the filters, and at the moment, this is the end phase of the design of our ozonation system.
Our ozonation system by today is 24 years old and should be changed. The new system will be more efficient and more reliable. If we move on to the next slide, then I will introduce also some operational results from the third quarter. As I mentioned before, there have been some challenges with the water quality in the city, but due to the teams that did a lot of work and due to the technologies that we use today in the network cleaning as an Ice Pigging, the result by the end of the quarter was still high. Our leakage rate is on the plant level. This is a little bit higher than last year, and if we speak about our goal for 2024, that is 14%, then we feel that this is also achievable. Wastewater treatment plant effluent is very good.
It is 100%, and for us, it's one of the most important objectives what we have to fulfill as this is related with the environment and the quality of the Baltic Sea water. If we speak about water interruptions in the city, then they definitely cause us some difficulties to our customers, and due to that, we try to do everything to minimize them. We have a lot of projects that should in the future make sure that the interruptions are shorter than today and the number of them smaller. If we speak about the first quarter, then our average interruption was two hours and 36 minutes. That is very good if we compare with the previous years. The customer satisfaction is growing as well. If we speak about the third quarter, then it was 4.2, and that is higher than last year.
If we look into details, then our customers today are really happy about the metering processes we have in the company, about connections, and also about contracts. The area where we have to have some improvements is related to the feedback to the customers if they would like to get from us some additional information or some questions. As I mentioned before, the network rehabilitation program is according to the plan, and in the third quarter, we reconstructed 15 km of our pipelines, and then by the end of the year, the aim is to complete 45 km of our network. I will give over now to Taavi, who will go into details of the financial results. Thank you.
Thank you, Aleksandr. The overall sentiment in the economy is slowly starting to improve, but still remains cautious, and our operational environment continues to be stable, and in the next slides, I'll give you an overview of our financial performance for the quarter and also touching upon the nine months. I'll start off with volumes, and we see that there is a slight increase in private customer water and wastewater volumes. It's slightly above last year. This is an overall macro trend. Those changes in volumes are rather slow as the number of consumers and customers is large and consumption has some change. Business customer levels for water and wastewater are on the same level, and outside service area volumes are slightly higher. The same trends we see also for the nine months.
What we must note for the outside area volumes is that those are in part affected by stormwater volumes that is part of wastewater services. Now, next, taking a look at revenues, first off, as already noted, we had a price change in July. From 1st of July, price increased to private customers, slightly decreased to business customers, and also increased to outside service area customers. The difference between private and business customers is that under the current regulation, the service prices for the private and individual customers have to be harmonized in next years. The deadline is 2026, and with this price change, one step towards the harmonization was taken, thus affecting private customers with a higher increase than business customers.
We see on the quarterly numbers that private customer sales revenues have increased by 7.5%, and in a smaller number, this can be also followed on a quarterly level. It is, of course, partially affected by volume changes as well, but Q3 figures primarily due to changes in pricing. And Q3 numbers for business customers show that the sales revenue has increased by 0.2%. This is primarily a result of the price supply from 1st of July. And same aspects are impacting the revenues from outside service area. Now, next, taking a look at the total cost of goods sold, we see a total increase of EUR 0.3 million compared to Q3 in 2023. Our total direct production costs have decreased by 21.5%, and this is primarily driven by electricity. Electricity has two components in that change.
It is the price of electricity and the impact of our own electricity production. This is done in our CHP, or Combined Heat and Power Engine, that is operating in the wastewater treatment plant and supplies energy to the wastewater treatment plant. As a result, the total production cost has decreased compared to last year. We can observe increases in staff costs by 11.7%, and this is in both terms reflected by salary increases performed in the beginning of the year and also hirings during the year. Slight increases in depreciation. This is a result of investments made and a EUR 0.4 million increase in construction services. This is reflecting similar changes in revenues, construction service revenues. Now, as next slide, I'll summarize the overall changes on the net profit level. Net profit level for the quarter has decreased by EUR 0.2 million.
We expect that one of the main components, interest expenses, will lead due to base rate changes in the coming years. But sales revenue increase in Q3 with a positive impact of EUR 0.6 million on net profit is negated also by cost changes in cost of goods sold and marketing and general expenses. So in operating profit level, we are at the same level as previous year, and on the net profit level, EUR 0.2 million below the previous year. But seeing that there are some seasonality also on cost and revenue side, we expect Q4 to be slightly better. On our cash position, the overall cash position in end of Q3 has increased by EUR 2.5 million. This is primarily due to the additional financing. Our investing cash flows in Q3 were the most significant for the whole year, totaling EUR 11.6 million.
Our total assets amount to EUR 284.5 million, and it's increasing as a result of investments made, and the financing cash flows primarily are a result of additional lending to finance those investments. Now, summarizing on the next slide, the total investments for the previous and this year, our investments have increased significantly in the previous year. We are looking at EUR 33.4 million investments into tangible assets in the nine months of this year. It is close to the level that was performed last year for the full year. We estimate that on a budget level, the investment amount will reach up to EUR 50 million for this year.
We have earlier estimated close to EUR 60 million, but this estimate is adjusted with the project timelines that we see at the end of Q3. Some up to 17% of the projects, totaling around EUR 10 million, will be completed during 2025.
These projects include investments in wastewater treatment plants, main pumping station, and pipeline construction. With this, I will conclude my presentation. Thank you very much, and I will go back to Kristina.
Yeah, thank you both for the presentations. And now we will proceed with questions. You will have a few minutes to submit your question. Please feel free to type in any questions you might have. So it seems that we have received one question, and that is, there was water test in Nõmme District when they also used water from Ülemiste water treatment plant. Will we see more tests in the near future and in other districts also? Aleksandr, will you give the answer?
Yeah, thank you. Very good question. We definitely had the test approximately two years ago, which was in the spring 2023, when we wanted to test if it's possible to pump water from the Ülemiste area to Nõmme and vice versa. So the test was actually successful, and at the moment, we do not have tests that are planned for the fourth quarter or for the first quarter of 2024 in this area or in our area that's related to the water change. But as Tallinna Vesi provides the vital service to the 500,000 citizens, then, of course, we have different tests monthly. This year, we tried to understand how good we are in the crisis situations regarding the connection between different departments and different parties, and we do a lot of cooperation with the Rescue Department and our vital services providers.
So if there will be any training that will impact our customers, then we definitely will give about that information preventively through the newspapers and media. At the moment, there are no plans that during the near future there will be any such event. Thank you.
Thank you. Seems like we don't have any more questions. So I thank you all for joining. Recording of the presentation will be available in the Tallinna Vesi's YouTube channel webinar playlist shortly. Presentation materials and reports can be found on Tallinna Vesi's web page. Taavi and Aleksandr, thank you for the overview, and thank you all for joining. Have a good day.