Hello, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. I am Kristiina Tamberg and I welcome you to today's Tallinna Vesi webinar. This webinar will be hosted by Aleksandr Timofejev, CEO, and Taavi Gröön, CFO. Firstly, Aleksandr Timofejev and Taavi Gröön will introduce the highlights of the fourth quarter of 2024. The presenters will also speak about Tallinna Vesi's operational and financial results of the year. Aleksandr will give an overview about some of the investments made in the fourth quarter of 2024. Right after the presentations, you will have the opportunity to ask questions. It is also possible to type in your question during the presentation, but this will be answered in the end part of the webinar. To submit your question, please use the question box on the right side of the screen. Now I will hand over to Aleksandr and Taavi. Here you go.
Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us. I will cover the fourth quarter of 2024, and we'll speak a little bit about the full year as well. If we speak about our results, then they were great. In the fourth quarter, the sales were EUR 17.7 million. If we speak about the net profit, then it was EUR 4.2 million. If we speak about the 12 months, then the net profit was EUR 13.028 million. If we speak about investments, then during last year, we invested into our assets approximately EUR 50 million, and in the fourth quarter, the part of this investment was EUR 16.1 million. The drinking water was of very high quality, and in the fourth quarter, our result was 99.5%, and if we speak about the full year, then it was 99.6%.
We took more than 3,000 samples from customer taps, and only 12 samples were not according to the standard. I have to say that in the fourth quarter, we had one working accident in our subsidiary, Watercom, when on the construction site, the employee's hand was injured. Today, he's back to work, and we have made some changes in our procedures to improve health and safety on our sites. One positive aspect is that at the end of 2023, we installed two CHP engines that produce electrical energy and also heating power for our plant. In 2024, we produced more than 8 GW of electrical energy. During the year, if we speak about the fourth quarter, then it was 2.5 GW of electrical energy.
We covered 100% of our heating power at wastewater treatment plant using our biogas and also produced approximately 18% of the electrical power we use in the company by these engines. Wastewater treatment plant performed very well as well. We treated over 50 million cubic meters of water, and our effluent was according to all the standards. We actually cleaned or treated the water better than the standards wish. We also continued with our five-year project, the installation of smart water meters. Today, over 60% of our customers can use smart water meters, and in two years, we will finish with that project. If we move on to the next slide, I will cover a little bit of investments we did. As I mentioned before, we invested approximately EUR 50 million in our assets. A lot of investments have been done in our network.
During last year, we built 45 km of pipelines in the city of Tallinn. We reconstructed water, sewage, and also stormwater pipelines. You can also read from the slide the streets where we did some work. Our main aim is to do cooperation with the city of Tallinn and other utilities. A lot of sites were built together with Utilitas, the heating company of Tallinn, and also a couple of sites have been done together with the gas company. If we speak about the plants, we finalized the digesters reconstruction. It gave us an opportunity to deal in the future with gas production. Our aim is to increase the biogas production at the wastewater treatment plant , so it will give us an opportunity to produce more energy, heating energy, and also electrical energy.
We do some reconstructions at the water treatment plant of Ülemiste, so we reconstruct the clarifiers and the filters. Of course, the main project for this and the next year is the reconstruction of the ozonation treatment. The design is almost ready, should be concluded in this quarter, and then we will move on with the procurement and the reconstruction of ozonation. We also started last year with the reconstruction of secondary sedimentation tanks in the wastewater treatment plant. This was a huge investment. Approximately EUR 9 million will be spent to reconstruct 12 of the secondary clarifiers. By today, two of them are completed, and 10 are waiting for the reconstruction in 2025 and 2026.
Of course, one important project that has been completed at the beginning of this year, but what we did work on during last year is the SCADA change in the wastewater treatment plant . Starting from this year, we also use the new SCADA system that is more protected from the cybersecurity and gives us an opportunity to visualize better our processes. If we move on to the next slide, in here, I will conclude the operational results from the last year. As I mentioned before, the water quality was great. The leakage rate, if we speak about the fourth quarter, was 12.67%, but if we speak about the full year, it was 13.67%. That is very good for the size of the city Tallinn East.
Our wastewater is treated according to all the standards, and it is very important to say that the customers are also satisfied with the service we provide to them. Our teams do a lot of work to improve our customer service and customer experience. We are happy to get feedback from our customers. If we speak about last year, then our result in the fourth quarter was 4.205%. That is very good. During this year, we have also some plans how to improve the customer satisfaction, and we do a lot of work together with our customers to improve that. The average duration of water interruption in the fourth quarter was higher than last year. It is related to some emergencies that took longer to repair them. If we speak about the full year, then it was on the last year's average.
The rehabilitation of the networks is according to our plan. This year, we reconstructed 45 km of pipes. This is the aim, what we achieved during three years. Our idea or our aim target is to reconstruct approximately 40 km a year. This will give an opportunity to keep the network in good shape and not to move with that to the other side. Now I will give over to Taavi, who will speak about finance in detail. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Aleksandr. Welcome everyone who has joined us live. In the next slides, I'll give an overview, as Aleksandr and Kristiina said, about our financial activities. First, starting with volumes of water and wastewater. The first quarter very much followed the same trends as we see on annual level. We have seen in the fourth quarter and also for the full year that business customer volumes have slightly decreased. There are some changes in customer behavior, but we see that this decrease is small, and we feel that with the improvement of the economic environment, there will not be any sudden changes in business customer water consumption for the future. At the same time, private customer sales volumes, both in the fourth quarter and also for the full year, have slightly increased.
Have the outside service area volumes, outside service area being other water companies within Tallinna area or outside. In private customer segment, we see that the increase is coming from the residential buildings, so it's natural consumption volumes from consumers. It is a slight increase, as we see year by year, in customer consumption, mainly due to the intensity of habitation and how the population changes in Tallinna and neighboring areas change. For the future, we see that those slight adjustments in consumption will continue. In overall terms, we do not expect any sudden changes in the sales volumes of our business. Next, let's take a look at the revenue side. For the year 2024, we had a significant change in pricing from the 1st of July 2024. It is primarily affecting the third and fourth quarter.
We can see the changes compared to last year's fourth quarter in private customer volumes, where the sales revenue has increased, but also in the business customer volume, where the sales revenue has decreased. This is a result of the regulation that requires that pricing for private customers and business customers has to be on the same level. Now in last year and in the next price adjustments, this gap between private and business customer pricing will decrease. The same trends can be observed for the full year. Private customer revenues have increased, and business customer revenues have slightly increased. Also, there is an increase in outside service area revenues. The price increase in itself, in total, is primarily driven by investments that we have made in our business to ensure reliability and quality of our services and also to protect the environment.
Now, next, taking a look at our cost sides in the fourth quarter, we see that the direct production costs of the fourth quarter have decreased by 11%. This is summarizing the chemicals and electricity, while chemicals have slightly increased. And it's a combination of how much chemicals are in use, but also the pricing that is slowly increasing for the chemicals that we use in the production process. At the same time, electricity has decreased, and this is very much a result of the electrical energy that we produce ourselves in the CHP, the combined heat and power engine in our wastewater treatment plant. Electricity price, in addition to our own production, is also supported by lower average price compared to last year. It's both positive trends that have an impact on the Q4 direct production costs. We have an 8% increase in staff costs.
There are two components affecting that. One is salary adjustment, but also new positions required to maintain our services. Construction costs have increased in the total cost portfolio, and this is directly tied to the construction revenues. It is a correlation depending on how much construction services are provided and how much construction cost occurs. Total production cost was EUR 10.3 million, and as mentioned, an increase compared to 2023. Now, moving forward, looking at the net profit level, we have a significant increase in net profit compared to 2023. Net profit for the quarter amounted to EUR 4.2 million. It is foremost a result of price change. Price change, as mentioned, was necessary to continue and reflect the investments that we have already made, but of course, also to cover the cost increases. Cost of goods sold is a decrease on net profit level, as we can see.
Administrative and marketing expenses have increased by 0.2%. Sorry, cost of goods sold has increased, decreasing the effect of price savings. Price savings change was driven partly also by cost changes. Marketing expenses increased by around roughly EUR 0.3 million and very much affected by the services that we outsource, primarily related to professional services. On the annual level, our profit level was slightly above 2023, around EUR 0.4 million higher, resulting in a EUR 13.3 million net profit for 2024. Now, taking a quick look on the next slide on the cash flows in the fourth quarter, we can see that our investment activities in the fourth quarter were active. That is very much related to the timing of the projects. Very much of the infrastructure construction projects reach a finalization stage in the fourth quarter.
The construction period will start again more with a quicker pace in the second quarter, but the fourth quarter is a time period where many of the projects are finalized, also incurring, as a result, the higher investing cash flows outflow. We have increased slightly our lending to finance these investing cash flows. Our cash position in the end of the fourth quarter was EUR 3.6 million. It is lower compared to the end of the last quarter, but as we have sufficient long-term facilities to finance our investing cash flows, we are optimizing the level of facilities that we use and are not maintaining a high cash balance. Our long-term facilities provide sufficient credit lines to cover our investing cash flows and operating cash flows. Finally, taking a quick look on the investment portfolio in 2024, it reached up to EUR 50 million.
The investments that we made in 2024 are already reflected in the price change that occurred from the 1st of July. As we've also indicated, that estimate for 2025 is EUR 61 million. It's an investment amount in the same range that we estimated in 2024. There are, of course, certain overflows, postponements of projects, so the implementation throughout the year will show how much impact the investments will have on cash flow during the year. The estimate includes the investments that we do also into our regulated asset base. Regulated asset base, the investments that have an effect on regulated asset base amount roughly to 85% of the total investment volume. These changes will be applied to regulated asset base and pricing after the price procedure and after approval by Competition Authority. The process is ongoing.
At this time, there is no clear deadline for the next price application and when it will be approved and applied. The process is ongoing. With these remarks, I say thank you very much to everyone, and I'll give the word back to you, Kristiina. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you both for the presentation. Now we are going to proceed with the questions. You will have a few minutes to submit your questions. Please feel free to type in any question you might have. Oh, it seems that we do not have any questions right now, but recording of the presentation will be available in the Tallinna Vesi YouTube channel webinar playlist shortly. Presentation materials and reports can be found on the Tallinna Vesi web page. Taavi Gröön and Aleksandr Timofejev, thank you both for the overview, and thank you all for joining us. Have a good day.