Akva Group Aktie

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and very much welcome to the Q1 presentation of AKVA Group. I will do the introduction and highlights. Ronny Meinkoehn, our CFO, will do the financial performance, and then we will do a Q&A session. So please post any questions during the presentation, and our moderator will read the questions.

Kicking off with the highlights for the first quarter. We had a quarterly revenue of NOK 1.140 billion and record high quarterly EBIT of NOK 91 million. Strong order intake of around NOK 1.5 billion and order backlog of NOK 2.8 billion at the end of Q1 2026. Our last contract with value of approx NOK 200 million was awarded from Ardal Aqua in February and earlier announced. And a small contract of EUR 28 million was awarded from Laxey in April and then -- will then be part of the order backlog for Q2.

Four new barges for the international market were awarded in Q1 with a total contract value estimated of EUR 6 million. Acquisition of remaining shares of Submerged was completed during Q1. That's our smart camera solution. Now we are the 100% owner and a dividend of NOK 1 per share were paid on April 21. And also the strategic review was announced the start of April to maximize shareholder value. I will comment on that a bit later in the presentation.

Key figures for Q1 2026, record high activity level of NOK 1.140 billion, which is representing 13% higher than a year ago. EBITDA came in at NOK 153 million, where Sea Based landed at NOK 99 million, Land Based at NOK 41 million and Digital at NOK 13 million. And the overall EBIT of NOK 91 million is representing a record quarter for AKVA Group.

Overall order intake of NOK 1.5 billion, which is also a record quarter, of which NOK 1.034 billion is related to Sea Based and NOK 460 million related to Land Based, also driven by the new Ardal contract. We are stepping up our order backlog and now it sits at NOK 2.8 billion by end of the quarter.

I'm also very pleased to inform you that we have done a strategic expansion into the defense industry. This is a very value-driven milestone for our Polarcirkel boats being produced here in Norway in Mo i Rana. So in the first place, AKVA has qualified for the Norwegian defense industry as a supplier of high-quality Polarcirkel boat. So very pleased with that. It's a kind of quality stamp, and we have used quite some time for getting this qualification.

Commercially, we have signed a long-term framework agreement with the defense industry in Norway for delivery of those boats. And the supply to the defense industry are expected to generate significant scale benefits and improve the profitability for the boat business.

Deliveries are scheduled to start in the second half of this year and are expected to be reoccurring and increasing in volume in the years ahead. That's the frame contract. So if I should give some flavor of it, I will say that when we have stepped up pretty well during '27, the activity of the traditional boat activity will be 3x higher for '27 compared to where we came from. So that will drive also profitability because of scale effect.

And those deliveries will be in addition to the ongoing commitments related to autonomous boats, both to the generic market and the defense industry. So if we are more than tripling the activity, we also need more production capacity, and that is secured. And we are now moving into new facilities, and they will be operational right after the summer.

Then moving on to the long-term salmon opportunity. This is the high-level picture, the challenge, how to double salmon production by 2040. Here you see the illustration in the graph for how the growth projection will be if the industry is to support a 5% demand growth. That's basically a doubling by the year 2040.

But the problem is that the current business model is running out of capacity. So new investments are required. And we believe box to the right that innovation and growth will be driven out of deep farming, post-smolt and grow-out. And this is an illustration based on our view, how to drive growth out of the traditional fish farming of 3,000 tons Atlantic farmed -- Atlantic salmon as today. We think deep farming can provide a growth for the next 10, 15 years of 0.5 million, plus multimillion tons and also Land Based will provide growth, but also other things like offshore and new technology like vaccines, new treatment, et cetera, et cetera.

Looking a bit more specifically into each of the growth platforms. Deep farming, we think it's a potential to unlock 15% higher harvesting volume from existing licenses. It is documented that those submerged cases, the deep farming will reduce sea lice treatment with around 80%. I will give some statistics in the next few slides. And this is proven to support fish welfare and supporting the social license, which also has to do with growth in the long run.

Also, very recently, we saw Sinkaberg, our first mover, our partner on deep farming. They reported that for the year 2025, they produced 38,000 tons of salmon, all with so-called shielded technology, but the clear majority is deep farming and Nautilus from us. And they achieved 4% mortality, which is way below the average of the industry being more like 60%, 70% and 92% superior, which is also excellent. So this is by far best-in-class biological results based on this technology. And we see that the fish thrives in the depth. So far, over 400 Nautilus units are deployed to the sea. We see significant reduction in lice pressure and higher share of superior, as I already mentioned.

And then diving a little bit into the details. We have followed 19 harvested sites from the generation spring '22 to fall '24. And to the right, you see the plotting of the data. So we know the 19 sites where deep farming is used, and we have then downloaded data from Barentswatch to see the number of sea lice treatments on those specific sites.

And there you see deep farming is on average for all those harvested fish, 1 treatment, a little bit more than 1 treatment for the whole generation. And the benchmark has been the neighboring sites without deep farming, and they are on average 6 treatments for the same generation. And then we also benchmark towards the previous generation at the same site, and there the reference is 7.

So to conclude, it's a 78% reduction versus neighboring sites without deep farming and it's an 83% reduction when you compare the last generation. So ballpark, you can say that 80% is a good number based on those 19 harvested sites.

So in addition to our own data, we have also noted that the scientist, Frode Oppedal from Havforskningsinstituttet, has said in public and he also did a publication that research shows that deep farming will reduce sea lice -- number of sea lice treatments from -- in a range from 70% to 90%. Also there, the midpoint is 80%. So we think 80% is a good number here.

Moving on to post-smolt. Post-smolt is established as an industry growth strategy. It provides shorter production cycle with reduced number of months in the sea. If you have a 1 kilo post-smolt, you typically go to 7, 8, max 9 months in the sea versus the normal, which can be 16 to 18. So the fish is just less months in the sea. And that is also providing fewer sea lice treatments, lower mortality and increased biomass yield.

And we have, in practice, very strong documentation from the Faroe Islands and the Rogaland region. And if you are successful in implementation of the post-smolt, there is certainly a documented potential to unlock 30% to 35% volume growth. There is a big market here going forward.

We are the only true global RAS supplier. We have a setup in Norway, Denmark and Chile, and we have an international project organization, which can execute the project globally.

We are ready to capitalize in the merchant growth phase. You saw last year, we came up with almost a doubling in our growth for Land Based. And that is on the back of the fact that we have invested NOK 300 million to transform this business to improve the science behind the technology and based on the documentation, we have 250 highly competent industry experts there. And last year, a turnover of approximately NOK 1.2 billion, almost doubling, as you can see here, and a relatively solid order backlog. So what we deliver is proven and documented technology, end-to-end project execution and advisory services.

Also Land Based grow-out is gaining traction. We basically have 2 major customers there being Laxey at Iceland on a hybrid flow-through where we reuse -- sorry, 70% of the water and NOAP in China with very high reuse of the water, more than 99%. So both of them are able and capable of harvesting big salmon. Laxey has started to take a fish at 4, 5 kilo and NOAP will harvest or they are planning to harvest 6,000 tons this year with a size of 6 to 7 kilo.

We think fundamentally, the success of harvesting big salmon has fundamentally to do with the water quality. We have very, very good water quality. We are able to take out quite a lot of the particles in the water, and that is boosting and stimulating fish health and fish performance in the tanks.

We expect to see commercial traction during 2026 and expect to sign one new customer during the year. And also NOAP will decide about their phase III project, which is a large project at the end of the year. And if they decide to go for it, we have the contract there.

Moving on to Digital. We have also there invested significantly in the last few years, NOK 500 million since 2021. Majority of the investment was related to Observe. We have 120 digital specialists within our digital platform. We have 4 different platforms there with presence in all the major markets.

Digging into those platforms, to the left, you see Fishtalk. Fishtalk is about biological ERP system where we have a 60% market share. So 6 out of 10 farm salmon will be on our system. And to the right, it's the control system, bringing hardware and software together, where we have a 50% global market share. And then in the midst, you have new systems, so relatively newly developed system, which is about short-term decision-making supported by AI. And there we have Submerged, which is our smart camera, which can do sea lice counting, biomass estimation and provide solid KPIs for fish health, and we have Observe.

So let's look at Observe. Observe is the market leader by far for [ automated ] feeding based on AI -- supported by AI. We have now installed Observe globally on more than 170 sites. It's a truly scalable solution, and we are now leveraging our global footprint. We expect to see more growth from Norway during this year.

Then summing up, we think AKVA is a global leader and a trusted partner. We have the 3 platforms, Sea Based, roughly with a turnover of NOK 3.1 billion last year, Land Based with NOK 1.2 billion and Digital with NOK 138 million. So in -- to summarize it, we think we are part of the solution. Our technology can provide growth, better fish health, lower mortality and more precise feeding with less waste.

Then our organic growth agenda for 2026, which is the driver for the step-up we are expecting to see into 2027, where we are on track to deliver on the NOK 5 billion mark. We will exceed it the way we see it today. And we have 5 organic growth projects. One is to commercialize next generation of Nautilus Next that will happen this fall. And the news will be about introducing a winch system, which will make it more easy to operate Nautilus. It will be more easy to bring it down and take it up, you will not need to bring in a service boat.

Internationalization of our net business, that's another project where we are now setting up a joint venture with an Indian partner. That is still in motion, still in progress.

Also, we will introduce a new more bigger size of our pen product that will also be launched this fall.

We have already partnered with a concrete barge producer, so the customer can choose between steel and concrete that's DOKK Husoy, and that is already now part of our product portfolio, what we can offer.

And we already announced that we have the ambition to develop our boat business with the defense industry. And I already said today that we already there have a contract in place.

So I'm very confident that those 5 generic growth projects will be supportive for reaching the NOK 5 billion target in 2027. And the way we see it today, we will exceed the NOK 5 billion target.

Focusing on '26, we have guided into this year that we expect to see a 20% step-up in our EBIT versus 2025. And on the back of a solid performance -- financial performance for Q1 and a solid order intake, we want to reiterate that we expect to meet with that guidance. For 2027, we expect to exceed the NOK 5 billion.

Then closing off with some few comments related to the announcement of the strategic review. This announcement was made on April 8, and the process is supported by the largest shareholder, of course, given the right market conditions. So AKVA has entered a phase of strong commercial momentum and sees the potential to exceed the 2030 guidance of NOK 7 billion revenue and minimum 10% EBIT margin.

So then a little update from where we are in the process because now we are 4 weeks down the road. So what we can report is that we see high-quality interest. And in particular, there is interest related to a potential sale of the entire company as a complete platform. Of course, I have to underline that we are still in the relatively early stage, but this platform sale will be our focus now, and that is what will be given priority.

So the strategic review is expected to be concluded after the summer or during the fall of 2026. I have to underline no decisions have been taken at this stage, and AKVA will provide an update to the market upon conclusion of the process.

So that brings me very much to the end. So I hand over to Ronny, please.

Thank you, Knut, and good morning to everyone. We are, of course, pleased to report that the strong financial performance in 2025 has continued into 2026 with high activity levels and also record high profits. So the revenue for the first quarter was strong, NOK 127 million above Q1 last year, driven by high activity in the Land Based business.

So on the back of a strong revenue, providing economies of scale and also a solid product mix in Sea Based, both EBITDA and EBIT reached record high levels for the quarter. EBITDA amounted to NOK 153 million, which is NOK 40 million higher than Q1 2025 and EBIT of NOK 91 million is NOK 34 million higher than the same period last year and provides strong support to our guidance of delivering at least 20% increase on full year EBIT compared to last year. Net financial costs in the quarter are high, negatively impacted by NOK 8 million reduced market value on our investment in Nordic Aqua Partners and profit before tax of NOK 56 million for the quarter.

So both revenue and order intake is showing a very positive trend. The book-to-bill ratio over the last 12 months is just above 100% with order intake of NOK 4.6 billion and revenue of NOK 4.5 billion. In Q1, we had a strong book-to-bill ratio of more than 130% with a solid order intake of close to NOK 1.5 billion.

So compared to Q1 last year, we see increased revenue in the Nordic market of 10%, 27% increase in Americas and 18% increase in Europe. We have a slight decrease of 8% in Australasia.

On the segments, we see Sea Based business still the major business area, representing 66% of the total revenue in the quarter. And the increase in the total revenue compared to last year is driven by Land Based, which had 96% higher revenue this quarter compared to 1 year ago.

After a soft EBITDA margin in Q4 last year, we delivered a strong rebound in Q1 this year with an EBITDA margin of 13.4%. Sea Based achieved a solid margin of 13.2%, supported by a solid product mix and Land Based delivered a strong EBITDA margin of 11.8%, driven by economies of scale and also a healthy project portfolio. And last, Digital maintained a stable and strong EBITDA margin of 32%.

Available cash, including unused credit facilities, was NOK 442 million at the end of Q1, which is a reduction of NOK 105 million compared to year-end. As we expected, the net working capital increased during the quarter and the increase of -- was NOK 85 million from the record low 6.2% at year-end to 7.9% at the end of the first quarter. So we aim to stabilize the net working capital below 8% on an average level, but please note that there will be some seasonality to it. Leverage ratio was reduced from 2.37 in the fourth quarter to 2.32 in this first quarter, which is reassuring and also provides comfortable headroom relatively to the threshold of 4.5.

Net interest-bearing debt increased by NOK 68 million during the quarter, and the big tickets are the increase in net working capital of NOK 85 million, CapEx of NOK 45 million, and we also had M&A activities of NOK 56 million, including payment of seller credit to the former owners of Observe Technology, and we also increased the ownership in Submerged from 58% to 100% in the quarter.

Total CapEx is NOK 45 million for the quarter, where NOK 20 million that's related to our innovation agenda and another NOK 7 million is related to our global ERP project.

And the return on capital employed continued to improve on the back of strong underlying operations and a disciplined capital allocation. So the ROACE improved from 9.3% in Q1 last year to 12.8% in Q1 this year, and we also expect further improvements during 2026.

A dividend of NOK 1 per share was paid on April 21 for the first half year, and the dividend for the second half year will be decided ahead of our Q2 reporting in August.

Continue with some more details on the financial performance in our 3 business segments. And for the Sea Based Technology, the revenue of NOK 653 million in the quarter, that's 6% lower than Q1 last year. On the other hand, we had a really strong order intake and more than 30% higher this quarter compared to 1 year ago.

EBITDA margin was strong, 13.2%, supported by a solid product mix. And overall, we can also report that the product mix in -- we added to the order intake and order backlog in -- during the first quarter was really sound.

Nordic region had a reduction in revenue of 9% in the quarter, while order intake increased by 25%. In Americas, revenue is down by 7%, while we had a strong increase in order intake of 160%, which is driven by the award of the 4 new barges. Europe revenue increased by 18%, while order intake is down by 28% compared to last year.

On the Sea Based side, both -- especially the order intake is showing a very positive trend, and we also expect the revenue trend to turn positive in the second quarter on the back of a really strong order intake in Q1. The order backlog is high of NOK 1.3 billion and is NOK 215 million higher than 1 year ago, indicating sound activity levels in the coming quarters.

And the OpEx-based Sea Based revenue in Q1 was NOK 233 million, representing 31% of the total Sea Based revenue and was NOK 17 million higher than the same period last year.

For Land Based, a strong order intake of NOK 416 million in the quarter related to the NOK 200 million contract with Ardal Aqua in addition to variation orders on existing contracts. The revenue was high in the quarter, NOK 346 million and 96% higher than the same period last year. EBITDA improved significantly by NOK 31 million in Q1 compared to last year, and the EBITDA margin ended at 11.8%. And the improved profitability is mainly due to economies of scale on the back of a higher revenue and with additional positive impact from closure of projects.

We see that both the 12 months revenue and order intake trend for Land Based is positive. Order backlog of NOK 1.3 billion at the end of the quarter is NOK 270 million lower than 1 year ago.

Digital order intake of NOK 44 million in the first quarter and NOK 12 million higher than last year. Revenue increased by 22% in the quarter and EBITDA margin was solid of 32%. And we see both the revenue trend and order intake trend is positive for Digital, and we expect this development to continue throughout 2026. Order backlog of NOK 226 million at the end of the quarter is NOK 85 million higher than 1 year ago.

That was my financial update. I will give it back to Knut now to close off with the outlook and the Q&A.

Thank you very much, Ronny. Closing off with the outlook, we see still a strong momentum for our deep farming concepts. Just to elaborate a little bit on that one. We have very good results from bringing the cod down in the deep. In particular, the cod doesn't like too much higher seawater temperatures than 15 Celsius, then it affects the appetite and the growth of the cod. So the cod should, in an ideal situation be lower in the sea. So we expect to bring more deep farming to the cod industry, the farm cod industry.

We also have an interesting development in Turkey, where they are farming trout in the Black Sea. In the Black Sea, it's very, very hot during the summer with high seawater temperatures. So they need to take out the fish in June. Now we have had one full cycle of production last year, where we took the cod -- sorry, the trout in the Black Sea down by 50 meters. And then we could produce growth entire summer. So we also expect to see further growth and scale up there.

And then we have the launch of Nautilus Next with the winch system this fall, which we think also will gain a good momentum in the market.

Moving on, we continue to invest and improve our solutions, both the 3x innovation agenda with Sea Based, Land Based and Digital. And we are aiming for revenue above NOK 5 billion. We expect to exceed NOK 5 billion next year in '27 and with a minimum EBIT of 9%. And the strategic review is expected to be completed during the fall of 2026.

So that brings me very much to the end, and we like to open up for questions.

So is there any questions in the call?

Not yet.

Okay. I urge you to post any questions, and we'd like to answer. Give it a little bit of time.

Okay. If no questions, we conclude. It was a very strong quarter and no need for questions. But thank you anyway for listening. Have a nice week.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and very much welcome to the Q4 presentation of AKVA Group. I will do the introduction and the highlights. Then Ronny Meinkoehn, the CFO, will do financial performance and followed by a Q&A session. So please post any questions during the call, and our moderator will read the question during the Q&A session.

I'd like to go straight to the highlights of the fourth quarter. We had a high quarterly revenue of NOK 1.1 billion with a corresponding EBIT of NOK 44 million. Land Based delivered a record high quarterly revenue of NOK 422 million. Sea Based secured a strong order intake of NOK 952 million, contributing to total order intake of NOK 1.250 billion. A RAS contract of a value of approximately NOK 220 million was awarded from Tytlandsvik Aqua at the start of Q4. Order backlog totaled around NOK 2.5 billion at the end of Q4 2025. We also had a very solid or robust cash flow generation in Q4, supported by NOK 153 million in net working capital release. And our dividend of NOK 1 will be paid later during first half.

Key features for Q4. We had a record high revenue for the quarter of NOK 1.1 billion, first and foremost driven by Land Based, but also a solid uptake on Sea Based. EBITDA of NOK 103 million on the back of this high activity. We are pleased with this EBITDA level, even though there are a few specifics to talk about related to project and product mix. That will be explained more in detail by the CFO later in the presentation.

EBIT level of NOK 44 million is fair for the quarter. Year-to-date, revenue of NOK 4.4 billion, that is almost representing a step-up of NOK 900 million versus 2024, which is 9% (sic) [ 25% ]. And that is certainly a very strong growth after quite a few years without any particular growth. So Land Based leading there with a step-up of NOK 557 million, which is representing roughly 90% increase. And Sea Based also solid with plus NOK 325 million, which is representing a plus 12% growth year-on-year. EBITDA came in at NOK 508 million, and that is 11.5% of turnover. EBIT of NOK 280 million is 6.4% of turnover. So if I'm to label this year, I'm very pleased with the growth, and I'm also very pleased with the financial performance. So it was a good year.

The order intake was also pretty good. Order intake of NOK 1.250 billion in Q4. We always try to look a little bit at the salmon price, because the salmon price is determining a little bit the appetite for customers to place orders. And we had relatively soft salmon price in Q4, the low 70s. So in light of that, I'm in particular, pleased with this order intake, just to view it a little bit. Order backlog of NOK 2.5 billion into the year is also reasonable.

Then taking one step back and looking more at the bigger picture and expressing that in our challenge, how to double salmon production by 2040. That is just illustrated by an annual growth of 5%, then you basically will double in '24. I'm not saying this is a hard forecast. This is just an illustration of what does it take. But we are a believer that if we directionally -- it's going to go in that direction into 2040, we think that the current business model is somehow running out of capacity. Okay, on the back of better biology, we could see a good growth in '25 of close to 12% increase in the global salmon production. So that was good. But that is not expected to repeat itself in the coming years without significant new investments and investments in new technology. Like we are a believer that the drivers there will be deep farming, post-smolt, and maybe a bit further out, some growth as well. And that is also needed to overcome some of the industry or the growth barriers being there, which is related to fish health, regulations, lack of social license and the financial risk. So we believe this is the high-level picture.

And then more specifically, in our context, what we believe and where we believe that there could be some growth on top of the base of some more than 3 million tonnes of Atlantic. We think that deep farming holds the potential to add something like 15% capacity by reducing lice and lowering mortality. I'll come back a bit more in detail about status on deep farming. And the same with post-smolt, holds the potential to add 30% growth on the current base by improved biomass yield and also reduced mortality and also utilizing your license to a bigger extent. And Land Based further out has the full growth, so Land has the potential to also reach a significant volume. But there certainly will be other emerging technologies like semi-offshore, closed system, et cetera, et cetera.

But I will focus on deep farming, post-smolt, and grow-out. Deep farming, we think that there is a potential to unlock something like 15% higher harvesting volume from existing licenses. That is on the back of significantly less sea lice treatments. We have data points supporting 80% production. I will show that in a minute. And that leads to proven improved fish welfare, reduced mortality, supporting also the social license and regulatory green light in non-green zones. Currently, this is applicable for close to 60% of the locations.

So currently, we have a few years of experience. The frontrunner Sinkaberg, they have been active now for quite some years. I think they have moved almost 100% of their production to deep farming, but also other customers are gaining experience with this. And based on our data points, in the first place, 400 cages of Nautilus is so far deployed in the sea. So 400 we have delivered. And generally speaking, we see a significant reduction in the lice pressure and the need for sea lice treatments. I will show more detailed later in next slide. Also positively, there is a higher share of superior quality. Based on the data we have access to, we see typically minimum 90% share of superior based on deep farming, and that's significantly higher than the industry average. And we also see more stable environmental parameters, positive signals regarding jellyfish and algae. Of course, this is site specific. I'm not saying one size fits all. It requires a certain depth. There are also other conditions required as well. But for the right sites, this is bringing very good results.

And we have data points here on generation Spring22 to generation Autumn24 or Fall24. 19 sites are being fully harvested. So what we have basically done, we know the sites which are operated with Nautilus technology. And then we have downloaded from Barentswatch the number of sea lice treatments related to the production on those specific sites. And that gives the data plot on the right-hand side, where you basically see the number of treatments for the full generation. So this should be a very accurate data.

And if you read the graph, you see that deep farming versus neighboring sites, because that is also something you can get information from Barentswatch about. If you do that mapping, there is a 78% reduction. And then we mapped against the last generation harvested at the same site before deep farming was used. And then we got to 83% reduction. So the midpoint here is 80%. So we stick to 80% if the starting point is correct with a site feasible for deep farming.

We have also noted that the scientist from Havforskningsinstituttet, he has said in public very recently that their research that was based on 40 sites shows 70% to 90% reduction in sea lice treatment. That's supporting our data because the midpoint there is also 80%. So we think that is something, for the time being, which looks realistic to achieve.

Then moving on to post-smolt. Post-smolt is established as an industry growth strategy. We see that shorter production cycles from typically 17, 18 months in the sea to 8, 9 months. That is, of course, a very reduced exposure in the sea, leading to fewer lice treatments, lower mortality and increased biomass yield. And there is very strong documentation there from both the Faroe Islands and the Rogaland regions, also other places. But we see that based on real data that there is a potential to unlock 30% to 35% volume growth.

With regards to the post-smolt market, we see a steady development there. For AKVA Group, based on our pipeline, we expect to close, on average, one post-smolt contract per quarter. So we did one in Q4. We expect another one in Q1. And on average, we expect one new post-smolt contract, a RAS contract per quarter for the time to come. The amounts, of course, it could vary a little bit, but I think the midpoint will be NOK 200 million to NOK 300 million, something like that. There have been some shakeouts in the RAS supply sector. And today, we can rightfully claim that we are the only true global RAS suppliers. We have capabilities to do projects in all the relevant salmon farming regions. We also have quite some people at ground in Chile with own presence there. And we have, over the years, delivered multiple projects in all relevant salmon farming regions.

So overall, I think also on the back of a very solid '25, where we had 90% growth in the top line, I think it's fair to say the statement that we are ready to capitalize in emerging growth phase for RAS. We believe our position is that we are the world's leading full-scale Land Based offering. We have invested a lot of money in order to get to this position, as much as NOK 300 million over the last 5 years, but we believe it will start paying off now. We have 250 very competent and qualified people with industry expertise, RAS technology expertise. almost NOK 1.2 billion revenue last year and NOK 1.3 billion revenue.

Land Based growth, we think it's starting to have some momentum. It's a slow birth. There are, of course, headwinds there as well. But we are advancing very well with NOAP in China. NOAP Phase 2, which we are just about to complete. That will add another 4,000 tonnes of production capacity for NOAP. They will have a combined capacity of 8,000 tonnes. And we expect that they will have a good production year this year. That's the communication from the company. And NOAP will decide later this year about Phase 3, which is a significant additional step of 12,000 tonnes, where AKVA has secured the contract, but the company will need to decide when to start on this one.

Moving on to digital. We have also there invested to create a leading digital platform for aquaculture, at least the salmon space. We are positioned for long-term growth. Also there, we have invested significantly. Over the last 5 years, we talk about NOK 500 million, whereby the majority of it is to acquire the AI company, Observe, which is providing automated feeding. So we have a leading platform, and we are present in all the major markets. Our offering is very much about biological control system, Fishtalk, where 6 out of 10 salmon will be on our system. That's to the left. We have the control system, which is bringing hardware and steering together. There, we have a 50% market share. And then we have gradually been investing in the concept in the middle, or the platform in the middle, which is about short-term decision-making supported by AI. It's either the automated feeding system or smart camera. But that's more a scale-up platform for us.

But saying that, Observe, which is our star for AI. There, we have very good traction. We have now established more than 170 sites or 170 sites is on our system with automated feeding. It's a truly scalable solution and with a global footprint with also growth opportunities in Norway. So for Observe, Q4 was truly excellent, because we contracted 70 new sites, which is a kind of game changer for this area, because we had 100 sites managed over a few years. And then we got another 70 in the fourth quarter, and that will add very meaningfully to our financial performance into '26, because the implementation phase is relatively fast for the 70 sites. I think most of it will be implemented in this quarter.

To sum up, with regards to the technology space, we think we can make the claim we are a global leader and trusted partner. We have the 3 platforms. We have Sea Based last year with NOK 3.1 billion turnover, where we have all the technology, all the equipment you need to run a farm in the sea, we can deliver. Land Based, both with the smolt, post-smolt and on-growing full-size salmon and also digital, as mentioned. So we believe, with our solutions, bringing the fish into the deep, starting with 1 kilo, and the digital platform, we think we are part of the solution that we are relevant for the future and that our technology can provide growth, better fish health and lower mortality, more precise feeding with less waste.

Then I want to spend a little time on this slide. This is a very important one. So of course, we are very pleased with the record growth we did see from '24 to '25 of NOK 900 million, equal to 25% growth and NOK 4.4 billion. But the next challenge we have communicated is the target from the Capital Market Day back in June last year, and that's the NOK 5 billion mark for 2027. So I just want to report to you what actions we are taking this year in order to have more growth to drive us. And of course, we have some organic growth from the base and the products already being there is realistic. But we have 5 projects, which will give additional growth.

First and foremost, it's about further secure deep farming and Nautilus Next. We expect to launch a new concept for Nautilus this fall. And the headline there is easiness to operate, because today, it works well, but it's too much hassle to bring the cage up and down. Very often you need a service boat to support this operation, and that comes with cost as well. So we are now developing a more advanced winch system, which will enable the farmer to operate it to lower and bring it up in an easy way without a big service boat being brought to the site. And we think that will help us to penetrate the market further. So that's number one. That's an internal development project we are in control of.

Second is about internationalization of our net business. Today, we are mainly running net business in Norway. So we are not very present and visible player abroad. And that is because we are lacking the HDPE quality. And now we are busy as we speak with acquiring HDPE production capabilities. That will certainly be outside Norway and outside Europe. But when that is in place, we expect that new production line to be -- it will take maybe up to a year to build. We are at the final stage to complete the thing from a contractual point of view, and then it needs to be built. It's a new greenfield. But we expect into next year that we will also be a player in the HDPE field, which is a very sizable market and where we are not present today.

When it comes to the pen products, we have a fairly fair market share for standard pens, but we are lacking one model. The market is moving in the direction of a bit more bigger dimension, a bit more solid pens. We are lacking that in our offering today. And now we have decided to organize that. So 6, 9 months later, we will also be in position to offer the lacking product there as well.

Then about barges. Traditionally, AKVA Group has delivered a lot of steel barges, and we have been -- we had typically a #1 or #2 position in the field of barges. But over the last few years, the commodity prices for cement has been more favorable than steel. So most farmers today will choose a concrete barge rather than steel. So we had a turnover on our steel barges last year of around NOK 100 million. A few years ago, that used to be NOK 300 million in a normal year, even NOK 400 million in a good year. But there has been a shift towards concrete. So we have been losing out quite a bit there.

So yesterday, we announced in a trade press release that we have now entered into a partnership with -- I think there are 4 of those yards in Norway which can produce the concrete barges. So we have now entered a strategic partnership with one of them, DOKK Husoy at Karmoy. And that will enable us to become a full-fledged supplier, either it's steel or concrete. So we expect that over a bit of time, probably already quite a bit into next year that we will be back to the normal turnover within barges regardless steel or concrete. So that's typically NOK 300 million or something.

And then the fifth one, the final one, also extremely interesting for us. And at AKVA Group, we have delivered for decades very, very solid working boats. We think we have the most robust and most secure working boats, service boats, those are typically up to 10, 11 meters, for the salmon industry. They are out there 24/7, 365 days and all kind of weather. So now we have made a contract with the Norwegian defense industry to modify some of our models and make some unique models for the defense industry. So we have secured already a significant contract with the defense industry. And also, we are together with them, financed by them, developing new models, which can add very nice activity to our boat building activity in Mo i Rana.

So all those 5 are very well-organized projects with very high level of comfort from our side, very high level of certainty that this will add -- each and one of them should add minimum NOK 100 million extra turnover within a few years. So we think those are very tangible things. Less so in '26, we will have some from the defense industry and the boats there. But for the others, most of it will materialize gradually into '27 and onwards. So very detailed, but I just wanted to explain more in detail to you what our organic growth agenda is about. And then once again, on our base, on our current base, there is a lot of technology and products behind that. We still expect some organic growth from that as well. So yes, also Land Based is very much about continuing working on the customer pipeline, and the same on digital as well.

All right. I'm running out of time here. Strategic road map. Just to conclude, we have been through a few turbulent years during '22 to '24 without top line growth, but we were able to do a lot of internal improvements. We changed a lot of things, both within the organization and with regards to the technology platform. We invested in bad times, and we started to harvest a bit from that in '24 where we improved the EBIT from 1% to 5% in that window. For '25, we guided NOK 4 billion and 6%. We came in at NOK 4.4 billion and 6.4% EBIT percentage. We are pleased with that. For '26, we are guiding that we expect to see a 20% plus EBIT growth versus '25. And that is based on some continued scalability. And also internally, we see areas where we can improve operational performance still, but also better profitability from our digital business on the back of the new contracts and Land Based as well and some from Sea Based. That's the justification of the 20% guidance. And for now, we maintain the '27 target of a revenue of NOK 5 billion and 9% EBIT percentage.

So that brings me to the end of my presentation, and I hand over to the CFO. Please, Ronny.

Thank you. Okay. Good morning, everyone. Yes. We are, of course, very satisfied with the financial performance in 2025, and we also consider the closing in Q4 to be acceptable. So revenue was strong in the quarter, like 40% higher than Q4 2024, driven by the high activity we have in Land Based business. For the full year, we have an increase of 25% of revenue from NOK 3.5 billion to NOK 4.4 billion in 2025, which is well above our guiding of NOK 4 billion for the year. So we have demonstrated good growth in Sea Based in '25 of 12% and 90% growth in Land Based. So on the basis of a high revenue in Q4, we consider the profitability to be somewhat on the soft side, mainly due to the product mix in Sea Based, but also to some extent, the project mix in Land Based. I will come back to this later.

EBITDA in Q4 of NOK 103 million is NOK 26 million higher than last year. And for the full year, we have an EBITDA of NOK 508 million, which is NOK 127 million higher than in 2024. And on EBIT, we have NOK 280 million on the full year, representing a margin of 6.3% or 6.4% compared to our guiding of 6%. So we are satisfied with the quarter, profit before tax of NOK 16 million and for the full year, a profit before tax of NOK 193 million.

Looking at the book-to-bill ratio of the last 12 months is just below the 100% level with an order intake of NOK 4.3 billion with a revenue of NOK 4.4 billion. A strong book-to-bill ratio in Q4 of 112% with this good order intake of NOK 1.25 billion.

Looking at the markets, comparing Q4 '25 to Q4 '24, we see a strong growth in the Nordics of 45% and also 49% increase in Americas, which is both primarily driven by Land Based projects. We see Sea Based business representing 59% of the total revenue in the quarter and the increase in total revenue compared to Q4 '24 is primarily Land Based with 94% increase and 20% increase in Sea Based.

EBITDA margin, somewhat soft, as mentioned, of 9.2% compared to the high 13.3% in Q3 and also the 9.6% in Q4 2024. For Sea Based, we have an EBITDA margin of 8.2%, which is primarily related to the product mix with less impact from deep farming products compared to previous quarters. Compared with Q3 and Q2, the Sea Based revenue is also less, meaning that the economies of scale is also limited in Q4. For Land Based, we have an acceptable EBITDA margin of 8.8%. I mentioned that this is also somewhat on the soft side due to the project mix, which I will comment later. In digital, we have a strong EBITDA margin of 31.8%.

Available cash at the end of Q4 was NOK 547 million, which is a strong increase of NOK 105 million compared to Q3. So we significantly reduced the net working capital by NOK 153 million in the quarter from 10.5% to 6.2% in Q4. We commented during our Q3 presentation that we expected some release in Q4, but the NOK 153 million was more than we expected and is also primarily related to the Land Based segment. We expect the net working capital to increase towards the normalized 8%, 9% level in Q1. And last, the leverage ratio was reduced from 2.62 to 2.37 in Q4, which, of course, is comforting compared to the threshold of 4.5.

We had a strong cash flow generation in Q4. Net interest-bearing debt was reduced by NOK 60 million, but the big ticket is the net working capital reduction of NOK 153 million. And for the full year 2025, we have a reduced net interest-bearing debt of NOK 154 million, which is driven by the sale of the Abyss shares back in Q1 of NOK 144 million. And please also note that we have reduced the net working capital in '25 of NOK 65 million, which is primarily related to our focus to reduce the inventory levels. So we believe the NOK 65 million reduction is a good achievement when we increased the revenue by 25% compared to 2024. It's very hard to fight net working capital levels when the business is growing.

CapEx of NOK 58 million in the quarter, where NOK 23 million that's related to our 3 innovation agendas, another NOK 10 million is to rental products. Rental products is equipment we invest in and rent to our customers, which is a profitable business to AKVA. And another NOK 15 million that's related to our manufacturing facilities. So total CapEx for the year amounted to NOK 176 million.

We have also seen a very positive development in return on capital employed during the last 12 months. It has increased from 7.9% in Q4 '24 to 11.5% in Q4 '25, which is a bit above our guiding of 10% at year-end. And dividend, we paid NOK 1 per share in dividend in November last year, taking the total dividend up to NOK 2 for the full year. We also decided to distribute NOK 1 per share for the first half of 2026, and this payment will be done in April.

And then some more details on the financial performance in our 3 business segments. And for Sea Based, the revenue of NOK 653 million, that's a 20% increase compared to Q4 '24. And the order intake was at the same high level of NOK 950 million. We see the decrease in EBITDA margin from 8.8% to 8.2% related to the product mix. I mentioned the most important driver behind this is the amount or share of revenue related to deep farming concepts, which was considerably less compared to Q2 and Q3 in '25 and also compared to Q4 2024. We see, in the regions in Nordic, we have increased revenue by 19%, a slight reduction in order intake of 9% compared to last year. Americas, both revenue and order intake has increased by 15% and 9%, respectively. And last, we have a strong improvement in Europe, Middle East, where revenue increased by 45% and order intake by 65% compared to last year.

We see the 12 months revenue trend for Sea Based is still positive, increased by 12% in the last 12 months. The order intake trend is more a flat liner. And we, of course, need to increase the momentum now to secure revenue growth in 2026. Order backlog just above NOK 1 billion at the end of the year, which is approximately NOK 60 million less than 2024. The OpEx-based revenue in Sea Based, which is a very important part of our business, was very high in Q4, NOK 320 million, and NOK 50 million higher than Q4 2024. And for the full year, we have just a little bit more than NOK 1.1 billion in revenue from OpEx-based revenue, which is at the same level as in 2024.

For Land Based, we have order intake of NOK 220 million in the quarter related to the RAS contract with Tytlandsvik Aqua. Revenue, all-time high, more than NOK 420 million, a 94% increase compared to 2024. We see a significant increase in EBITDA of NOK 16 million compared to last year. And please also note that Q4 '24 was positively impacted by closing of one project with a favorable outcome.

I mentioned the EBITDA margin somewhat soft in Q4 related to the project mix. So close to 40% of the revenue in the quarter is related to 2 projects with a project margin, which is lower than normal for the business area. First, we have a project in Chile, which we took over from Billund following the bankruptcy. This project is very derisked, which it should be when we take over a project, with a corresponding low project margin. And secondly, we have a hybrid flow-through project. Also this project with a lower-than-normal project margin due to less technology content complexity and hence, also lower risk to AKVA.

So just to summarize, the revenue related to these 2 projects was very high in the quarter, 40%. The project margins are lower, but reflects the underlying risks in the project. So they are fully in line with our expectations. We see positive momentum in Land Based, both on revenue and order intake trend. Order backlog is still solid of NOK 1.3 billion, NOK 130 million below 2024 at the end of the year. And last, digital, we have a strong order intake of NOK 77 million in Q4, primarily related to this new contract for Observe on the 70 sites mentioned by Knut. The revenue was 15% higher in Q4 this year compared to last year. We see a solid EBITDA margin above 30% for the business. And we see that the 12 months revenue trend is still a flat liner for digital, but we expect this to improve during 2026 on the back of a positive development in the order intake trend. So we have a quite solid order backlog now at the end of 2025 of NOK 222 million, which is 60% higher than 1 year ago.

That was my financial update. I give it back to you, Knut.

All right. Thank you very much, Ronny. Just to close off here and conclude. outlook, foreseeing continued strong momentum for deep farming concepts, also supported by Nautilus Next concept, the one I explained about, which will lead to a more easy way to operate, bringing down and taking up the Nautilus Cage as such. We are still continuing to invest and improving our solutions, our innovations agenda related to both Sea Based, Land Based and digital. And we are aiming for revenue above NOK 5 billion in '27 and EBIT of 9%, also supported by the 5 organic growth initiatives. And I should also mention that specifically our guidance for '26 is plus 20% on the EBIT versus 2025.

So that brings me very much to the conclusion, and we will open up for Q&A. So let's start with the people here in the audience. Yes, please.

Henrik Knutsen, Pareto Securities. How do you see competition in the farming concepts between competitors and also the farming concepts compared to, for instance, closed facilities?

Yes. So we were the pioneer in deep farming together with Sinkaberg and that gives us a good starting point, because we have installed already 400 cages, also with much more customers than Sinkaberg. So by far, we have the highest installed base. But of course, competition is not sleeping either. We think they have been stepping up, in particular, our main competitor has been stepping up during '25, and they also start to deliver. And I don't know what the exact data points there. I know that by far, we are still the market leader. And that is a position we want to secure also long term.

I think 1 thing is the current situation and status for the best technology. But the fact that we came first and also we are working with a couple of very good clients on our innovation agenda, it's very important to also lead the innovation race, and my observation is that I believe we are a little bit in the lead when it comes to the innovation race there. Because this is our new technology, there is a lot of -- it's a lot about protocols with regards to how to operate, it's a lot about choosing the right site, and it's also some about technology in orders. And we think the next phase will be about easiness to operate. So I'm pretty optimistic that we will have a good market position for deep farming also in the coming 3, 5 years.

With regards to closed, it became a little booster when we got the incentive for closed based on those 30,000 tonnes from the red zones you could recoup by a closed technology. So with great curiosity, we have been talking with quite a few of those companies with technology. We think it will still take a bit of time to mature the technology to really commercialize it. We saw the same with deep farming, even though we had a very good pilot there already 5, 6 years ago. It takes quite some time in order to mature everything, come to good protocols, come to good piloting, come to good biological performance. So we see that there is good appetite, good interest there.

We think it's still a little bit -- it will still take a bit of time before you see a couple of winners. Typically in our space, you end up with 2, 3 winners. And today, there are a lot of players. Not all of them will be there 5 years later, that's for sure. And for us, we are willing to consider to go into that, but we have decided not to develop ourselves, because there are so many players doing a lot of things there. So then we will rather invest in what we think could be a winner. And for time being, we don't know the answer to that.

A short question on the digital side, on what you call short decision-making. I guess you're more of a challenger, but you have secured a big order, as you say. Can you elaborate a little bit on that order? And how do you see competition there from the, let's say, 3 big players?

You mean the Observe activity, automated feeding? Then I will talk specifically about Observe and automated feeding. I think it's fair to say that on automated feeding, that is also a space, a segment where we have been the pioneers, right? There is one other player or competitor working with one specific large customer. They have not been too active in the wider market space till date. So we are basically the supplier or the player with a lot of -- a wide portfolio there. We have 170 sites across all the 4 main markets, Chile, Canada, U.K. and Norway. Norway is less penetrated than the others.

The 70 sites was distributed into 3 different customers, 2 or 3.

Two.

Two. So that means that 2 of them, they had done 5 plus/minus pilots. They saw good results, and then they deployed it over a large number of sites. We see a lot of things happening within smart cameras, but the smart cameras, at least not currently, cannot do automated feeding. They do sea lice counting, biomass estimation into weight classes and a fish health dashboard, but that's not automated feeding. So in specifically automated feeding, we are the leader, and we are the pioneer. Of course, also competition will wake up and move into that field. We understand that. But we also think that the relative revenue per site will increase. There will be more sites.

Today, there is a penetration of roughly 10% of all the sites in the world, the 170, there are 1,600, 1,700 sites, so a penetration of 10%. So there will be more penetration over the next years, and there will be more revenue per site, because we are still in the first phase of development in order to come to full autonomous feeding. A full autonomous feeding application will probably trigger twice a turnover per site. And we are now at the brink to deliver on that one. So you see value creation from more revenue per site and more sites. And of course, there will be more competition as well, but it's just at the very beginning of opening that new market space. So I think that is a very promising new segment, and you can add a lot of value from that.

Today, it's like that if you -- with help of automated feeding, if you can improve FCR with 0.008 or if rounded, 0.01, that means in practice from 1.20 to 1.19, if we are able to bring that value to the customer, everything else on top of that is the bottom line. So that is the cost of it. So relatively low cost compared to the value you bring. And we see in a number of user cases, we are able to support with improvements, which is way more than the 0.01. Sorry for the long answer, but it's a very exciting development.

Is there any -- okay 2 questions here. And then you can check if there is any questions from the call.

So how much of the growth in the Land Based section is contributed to a single contract or single contract versus like broader growth?

Last year, we had a 90% step-up, and that is based on our relatively broad portfolio. And I would say we have 5, 6 bigger projects behind that. Is that fair to say?

I think that's fair. 5, 6 above NOK 100 million in revenue.

Yes. So we see some customers, which are more like repeatable customers. We have done 2 projects for NOAP. We expect the third one to be started maybe at the end of this year into next year. We see with Tytlandsvik, we have been with them now from 0 to the latest contract, which will allow them to have 9,000 tonnes of installed capacity. The same with Laxey, and also Cooke is a very kind of repeatable customer. So there are quite a few. I mean, I would say, 6, 7 customers which are very stable with us. And then we have some other customers where we get one project, maybe they only have the need of one project. So there is a mix there. But we think we have a good traction now in the space for us after all the work we have done there and also the fact that some competition is struggling financially there. We think we have a pretty good momentum.

Do you expect that growth to continue?

Yes, over time. We got a little bit more growth than we expected in '25 for Land Based due to very good project progressing in Q4. So maybe '26 on Land Based will be at around the same level in between, but we expect at least '27 to come with a lot of growth. We are not sure about '26. There are quite some cases we are working on, which can give some extra growth in '26, but should be hopefully minimum the level of '25.

Is there any questions from the call?

Yes, there is. We have one from Ola Trovatn. Do you expect to close a post-smolt contract in Q1 2026? And what is the outlook for a new grow-out contract in China other than NOAP?

So yes, we expect to close a post-smolt contract in Q1. The answer is yes. And we are guiding that on average -- it's always hard, it's a marketplace with dynamics, but on average, there should be one post-smolt contract per quarter for the coming period. And we hope -- we don't know, but we also hope to sign one new contract in China outside NOAP within this year. We are at least working on it, whether it will materialize finally, those are very big complex contracts, legally complex contracts in China. So we need to be on 100% solid base whenever starting a project. But the ambition is to close a new project outside NOAP in China in '26, yes.

Well, we don't have any more incoming questions. Do we have any more questions from the audience? Let's give it 10 seconds.

Okay. Thank you very much for all your attention and have a nice Olympic weekend.

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and very much welcome to the Q3 presentation for AKVA Group. I will do the introduction and the highlights. Ronny Meinkoehn, the CFO, will do the financial performance, and then followed by a Q&A session. So, please post any questions you might have, and our moderator will read your question.

The highlights for the third quarter. Solid quarterly revenue of NOK 1.1 billion, and EBIT of NOK 89 million. Just into the fourth quarter, early October, we were awarded the RAS contract from Tytlandsvik Aqua, with estimated contract value of NOK 220 million. Order intake is expected to be strong in Q4, providing a solid foundation for continued revenue growth into 2026. And AKVA is confident to deliver on 2025 revenue and EBIT guidance of minimum NOK 4 billion and 6%, respectively.

Let's go straight to the numbers. Revenue for the quarter was NOK 1.1 billion. EBITDA came in at NOK 148 million and EBIT at NOK 89 million. This is representing our best third quarter ever, and we are pleased with both the activity level and the financial performance.

Year-to-date, revenue of NOK 3.3 billion, EBITDA of NOK 406 million, and EBIT of NOK 236 million. This is representing a 20% increase in revenue year-on-year, and also our best financial performance ever. So, we are pleased with that.

Let's look into order intake and order backlog. Order intake of NOK 786 million in total, which is on the soft side for Q3, above the level as a year ago. And please be aware that there is a seasonality in the order intake pattern.

Saying that, we expect Q4 this quarter to be very strong, significantly stronger than the same quarter a year ago, which was NOK 1.1 billion. And that will secure a good momentum for continuous growth into 2026 versus '25 then.

And this statement is based on actual sales we have seen now in October, and the number of tenders being out there. So that is the basis for our qualification of a strong order intake in Q4. Order backlog of NOK 2.4 billion, which is a reasonable level.

Then I will spend some time, some minutes on the long-term Salmon opportunity. And this is a kind of executive summary of the Capital Market Day we had back in June this year. First of all, a few words about AKVA Group. We are a technology innovator across multiple areas. We are the pioneer. We have been the first mover in many important areas.

Starting in the 1980s with the automated feeding, which is kind of the DNA of AKVA Group. More recently, over the last 8, 10 years, the development and the first mover of the deep farming concept where we have delivered more than 200 cages now till date. And then over the last 30 years, we have been a pioneer and a mover, first mover within the Smolt and the Post-smolt segment, which is now proof-of-concept is very much there. And that gave also birth to the Land Based grow-out area, which is now happening first and foremost in China with Nordic Aqua Partner. Also, since the '80s, we have been there with software and more recently more AI-based solutions.

Then moving more into the industry. Salmon farming industry is at a crossroad. The graph on the numbers here is representing Atlantic salmon, the volume globally over the last 20 years or so. It took 3 decades, 30 years to pass the first 1 million tonne in 2001. And then another 10 years or so, a little more, 11 in 2012 to add another 1 million tonne. And then slightly less than 10 years till 2021 to pass 3 million tonnes.

But then followed by some years of stagnation. And why stagnation, there have been some industry barriers in the recent years, which is about fish health, high mortality regulations. We have seen growth constraints related to regulations and also the social license has been at stake. And even more, we have seen financial risk, first and foremost, represented by the new resource tax as such. So, this has hindered some growth. But saying that in 2025, we have seen some good growth of 9%. That is on the back of excellent biology. But still, in 2026, we do not expect too much growth again, more flattish.

And now the challenge. The challenge is how to double salmon production by 2040. So, the -- what we see is that the current business model is running out of capacity and new investments are required. What we like to see in this industry is a healthy growth. Probably a healthy growth is something like 5% because there is an underlying megatrend and growth for salmon consumption demand. And 5% is representing a healthy growth because the market can handle that and you will have a healthy salmon price with that type of growth.

And if we can grow the market with around 5% year-on-year, that will take basically the challenge to double over the next 15 years. And that cannot happen within the current production model. So new investments will be required, new investments in new technology, technology like deep farming, post-smolt and also grow-out. And that is to overcome the industry barriers, so to say.

And then, we have just illustrated some of the growth potential. Of course, it can be -- it can happen in real life in a different way than this, but this is for illustration purposes. So, the starting point is that the traditional Sea Based farming currently produces around 3 million tonnes of Atlantic salmon globally.

We believe that, if we can scale deep farming over the next 15 years, that could add another 15% capacity by reducing lice, lowering mortality and open the social license to produce more. Furthermore, post-smolt holds the potential to add 30% to 35% to volumes That is by improving biomass yield and reducing mortality.

Land Based growth beginning to gain traction with long-term potential of 500,000 tonnes or more. And of course, other emerging technologies like offshore, close containment is likely required also to support growth as such.

Diving into deep farming. We see a potential to unlock 15% higher harvesting volume over the next 15 years or so. Submerged cages reduce the sea lice treatment by up to 85% and hence, reducing mortality with relatively speaking, limited additional investments.

Proven improved fish welfare supporting social license. This is important because we think in addition to the effect from lower mortality, we think also there will be a positive impact of increased or greater social license, enabling growth as well. And this concept is currently applicable for close to 60% of the locations, and we believe this is representing a NOK 6 billion market.

Using this opportunity also to give a short commercial update on deep farming, where we are right now. As I mentioned, we have delivered more than 200 cages. And now just into October, we got our first commercial contract of deep farming to Turkey of NOK 45 million. And the concept in Turkey is to produce trout in the Black Sea. The surface temperature is very high during the summer. And the concept is to bring the fish 30, 40 meters underneath to come to more ideal temperatures, enabling the industry to grow salmon throughout the summer months. So, this can be a breakthrough in Turkey.

We also believe that talking Turkey for the bass production, also the temperature in the sea is too high in the summer now. So, we also believe that, there is a business case for moving bass down in the deep.

Back to Norway, we expect to sign contracts with several new customers during Q4. Post-smolt established as an industry growth strategy. It is bringing shorter production cycles down to 7, 8, 9 months with reduced exposure in the sea. It's about fewer sea lice treatments, lower mortality and increased biomass yield. And we have a strong documentation from the Faroe Islands and the Rogaland region. And we see a potential based on those business cases, Faroe and Rogaland of unlocking 30% to 35% volume growth.

Also here, a short commercial update. In addition to the new contract of NOK 220 million we have reported early October, that's with Tytlandsvik. We also expect to close several new contracts over the next months to come.

AKVA Group, we are the only true global RAS supplier. We have physical presence in Norway. We are the only one with the presence in Chile and the only one in China. And we have a global project capabilities, so we can drive projects, execute projects all over the world.

We have invested a lot in Land Based, actually around NOK 300 million in the last 5 years. We have 250 very competent people, and we have a solid order backlog, which we expect to increase in the years to come. So, we are very well positioned for taking part of the expected growth. We have proven and documented technology. We have end-to-end project execution, and we have advisory and services.

With regards to Land Based growth, Land Based farming is beginning to mature. We saw 25,000 tonnes of production in '24 after a decade with trial and errors. And several RAS and reuse facilities now showing commercial validation.

Nordic Aqua in China is now delivering predictable and well-documented volumes of superior fish. Also here, a small commercial update. We are now working with other Land Based projects than NOAP. NOAP is exciting still for us. It's our #1 customer within this segment. And we also expect to -- in the future to deliver Phase III for NOAP. But now we're also busy with increasing the customer portfolio, and it's getting more concrete now than before. So, we expect something to materialize over the next months.

When it comes to digital, also here, we have invested to create a globally leading digital platform within aquaculture. Over the last 5 years, we have invested as much as NOK 500 million and majority or a bit more than half of that was acquiring the AI company, Observe. And the rest of the money went into further development of AKVA Fishtalk, AKVA Connect and also the acquisition of AKVA Submerged. And we are present in all the major salmon markets.

Our platform is based on, first of all, a complete platform. It's about biological control. There, we have a 60% market share. That's Fishtalk to the left here. To the right, it is about control system between the barges and the pens where we have more than 50% market share. And in the midst, it's about short-term decision-making using AI to support short-term decision-making. And here, for instance, Observe is very, very instrumental. We are now the owner -- we own Observe 100%. We have global presence. It's a truly scalable solution, and we have around a bit more than 100 sites now.

Also here, a small commercial update. During Q4, we expect to add and contract another 70 to 80 sites on top of the more than 100-plus sites being there. So Q4 is expected to be a kind of breakthrough when it comes to the commercialization of Observe.

Coming to the end, AKVA Group has the position as a global leader and trusted partner. We have the 3 platforms, Sea Based, Land Based and Digital. And we bring improved fish health and welfare, higher growth and higher value creation. We truly believe we are part of the solution, and our technology can provide growth and value creation as such.

This is a graph just showing in the blue or black colors, AKVA revenue over the last 8, 9 years. And then in the orange graph, it is the development of the investments in fixed assets by the farmers. So, the investment level in the Salmon farming industry increases by 12% annually over those years. And that is significantly outpacing the harvest volume, which is more at 2.3%. And the AKVA Group revenue had overall also increased to the same 12%, in line with the industry investments. Year-to-date, we are a bit higher. We are at 20% revenue growth year-to-date.

And then coming to the end, our strategic road map, which was presented during the Capital Market Day in June. First of all, we like to confirm the 2025 guidance, which is a revenue of NOK 4 billion and minimum NOK 4 billion, sorry, and EBIT of 6% or higher.

Then a new 2026 guidance, that is to be reported as part of the Q4 reporting, which will happen in February. So, in February, we will release the 2026 guidance. And then we have the 2027 target of NOK 5 billion and EBIT of 9%. And today, we have a bit more information than in June when we issued this, and we just want to reiterate the 2027 target, which was reported during the Capital Market Day.

And that brings me very much to the end. We will now move into the financial performance. And Ronny Meinkoehn, our CFO, he will do the presentation. So please, Ronny.

Thank you, Knut, and good morning to everyone. We are satisfied with the financial performance in this third quarter. And as we told you when we did the Q2 presentation back in August, we expected Q3 to be a repeat of Q2, and that's exactly what happened.

So, we had a strong revenue in this third quarter, NOK 176 million higher than Q3 last year and revenue year-to-date of NOK 3.3 billion is more than 20% higher than in 2024. So, we have demonstrated good growth in Land Based and Sea Based in 2025. And we are, of course, comfortable to deliver on our revenue guiding this year of NOK 4 billion.

The profitability in the third quarter was strong. EBITDA of NOK 148 million is NOK 20 million higher than in Q3 last year. And year-to-date EBITDA of NOK 406 million is more than NOK 100 million than in the same period last year, which is a strong increase of more than 30%.

On EBIT, year-to-date, we have a margin of 7.2%, well above our guiding for the full year of minimum 6%. And the net financial costs in the quarter was low of NOK 14 million, positively impacted by the NOK 10 million increase in market value on our investment in Nordic Aqua Partners.

So overall, we are satisfied with a profit before tax of NOK 75 million in Q3 and NOK 177 million year-to-date. And for Q4, we expect a soft closing for the year, both with regards to revenue and profit due to the seasonality in our Sea Based business.

The book-to-bill ratio over the last 12 months is a bit above 100% with both order intake and revenue of NOK 4.1 billion. Book-to-bill ratio in the third quarter was somewhat soft of 71%. However, as stated by Knut, based on the momentum we see in the market, we expect a strong order intake in Q4, which will support continued revenue growth into 2026.

And compared to Q3 last year, we see increased revenue in all our markets, except Americas with 22% increase in Nordic, 27% increase in Australasia and 53% increase in Europe and Middle East. Sea Based business represented 69% of our total revenue in the quarter and the increase in revenue is mainly related to Land Based, which had 90% higher revenue in Q3 this year compared to a year ago.

We delivered a strong EBITDA of 13.3% in Q3, in line with Q3 last year and a bit higher than in Q1 and Q2 earlier this year. We have a strong EBITDA margin of 14.7% in Sea Based, which is supported by a sound product mix and also high activity, which provides economies of scale at our production facilities. For Land Based, we continue to see improved profitability due to higher revenue and also improved project margins with an EBITDA of 7.3% for the quarter.

Available cash was reduced by NOK 31 million in the quarter and ended at NOK 442 million, and the main reason for this reduction is due to the increase in net working capital of NOK 56 million from 9.4% in Q2 to 10.5% in Q3. We expect some relief in the net working capital during Q4.

And the leverage ratio was increased from 2.3 to 2.62 in Q3. And the reason for this increase is related to the observed gain of NOK 71 million recognized in Q3 '24, when we did the 100% acquisition of Observe Technologies. And this gain is no longer included in the last 12 months EBITDA. But still, our ratio of 2.62 is comforting compared to the threshold of 4.5.

Net interest-bearing debt has increased by NOK 35 million in the quarter, driven by the increased net working capital of NOK 56 million. We have NOK 44 million in CapEx and also NOK 49 million in new IFRS 16 liability. Year-to-date, we have a reduction in net interest-bearing debt of NOK 94 million, which is driven by the net proceeds from the sale of our shares in Abyss Group back in Q1.

Total CapEx of NOK 44 million, where close to 40% is related to our 3 innovation agendas, one for Sea Based, Land Based and also one for Digital. And we have another NOK 7 million in CapEx related to rental products, meaning investments in products we are leasing out to our customers. Year-to-date, we have CapEx of NOK 118 million.

The improved financial performance is also reflected on the return on capital employed, which increased from 7% in Q3 last year to 10.5% in Q3 this year, which is in line with our guiding.

Dividend, we paid NOK 1 in April for the first half year, and we also paid another NOK 1 now start of November for the second half year. And of course, it's good to be in a position to distribute dividends again and NOK 2 per share for the 2025 is a record for AKVA.

Continue somewhat details on the financial performance in our 3 business segments, and I will start with Sea Based technology. Overall, revenue of NOK 770 million is NOK 30 million higher than Q3 last year, while order intake was somewhat lower of NOK 15 million compared to 1 year ago.

Strong EBITDA margin of 14.7%, driven by a healthy product mix and also high activity, which provides economies of scale. On the regions, we see in Nordic, we have increased revenue of 3% in the quarter, reduced order intake of 12% compared to Q3 last year. In Americas, revenue was down by 14%, but we see a sharp increase in order intake of more than 100% compared to 2024.

And last, Europe, Middle East, revenue increased by 64%, while order intake was down by 61%. We see the 12 months revenue trend for Sea Based is positive, and we also expect the 12 months order intake trend to turn positive in Q4 on the back of a very high tender activity in the market. So order backlog in Sea Based, NOK 745 million is NOK 35 million higher than Q3 last year.

And the OpEx-based revenue in Sea Based is a very important part of our Sea Based operations, and the revenue was somewhat lower in Q3 this year compared to last year. But overall, for the year, we are at NOK 826 million, which is a bit more than in 2024.

For Land Based, the order intake in Q3 was NOK 138 million and primarily related to the new contract for Laxey on Iceland of EUR 8.5 million. The revenue in the quarter was high, more than NOK 300 million and a 90% increase compared to Q3 2024. So we had good activity and good progress on our project for NOAP in China, as well as for other larger projects, both in Norway, Iceland and also in Chile.

EBITDA improved significantly by EUR 17 million in Q3 this year compared to last year and ended at 7.3%. The improved profitability is, of course, related to the higher revenue, which provides economies of scale and also to improved project margins. So the 12 months revenue trend for Sea Based is really positive, and we also expect to see a positive shift in the 12 months order intake trend in Q4 due to the newly awarded RAS contract for Tytlandsvik Aqua of more than NOK 200 million.

So order backlog in Land Based is solid. It's just above NOK 1.4 billion, which is NOK 70 million lower than last year. And last, digital with an order intake of NOK 28 million in Q3, same level as last year. Revenue was also at the same level as in 2024. We see EBITDA margin improved from 31.9% to 36%. And the trend, the 12 months revenue trend is a flatliner.

However, as Knut stated, we have secured some good sales now in Q4, we expect to see a positive trend, both with regards to revenue and also order intake in 2026. And we have an order backlog of NOK 183 million for digital, which is NOK 36 million higher than 1 year ago.

That was my financial update. I will hand it back to Knut now for the outlook and the Q&A.

Thank you very much, Ronny. Outlook, we foresee a continued strong momentum for our deep farming concept, as I already explained about, continuing to invest and improve our solutions across Sea Based, Land Based and Digital. And once again, we are aiming for our revenue above NOK 4 billion this year and EBIT of 6% as such. And we also expect a strong order intake in Q4 to support continued revenue growth in 2026.

And that brings us down to the Q&A session. So we like to open the Q&A session. So -- we ask our moderator, if there is any questions.

We have one question from Mr. Henrik Knutsen, Pareto. How do you see the competition in post-smolt production from closed systems in sea?

Yes. Yes. First of all, we see a good appreciation for post-smolt -- the post-smolt concept as such. And there are 2 ways of producing a post-smolt. You can do it in a RAS facility on land, and you can also do it in a closed containment in sea.

I think the answer to the question is very much related to regulations. We see an uptake in the interest for producing post-smolt in the sea very recently because of the new incentives related to the Miljuflex -- sorry, for the Norwegian Miljuflex regulation. And that -- there is an incentive up to 30,000 tonnes there, because you can get back some of the lost volume in net track in Norwegian. And that is attractive when you can have this growth without utilizing and using your current MAB.

So, we think that is a fair opportunity for the farmers. However, in a more regular situation where you have to use out of your current MAB, we think that for us on land is competitive. So, I think it's a question about regulation at the end of the day.

Saying that, we see good tender activity on both smolt because there are still smolt facilities, regular smolt facilities to be built and also post-smolt. And even on the ongoing, we have some good activity. So, we are not worried for the next few years to come.

We also have a question from Mr. Ola Trovatn, DNB. Do you expect a stronger order intake in Sea Based Q4 2025 versus Q4 2024? And also, do you expect a similar revenue level and EBITDA margin for Land Based in Q4 2025 versus Q3 2024?

So on the order intake first, and we have said clearly that, we expect a higher activity level for Q4 for AKVA Group in total, but we also expect that to be the case for Sea Based. Now I'm talking order intake Q4. And Ronny, you can comment on the expectation for Land Based in Q4.

Yes. We are, of course, pleased to see the progress in Land Based with high activity level and also improved profit margins, and we expect more or less the same to happen in Q4 this year, yes.

Question from Carl-Emil Johannessen, Pareto. Are you working with any of the closed system providers or looking to develop your own system?

As far as we have recognized there are 22 different technologies available in the market. We -- so far, we have had a strategy to monitor those emerging technologies. It's rather costly. It takes a lot of time, resources and not at least money to develop each and one of the technologies.

It's very hard to predict who will be the winner. One thing is for sure, it will not be all the 22. It might be probably 2 or 3 of them. And there are some risks related to this kind of race. So we have not been participating. We have been focusing on further developing our RAS technology, deep farming and other Sea Based technologies and also Digital.

But saying that, of course, we are monitoring what's going on. And if we believe really there is a winner or 2 or 3, we -- our strategy is to partner with them. It could be a combination of a true partnership where we do the supply chain, scaling up production. We have the customer interface, we can do contract management. So, we can bring value to the table. And we might also take equity tickets in -- as part of our partnership. So, we have our eyes open.

Another question from Henrik Knutsen. You mentioned deep farming currently applicable for close to 60% of locations, but how many sites do you think it is very suitable for?

We are now working with what we call deep farming next. So far, we have had 2 generations of technology development. Last release was the new air dome, which made significant improvements to the farming operation.

The next generation, which will probably be released next spring, is about easiness to operate and more robust mooring. More robust mooring will enable more possibilities, in particular, in strong current. So that will secure the 60% number. And the easiness to operate is about a new Winch system. Today, it is still relatively costly to operate deep farming when you -- sometimes you have to take the fish up. It can -- it has to do, for instance, with the sea lice treatment. There are still need for sea lice treatment in deep farming, whereby the frequency is far less than in conventional farming.

There is still a need every now and then to bring up the site. That is a too big operation today. Very often a big service boat is involved. And when I'm talking easiness to operate, the new Winch system will enable the farmer to bring up the site, the deep farming installation and bring it down again without using any service boat.

We think that will open new market areas, open new markets because there are other purposes and needs for deep farming rather than just avoiding the sea lice treatment. It could be that for some months in the year, you like to go, let's say, 10 meters down because then you have a more optimal temperature. It could be 10, 20 meters. It could be that there are some algaes coming in and there are less of them in the deep. So, you bring it down for some few weeks to await the algae to disappear. It could have something to do with oxygen, et cetera.

We also see for other species, as I mentioned, the trout example in the Black Sea, the bass example in the middle Sea. We see more purposes, more areas where we can use deep farming. So, we think there is a market there for the years to come. Sorry for the long answer, but we think this is very exciting.

Thank you. We have no more incoming questions.

We give it another 10 seconds. So, if there are no more questions, thank you very much for your participation, and have a nice weekend.

Yes. Thank you.

Thank you.

Welcome to this Second Quarter Financial Presentation for AKVA Group. My name is Knut Nesse and I'm the CEO of the company. So I will do the introduction. Normally, I will focus on the financial for the quarter and what happened, but since we are now presenting at Aqua Nor, I will take the bigger picture and leave the financials aside and talk about the long-term salmon story.

But just 30 seconds about the numbers for the second quarter. They are good. So we are very pleased. We had a record high quarterly revenue and EBIT revenue of NOK 1.167 billion and EBIT of NOK 89 million. So very, very pleased with that. So thanks to our customers for trusting us and own employees for being part of the contribution, very much appreciated.

Acceptable order intake of a bit more than NOK 1 billion, NOK 1.052 billion, supported by the award of the EUR 20 million Laxey contract -- Land-Based contract from Laxey. Also, we got another one from Laxey in July, which is not part of the order intake for the second quarter and that was EUR 8.5 million.

And overall, we have a full focus, sharp focus on driving the implementation and development of deep farming.

Okay. So I'd like to spend my time on the long-term salmon opportunities since we have people from the industry here today. So first, a few words about AKVA Group. The recent statement of AKVA Group is pioneering a better future. We have been driving innovation for more than 50 years. If you look at the picture there to the left, you see Hans-Petter Meland in Bodø, 1973, that was with the model and the pilot of the very first plastic cage. Before that, they try different type of technologies, including wooden cages. But I decided to try plastic and work together with Helgeland Plast, which is part of AKVA Group today. And in the picture to the middle from 1974, you see there Steinar Olaisen being part of mounting the first plastic cage at the Island Lovund. So that was the very beginning of the plastic age, which seems a bit basic to say today, but it was one of the more important innovations to modernize and industrialize the salmon farming industry. All the way to 50 years later, we are now busy with Deep Farming, which is a bit of a more advanced solution in all fairness.

So we have been a technology innovator over the years in different areas like automated feeding from 1980s, feeding is in the DNA of AKVA Group. Deep Farming, as I already mentioned, over the last 5, 10 years, and we have been also one of the partners within Smolt and RAS solutions, starting with flow through and all the way to a full Land-Based solution today for ongoing. That's the next one. And also Digital, we have been really part of being pioneers there all the way back since 1980.

Okay. So if you take the high-level picture, the big picture of our industry, salmon farming industry over the last 50 years, it took 30 years to come to the first 1 million tonnes of salmon produced globally. So that was in 2001. So 30 years. Then it took another 11 years until 2012 to add another 1 million tonnes. And then another 10 years or so, 9 to be exact to 2021 to get to the 3 million tonnes. And then prior to this year, we have seen some sort of stagnation and there have been some sort of industry barriers, we call it, like fish health challenges, there have been issues with regards to regulation. And now I'm talking about Norway and Chile, not at least Canada and basically all the salmon farming regions. And the industry, we have had some issues with the social license. And at the end of the day, you need to accept from society in large, including the political community in order to be allowed to grow your industry. So there have been some issues.

A little side remark, we are utilizing some of the biological potential better this year because of lower mortality, better production and higher level of superior. So that is good for this year.

But if we continue to look at the big picture, I think growth is still fundamental. And it took, as mentioned, 50 years to get to 3 million tonnes. But there is still appetite for salmon. And at least, we believe that it should be possible to do 5% annual growth on a sustainable way with sustainable pricing from consumers. On the back of salmon still being a mega trend. So the question is how to double salmon production by 2040? How can we add another 3 million tonnes in just 15 years? We think that, that is possible, but that needs to happen on the back of new technology like deep farming, post-smolt and grow-out, and that's to overcome the industry barriers.

Just diving a little bit more into that the way we see the world. So the base is that as of last year, we had 3 million tonnes of production from a traditional fish farming. We believe that deep farming holds the potential globally to add another 15% capacity, then by reducing the lice and lowering mortality.

Post-smolt, we have many big proof of concepts there. Post-smolt comes with the potential to grow your capacity with 30% to 35% volumes. So that is adding in principal 1 million tonnes on the base of 3 million tonnes.

And then also Land-Based has the potential with maybe roughly 0.5 million tonne until 2040. That's at least what we believe.

And then there are some other emerging technologies like new vaccines and others, which will add some as well. So those -- and there are other emerging technologies, of course, it's all -- it's not easy today to know what is working in 2030 and '35. But fundamentally, we think those are the key building blocks, the way we see it today.

Then moving a little bit more into deep framing. As mentioned, potential to unlock 15%, we believe. And the positive driver is that the submerged cages are improving and then by reducing the number of sea lice treatments with up to 80%, 85%. So that is proven. We have a lot of data because we have delivered more than 200 cages in the marketplace.

So on top of the direct growth as such because you make improvements, we believe there is also an indirect potential there because some of the criticisms towards the industry has to do with mortality at [indiscernible]. So when you solve that problem, we think you will have a better agreement a better social license, and then you have more possibilities to grow your industry. So that's the more indirect consequence of solving some of the core issues. So that's why we believe that a number of 15% on the base and the base of 3 million is doable over the next 15 years.

On Deep Farming, AKVA Group, we have -- we are the market leaders. We were the first mover when it comes to driving deep farming. We did the pioneering and the pilot together with customers in Quebec. But today, we have a more big customer portfolio, 5, 6 customers and more customers are interested in this concept. So I would say we have a strong pipeline there. And as mentioned, 200 cages are already delivered. So there is a lot of real production data out there.

We believe going forward, until the year 2030, we believe it's roughly NOK 6 billion total market opportunity. And that is on the basis of roughly 600 active sites at the point in time in Norway. And we believe that based on the depth required for this technology and current and other local conditions, we believe that 50% to 60% of the sites are suitable for this technology. That means that if you do the math, then you can probably drive 50 to 70 sites a year. And that's ballpark, a NOK 1 billion market per year until 2030. So we are the market leader, and we want to drive this development and capture value down.

Then moving on to post-smolt. Post-smolt is today a proven concept, producing on, for instance, up to 1 kilo and then go to the sea and by then reducing the production time in the sea down to 7 to 9 months, it depends. So the shorter production time in the sea gives more -- yes, reduced exposure in the sea. And it comes with fewer sea lice treatments, reduced mortality and not at least, better capacity utilization of your license. So we have a very good documentation from many farming regions. Faroe Island went first and then followed by the Rogaland region. [ Tysvær ] was one of the first movers there, and they have very solid production data both on how to produce the post-smolt up to 1 kilo, but not at least performance of the smolt in the sea. That is well documented by Grieg Rogaland and [indiscernible]. So we think it's a potential to unlock 30% to 35% volume growth.

Mowi, they had their Capital Market Day, September last year. We have delivered the technology for Mowi Nordheim. We think -- I think that's the biggest small facility within Mowi. Anyway, Mowi reported about the advantages to go from 150 grams smolt to post-smolt of 700 gram. So they are saying that their data is that it reduces the number of days in the sea with 200. It reduces mortality with 50% and the treatments, mainly the sea lice treatments with 40% because of the fewer months in the sea. So -- and 5% faster growth. So those are amazing numbers. And you could add the fifth KPI as well, and that's the additional growth in terms of better license utilization. So it is, in my view, a very solid business case to drive post-smolt.

AKVA's position within this segment, post-smolt is that we are the only true global RAS supplier. I'm talking now the salmon farming industry. So we have a footprint, big organizations, of course, in Norway, in Denmark, in Chile. We are actually the only RAS supplier with presence in Chile. And we have also now built the last few years, we have built a presence in China to serve Nordic AKVA partner.

So this segment, the post-smolt segment has been true kind of development. You can see it as a step-wise evolution over the last 30 years, starting with the very basic flow through solutions and then with small recirculation units from the 2000 and then the 2010s driving technology into full recirculation, reuse and then the post-smolt. And it took some time with quite some challenges to start with. But we believe over the last years that we have more fully documented and proven technology base. And the aim for the next 5 years is to have a fully automated and intelligent fish farming. So that's the next level of development. So we think we are now ready to capitalize in what we consider to be a growth phase.

I said it came with some challenges. So we had to spend -- over the last 5 years, we have not been earning money in Land-Based. We earned some money last year, and we are doing fine this year. But before that, we actually spent NOK 300 million in different type of action, NOK 300 million, which was more about improving the technology platform, having R&D in place having documentation and data behind. So it was a big effort, big investment, but now it seems that it will be rewarded. Last year, we had a turnover of roughly NOK 600 million. And this year, we will be closer to NOK 1 billion. We have 250 skilled employees and a pretty solid order backlog.

Okay. On top of post-smolt, we also are participating in the development related to full cycle on land. And that's the Land-Based grow-out. So that has been -- it has been a tough birth in that segment as well over the last 5, 8 years. But last year, more companies started to handle this in a better way. So it was produced 25,000 tonnes of salmon, large salmon on land. So this is now starting to work. We are very pleased to work together with the Nordic Aqua partner in China, and they were able -- they are able now. They have 4,000 tonne installed capacity based on Aqua technology. And they are able to produce a large salmon of 7-kilo with extremely low mortality, less than 2%, healthy FCR and good superior and also no maturation or extremely low maturation. So we think we are getting very close and have in principle proof in concept in place there as well.

Then moving on to the third business platform, I'm talking about Sea-Based, Land-Based and now Digital. So also, we believe very much in the Digital business, I will explain in a few minutes what it is about. But also there, we have made considerable investments in the last years. Actually, we have invested as much as NOK 500 million, which is a lot of money for AKVA Group, in building the Digital platform. Majority of the money was to acquire the AI company, automated feeding company, so I'll come back to that. So today, we have 4 different solutions there, and I will explain them in a few seconds. And we are present in all the major salmon farming markets. So we consider ourselves to have a complete platform there.

To the left, you have Fishtalk, which is the leading ERP system. It's about biological control, planning and control, 6 out of 10 salmon in the world will be on our system. And to the right, you have the control system, which is about bringing the barges, pen cameras and connected to the steering software control system. And then in the middle, you have Submerge, which is an intelligent or smart camera together with Observe, that's about short-term decision-making, smart data, online data which has been developing a lot over the last few years, 5 years, I will say.

Then focusing on Observe. Observe is U.K.-based AI company, artificial intelligence, and it's about automated feeding. So we acquired 100% of the shares mid last year. We have been invested in the company for several years. But now we are -- we have 100% of the shares, which was an important decision for us. They have today more than 100 sites -- salmon sites in the world on their system, which is about moving towards automated feeding. So we have done the investments. So it's a very scalable solution there. All investments are done. Overhead in place. So in financial terms, it's very beneficial when we scale this business, and we see a major growth opportunity also in Norway here.

Then coming to an end, we see the position and the profile as AKCA as a global leader and a trusted partner. We have the 3 platforms. I mentioned Sea-Based which is roughly close to 80%, 77% of our turnover last year, to be exact. Land-based 17 last year, but that's the fast-growing business this year. It represents the majority of the step-up from NOK 3.5 billion turnover last year to NOK 4 billion. A lot is coming from Land-Base together with Deep Farming. And then Digital, which is lower in volume, but the strategic importance is very, very high. So this is just a graph showing the investments done by the salmon farmers in the last 8 years, from '15 to '23. And it shows -- and those are official public data from Fiskeridirektoratet, the Norwegian data. And it shows that the annual growth and the CAGR in investments, in technology from the side of the salmon farmer is 12% year-on-year.

So it's important to note that, that is very much higher than the growth in the number of heads in the production volume because that's more like approx 3% in the same period. So there is a kind of overinvestment in technology versus growth in volume. And the other graph here is then showing the growth of AKVA Group over the same 8 years. And that happened to also be 12%. So we are kind of growing in line with the industry. So we are growing -- the technology space is growing faster than the growth in production volume. That's the key message. And that's basically what we expect to continue now. And we have been through a few years of turnaround. Until last year, we were pleased with the performance of last year, not the previous years, but now we turn the page. And this year, we will see a pretty good step up from last year on the top line from NOK 3.5 billion to NOK 4 billion. And also, our EBIT will also improve from roughly NOK 180 million last year, a bit more and then to a minimum 6% out of the NOK 4 billion this year. So we are pleased with that development.

We expect the 12% ballpark to continue. So the target for our 2027 is NOK 5 billion turnover. And a lot of our business, like in particular, the Land-Based and Digital but also to some extent, Sea-Based. That is a very scalable business. So we have done the investments. We have the people we need in principle, and that's why we expect to see a pretty much higher EBIT on the back of a higher term or into '27.

So concluding with the key investment highlights, we are -- as already mentioned, we are fully invested. We have fully invested business platforms. I already mentioned, we invested NOK 300 million in upgrading the Land-Based and 500 million, Digital. Also, we make considerable investments in new innovation in Sea-Based. So the way I see it, it's a kind of harvest time, we are positioned for growing and see profitable growth across the trade business model. So we have an attractive business model and also financially, we are strong, and we have stability in our management team. So it should be some good years ahead. That's our expectation.

So okay, I'll leave it here and then Ronny, the CFO, he will talk you through the financials for the second quarter. So, so far, thank you very much for your attention.

Okay. Thank you, Knut. Let's continue with the our financials -- our financial numbers. So overall, we are satisfied with the financial performance in the second quarter, both a record high quarterly revenue and also a record high quarterly profit. So the revenue of approximately NOK 1.2 billion is 15% higher than last year, and the increase in revenue is primarily related to our Land-Based business. EBITDA came in at NOK 145 million, which is NOK 35 million higher than last year, and EBIT of NOK 89 million is NOK 26 million higher than in 2024. So the improved profitability is mainly related to the higher revenue level, which provides strong economies of scale.

And for the first half year, we can report revenue close to NOK 2.2 billion, which is 20% higher than in 2024. And we are on track with regards to our guidance, which is revenue of minimum NOK 4 billion in 2025. And profitability has improved significantly this year. We have an EBITDA of NOK 258 million and an EBIT of NOK 146 million. So we have guided an EBIT margin this year of 6%, the first 6 months ended at 6.7%. So it's comforting with regards to our full year guiding.

And the order intake was also acceptable in the second quarter. Total order intake just about NOK 1 billion and approximately 20% higher than in 2024. We have NOK 81 million in Digital, Land-Based with NOK 316 million is supported by the new contract from Laxey of EUR 20 million. And then we have Sea-Based with NOK 655 million in order intake, which is approximately 15% lower than in Q2 last year. So we still see high interest for Deep Farming concepts. However, we also see a seasonal profile with regards to this order intake with high tender activity in Q4 and Q1, and we also expect to see the same pattern this year with high tenders in the fourth quarter of this year and also in Q1 into 2026. So we have a solid order backlog of NOK 2.7 billion, NOK 1.6 billion in Land-Based and NOK 0.9 billion in Sea-Based.

So on this basis, we expect the Q3 revenue and also the financial performance in Q3 to be a repeat of the strong numbers we delivered in the second quarter. Some more details on the consolidated income statement. Strong revenue in the quarter, NOK 153 million higher than Q2 last year. For the first half year, 20% higher than in '24. Total revenue of NOK 2.2 billion. We see improved profitability. We have an EBIT margin of 7.7% in the second quarter and for the first half year, the NOK 146 million in EBIT is NOK 63 million higher than a year ago.

We have net financial costs of NOK 33 million in the quarter, which is also NOK 45 million for the first half year. And we are also satisfied with the profit before tax of NOK 57 million in the second quarter and the NOK 102 million for the first 6 months of 2025.

So the book-to-bill ratio for the last 12 months is good with 106%. We have an order intake of NOK 4.1 billion and a revenue of NOK 3.9 billion. And for the second quarter, we had a book-to-bill ratio of 90% positively impacted by this new contract from Laxey, the EUR 20 million contract. And we were also awarded a new contract from Laxey mid-July with an estimated contract value of EUR 8.5 million. So obviously, we have a good momentum and progress with Laxey on Iceland, and we are, of course, very pleased with this strong collaboration.

We continue to see a strong market in Nordic. Revenue was 22% higher in Q2 this year compared to last year. We also see strong increase in Australasia, driven by the NOAP project in China. The revenue was reduced both in Europe and Americas by 7% and 23%, respectively. So our Sea-Based business represented 74% of the total revenue in the quarter and the increase in the overall revenue is more or less all related to Land-Based with a 92% increase in revenue in Q2 this year compared to 2024.

We consider the EBITDA margin, the 12.4% in the second quarter to be respectable. It's an increase from the 10.8% in Q2 last year driven by increased revenue and also economies of scale. So we have a strong EBITDA margin in Sea-Based of 14.3%, supported by a very strong product mix and also, we see improved profitability in Land-Based, first and foremost, related to the higher revenue, but also to healthy project margins.

At the end of the quarter, we had available cash, including unused credit facilities of NOK 473 million. That's a reduction of NOK 27 million compared to the first quarter. So net working capital increased a bit from 8.9% to 9.4% in the second quarter. And we are satisfied that we have managed to stabilize the net working capital below the 10% level in the last 4 quarters.

And on the leverage ratio, we continue to improve in the second quarter. The NIBD EBITDA ratio was reduced from 2.47% to 2.3% in the second quarter, which, of course, is very comforting.

Net interest-bearing debt is more or less unchanged during the quarter. We paid a dividend of NOK 36 million in April, and year-to-date, we see a reduction in net interest-bearing debt of approximately NOK 130 million, which is driven by the net proceeds from the sale of our shares in Abyss Group back in March in Q1.

On CapEx, we had a total CapEx of NOK 34 million in the second quarter, 50% of this is related to our 3 innovation agendas, 1 for Sea-Based, 1 for Land-Based and one for Digital. And year-to-date, we have total CapEx of NOK 73 million.

On dividend, we paid NOK 1 in dividend on April 15 related to the first half year, and the Board in AKVA has decided to pay another NOK 1 per share for the second half year, bringing the total dividend in 2025 up to NOK 2 per share.

I'll continue with some more details on the financial performance in the 3 business segments, starting with the Sea-Based technology. So the revenue of NOK 868 million in the quarter was more or less at the same level as last year. We have a reduction in order intake of approximately 15%. Strong EBITDA margin, 14.3% driven by this high revenue, which provides strong economies of scale, and we also have this very favorable product mix. So the Nordic region experienced increase in revenue of 12%. Order intake was down by 6% compared to last year. In Americas, both revenue and order intake was reduced by 27% and 26% respectively. And last, we have Europe, Middle East. Revenue was down by 7%, but we have a decent increase in order intake of 35% compared to last year. And looking at the 12 months order intake and revenue trend for Sea-Based, we are pleased. We have seen a positive uplift in the past few quarters. The order backlog of NOK 900 million is acceptable, NOK 80 million higher than in last year, which forms a basis for a very decent revenue level in this third quarter.

With regards to the OpEx-based revenue in Sea-Based which is a very important part of our Sea-Based business was at the same level as in last year, and represented 33% of the total Sea-Based revenue. And please also note that the main part of this OpEx-based revenue is not reflected in our order backlog meaning this revenue will come on top of the NOK 900 million in order backlog.

For Land-Based, we talked about the order intake, the NOK 360 million, main part is the new contract with Laxey. And we have the strong increase in revenue in the quarter, 92% compared to last year, and revenue ended at NOK 264 million. So on the back of this higher revenue, improved project margins, we improved the EBITDA by NOK 14 million compared to last year, and EBITDA margin ended at 5.5%.

For Land-Based, we continue to see a very positive development, both with regards to the order intake trend and revenue trend. Order backlog is solid, NOK 1.6 billion which is comforting for the revenue level in the second half of '25 and also into 2026.

And last, we had Digital, which had an order intake of NOK 81 million in the quarter, which was NOK 55 million higher than last year and approximately NOK 25 million of this order intake is related to a contract awarded from an international customers regarding Observe. So this customer had already installed the recommendation module, which is the step on with Observe and has now decided to upgrade to the copilot module for automated feeding. So this contract was important milestone to AKVA, a commercial breakthrough also for the copilot module. And the rest of the order intake in Digital, approximately NOK 55 million is largely related to extension of contracts for Fishtalk and not to new sales as such. So the revenue was at the same level as last year. EBITDA margin improved from 14% to close to 22%.

As we have talked about several times, the key focus in Digital is to further grow the top line. We strongly believe that top line growth will have a significant scaling effect to the bottom line. So we see this positive shift in Digital, the order intake. The revenue still remains a flat liner. We have an order backlog of NOK 188 million end of the second quarter, which is NOK 38 million higher than last year.

So that was my financial update. So I will give it back to you, Knut, to do the outlook and the Q&A.

Okay. Thank you very much, Ronny. So in terms of outlook. We expect to see still a good focus and commercial momentum on Deep Farming. As Ronny mentioned, there is some certain seasonality when it comes to the order intake. So we expect during the next sales season, Q4 and Q1 to see some positive order intake from Deep Farming.

Also with regards to the post-smolt market, we are rather hopeful to sign a few contracts there before the end of the year. So positive there as well. And in general, we have a full focus on innovation for -- on the 3 platforms, both for Digital, Land-Based and Sea-Based. And as already mentioned by Ronny, we are aiming for revenue above the NOK 4 billion mark for this year and with a corresponding EBIT of 6%. And we have high visibility on that and a good comfort level. So we expect to deliver in line with this guidance.

So I think we leave it there and want to move to the Q&A. So we have some people in the call. So we take, of course, a question from the call, but also from you being here, the audience. So if you want to ask a question, you can raise your hand and you will be -- a mic might will be brought to you.

Any questions? Please. It's more encouraging with -- okay. Any questions from the call, Stale? All the analysts are busy this morning, too many. We have one. Good.

One on the Digital. We see that there is a lot of competition, especially on this, what you call, very decision-making cameras. Can you say something about how you view the competition there and how you position yourself compared to the rest of the space?

Yes. So you're absolutely right. Smart Camera has been growing very rapidly over the last 5 years. AKVA was probably a bit late to focus on that segment, because we have been the traditional feeding company with the feeding cameras, which, by the way, is working extremely well for us this year, the feeding cameras. So we decided a year ago, we decided to acquire a start-up company submerge, which had the same kind of AI capabilities like the 2 leading ones being OptoScale and Aquabyte. So we are clearly behind those 2. But we believe from a technology standpoint because we have validated the technology of Submerged, the company we acquired a year ago. So from a technology standpoint, we think we are now at a ballpark equal level or our biomass estimation is validated at a very high level, 98, 99. And also the sea lice counting is working, and we are now busy with developing the so-called fish health KPI dashboard. So we hope and we expect to see positive momentum with our solutions. But in that very specific space, we are the up runner, but a very interesting segment.

Please, one more.

Maybe one more on, I would say, Shield technologies. You're big in the submerged cages, but there are also a lot of things going on, on more shielded technologies. Are you doing any work there? And what's your stand on those technologies?

We have a strategy to monitor. In the last 5, 10 years, following the award of all the development licenses in Norway, there have been, I would say, between 20 and 30 different technologies being developed. Each and one of them, they have been investing a lot. So we have decided not to go into that development race ourselves. But just monitor who will be the successful one. We still believe it's a bit hard to pick the winner. But our idea will be when we see someone with proven technology with real true proof of concept, more than 3 customers, not only one believer, but a little portfolio. Then we will be prepared to consider to acquire this technology because we think the strength of AKVA will be the scalability, dealing with supply chain contract management, our footprint on services. So we think we can be a good home for one of those technologies. But so far, we have not decided to invest in any of them. So we still believe that the biggest potential in the next 3, 5 years, we believe is from Deep Farming. So -- but we are monitoring.

Any other? Okay. Anyone from the call? If no more questions, thank you very much for showing up early in the morning [indiscernible] all. So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you for your time.

[Presentation]

Ladies and gentlemen, a very warm welcome to AKVA group's Capital Markets Day. Thank you to all of you here in Klepp, and thank you also for those joining us via the webcast. It is always pleasant to talk about AKVA group, and it is especially pleasant when we get to talk about innovation, technology and the company's strategy for pioneering a better future.

My name is Stale Okland. I am the Chief Commercial Officer of AKVA group and I'm also today's moderator. A couple of practical details before we begin. We have not planned any fire drills today. And in the event of an emergency, we ask everyone to calmly go down the stairs and out. We have 2 emergency exits, one down the stairs and also one right here to my left side. There are restrooms available on this floor behind the scene. Please feel free to ask me or the rest of the AKVA team if there is anything practical we can help you with or answer to.

Today, we hope to provide you with a good overview of AKVA group's vision and our areas of operation. You will meet the company's most prominent representatives here on stage, and we will invite you to a Q&A after the first and the last presentation. For those of you who attend here in Klepp, you will have the opportunity to visit various workstations in our different business areas. We will conclude the day with a pleasant dinner this evening.

Now I would like to welcome the first speaker to the stage, our CEO, Knut Nesse. Knut has been in the industry for more than 30 years, 30 years, both as CEO of the feed company Skretting and Nutreco before he came to AKVA group. He will provide you with a good overview on both the industries and AKVA group's future perspectives. Knut, the floor is yours.

Okay. Thank you, Stale. Yes, it's a great pleasure to wish you welcome to this Capital Market Day. I'm very pleased to see this great audience. Hopefully, many people are listening to the webcast as well.

Okay. I'm going to talk in the beginning about the long-term salmon opportunity. But before doing that, please allow me 1 minute to talk a little bit about AKVA group and our legacy. So the vision statement of AKVA group is pioneering a better future. We have been pioneering solutions and innovation for more than 50 years. To the picture to the left, you can see Hans Petter Meland, one of the founders of the industry as such. That's from 1973. He has some model of the very first -- world's first plastic cage in front of him. And then picture next to the right is his partner [ Steinhalisen ] at Island Laven, which became a kind of gravity center of our development back in the '70s. Stiena has in front of him the very first real plastic cage produced.

Well, the plastic cages today look a bit different. But as such, it was a very important innovation, which took place there 50 years ago. I would say one of the top 5 innovations in this industry, even though from a basic starting point, if I may. AKVA as of today, we are a modern company with 3 business platforms. We have leading technology for the sea or the sea-based operation, land-based operation and digital. And over the year, we have been functioning as a technology innovator across multiple areas. Automated feeding, that was the original DNA of AKVA group back to the start, next to here in the 1980 and '80s, that was automated feeding. More recently, over the last 5, 10 years, it has been a lot of focus on deep framing, which is today fully commercialized. And over the last 3 decades from the very basic starting point on smolt through flow-through technologies evolving into RAS technology with a high level of recirculation and all the way to land-based to grow up, which is being demonstrated today.

There is no doubt that we have proof of concept of post-smolt, and we believe that proof of concept is also there for the full cycle. In China, we are producing or NOAP is producing a salmon of 7 kilo. Also digital, we have been a frontrunner in. So that's where we came from. That's AKVA growth. If you look at the industry as such, I said the industry started to industrialize in the '70s, and it took a few decades all the way to 2001 for the global salmon farming industry to come to the first 1 million tonne. That was in 2001. And then on the back of more industrialization, more growth, also consolidation, it took another 10 years plus to arrive to the next 2 million to add another 1 million. That was in 2012. And then in 2021, which is the last peak year, actually, we passed the 3 million mark of global salmon production.

And then following '21, it has been some years of stagnation, not growth for the entire salmon farming industry. And then we can talk about a few industry barriers, which has been kind of hindering growth. It has to do with fish health. We have seen more mortality. We have seen more diseases. And that next to the regulation system, which is today blocking growth, at least the big growth, both in Norway and Chile. So it has been some kind of headwind. Our social license, the hidden agreement between the industry and the society in large has not been favorable either. And some of the critics is, of course, valid absolutely.

And also more recently, you can say that the new financial risk has also been introduced in terms of resource tax. We didn't talk about that 3, 4 years ago, the non prices and tax regime uncertainties in general. By the way, we will see some growth in '25 5% plus, by the way, But as such, this has been the big picture over the years.

However, we still believe being in this industry for 30 years, I believe still consumption of salmon is representing a mega trend on the back of the rising middle class in the world, salmon on the back of the Sushi sashimi trend, easy to cook, easy to prepare, even the youngsters can do it. So we believe that it is deemed to continue the growth. And then the challenge is how to double salmon production by 2040, 15 years later, that's 5% annual growth. That was -- that's what most analysts believe is kind of consensus of how much growth consumer can absorb.

We believe that could happen. But then it needs to be on the back of new technology to overcome the industry barriers and that takes investments. You need new investments in new technology in order to drive new growth. But if you reflect on that, investments are needed, but also investments require a stable framework. And I'd like to go over this -- the principles here, at least I learned about this back in the days as the Golden Triangle. And this is a little bit a Norwegian model where you have government with a role as the regulator, even including the enforcement. And the R&D institutions, certainly, a lot of R&D is done by the private companies. However, there are -- since you are literally in the same water, there is also a need for doing basic R&D and science across the industry. And for that, we have R&D institutions which is publicly funded. That has been 1 of the strengths of Norway.

And then the industry with the sole purpose of driving the business, growing the business et cetera et cetera. And then in the middle of this triangle, it's about trust and mutual trust. This has been the recipe for our success and the growth of the Norwegian salmon industry, which has a unique position in the world today as the locomotive. And without saying anything about where to place the burden, but the mutual trust is a little bit gone today. However, it's very positive to note is that today, we will have voted that -- there will be a voting in the Norwegian parliament for the new Norwegian white paper. And even though this is going to take a bit of time before it's out a new regulation. We hope that the new regulatory framework is going to be based on predictable policy environment, regulatory efficiency. It cannot take forever to get approval for our new license, whatever, support for growth, technology neutrality and trust-based collaboration.

We think if that is the outcome, we will be back in a better situation when it comes to this golden triangle, and that will revitalize the collaboration between the core institutions. We think that is very much needed.

So what are the technology possibilities if we are to double this industry globally over the next 15 years. And if the starting point now is a base of 3,000 tonnes of Atlantic farm salmon, we believe 1 building block could be related to deep farming. We believe that if deep farming is supplied globally, that could add 15% capacity. I'll come back a little bit more to the details in a minute.

And the next building block, we believe, is related to post-smolt. We believe post-smolt if that is applied by the industry across, you can grow your volume by typically 30%. And then in the 2040 vision, we believe there's also space for some ongoing of large salmon on land, in particular, closer to the consumer.

And then you have other new emerging technologies like semi-offshore, offshore and also improvements related to vaccines, new treatments et cetera, et cetera. So there are some from the new frontiers and some from improved efficiency. So I will go over them one by one.

First, about deep farming. We think that there is some argument that deep farming can increase volume with something like 15% from existing licenses. There is documentation today that if you apply deep farming, you can reduce the sea lice treatments with up to 85%. And that has a big value because that gives proven improved fish welfare. And also, if you have proven improved fish health, less mortality. So far, we see documentation about numbers of halving the mortality. Then you are also closer to improve your social license and then the regulators will be more deemed to provide you with growth opportunities. So we think it's a totality there. which will work in a more positive manner.

Today, deep farming is applicable for close to 60% of the location, and they will -- in accordance to our calculations, there is a NOK 6 billion market. to get to the 60%. We will come back to more explanations about how this is calculated later during the presentations, not my presentation, my colleagues.

Post-smolt, we think post-smolt today is established as an accepted industry growth strategy. Many companies are talking about that and has it as a part of their core strategy. Post-smolt comes with the advantage that if the starting point is 1 kilo post-smolt, which you grow on land, you reduce the number of months in the sea from 17/18 to 7/8/9. And that's 10 months less in the sea, and that's way less sea lice, less mortality. And in addition, you can optimize your own licenses in terms of growth possibilities because the cycle is just short-term. So this is very interesting.

Land-based growth, big salmon on land has been kind of difficult birth there, but we see it's starting to mature these days. 25,000 tons produced last year, but likely more in the direction of 200,000 as installed capacity in the year 2030. We come back to examples there, including Nordic Aqua partner in China. Also, we expect a lot of improvements from digital solutions. We, ourself, AKVA, we have invested a lot of money, NOK 500 million to create a leading digital platform over the last 4 or 5 years. We see high-growth opportunities with AKVA Observe, which enables automated feeding, which is more precise when it comes to monitoring and achieving the FCR, the feed conversion rate and also give some opportunities on the OpEx side as well.

So we have a global scalable business there with 90%-plus recurring revenue. I mentioned that one of the advantages with regards to post-smolt is the reduced number of months in the sea. This is real data. This is from BarentsWatch. That's the advantage in Norway. Everything is so extremely transparent. So we have downloaded real data over the last 12 years, more than 5,000 production rooms. And the graph plot is on the horizontal axis, you have the number of months. 6 to 9, 9 to 12 blah, blah, blah, all the way to 18 plus. And then you have the percentage on the vertical axis. And then we have seen that we have the mapped the number of PD, pancreas disease, and you see that if the fish is more months in the sea, there is a tripling of the PD cases.

And in terms of the need for sea lice treatments or biomechanical lice treatments, you see it's a doubling there if it is more months in the sea. So this is basically telling you that from a real data and empirical data over many cycles that the more months in the sea, the higher mortality effectively. So this calls for companies to consider either a post-smolt strategy or to protect the salmon from the sea, and that's deep framing today which is the #1, proven technology.

So just to sum up a little bit. AKVA group today is a global leader and a trusted partner. We are present in the market for technology for salmon based on 3 business platforms. We have sea-based which is a bit less than 80% of our turnover. And with regards to all the operations you see in the sea, AKVA group can basically deliver everything you see there, not the well boats, not the genetics and not the feed, but everything else we basically do.

Land-based, we have developed our technology platform over the years to go from basic smolt, post-smolt proven, and we expect on growing full cycle salmon to also grow. And for digital, we have a complete platform as well. And then just one reflection. We believe that technology can really be used for improved fish health. And this is our most important ESG contribution as well because if you can significantly reduce mortality by applying new technologies, well, then you are part of the solution.

We just -- this illustration, this graph is basically showing you what has been the investment level by the salmon companies over the last 9 years from '15 until '23. So -- and that's -- the light blue is the growth or the development of the investments either in post-smolt or barges, sea-based technology. And if you see over the cycles, there are many years, the growth CAGR is 12%. So 12% is the growth in investments by the salmon farming companies, which, as a real coincidence also matches the growth of AKVA group over those the same years. So that has been 12% as well. Less so in the last couple of years related to quite a few headwinds. But we think the industry will come back to growth, again, a bit fueled by this white paper being voted today. We think that's going to be good for the investment climate going forward.

So ending up my part by talking about financial ambitions, where we came from, we have been through, a turnaround, both in many ways, the way we operate. We have changed a few people managers as well. We have been changing the business model. We have a more robust and resilient business model today, both for land-based and in other parts of our business as well. So last year, we were reasonably pleased with last year and the performance, but now we need to look for growth because we have invested a lot, and we have capacity for more activity than we saw last year.

So that's why the 2027 target is revenue of NOK 5 billion, which happened to be the same 12% growth on the basis of '24 and we think that's realistic. We have relatively good visibility through our order backlog, in particular, in land-based, which where we expect relatively the most growth to come from. We have good visibility on the activity level all the way to '27. Of course, we need to land a few more contracts, but that's based on ongoing customers and ongoing activities. So we think that can happen.

And we also expect a continuous focus on deep farming and of course, our digital applications as well. So in combination, that's going to give the NOK 5 billion. And we have -- we are relatively fully invested, including the overhead it takes to run a growing business. And that's why we foresee that the EBIT level should be pretty much higher than in '24. So the target is 9%. So '27 is a real target based on the visibility we have. 2030, we have less visibility. So there, we have more ambition on the basis and expectation that there will still be a need for investments in technology to grow a sustainable salmon farming business.

Summing up, the key investment highlights for AKVA group is related to that, once again, we have a fully invested business platforms with capacity to double our revenue based on physical production capacity, people, leadership et cetera, et cetera, technology base. We are perfectly positioned for profitable growth across the 3 segments. And we have, over the last few years, we have developed over many years, we have developed an attractive business model with an increasing share of recurring revenues. So we are less volatile with regards to changes in the salmon price than we used to be. Also now we have a more strong balance sheet. And also since we are invested, we don't foresee any M&A in the next 2, 3 years. So we have a true organic growth strategy. And that's why we have more predictability on our cash flow, and we will provide competitive returns.

Also, always hard to talk about yourself, but I think we can make the claim that we have an experienced management team, at least in combination, we have been in the industry for more than 100 years. So that's the summary. And I like to open up Q&A.

And just to explain to you the concept, we do one Q&A related to my session, which is more the bigger picture and the high-level growth opportunities. And then we will do a detailed presentation from all the 3 business platforms, including the financial summary. And then we do a Q&A following that with everybody which has presented available for Q&A. But we have allocated 10 minutes for the first round, which is related to my part. So please, if you have any questions, do you raise your hand, you get the mic.

We will start here with the audience here in Klepp and then we will follow up with the questions from the webcast. So those of you who are online, please post your questions now and Silia over here, she will hand you over to mic if you have any questions here in this audience, please raise your hands.

My name is Olga Gabrielle [indiscernible]. I'm not in the business anymore. I used to be. One question, do you -- I think about 70% of this planet is water, yes, but most of it is offshore. We have developed world-leading technology and experience for offshore installations to produce oil and gas. Now it seems AKVA backed out of these plans for offshore farming. But still, I think we should have extremely good technology and experience in Norway for offshore farming. Do you have any thoughts about that? I mean deep farming sounds very exciting. But I think the potential in offshore should be substantial in future.

I agree in principle if you take the starting point of the nature of being there or the sea being there and the salmon is typically out in the sea from side of the nature. But I think the answer to the question is more, it's a regulatory answer. It's a bit boring. But ironically enough, it's about the resource tax to start with because the government did not impose resource tax to this new kid on the block offshore farming because they think the risk is too high, but I reserve the right to do it in the future. And that's not a very attractive business proposition for investors.

So I think you will need a new regulatory regime in order to stimulate relatively risky investments for that space. And then you have the other questions about the licensing et cetera, et cetera, which is not clear either. So it's a bit of a boring question because it has to do with the regulatory conditions. But over time, I think it will come. With regards to AKVA group, we are humble about the very huge technical installations, it takes to farm out in the sea, that's probably not for us. That's for the players which know how to do that. So what is for us is probably to participate on the feeding, on the digitalization and all that part. So we don't have a strategy to produce those big technical installations, but we have a strategy to follow with feeding cameras digital in case this will evolve in the future. I think it's a question about time, but not a few years, yes, it will take more time for sure in accordance to my view, at least.

We have a next 1 over there.

Can you see -- sorry, English. Can you say anything about the growth rates as the back mirror and going forward, how much is volume and how much is CPI inflation?

So we have -- in our numbers, we have a normalized inflation for '27. So the majority of the NOK 1.5 billion step-up has to do with increased activity, the waste majority. Ronny can come back to the details there in his presentation. But it's basically higher activity. One example, land base was NOK 620 million last year and NOK 1.4 billion in the '27 target. And that is based on the order backlog we have and the visibility and the continuation of NOAP in China, Laxey at Iceland and post-smolt in Norway. So that's how we have done it. That's a general answer.

12%...

That's nominal money. And the source there is Fiskeridirektoratet that's the statistics from Fiskeridirektoratet fiscal direct. Sorry. You said back now.

You spoke about the deep farming, Maybe we'll get back to that. But as you go deeper down in the ocean, it's colder water. So how does that impact the growth, especially during the winter?

So there is -- so far, the data is showing that it has a relatively neutral impact on the growth. And -- but the growth pattern will be a little bit different down in the deep rather than when you do surface farming. So it could be more beneficial in the winter and a little bit the other way around during the summer. But for the full cycle, it has been relatively the same growth.

Ola Trovatn, Carnegie. You saw a high correlation historically about between the revenues of AKVA group and the investments in fixed assets for salmon farmers. How do you expect this correlation to develop going forward?

Yes. And 1 disclaimer there. This is just the development of the fixed asset investment. It doesn't take the so-called OpEx related. So -- but it's just an indication that -- it's an important indication that investments in technology is higher than the growth in the biomass. That's the key takeaway there. And we believe that will continue as such. If you believe that there is a case for a 5% growth going forward, we believe that the investment CAGR will be higher. The combination of OpEx or service-based revenue and so-called fixed asset or investment based revenue will be higher than the 5%, at least double, and it has to do with that you're basically doing fundamental investments in post-smolt, and you are upgrading barges. You are moving into new technology platforms like deep framing, et cetera.

So in some this is calling for a higher growth than the growth in the biomass. That's the key message.

[indiscernible]. Can you please provide a bit more color on how the change in product and service mix as opposed to lead to the targeted improvement in EBIT margins?

Yes. So on sea-based, we have seen a relatively good growth in our service-based revenue higher than on the so-called investment-based revenue. We expect that the service-based revenue and the relative growth there will continue, but we expect to see more -- to regain growth on the investment side. So that's why we have a 7% CAGR for sea-based.

Land-based is very different because that is project-based and that's why I'm saying we have relatively good visibility on the activity we can expect until '27. The starting point is our order backlog plus the expected awarded contracts in the next -- over the next 6 to 12 months, that is the basis for the activity in '27 and that we put on NOK 1.4 billion. So -- and that's a very different CAGR than sea-based, of course, because that's project driven. And digital comes with a lot of new possibilities. So we also expect a pretty good CAGR there, more than 20%.

On the uplift of the EBIT margin, Ronny will explain that more in detail, of course. But at a high level, we are fully invested in the technology. Of course, we need to still allocate money for maintaining and further development what is there, but we don't foresee M&A. We think we have, from a management -- managerial capacity point of view, we have what we need at least for the '27 target. And then you have a scaling impact that if you do NOK 5 billion on the same overhead, you uplift the margin. So we don't -- we have the same gross margin. We don't expect to sell smarter or better that's at least not in the production. It's a scaling impact, first and foremost.

We can have 1 last one. So we keep the time here. Is there anything from the webcast? Okay? Final here. Yes, one final.

Can you say anything about how do you package the service revenue or the service part? Is that a cost plus? Or is it more a long-term agreement?

It's a mixed bag. I want to park the question for now because otherwise, I'm preempting everything from my colleagues because we are going to explain this pretty much in detail. So I park it for now and then you pick it up again in the general Q&A session if it is not answered in a good way. Otherwise, they will go after me because I'm preempting our colleagues. Sorry for that. Okay. Then okay, then we move on back to you, Stale.

Yes. Thank you so much, Knut. Thank you so much for the questions. And to our audience online, there will also be a second chance at the end of the day. And that goes, of course, for you here in Klepp as well.

So I think this was a good overview. Now we are moving on. And as you heard, Knut say, AKVA group has been part of the Norwegian salmon farming since the beginning, basically. And during the years, the technological evolution has been remarkable. I think we can all agree on that. And we believe, of course, it will be so in the future as well. Technology is part of the solution. To present today's and our future ambitions in the sea-based segment of aquaculture, you will now first hear from Kristian Botnen, who is Chief Operating Officer in our Nordic department. And then after Kristian has done his presentation, you will hear from Glenn Mo, who is Chief Operating Officer in AKVA group Egersund Net. In total, they have more than 30 years' experience. And they're going to tell you a little bit about the practical side of aquafarming, fish farming and also the big picture.

But before I give the floor to you, Kristian, let's have a look at this video.

[Presentation]

Yes. Thank you, Stale, for the introduction. Glenn and myself will now spend around half an hour, guide you through the sea-based segment in AKVA group and to continue what Knut said, we have been pioneering aquaculture for more than 50 years in the sea-based segment. We have a long innovation history in pens and in feeding. We introduced, as Knut said, in -- with the help of the farmers at Lovund, we introduced the first plastic pen to the market, and we have been leading the field of automated feeding and waterborne feeding. And together with customers, we have been driving forward deep farming from the start with the TubeNet. Some -- we introduced some 10 years ago to the submersible Atlantis solution and to the current solution we call Nautilus.

And we are committed to deliver -- to offer sustainability in all of our products. We introduced, as you see on the screen here, the first pen made out of recycled material, introduced the first carbon-neutral boat hull, and we introduced the first fully recycled net. So we can say we have been innovators and we will continue to be innovators in everything we do.

So to move a little bit into our operation. As all of you know, Norway is the biggest salmon producer in the world. And with our Norwegian heritage, it's probably no surprise that the largest part of our business comes from the Nordics, a little bit more than 2/3 of the revenue. However, we are operational in all major salmon farming regions, got around NOK 550 million in revenue from the Chile and from Canada. NOK 250 million from the EMEA ex the Nordics, of course, and we have a smaller portion of our revenue coming from Australasia, more specific Tasmania.

And as you see on the right side, that for me, of course, you see a pretty stable overall revenue during the last couple of years. However, we see a solid underlying growth of around 16% annually in our service part of the business, which we also call the OpEx-based revenue. We have experienced for the last couple of years, lower investments, CapEx investment in sea-based especially on barges. And this reflects the reduced willingness to take on CapEx investment, especially after the changes in the fish farming taxation regime back in Norway in -- from 2022. But as we hope to show you today, we expect the growth to be higher in the years to come in CapEx investments, and we expect continued growth in the OpEx-based segment.

So to move into our product line. In our day-to-day operation, we want to meet our customers as a one-stop shop in everything they need in order to operate in a good way. We have a wide variety of quality marine infrastructure equipment for better operations. We are #1 in steel pens in Chile. We are #1 in nets in Norway. Number one, in net cleaning, in ROV in boats. And if we are not #1, we have our clear #2 position. We have delivered more than 450 barges worldwide. Strong position in feeding, strong position in lights, in cameras, and that's tied together with the digital that Knut and Rishi will present later today.

And finally, the most exciting part, the new kid on the block, as we often call it, the deep farming, Nautilus. That's the key main growth driver for us. We have a clear #1 position at the moment. And we believe that deep farming offers a very efficient solution to the lice challenge faced by the industry. And I will get back to the technology and also the market opportunities in a minute.

We take pride in our product offering and believe that a great part of our success lies in the fact that we produce most of what we deliver to the customer and we produce in-house. While this posed some challenges in tougher times, we believe this enabled us to capture a higher market share over time. And as an example, you can see here on the screen, some good examples. You see on the left, you see Polar circle boats. You see polyethanol pipes manufactured at Helgeland Plast, Mo i Rana. On the bottom middle, you see ROV manufactured at Sperre ROV Technology at Notodden both are 100% owned companies of AKVA group. We have feeding systems, we have cameras, we have lights, most parts manufactured or assembled right there at Klepp. So you -- some of you will hopefully see that later today. And we have the barges, which we design and equipped specifically tailored to our customers, and they are normally built at international shipyards at our specifications.

So with that, I'll hand it over to you, Glenn. You're going to take us through the net and service business, also a large and profitable part of the sea-based segment.

Thank you, Kristian. I'm responsible for Egersund Net, the largest entity of AKVA group based technology. We are a market leader in fish farming. We have delivered nets since early '70s, and we see ourselves as true pioneer, developing good and safe nets for different fish species all over the world. As you can see behind me, most of the picture is from our production facility in Egersund. We produce around approximately 1,500 tonnes of netting and in the picture below, you can see our production facility in Lithuania, Taurage, where we produce around 1,000 nets a year. We have 300 amazing employees in Lithuania and 500 excellent employees in total. If we then add, we have a production and service facility also in Izmir in Turkey. We will claim that we are 1 of the largest supplier of fish farming nets and service in the industry.

As Kristian already mentioned, service have made up increasing part of our business over the past years, both in Norway and international. In Norway, we have 16 service stations from Egersund in South to Kvalsund in Finnmark in North, and we have spent a lot of time and a lot of money building this and over time, build customer confidence and trust. We are serving a large installed base of marine infrastructure and this offers a stable and recurring service and after sales revenue base. We strive to serve our customer 24/7. We're always trying and we have the ambition to keep improving the sales level and maintain our position as trusted partner globally. In this picture here, you can see one of our employees. She has been now working in the company for 29 years. Even if she have a fantastic office in Egersund, she still believe that going out in the field, here in this picture, she is out with the customer in Hordaland, just out of Bergen is the best place to be, good or bad weather.

We take pride in repair and maintain all kind of equipment we supply 365 days a year. And most of our best innovation has, in fact, happened out in the field together with our good customers and users. Speaking of innovation, let's not forget that we have a team of 35 innovators, designing, optimizing the best solution for the aquaculture industry, marine infrastructure, precision feeding and fish performance. This is a highly specialized group of marine engineers and technical designers working out mainly from Bergen, and we also have a lab and testing facility in Egersund. This is a competent center of innovation and product development, but they also offer technical support for sales, certification and project management. The team is both helping customer optimizing existing solution and develop new solutions.

One of the main development over the past years is, of course, the deep farming Nautilus, which we can see as 1 of the main growth driver in the years to come. So now, Kristian, I'll leave it back to you, and you will explain a little bit more, about what is Nautilus. Thank you.

Thank you, Glenn. You, Glenn and your team, a great part of the success of deep farming and Nautilus, which is a concept. We have developed the key customers to solve the challenge with sea lice. The current solution we call Nautilus builds on more than 10 years of experience from the TubeNet, as mentioned in the Atlantis solution. And the basic concept of deep farming is as simple as it is -- is it effective -- as simple as it is effective, sorry. You submerge the fish to around 30 meters below the surface to separate the sea lice and salmon. The sea lice normally operates in the upper part of -- upper layer of the sea from the surface to 10, 50 meters below the surface. And deep farming with Nautilus speaks to all the key issues Knut laid out earlier today to drive -- to improve fish health, to improve fish welfare to drive growth and then create value.

And our customers typically report on 80% or more in reduced sea lice treatments. And with fewer stressful sea lice treatment, you will get healthier fish, a more happier fish, I would say, lower mortality and more time to feed. And this, in turn, yields a higher production volumes and also with less lice, low mortality. That means that the fish farmer is allowed to grow. So on the value side, with higher volumes, higher share of superior on your fish and lower cost with less sea lice treatment, we help create value for our customers.

Although the basic concept is simple, we needed to come up 2 key innovation in order to enable the concept. We have the add on, which give access to air for the salmon, and you have waterborne feeding to give access feed to the salmon. And deep farming also relies more on comprehensive digital support as the fish is out of sight, so to speak. And that driving demand for our AKVA Observe solutions and AKVA Submerged solutions.

To look into the key innovation #1, if I can say so, that is an engineering feat where we provide secure access of air for the salmon, which it needs to fill its swim bladder. In traditional cages, open cages, the salmon swim to the surface, snap air and go down again. That's not possible if you have a submerged cage. So we have developed an add-on that is -- gives the salmon a sufficiently large air pocket at top of the cage. And overall, our -- we offer our air solution that is secure, stable, efficient under all conditions.

And when you submerge the fish, you, of course, need to present the feed in the duct and how we do it? We take feed and we take water, mix that together on the barge, transport it by feed pipes to the pen and to a lit area under the add-on. And then the salmon both can see the pallet, can see the air pocket and the salmon behaves in pretty much the same way as it does when you feed in a traditional cage.

Waterborne feeding holds a significant advantage over airborne solutions. It's more gentle to the feed, to the -- more gentle to the equipment. Typical triple the transport capacity and reduces the energy consumption quite significantly. And we are offering waterborne solutions on new barges. We are retrofitting on existing barges, and we can provide hybrid solution, combining water and air.

To give you an example of the energy consumption, if you have a hybrid system, you would typically half the energy consumption compared to airborne solutions. So to sum up Nautilus, we have introduced the market to a relatively simple concept, to submerge the cage and avoid sea lice on the salmon, so let's go into the value for us.

Deep farming require much more than just the net. As I showed you, you need the add-on, you need waterborne feeding, you also need plastic pens, you need new mooring systems, you need winches to haul the net up and down. You need more lights in the cage. And you also need a submerged camera to count sea lice. And of course, as Rishi and Knut will show you later today, of course, you should deploy our AKVA Observe solution to monitor and to improve fish performance and feeding performance.

Nautilus and deep farming offers a high return on investment for fish farmers and the combined value of these deliveries is why we see the order intake and revenue really started to pick up in the sea-based segment. And hopefully, this will continue.

Moving into the market. We are the deep farming pioneers, early movers, and we have so far retained a high market share in that area. We have deployed more than 200 Nautilus cages on 30-plus sites. And to give you a rule of thumb, 1 site in Norway have on average 7 cages and I will refer to the sites in the following slides. And the 30-plus sites we have deployed starting with Sinkaberg Hansen some years back, to last year, where we delivered half a dozen Nautilus to half a dozen leading fish farmers. Several new ones will be added to the list this year, and the opportunity list keeps expanding.

And the reason for this to be a little bit unpolitical, that's because this s**t works. And to quote to Henning Beltestad, in Lerøy, this has been a game changer for us. So going into the market as we go along to the 2030, we see a market opportunity of around NOK 6 billion. In Norway, there are in total around 1,300 approved fish farming sites. Around 600 are active sites at any given time. And we have used data, market research, BarentsWatch mapped the sites, and we see that between 50% and 60% of the sites are suitable for deep farming. And we believe that most of those sites will have some kind of shielded technology within the next 5 years and with deep farming as the most widely deployed solution.

And with the deployment of 50 to 70 sites annually, that implies a market potential of around NOK 1 billion annually. And as I said, we are the clear market leader in deep farming, and we expect to take our fair share of the market in years to come.

So to leave Norway a little bit behind, although Norway is 2/3 of our revenue, we also have a long-standing track record and strong market position in Chile, the second biggest salmon producer in the world. As I mentioned, we are #1 in steel pens. We are market-leading in net service, net cleaning service, feeding, digital systems. And like in Norway, we have a large recurring service and aftersales business, roughly half of the revenue in Chile. And we now see innovation-driven growth as we have started to introduce deep farming in Chile and other international markets.

Chile struggles with lice as in Norway. We have done some market research shows that around 30% of the sites could be suitable for Nautilus with some adoption, of course, to Chilean conditions. And this brings a significant potential, especially for nets and for waterborne feeding in Chile. We are meeting demand for off-grid energy solutions in Chile, and we actually already installed the first, what we call low emission farming site in Chile, where you combine, as you see here, floating solar panels with battery systems and providing renewable energy to the fish farmers.

And I would like to show you a short video of that first delivery that Mowi Chile has made.

[Presentation]

Yes, great potential for us in the future. That's exciting. Unfortunately, we don't have time to take a deep dive into other international growth opportunities. So I will summarize that quickly. In Canada, we see potential for nets, net service and net cleaning. In the U.K., we see potential for nets. We see potential for cleaning, barges and digital systems. In Turkey, we see actually potential for deep farming in the Black Sea with drought. And in other emerging regions, we see an increasing activity as new farming areas are being developed.

So moving to the fun stuff for probably most of you, the financial side. So let's put it into our financial context, a pretty stable revenue during the last couple of years, NOK 2.7 billion, NOK 2.8 billion despite limited growth and low willingness to take on investments. We have seen a clear uptick in order intake in '24 and now into '25 mainly related to Nautilus. And combined with the continued growth in the service business, we are forecasting a revenue of NOK 3.4 billion in 2027. And despite the flat revenue, we have improved the profitability, moving from 10% to 12% in '24. We are aiming for around 14% EBITDA as we go along achieving the NOK 3.4 billion in revenue. Looking a little bit further ahead on the 2030 ambition, steady growth, up to NOK 4 billion in revenue and with accretive margins, fueled by deep farming and international expansion.

So to summarize the sea-based, we are an industry leader with a strong and stable core business built on decades of innovation. Deep farming with Nautilus is unlocking the next growth frontier. We have a growing recurring revenue base and a resilient service in aftermarket and we are present in all key salmon farming markets globally.

So with that, I would say thank you for your attention.

Thank you, Kristian. Thank you, Glenn, for an excellent presentation. We will now have a break, 20 minutes please be back here at 13:25. 13:25, that is, and then we will start again. Thank you so much.

[Break]

Welcome back to AKVA group's Capital Markets Day. Many people smiled when pioneers in aquaculture started to farm fish on land. Fish on land, they said, was that really possible? The land-based revolution has shown that it was indeed possible and also necessary to create growth in aquaculture and salmon fish farming.

The next presenter is Johan Fredric Gjesdal. He is the Chief Operating Officer of AKVA group land-based. He has been in AKVA group for 8 years and as COO for 5. But before I invite Johan Fredric to the stage, we're going to have a look at the short video that shows what is actually possible.

[Presentation]

Thank you, Stale, and good afternoon to everyone. Also within land-based, we have a very proud pioneering history. We have been doing recirculating aquaculture systems for over 3 decades. We were among the first who introduced RAS for Atlantic salmon in Norway in 2007. We built the world's first post-smolt module in the Faroe Islands in 2014. And we took post-smolt to the next level with a 1 kilo post-smolt for Tytlandsvik AKVA in 2019. More recently, we have built the world's first successfully scaled RAS facility for rollout in China for Nordic Aqua as you saw in the video. And we are also the technology partner to Laxey, who is a frontrunner within grow-out in Iceland, where we are using reuse technology.

The land-based segment has indeed seen significant developments over the last 25 years. Going back to the early 2000s, the smolt was small and the low biomass volumes could be produced by low tech flow-through technologies. As more and larger smolt was needed to grow production in sea, water became the bottleneck and also more flexible and controlled production environments were needed. And hence, RAS became the enabler for growth. And now with the grow-out segment, commercially proven, the land-based industry or segment as such is per our view, fully industrialized as our projects today are about building large, complex and fully integrated salmon factories on land.

The next step, we think is about really enabling precision farming on land. This is about taking automation to the next level where we utilize data and decision-making tools to realize and implement an intelligent farm in order to further improve fish performance, but also make the farms easier to operate.

As a supplier, we have also seen significant change in recent times. Over the last couple of years, we have been through a radical turnaround. We have spent some NOK 300 million in negative EBIT in carrying through and completing a very comprehensive transformation and restructuring of the land-based business in AKVA group. In short, we have rebuilt the organization. We have improved our execution capabilities, and we have improved and documented our technology platform.

Lastly, we have also built a solid service offering, including our production advisory services where we offer services and assist farmers in getting the optimal and best possible production in their facilities. We are today, 250 employees in the land-based business. We have a solid backlog, and we are well positioned to capture market share in a growing market. We deliver end-to-end turnkey RAS, technology and facilities from hatchery to grow-out with all relevant support systems. With basis and production capacities, production plant and relevant water quality parameters, we design an optimal facility with respect to footprint investments and operations. Everything based on our standard RAS technology.

As we know, salmon is a clean water species. And you need to have low particle load in your system to achieve the best possible fish performance. And our technology really excels at capturing organic and biological matter very efficiently. And thanks to the high level of automation and the streamlined and holistic design, our system and technology ensures exceptionally good water quality while maintaining operational stability and ease of use.

With basis in our size, our extensive track record and presence in all salmon markets as well as emerging growth markets, we are the only RAS supplier that can truly be defined as a global supplier and technology provider. Also, as part -- a part of our global reach includes a well-developed global delivery model. This ensures quality, predictability and consistency ensuring that our projects are delivered in a very solid way around the globe in all relevant markets.

Zooming in on the post-smolt market. It is, as already said, clear to us that post-smolt is one of the main tools to solve the growth challenge within this industry. A larger smolt reduces the time in sea. And this shortened the time period where the fish is exposed to sea lice, pathogens and also undesired water temperatures. This significantly improves fish health as well as reduces mortalities. Also shorter time in sea provide a better utilization of your sea licenses. And going from a regime where you have 150 grams smolt to something closer to a kilo, you will see a 30 plus increase in your production volume coming out of the sea licenses.

We see post-smolt as a tremendous value creator. You achieve better fish performance, your biological cost is reduced, and the production volumes are increasing. We have very strong reference post-smolt track record and reference list globally. On the back of regulatory changes in the Faroe Islands in the early 2010, we built the first post-smolt facilities to both Bakkafrost and Hiddenfjord. Bakkafrost is now producing -- sorry, Hiddenfjord is now producing a couple of thousand tonnes of a 700-gram smolt and Bakkafrost is also on their way towards those numbers in terms of smolt size.

Beyond the Faroe's, we know that Norway is indeed the most developed post-smolt market today. And most farmers, they do have a clear growth strategy built on post-smolt. One example here is Mowi. We have worked with Mowi and the [indiscernible] facility for close to 15 years, building this facility to what it is today, Mowi's largest post-smolt facility with a production capacity of 6,000 tonnes and the smolt is reaching an average rate of 700 grams, there as well.

[indiscernible] and Grieg they have received a 1 kilo post-smolt from Tytlandsvik Aqua since 2019. And to date, we have built 4 modules, bringing the total capacity up to 6,000 tonnes also there. We do see that post-smolt is getting more and more traction also internationally outside Norway. One example is Chile and the Chilean aquaculture, as you see here. We have delivered several post-smolt modules to Chilean, and they have a capacity now of 4,000 tonnes of post-smolt at 400 grams.

Let's look at some concrete examples from our customers. This one is from Mowi. In this study, they have been comparing smolt -- large smolt of 700-gram and larger with smaller, smolt 150 grams and down. And we see that they -- when they compare these 2 production systems, we see that the mortality is reduced with some 50% and also that the number of treatments -- lice treatments are reduced with 40%. And also lastly, the growth rates are also in favor of larger smolts.

Then we have some data from Grieg Seafood -- Grieg Seafood, Rogaland. And in Rogaland Grieg has over the last 10 years, been working very consistently and steadily by increasing smolt weight towards a kilo. And effectively, they have reduced the time in sea from 15, 16 months down to 7. And we see that the share of fish that receive lice treatments has basically been more than halved. And we see that the survival rate is improving, some 7, 8 percentage points when you compare the largest smolt with smaller smolt.

And lastly and perhaps most interestingly, I think, is the volume. We see that following this post-smolt strategy, the production volume in Sea in Rogaland has increased with some 50% for Grieg.

In the years to come, we expect a very strong post-smolt market. This is both to support the overall growth ambitions within the industry, but also to provide the farmers with larger smolt assets. And looking closer to Norway. Norway is the largest market. We believe that the number of smolt will increase steadily. However, we will see a quite large increase in the smolt size. We expect the smolt -- average smolt size to close in on 400 grams in 2030, up from 200-plus grams today. So this is effectively doubling the smolt biomass over some 5-year window.

And what does this mean for us? Well, this translate -- this growth translates into a technology -- RAS technology markets of around NOK 2 billion per year. And as a Tier 1 RAS player, we aim for no less than 20% to 30% market share. So we see a revenue opportunity in Norway north of NOK 500 million. And again, there are also a lot of interest and opportunities outside Norway. We are well positioned, and we see revenue opportunities there or a market share providing us with more than NOK 200 million per year from the post-smolt segment.

Then moving over to the grow-out segment and farming fish on land from egg to slaughter close to consumer is indeed an intriguing opportunity to get sustainable growth in the industry. It has, as already mentioned, taken some time to master this new smolt. And if we compare with producing post-smolt, yes, this segment and the projects here has a higher complexity. This is partly driven by the size of the projects under scope. It's also significant greenfield infrastructure requirements tied to most of these projects. And also, there is quite a lot of technological and operational integration needed across the value chain.

Also, if you produce salmon locally, you're basically competing with salmon, which is imported to the country. We see this as a new salmon product, meaning you have to invest quite a lot in marketing and building or supporting your product with advertisement and branding. We also need to stress the importance of food standard requirements. This is something you need to comply with. And in our view, this is about delivering extreme water quality. It's about having very good fish health and it's about having control over everything that comes in and out of your facility and lastly, ensure transparency and traceability across the value chain. It's a complete package.

Thirdly and lastly, yes, this segment has also some -- brought some new challenges. You need to master. One example is flavor or off flavor of the fish. As you probably know, our customer, Nordic Aqua in China, did experience 2 high levels of Geosmin which gives a certain off flavor to the fish. This was an issue in parts of the facility. This issue is now managed, which was a result of a joint effort where we worked together with Nordic Aqua to implement the appropriate technology and optimize also operating procedures.

We are now at a turning point when it comes to land-based salmon farming. The segment is becoming commercially viable and meaningful volumes are being produced. '24 had an output of around 25,000 tonnes, 2/3 coming from RAS facilities, the remaining 1/3, mainly coming from reuse facilities. And with basis in projects or capacity under construction and planned expansions, the volumes are expected to triple towards 2027. And we still see RAS as the preferred technology in the sense that this technology has a much broader flexibility when it comes to geography.

Reuse is dependent on a lot of seawater with the right quality and with the right water temperature. So reuse technology remains relevant for certain geographical areas. However, reuse has indeed a favorable investment profile and also, to a certain degree, less complex operations when we compare it to RAS. Within reuse for grow-out, our most notable delivery today is Laxey on Iceland. This collaboration started back in 2021. We were awarded a contract for the hatchery built on the RAS technology. And from there on, we have expanded the collaboration and we have delivered technology -- reuse technology to the post-smolt module and the grow-out module. And also we have taken the next step by the award of a EUR 20 million contract for the second grow-out module earlier this year, and this delivery encompass a complete reuse technology package from AKVA.

Laxey, they have a plan to construct 6 grow-out modules in total and also additional post-smolt capacity, bringing the total production up to 36,000 tonnes HOQ. Within RAS grow-out, Nordic Aqua is indeed a flagship project. We are now busy with constructing Stage 2, which is increasing the capacity from 4,000 to 8,000 tonnes. This is a 20,000 tonne project, but there is also an option for additional 30,000 tonnes HOQ. Our scope here is end-to-end RAS with all relevant support systems, feeding SCADA 2 examples. We do have the sort of the contract for Stage 3, but that is not in our backlog as NOAP need to confirm financing and final go ahead for that stage.

And We've seen NOAP as one of the first players who is proving that grow out production on land using RAS technology is commercially viable. And with that, we mean that NOAP is producing fish according to the dimensioning and the designed capacity of the facility. And it's interesting to look at the KPIs. NOAP, they are slaughtering fish at above 6 kilo. They have a very solid and consistent superior rate of 99% and the survival rates have stabilized on a solid level above 98%.

And lastly, the production -- the fish production, the biomass, extremely efficient facility, producing a lot of large fish. As the largest seafood market, China is indeed an interesting opportunity for locally produced salmon on land. Today, approximately 100,000 tonnes is consumed in the country. This is imported as we know, and the predictions are forecasting this to double over the next 5-year period. We know that consumers in China, they want a large fish, a fresh fish, and we do believe that producing fish on land locally can actually be part of unlocking additional consumption and demand in the country and Asia as such.

Also, food security and self-sufficiency is a key priority for the local or the Chinese government. And this results in a favorable framework for land-based developments in the country, and we know that, that's part of the key to get projects moving. We are very well positioned to take part in the growth for land based in China and Asia as a whole. Certainly, NOAP our main in local reference and proof of concept, but we also have project references in South Korea and Japan. We do have a strong organization locally, supporting product execution, site operations. And also, we have spent a lot of time establishing a strong network of subsuppliers. Around 80% of what we deliver in projects today in Asia is sourced locally.

Looking ahead in terms of activity and revenue, we had a strong backlog of NOK 1.4 billion end of '24. In Q1, this has increased to NOK 1.55 billion by inclusion of the smolt contract to Cermaq in Chile. And we believe that this backlog gives a very solid fundamental visibility towards 2027 and with the significant opportunities within post-smolt and also grow-out, we are aiming for -- or we are targeting a revenue level of NOK 1.4 billion in 2027. And as you can see, with the continuation of activity on projects for Laxey as well as NOAP 3, a significant part of the majority of the step-up is accounted for. And then the third item is post-smolt mainly in Norway.

In terms of financials, we have had a flat revenue level the last couple of years. However, we have completed a comprehensive turnaround of the land-based business area in a fairly challenging market, and we have been improving profitability. We have black numbers in '24, and we do have continued positive development, both top line and profitability going into the first part of '25. We are now ready to scale the business. We see that with NOK 1.4 billion revenue in '24 as our target, the EBITDA margin will improve to some 10%, which, again, is mainly the scaling effect. And beyond '27, then we have an ambition to keep growing 15%, 20% per year and see some further strengthening of the EBITDA due to additional scaling effects.

Summing up, we are very well positioned as the global Tier 1 RAS player. We are positioned to grow market share, both within post-smolt and grow-out. We have a very solid technology platform. Our facilities deliver best-in-class fish performance. And lastly, with the solid backlog and qualified pipeline, we see a strong and accretive growth going forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Johan Fredrik. You and your team are true pioneers. The aquaculture industry is undergoing also a digital transformation. And as in all other industries, artificial intelligence is a big theme. To present AKVA Group's status and ambitions on the digital business area of AKVA group, you will now hear from Knut Nesse again who is already introduced. And we will also here then from Mr. Hemang Rishi, Co-Founder of Observe Technologies that now is part of AKVA Group. But before I'll give the floor to you, Knut, let's have a look at this. short video.

[Presentation]

All right. Just explaining very quickly why I'm here. And we are in the midst of a leadership transition in digital. Asle will retire in the second half of this year, our current manager of our digital and his successor will be there right after the summer. So I will do the first part, and then Rishi will take over a little later. So starting the presentation, it's not only within sea-based and land-based we are pioneering in AKVA, that also goes for digital in particular. So it goes back in 1982. I mentioned earlier this afternoon that we started the automation of the feeding in 1980, and I quickly understood that, that needed to follow by also control system. So that was the first control system introduced in 1982.

When you were able to do the feeding from a physical point of view, you realize you also need more like a biological ERP system. You need to know how much feed you have given to the fish and how the fish is growing and you need to plan your harvesting. So that was 1985 with the first biological ERP system.

And more recently, we became the owner of Observe 100% basis last year. That's the world's first AI-driven feeding system. In general, talking about digital, we have seen that there is an increasing focus on digitalization and what AI can bring to this industry over the more recent 5, 10 years. If you go 5, 10 years back, it was more about historical data, a bit the back mirror, and that moved to more focused on having real-time data maybe using our biological ERP system as a basis for BI tools et cetera, et cetera, real-time data.

But now it's more about data-driven decision-making that AI can support your decision-making and you can even automate it. So to the right, you see that quite a number of the big names, they have a digital agenda or the digital one, high on their agenda, focusing on smart farming, precision feeding and farming followed by cost reduction, growth and fish welfare focused as well. So this is what we learn at the marketplace, a lot of focus. And that's also why we, as AKVA group, we have invested substantial money in this field over the last 4, 5 years in particular. It's actually as much as NOK 500 million, which is a lot of money for a company like AKVA, so roughly NOK 300 million on M&A, acquiring 100% of Observe, come back to observe a little later and also Submerged, also coming back to that one.

And then in addition to those NOK 300 million, NOK 200 million on developing the solutions and the platform we have. And this has resulted in a rather comprehensive solid digital platform containing Fishtalk, the biological ERP system. AKVAconnect, Submerged, also, I will present them 1 by 1 in a minute. And we are also present in all the major markets, Norway, of course, the biggest one with 57%, but also big in Chile, we are the clear market leader in Chile when it comes to the digital space as well. And present salmon farming is taking place.

So it's all about the art of precision farming and precision feeding. And that's about improving fish health, fish welfare. It's about optimized feeding, improved biomass control, health monitoring and lower mortality, driving growth and creating value as volume and -- higher volume and quality.

FCR, the feed conversion rate, that's kind of the holy grail. Overfeeding is not good because then you are wasting feed, underfeeding is not good either, because then you are not utilizing the full growth potential of the fish. It should just be precise. And in order to have precise feeding, you need support, you need tools. And Rishi will, of course, explain very much more about the feeding part because that's what he's living and breathing.

But we also believe that new technology, centralized feeding stations and more precise feeding, automated feeding can also come with lower operational costs as well. This is the complete overview of our digital platform. I think it's fair to say that we have the most complete digital platform within the industry. Starting to the left, then I'm talking Fishtalk, that's the biological control system where we have a 60% global market share. And then the other legacy system is the AKVAconnect the control system. And in the midst, we have the more new kid on the block, which is about AI power decision-making. I take them one by one.

AKVA Fishtalk. 6 out of 10 salmon farms in the world is on our biological ERP system. So that's a strong market position to have. So it's about the control and planning and also about financial control. This is enabling optimal planning efficiency, focus on fish quality and not at least the harvest planning as such. Of course, investing in an ERP system is not a decision you make every year. Typically, you are there to stay, and that's what we see. We have a 95% customer retention over the years.

What's new with Fishtalk? We have invested quite a bit in getting rid of some old technical debt and modernize and improve the system, make it more transparent or open, so you can use APIs on the system. And the next level of development is that as the first mover, we are now moving our Fishtalk solution to the cloud and we are introducing a Software as a Service model. So the idea is that the fish farmers will move from their own on-prem solution up to the cloud and be there in a standardized and open architecture. We think this makes a lot of sense also from an IT security standpoint from our -- seen from our customer and from our side.

This also makes a lot of sense with regards to, yes, improving our recurring revenue base, also customer stickiness, predictability. So the first customers are moving now, and we expect to see traction on this new additional service model or business model in the months to come. So what we will end up with or what we hope to end up with is a complete library of more than 50 million tonnes of biomass accumulated over the years, of course, on this cloud-based system. And I don't have a fantasy enough today to explain you what someone right competent company next to us. If we partner with someone and if we can use this enormous fish database in order to find or search for new solutions and combine it with other data libraries, I think that's going to be a very powerful muscle to have in the future.

And we are now organizing contracts in such a way that we can use those data and aggregate it and anonymous basis for what is the better thing in terms of developing the industry.

AKVAconnect. 5 out of 10 Atlantic farm salmons will be on our control systems. This is also based on a recurring business model. So it's basically about enabling feeding, bringing hardware software together, same with the cameras and the same with the barge control as such.

Then closing off with Submerged, Submerged is a smart AI-powered camera. It's not developed by AKVA group, but with some third party founders. But we acquired this company a bit more than a year ago. We acquired that because we see that there is an enormous focus and movements in the direction of having AI powered cameras. Also in the last -- or today, I said that the new regulations being voted for. And one element in this as a principle in the new regulation is that the government want to introduce automated sea lice or lice counting. So -- and then you need AI-powered camera for that.

Our technology is delivering on this automatic sea lice counting. It's also approved by the food authorities, 1 out of 2 or 3 and it also give accurate weight distribution, which is relevant for the farmer in order to do their harvest planning. Also, we have delivered -- sorry, developed a number of fish health KPIs and a bit more work is to be done there. But commercially, we are now out there in the market with quite a number of pilots and we now are picking up on the first commercial contracts.

In all humbleness, we are -- commercially, we are a couple of years behind 2 competitors there. They have commercialized their smart camera over the last couple of years. But we think in fairness that technically, we are at par level now, also demonstrated by the fact that our sea lice counting is authorized by the food authorities. So we expect to see a good pace now in our commercialization and scaling up of that. We think it's attractive for the customer to have something which is part of our digital platform, where the AKVA name is behind in terms of security, in terms of guarantees, in terms of service and follow-ups. So this is going to be exciting to follow in the next couple of years.

Then Rishi, you tell us everything about feeding.

Thank you, Knut. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Rishi and I'm the CEO and Co-Founder of Observe Technologies, a company that is looking to pioneer precision feeding in aquaculture. Today, I'm going to go into how fish farming can be further optimized, the solution we've created for it, the proven value, why we stand out, our customer-first approach and why we'll maintain and increase our market position today.

So everyone knows that feeding is the biggest cost in aquaculture and behind it is an intensely manual process. It involves an operator sitting behind these many screens. And imagine if you're an operator, you come in, in the morning, you would look at your feed systems to make sure everything is up and well. You would look at your cameras and adjust them to be just the right position. You would look at your sensors to make sure you're on the right environmental range to feed your fish. You would look at tables to understand the theoretical values that you need to feed your fish to, and then you would look at the previous day's data. And that at that moment, you're starting -- you're ready to feed your fish.

They then go back to the feed system, you would then press start and you would look at their cameras and look at the appetite and the pellets in each of these video screens. You would then also continuously examine the sensors, make the small adjustments, all to optimize the balance between overfeeding and underfeeding. You do not want to overfeed because it'll be a waste to the bottom of the ocean floor, and you don't want to underfeed and compromise on fresh performance and growth. And you won't do this for 1 hour or 2 hours, this will be for 8 hours a day. In fact, across the next 7-day shift, 56 hours in total.

And at that moment, you will hand over to a colleague and that colleague will make different decisions based on what they think is the best to achieve that balance. And then you would compare notes. And those notes would just be the amount of food delivered and then the potential growth. It's an art because it's an information overload, it's nonstandardized feeding and there's no reliable benchmarking. And that's what we do. We introduced the science. We aim to unify and bring all the tools in one place, something that fundamentally wasn't possible in the last 10 years. We then process it in milliseconds and give actionable outputs either in a decision support system or a automated system. Left, red, stop feeding; orange, decrease; blue, stay stable; green, increase, just like here.

And this solution is proven. We've seen a 10% reduction in feed costs in sites in Chile. We've seen a 3% growth increase in sites in Australia, and although we don't focus on this, the feed data has given some customers an idea of anticipation of fish health issues. And we've seen a reduction of training time, something pivotal when new people enter this industry, particularly in our coastal communities. And this is further backed up by one of the lead producers in Chile, which has said, Observe AI sites produced better results than those ones used manually.

In fact, we have trust of over 100 locations in this industry. And we don't just integrate with aqua equipment. We're agnostic to equipment. So farms do not need to require extra CapEx. We can use what's there. We have worked with 11 different camera providers, 4 different feed system providers, 6 different sensor providers. And with this recent acquisition, as Knut has described, we aim to leverage AKVA's footprint in the market today and make further grounds into Norway.

And we do this with a customer-first tailored package. We start with a recommendation based system, which is a decision support system, which designed to gain the trust of our AI output of our operators. And once that trust is achieved, we can then go into a fully automated solution of feed and cameras, with a commercial upsell for us. And we are thereby developing an even more automated solution with more things around the farm. And we've proven that this model works. We've seen that decision support system is now being upsold commercially worldwide by more than 50% of our customers.

We don't plan to stop there. Part of our autopilot package is working with the biomass and sea lice cameras in our industry and providing an enriched experience with AKVA Submerged. While Observe provides a lot of data around the feeding, we miss a core thing in the feedback loop, which is the biomass and the health data. By reducing that time and understanding further, we can be even more precise in our feed delivery. We can deliver the right amount of food at the right time with being fully automated, and we are confident we'll see even better results in the long run.

So to summarize, at Observe, we are recognized to have one of the most advanced feed automated solutions in the market. Number 2, we're proven. And number 3, we have a road map that will keep our stack commercially and technically in the long run. Thank you.

Thank you, Rishi. Now, you probably have some sympathy why we invested in the company. They have a leading cutting-edge technology, AI-based and also very impressive leadership, I have to say. So Rishi and his team is located just outside London City Center. We have 25 true AI specialists. You don't find them here in this area. We realize, so you need to go to a bit smarter places. So -- but we are very, very happy with the onboarding of Observe and Rishi and the team. So it works very well for us.

Summarizing the growth opportunities here with the base of last year to start with. There will be some building block. Number 1 is about some underlying growth, which is representing the growth in the biomass because our revenue model is following the increase of the biomass. This is from '24 to '27, I'm explaining. And then you have new sales opportunities. And new sales opportunities will basically be, there are 3 drivers behind that one. It's about the new SaaS model for Fishtalk that will generate new revenue. It's selling more sites, number of sites for Observe, around 120 today on our recurring revenue model. We have the ambition to increase that number. And not at least Submerged, which I explained some 10 minutes ago and the possibilities there. That's the new sales stepping block.

And then you have upsell, which is very much about with the base we have on Observe, the 120 sites plus the new sites and bring it all out to pilot or in other terms, full autonomous feeding. That is basically doubling the income broadly if we are able to bring customers there, which we think we will do. And then we have a rather low churn today of less than 5%, and we expect that to continue. So that's the stepping stones in order to arrive to NOK 250 million for 2027.

So we have seen a reasonable growth in the last few years. EBITDA more flattish because we have been investing a lot. But now, we will scale and leverage on higher revenue and the ambition is to get to -- or arrive to NOK 250 million 3 years later. And then the EBITDA will be more like it should be for this kind of business, 40%. And then the 2030 ambition is to double on the back of this being mega trend, a lot of focus on digital, certainly.

So this is the key highlights for digital. We have a unique end-to-end platform, powering precision fish farming globally. We are really positioned for profitable growth following our large investment. I said NOK 300 million in M&A in the last few years and NOK 200 million for upgrading the technology platform. So we expect strong financial outlook with high margins, recurring revenue and scaling globally. So we want to unlock the value from the SaaS model, AI driven feeding and also the data capitalization.

And that brings me very much to the end. Stale, I hand it back to you, please.

Thank you, Knut. Thank you, Rishi. We will now have a break, a short break. Please be back at 14:30. 14:30 and then we will dive into the financials. Thank you.

[Break]

Welcome back. Now we're going to take a deep dive into finance. Our next presenter is AKVA group CFO, Mr. Ronny Meinkoehn. He assumed his position in August 2020 after some years in the oil and gas industry. Ronny will present the financial overview and his thoughts on AKVA group's future perspectives. The floor is yours, Ronny.

Thank you, Stale, and good afternoon. So before we dive into the numbers, I would like to do a short recap of what we have presented so far today. So Knut has seen at the start by illustrating the growth challenge in the salmon farming industry. And it's clear for us that continued innovation and investments in new technology is required to overcome the growth barriers. The license to grow for the industry lies in improved fish health and fish welfare and to reduce the mortality in a financially and environmentally sustainable way. That will create value for the industry through increased harvesting volumes, but also through improved quality with a higher share of superior fish.

And we believe that AKVA has the solutions to help solve these challenges and enable growth with deep farming, post-smolt, full grow-out facilities and also digital solutions as a key enabler for growth and also key value drivers for AKVA in the coming years.

Improved fish health and welfare is obviously AKVA's main contribution to secure a sustainable industry but as being the leading global supplier, we are also aware of other ESG responsibilities. Rishi talked about the importance of feeding from a cost perspective, but to reduce waste from feeding is also important to reduce the impact on the environment of the industry.

Johan Fredrik talked about the importance of clean water, supply chain transparency and also about sustainability standards in land-based farming of salmon. Kristian and Glenn, they showed a few examples on sustainable solutions within sea-based such as the recycled pen, recycled net and also the carbon-neutral boat hulls. Kristian also showed a video from Chile, the project for Mowi with the floating solar panels, which we are very proud of, and we believe that there is a great market opportunity for AKVA within this solution going forward.

So let's continue with the financials. So as you have heard today, AKVA is entering a new growth era where we expect to move from an average growth of 2% in '22 to '24 to 12% in '25 to 2027. In other words, we expect to lift revenue from NOK 3.5 billion to NOK 5 billion in '27. And we see the strongest growth in land based, both in absolute and in relative numbers. And the good start we had to '25 is really supportive to our revenue targets. We had a revenue in Q1 this year, which was 30% higher than in Q1 last year.

And our revenue growth will be profitable. We will continue the positive EBITDA development we have seen in the past few years. So we managed to lift the EBITDA from NOK 158 million in '22 to NOK 381 million in 2024, which was driven by this restructuring process in land-based, cost optimization processes. We have improved on project execution, and we have spent a lot of time and efforts to really improve on contract management. So we improved the EBITDA from the low 5% in '22 to 11% in '24 on more or less the same revenue basis, the same revenue amount.

So looking ahead, we are targeting EBITDA of NOK 700 million in 2027, which is corresponding to a EBITDA margin of 14%. And we can see that all segments will contribute significantly to this improvement with the NOK 140 million from sea-based, NOK 115 million from land-based and more than NOK 65 million from digital.

Looking deeper into the segments, we see sea-based increasing revenue from NOK 2.8 billion to NOK 3.4 billion in 2027. EBITDA set to improve from 12% to 14%, driven by economies of scale and continued cost efficiency. And as Kristian showed you, the order intake development during '24 and '25 is positive, which is a strong indication that a new period of growth will come for the sea-based business, which is driven, of course, by deep farming, but also we have a very steady, growing, recurring service and aftersales business.

For land-based, we look at a sharper increase in revenue from NOK 600 million in '22, all the way to NOK 1.4 billion in 2027. And the target we have for this year, '25 is of NOK 800 million to NOK 900 million. We can be quite firm on this target since we have already the contracts in our order backlog. And the growth beyond '25 is related to increased number of smolt and post-smolt contracts and also clearly identified full grow-out projects in Asia. And we have spent a lot of time on finalizing old loss-making projects in this business segment, become more cost efficient and also improved on contract management. This resulted in a slightly positive EBITDA in '24 and entering this new growth period with critical mass, we will increase towards the 10% level in 2027, driven by high operational leverage.

And we have a solid order backlog, close to NOK 1.6 billion in Q1 this year. And the revenue from what we consider to be a very qualified pipeline is topping off all the backlog conversion in the years to come. And then we have digital increasing from NOK 137 million in revenue in 2024 to NOK 250 million in 2027. We see the strong increase in EBITDA from 22% to 40%. And we have talked a lot about this in our quarterly presentations. We have invested a lot in the digital business segment, but also in the digital organization. So the current organization has both the capacity and capabilities to manage a significant higher revenue level than we are at today.

So we expect this business to really, really scale in the years to come. And also, more than 90% of the revenue is on a recurring revenue model with high opportunities for both upselling and new sales on a customer base with a very, very low churn.

So turning back to group level, on EBIT, we have improved from 1%, the low 1% in '22 to 5% in '24, which reflects a successful turnaround in land-based and also improved underlying performance in general.

So looking ahead, we forecast that capital-light growth and are targeting a 9% EBIT level in '27, which means that we -- overall, we see the opportunity to grow the operating profit by 30% on an annual basis.

With regards to CapEx, we're already well invested to deliver on our business plan. We have spent approximately 5% of our revenue to build strong delivery platforms across all 3 business segments. And looking ahead, we foresee only a slight increase in absolute terms on CapEx but the CapEx intensity will decline towards the 4% level on the back of a higher revenue. And we will continue to spend approximately NOK 100 million on innovation on an annual basis, which is approximately 50% of our total CapEx spendings.

The financial performance we are forecasting will return -- will result in a sharp increase in return on capital employed. We managed to improve from 2% in 2022 to 8% last year. And this year, we are exceeding 10% level. And we have the target to double this within 2027 and deliver 20% return on average capital employed.

Based on the financial outlook, this will strengthen what we consider to be an already strong financial flexibility. At the end of Q1 this year, we had available cash of NOK 500 million and a net debt of NOK 1.2 billion. With regards to the net working capital, we don't -- the revenue growth we are forecasting will not increase the relative net working capital. For land-based, we will still stick to the principle to be cash positive or at least cash neutral on all projects. In digital, we will continue with monthly or upfront invoicing. While the situation is somewhat more complex with all the products and services in sea-based, overall, we -- due to more impact from land-based than digital revenues, the net working capital ratio will decline the coming years.

So with a net debt EBITDA ratio below the 2.5 level and improving cash flow, we will have ample headrooms to covenants and we'll have the room to pursue both growth and dividends in the years to come. And these forces will continue to strengthen. We will have a significant improved cash flow over the next years. We'll have comforting headrooms to covenants. We have a sufficient capital base to deliver our business plan. CapEx intensity will decline. And we have the potential now to significantly increase the dividend capacity in AKVA.

And we aim to reward shareholders both through an increase in the share price, but also through competitive dividends. So finally, we resumed dividend payments in the first half year this year, after suspending for 2 years in '23 and 2024. We have also introduced a new dividend policy, which is tied to our cash flow generation. So over time, we intend to return between 40% and 50% of cash flow after CapEx to our shareholders in form of cash dividends. Given the financial outlook we are seeing, this should give ample headroom to expand dividend payments in the years to come.

So all in all, we expect revenue to increase from NOK 3.5 billion to NOK 5 billion in '27. The corresponding EBITDA impact is to improve from NOK 381 million to NOK 700 million. On EBIT, it's increased from NOK 184 million to NOK 440 million. And this will give us a high financial flexibility and the opportunity to increase dividends at the same time as we enable high organic growth and also maintain the robustness in the company. And we have significant ambitions also beyond 2027. We believe that technology is more important than ever for the industry. AKVA has a unique position to take advantage of these opportunities. So we have set an ambition in 2030 to improve from the NOK 5 billion in revenue in '27 to NOK 7 billion in revenue in 2030, supported by an EBIT margin of minimum 10%.

And summing it all up. We are fully invested on all business platforms, and we have the capacity to double the revenue over the next 5 years. The growth will be profitable and capital light. And we strongly believe that we have an attractive business model with an increasing share of recurring revenue.

And last, after some years with financial headwinds, we finally have a strong balance sheet. And with the increased cash generation, this will result in competitive returns to our shareholders.

So thank you for your attention.

Thank you, Ronny. We would now like to invite today's presenters on the stage for today's second Q&A. [Operator Instructions] And if you are joining us here at Klepp, please raise your hand, and we will pass you the microphone. To make this as efficient as possible, we will start with the questions from the audience here in Klepp, but please do post your questions online already now if you want to.

Ola Trovatn, Carnegie. So first question to Knut. How do you see the potential for synergies across the 3 divisions in AKVA group?

We like to be owner of both the land-based, the digital and sea-based business platform. So we have 1 big platform on the basis of the -- very often the very same customers. So everything which comes to customer relationship, intelligence, we share this information across those 3 platforms. So we think that's the basically the biggest asset. If I personally see a CEO in a farming company, I can talk through the 3 business platforms with 1 guy. That's typically the guy making all the decisions.

So I'm not saying we have a huge amount of cost synergies. I think you could -- from a cost -- pure cost standpoint, you could have dare it -- done it differently. But from the customer and market knowledge. And I think there are 2 synergies.

And maybe 1 more. Can you comment on how much of the digital revenues is coming from Fishtalk?

For 2024, that's around half. And as we have demonstrated to go from the NOK 137 million to NOK 250 million, we expect the other parts to be the big drivers. But for '24, it was around half of the NOK 137 million. That's fair?

Yes.

And last 1 for me. Why do you foresee a smaller margin expansion going from NOK 5 billion to NOK 7 billion in revenue versus NOK 4 billion to NOK 5 billion?

Well, we are pretty clear about '27, and that's why we call it a target. The target is something you should be very serious about. And we have, of course, a big financial model behind this. And we believe we can targeting the 9% for '27, and that we can be pretty clear about the activity level. 2030, we have less visibility on 2030. We just expect that there will be uptake on land based, also still traction on digital. And we have set a reasonable target also on the EBITDA 2030, but of course, with less visibility. But the CFO said minimum.

A question about Nordic AKVA Partners because AKVA group is a shareholder, and I think you own a stake of 10%. Is that correct? What is correct?

3%.

3%. Okay. Then indirectly, actually, you're a competitor with other customers. There's a small stake, but still. So do you have any problems with that? Or -- and do you have a strategy for exit? Or do you have any future commitments for expanding the project?

So this is a bit of a historical decision. We wanted to give birth to the first mover on RAS technology and land and in that context, it was meaningful at that point in time to raise capital that we also invested. That's not typically what we are going to do today. We are shareholders today. We are happy to be there. And I'm even a Board member there. So we follow this company very closely. I don't think typically, we will invest a lot in new farming companies.

Talking NOAP, you see quite a few Norwegian salmon farmers also being shareholders there. So I think it's not seen as a conflict, no.

No. Okay. No. But I mean fish farmers are your customers. So -- but that will not be, what should we say, other cases would not be normal that you invest in the projects. It was like you call it, kind of giving birth to this project.

That's what I'm saying.

Yes. Okay. One more question. Last year, Billund Aquaculture went bankrupt and you took over this project in Årdal Aqua, did you take over other projects? And have you noticed that this competitor is gone that you have increased your competitiveness in vast projects?

So Billund went broke last summer. We took over their contract with Årdal, as you said. And we also took over the contract in Chile. They are building a very big smolt facility for Cermaq. And in Chile, we were only 2 players, Billund and AKVA land-based. And since they are gone, we are now the only 1 there. So that will, of course, change the dynamics somewhat into the future. So -- but those 2 projects were the 2 main projects at that point in time. So we think we came to a good solution for AKVA group in that situation.

On sea-based technology, how much is increased scale and how much is cost efficiency as regarding the EBITDA margin that you're presenting today?

Yes. The majority is scaling of the increased profitability in sea-based, absolutely. We believe we have the current organization but also the current production facilities for that cages, pens, et cetera, has the capacity to increase without adding a lot more costs to it. So the majority is scaling.

So it's increased capacity?

Yes. On the capacity we already have, yes.

And 1 more. The sea lice, how sure are you that the sea lice will not move down another 15, 20 meters on the deep?

No, you can never be sure about that because it's adaptable, but you can comment on that, Kristian.

Thank you. Tricky question. As I presented, we can see that the fish farmers are experiencing 80% or more in reduce sea lice treatments. So you will -- could experience sea lice in all of the -- all of the depth, of course, in the sea, but to reduce quite significantly compared to open on traditional pens. So there's no yardstick on that specifics.

Yes. One more question about sea lice because, I guess, this is -- the problem with sea lice is a big driver for investing in deep farming and also us or land-based farming. And we all know the problems in Norway. But how are the problems with sea lice in Scotland, Chile, other countries, Iceland? I only know the problems in Norway because I'm a salmon fisher. That's a big problem.

But if we take the Chilean situation because Chile is by far the second largest producer, roughly half of the volume of Norway on Atlantic salmon, and they have a little different type of sea lice. It's not the Norwegian version, it's called Caligus, so it behaves a little differently. But basically, it's causing the same type of problems, which is need for treatment and higher mortality at the end of the day. You have seen a relatively high increase and almost like an explosion of the sea lice problem in Chile as well over the last 12, 18 months. It's a little cheaper to treat in Chile than in Norway.

But as such, the problem -- the underlying problem is the same, it's causing treatments and higher mortality. So we are now adapting Nautilus to Chilean condition as well because we see market potential there. 30% of the sites in Chile from a physical conditional or depth point of view can be suitable for Nautilus. But there is 1 important innovation, which needs to happen that the net solution we have in Norway is not suitable for Chile because they have a issue with the predators, the sea lions, so you need to protect against or towards the sea lions.

So we are now completing that adjustment of the Norwegian version of Nautilus, and we will have 2 pilots there in the months to come. First without fish in order to test things and then with fish. So we expect to have a commercial solution there end of this year.

We have time for 1 or more 2 questions, if you like. Is there any question from the call?

Not, now.

Not now. One last one. Yes, over there.

[indiscernible] again. Can you talk a bit about packaging the service revenue going forward? Will that be a cost-plus or more longer-term agreements?

Now you can start, Ronny and then hand over to the specialist afterwards.

We have a mix. The majority is on cost-plus contracts, not long-term frame agreements, but we have a mix. In Norway, it's -- the majority is cost-plus. Chile, we have more on contracts. So there is a mix, but maybe you Glenn can explain a bit more?

Glenn, explain about your service stations.

Yes, I'm not sure if I understand your question, but we believe service will keep growing as we see Kristian presented, and I explained and the need for us to go out being -- helping our customers out in the field, helping make the solution work as well is very important. So we strongly believe that the service revenue and after sales will remain and grow over the years to come, for sure. Was that answering your question? Partly. Yes, that's quite good.

But as explained today, the service business and the relative growth there has been very good in the last few years. We are happy about that because that gives more resilience to our business model, and we expect that to happen. We have really invested in the service stations. In average, the replacement cost or the cost today for our investment in our service station is plus/minus NOK 100 million.

We have 9 of them. So it's a pretty -- relatively well-protected business model. It's not -- it's hard to replace the thing or enter this space. So in that sense, we -- and also within sea-based the other part of sea-based, we have 40 people, 40 something, which is generating a customer presence. We are there on the site on a daily basis with those 40 guys. And yes, it's just a good business model.

Ola Trovatn, DNB Carnegie. Just a follow-up question on service revenues and the growth. What is the driver of the growth of the service revenues? Is it you taking market share? Is it that equipment is becoming more and more complex? Can you say something about the drivers of growth of that?

If we go to the service stations, we added 2 or 3 of them in the last 5 years, 2 or 3?

2.5.

2.5, okay. That's a good answer. So of course, that is giving us more capacity. So we have invested in more capacity, and that's a big driver. Okay, final question over there.

Hans Petter from SpareBank 1 Markets here. The geosmin issue in Nordic AKVA Partners, how big of a surprise was it to you as a technology provider?

Sorry, can you repeat the question?

Yes, the geosmin issue, how big of a surprise was it to you as a technology provider?

You can start Johan Fredrik and I can fill in.

I think it's fair to say that it was a surprise that we couldn't solve the issue with the technology already installed. Remember that if we compare to post-smolt, this is not really a topic, right? So I would say that between ourselves and our customers, we saw some surprise in this, but we have worked -- as I mentioned, we have worked very strongly in a strong partnership, shoulder to shoulder to effectively control and manage the issue. And as I also mentioned, the technology and kind of the water treatment is 1 part of it.

But the way you run and optimize your facility in terms of operations and procedures and so forth is also very, very important. I guess this is partly how it is when you are sometimes pioneering.

Now we always said that some new issues will pop up, but we don't know exactly what it will be about. So we just need to be prepared for the unprepared, but okay, this is the situation now. It's being managed. So I think this is a scalable business.

All right. And I think we are on time now. So I have to say thank you very much, first and foremost, to the people showing up here. We couldn't do with real participation otherwise it would have been very boring at least. So thank you very much for taking the effort. Very much appreciated. And also thank you to the people in the call and the webcast for following this for a good 3 hours. So saying that, I like to close the AKVA Capital Market Day, and thank you very much.