Grieg Seafood AS Stock

Good morning, and welcome to Grieg Seafood's First half 2026 Presentation. My name is Nina Willumsen Grieg, and I'm the CEO of Grieg. I'm joined today by our CFO, Magnus Johannesen. This is the first time we're holding the presentation in Bergen, and I appreciate everyone who has joined us early this morning. Today's agenda includes updates on our operation and market activities. For the first time, we are presenting farming and sales as separate segments. And as usual, Magnus will take us through the financial results at the end of the presentation.

This first half year have been challenging for Grieg Seafood. Weaker market conditions than we anticipated, combined with biological challenges and a company in transition resulted in weak financial performance. The results are certainly not to the standard that we like to set for ourselves. We harvested nearly 14,000 tonnes and delivered marginally positive results in both farming and sales. The freshwater production have been strong across all sites, while at sea, we have had a rough start to the year. However, I'm pleased that we have entered Q3 with close to maximum MAB and the fish is performing well.

During the period, we ramped up Gardermoen VAP facility and implemented actions to mitigate rising feed prices. Refinancing of the hybrid marked the important last step in ensuring a long-term financing structure for our company. I will get back to details on these highlights. One slide on context on the new Grieg Seafood before we turn to the numbers. 18 months ago, we were a company managing a balance sheet problem. Today, we are a focused Rogaland operator with a clean capital structure. The transition is done and it proves that this organization can move decisively when we need to.

The years 2020 to '24 brought biological issues in Canada and Finnmark, heavy CapEx and write-downs. We found the solution without diluting our shareholders. First, the hybrid bond, then a disciplined divestment process in which we map every option before we moved. The result is well known. We divested 3 of 4 regions and closed the sale to Cermaq at NOK 10.2 billion, which cleared the debt from our balance sheet. Over the past 12 months, we have paid NOK 4 billion in dividend, established a new bank syndicate and last in June issued NOK 750 million hybrid. We have also resized the organization and cost-cutting initiatives are tracking ahead of the original NOK 50 million target.

From here, the agenda is simple, strengthen the core, keep taking costs out and optimize post-smolt as our main competitive advantage. A transformation of this scale is demanding for any company. But it has built the decisiveness and focus that I believe leave us stronger, even with a challenging start to this year. With post-smolt and our own sales organization in place, we believe we have the setup to act as a consolidator in Western Norway at the right time and on our terms. For now, the management team's top priority remains building a strong foundation, and we will keep looking for and acting on improvements across the balance sheet, the structure and our operating model.

Then to the numbers. Starting the operational review on a positive note on land. We had strong freshwater performance during the period. We released 2.9 million smolt with an average weight of 1.3 kilo. A major milestone during the quarter was the harvest of 600 tonnes of fully land grown fish. Seawater production was affected by challenging biological conditions. The weak results in Rogaland is driven mainly from harvesting fish groups with winter wounds in Q1 and into Q2. Sea lice issues and repeated treatments in late 2025 resulted in weaker fish in a cold winter. The situation looks much better now, and we have done several operational changes to prevent this from repeating.

Winter wounds led to a low superior share of 63% and harvesting fish with lower harvest weights due to fish welfare. Building biomass left us with a harvest profile heavy at the end of Q2, where superior share had improved, but at a time where the prices were at its lowest. However, by building biomass, we are increasing the guiding for the full year back to 31,000 tonnes. Challenging biology transferred directly into a farming cost of NOK 70.9 per kilo. Production is strong so far in Q3 and we maintain our cost guidance for the full year at NOK 67.5.

Feed prices going into Q3 have increased due to challenging fisheries and tighter raw material supply. We have done targeted actions to contain costs, including revision of feed recipes and introduction of land-based proteins or poultry meal. With these measures, we have absorbed 50% of the raw material increase. While we believe the increase of price is not permanent, we see it as essential to include a wider range of alternative ingredients, both for sustainability, cost and nutrition.

As mentioned, our land-based production across sites have been strong during this period. The capacity available to us gives us the opportunity to adapt smolt size to the needs of our production. The pilot for land-based fish at Ardal was the ultimate test of our land-based facilities. The biological results were strong with high survival on land and 95% superior share. The main learnings related to transferring large fish to the harvest plant, and purging them at sea to remove the land-based taste. Sea-based purging has never been done before.

The result I'm most pleased with is that we saw no significant slowdown in growth among larger fish, unlike the challenges reported by other land-based projects. This production confirms that Ardal and Grieg Seafood have the setup to produce 5-kilo fish on land with low mortality and higher superior share. However, given the cost of production without the necessary scale, we will for now focus solely on post-smolt in all 4 halls at Ardal. With data from 75 post-smolt groups across various sizes, we are now conducting a thorough analysis on the best operational strategy going forward. We know the post-smolt strategy is delivering, and we now have enough completed cycles to fine tune it. Increasingly, that tuning is about improving smolt quality and the value each kilo realizes on different sites throughout the year.

We also see our available land-based capacity as a competitive advantage in a potential consolidation or collaboration, giving us flexibility to adjust the number and size of post-smolt supplied to additional sea licenses. While sales and value-added processing have been part of Grieg Seafood for many years, we present it as a segment for the first time with figures included from 1st of April 2026. The segment delivered positive EBIT contribution of NOK 15 million. However, this should not be read as the potential of the segment. Sales performance on superior graded fish was strong during the period, but price achievement was highly affected by downgraded fish, the ramp-up of Gardermoen and currency fluctuations.

We have had a contract share of 30% year-to-date, delivering a positive contribution to results. The contract share will be stable into the second half of the year. Grieg Seafood Sales purchased fish from external suppliers to support contract fulfillment and maintain production volumes at our processing facility. While this is mainly done from week to week, we recently entered into an annual agreement to sell 50% of Lingalaks volume through our sales organization. Our new value-added processing facility at Gardermoen started production in January and establishing a new production line takes time. One-off ramp-up costs and negative earnings driven from low capacity utilization has affected our results this period. Production at the facility is picking up speed and the important milestone of breakeven volumes was reached during July.

Going into Q3, focus on stabilizing volumes and optimizing both the line and our product portfolio to ensure the best result in total. I believe we have a strong team on VAP and the facility, and we expect the positive trend to continue through second half of the year.

And with that, I leave the stage to Magnus.

Thank you, Nina, and good morning, everyone. It's great to present in Bergen, but it would be even better if the results were representing the strong track record we have in Rogaland. Starting with the profit and loss. Our sales revenues are down 6% year-over-year. This is due to a high share of downgraded fish in an already soft price environment and is even magnified by the lower harvest volume that we have in '26 compared to '25 in the first half year. The biological challenges, of course, then impacts our revenues. Equally, our farming cost is not satisfactory for this half year.

We see the farming cost being almost NOK 71 per kilo, which is an increase of above NOK 40 year-over-year. The biological challenges led to higher capitalized cost to the generation, which was harvested both in Q1 and Q2. And combined with the lower harvest adaptation of our harvest plan to accommodate the changes following the incident as well as general price increase -- cost increase. The farming cost was high for the first half year as a whole.

However, there are also positive elements in the first half year. For instance, our headquarter cost reduction is tracking ahead of plan. We see additional cost initiatives being explored, defined and implemented as we go into 2027. And we do believe that we gradually will come down to NOK 3 per kilo and below. All in, we see that the operational EBIT for the group came in at minus NOK 30 million, which is equivalent to a negative NOK 2.1 per kilo which is not satisfactory or representative of the new platform Grieg Seafood is building on.

Moving now to cash flow. Our net cash flow for operations ended at negative NOK 108 million. It was positively impacted by the EBITDA of NOK 48 million and negatively impacted by changes in working capital of negative NOK 257 million, partly offset by lower biomass at sea. Looking at the net cash flow from investment activities, we see this coming in at negative NOK 80 million. This includes NOK 35 million CapEx investments in our Rogaland segment as well as NOK 44.5 million participation in the share issue at Ardal Aqua early in this year.

However, looking at investments, this is a positive element in today's presentation. We reduced our CapEx guidance for the full year of 2026 from NOK 150 million to NOK 105 million. And this increase is expected to come mainly from the farming segment. A statement to the strong and well invested value chain that we have built up in Rogaland over many, many years.

Looking then at the larger items in the financing -- sorry, in the cash flow, which is net cash flow from financing. This is not surprisingly impacted by the dividend of NOK 4 billion paid in end of April as well as the refinancing of the group's capital structure of net NOK 339 million. And in this number, you will have both the repayment of the hybrid bond, the issue of the new hybrid bond, the drawdown on the new RCF credit facility as well as the repayment of the bridge loan. As such, this is a net figure representing the full restructure that we did on the finance capital structure.

Moving then to our net interest-bearing debt. The net interest-bearing debt started off going into 2026 with a positive cash position of almost NOK 2.5 billion. The cash position was positively impacted from the operational EBITDA as well as the reduction of biomass at sea. And then we also have reduced the cash position through our investments, the dividend as well as changes in our -- as well as other changes in our debt structure. All in all, we exit the first half year with the net interest-bearing debt, excluding IFRS of NOK 1.25 billion. Despite having a more normalized capital structure, we still have available liquidity and cash of above NOK 1.1 billion, and we still have a robust liquidity position.

However, I think it's important to spend some time on our capital allocation strategy that is revised in going out of the first half year. Even though Grieg Seafood maintains a robust balance sheet, the carrying value of our licenses are significantly below the fair value of those licenses. For instance, our licenses is only valued in our books at NOK 250 million despite being worth many billions. This makes our balance sheet more sensitive to changes in price and earnings expectations.

At the same time, there are risks that we need to account for. We see political, regulatory and market risk. But most importantly, there are significant opportunities in this sector. Opportunities that Grieg Seafood wants to explore and move towards. As such, we will prioritize creating headroom in our balance sheet to be able to easier -- more easy and flexibility to act on those opportunities. And that is why we repeat our 3 pillars in the strategy. We still will strengthen our core, but most importantly, we will prioritize important and also exciting opportunities that we believe the industry will be facing. And Grieg Seafood plans to have a key role in that process. Also, we have done strong and decisive investments over 10 years in our post-smolt technology, but we are also open on exploring new technologies if the time and price is right. But for now, we are prioritizing strengthening the core and the expansion of Grieg Seafood.

And due to that, we also want to invite our shareholders to our Capital Markets Day on the 27th of April next year. We believe that this Capital Markets Day is important to go through the new Grieg Seafood platform as well as looking and discussing the opportunities that we see ahead. Further information about this Capital Markets Day will be published in due time and invitation will be sent out. For those who are unable to attend in person, there will be a streaming of the presentation itself. And based on that I thank you very much for presentation, and me and Nina will take questions from the web and in the room. Thank you.

Let's start with the web unless there's any questions in the room. Yes.

Your equity ratio sit at 30%, while the covenants for '26 is the same at 30%. How comfortable are you with this position?

So we have -- in the new bank syndicate, we have gradually increasing or step-wise covenants. So it started out at 20% equity ratio. And out of the first half of 2026 it was 25% and it will not be 30% until exiting the first half year '27. So we are comfortable when it comes to our equity ratio. At the same time, there are importance -- the important changes due to the capital allocation strategy is to exactly create the necessary headroom to have that opportunity to act without being in breach of covenants. And we have a very good dialogue with the bank syndicate on these matters.

How will you create the financial flexibility to pursue M&As?

So there's several, of course, options to that. We are reducing costs. We are doing adaptations to how we operate as well as implementing the initiatives Nina talked about on post-smolt. But more importantly, it will be to repay debt. And given that our balance sheet is so small compared to the underlying values, there are not that much earnings that need to come in, in order to improve this equity ratio significantly. So it will be through the operations. But of course, just to add, the capital markets, of course, will still be an important source of capital for us.

Following the recent divestments, your farming footprint is now highly concentrated. How do you plan to mitigate the increased biological risk and achieve industry standard margins with a reduced geographic setup and limited growth capabilities in PO2?

I think our main -- the post-smolt is what really takes down the risk in the Western Coast of Norway. So that is our main focus. And we also believe that 30,000 tonnes and the 13 sites that we have available is giving an okay risk return to that. But that is also one of the reasons why we believe we need to grow into PO3 and PO4 to reduce that risk.

Can you please give a breakdown of the earnings in VAP and Sales and give indications of the earnings potential in each.

I don't think I will do the breakdown live on stage. But what we can say is that the VAP contribution is the most significant contribution when you look at the facility and the VAP income -- VAP income separately. As well as the salmon processing -- also salmon processing the VAP facility is also contributing positively going into H2. But it's a combination of those who are positive for H1. When it's for the sales performance, the sales performance on the superior graded fish is very strong. But it is the downgraded fish that is offsetting that performance in this quarter. So to break it down, I would say that the price achievement of Superior is the key driver. And then the negative key driver would be the operation of the result in the Gardermoen facility and then offset by the VAP performance. That is the overall breakdown, and then I can come back to the numbers next time.

One last question. How do you see cost developing into '27 based on the current inflationary environment in feed?

The inflation on feed prices from marine ingredients now is high. As we said, we have done what we can to contain that price increase. So -- but -- and I think it will not stay forever. Fisheries will start up again next year. But for us, it has been really important to create the flexibility in that price. So yes, some feed -- there will be some inflation from feed absolutely into 2027.

And just to add to that, given that the generations we have in the sea now is fed with feed on the old price. The implementation of the feed increase will not be seen until early mid-2027, so April, May. So there is an implementation effect from the feed increase as well.

But will the cost go up or down compared to '26?

It will go significantly down. And on that, we end this stream. And thank you very much for following. I appreciate it.

Good morning, and welcome to Grieg Seafood's Fourth Quarter Presentation. My name is Nina Willumsen Grieg, and I'm the CEO of Grieg Seafood. Together with me today is also our CFO, Magnus Johannesen. Today's agenda will cover a current status on our strategic turnaround and updates on our operational and market performance. As always, Magnus will walk us through our financial review and also share some information on the dividend after the transaction.

Starting with the highlights of the quarter. This is our final presentation covering discontinued operations, and I'm pleased that the closing occurred as scheduled in Q4. It has required quite some resources and focus from our organization, and we look forward to focusing solely on Rogaland going forward. Q4 represents a solid quarter, harvesting just below 7,400 tonnes and delivering a farming EBIT of NOK 20.7 per kilo, a result we are very pleased with. I will get back to details on this in our operational review.

A high priority for the management team continues to be restructuring of the company. We are continuously doing changes and improvements in our balance sheet, structure and operating model. As a result of the closing of the transaction, we have used the proceeds to repay debt, taking up a new syndicate with Nordea and SEB, and the Board has taken the principal decision to advise the general assembly to pay NOK 4 billion in distribution to shareholders.

I will continue to repeat this slide and our new focused strategy. We will go from global growth to regional profitability. This shift requires disciplined execution, and we have maintained momentum also in Q4. A key operational focus for us continues to be how to best utilize the strong position we have on post-smolt and land-based. During the quarter, we announced the planned expansion at Tytlandsvik of 2 new buildings, and we are also planning to build an in-house smolt facility at Ardal. This project has been in development for a long time and will support improved performance and fish welfare throughout our value chain. We will give you more details on this in our Q1 presentation.

Capital discipline is key to our new direction and investment in Grieg Seafood is kept at a minimum level during Q4 and until new strategic plans are reviewed and implemented. Having completed downsizing, we have turned our focus to absolute cost and reducing complexity. As part of that, we have defined additional cost reduction of a conservative estimate of NOK 50 million for 2026 as we target below NOK 3 in overhead cost on average. These actions are all key for us to achieve our targets.

Deep diving into operations and quarterly performance in Rogaland. All our freshwater facilities, including joint ventures, delivered solid production with an average smolt weight of 1.2 kilo. Following a challenging Q3 for us, we have to say, we had a slow start for production at sea with elevated mortality into this quarter as well. However, the performance improved as lice and gill challenges eased and production was strong in the quarter overall. This allowed us to recover the lost growth and enter into 2026 with high average weights in sea and maximum MAB, actually 98% for the year on total on MAB utilization. Harvest volumes increased from Q3, resulting in all-time high harvest volume of almost 30.5 tonnes for Rogaland. Our guidance for 2026 is 31,000 tonnes for the full year and 6,600 tonnes for Q1, slightly skewed towards the end of the quarter.

The farming cost for the quarter was NOK 63.6, still higher than we like, but lower than Q3. And we still have our long-term target of NOK 60. Summing up the key figures for Q4, it has been a strong quarter with an operational EBIT of NOK 152.8 million. The post-smolt we put to sea is now significantly higher than any of our peers. The distribution of smolt size has shifted dramatically over the last few years, as you can see in this chart, with more than 50% being above 1 kilo. As noted in Q3, our main objective going from '24 to '25 was to minimize the lower sized groups and only our broodstock smolt, 7% of our smolt was below 500 grams in 2025. Finding the right-sized smolt for each site is a key part of our production planning.

The smolt put to sea in Q4 was 900 grams from Tytlandsvik and 1.4 kilo from Ardal on average. In 2026, we also plan to harvest 500 tonnes of fully grown fish from Ardal. This is a pilot. The fish is performing well, and it is providing valuable insights into the potential of full cycle land-based production.

Turning to some comments on sales and processing. We were very happy with our achievements in this quarter. Our achieved sales price was NOK 84.3, a solid beat on the index, driven by high harvest weights, 55% contract share and strong sales performance on spot. The price experienced an upward trend during the quarter as illustrated in the middle chart. Looking at the details of the chart, it reveals that we benefited from optimal harvest timing, both for the entire quarter and on a weekly basis. We believe we are able to achieve this over time through close collaboration between production and sales.

At Gardermoen, Oslo Salmon processing, it's called, construction was finalized in December, and we successfully started production in January. Initial ramp-up shows high demand for filets and access to external raw material is expected to be sufficient to maintain high production utilization in 2026, but we expect Q1 to be a ramp-up period. We are guiding a volume of 8,500 tonnes of raw material for value-added products in 2026. To ensure high utilization of this facility, we are currently seeking partners to supply external fish and also exploring partnership models for the facility itself.

And with that, I leave the floor to Magnus.

Thank you, Nina, and good morning, everyone. So I think as you might have seen already, this quarter is presented with implications from several of the processes that we have completed, but also initiated in Q4. This includes the closing of the transaction, which causes a significant inflow of cash. It's also about the hybrid bond, which has been temporarily reclassified to debt and also discontinued operations, which are still included in both our NIBD structure as well as our cash flow that we present today. We're also happy to report that we have completed what we promised in Q3, both in terms of dividend, but also in terms of closing the negotiations with Nordea and SEB, which we are very pleased to have entered into a new financial syndicate with very few days ago.

And with that, I will go into the profit and loss statement. Starting on the top, we see that our sales revenue have increased 10% year-over-year. This is mainly due to higher price achievements, both from our composition of higher average weight, but also our financial contracts and physical contracts. However, it's drawn slightly below -- slightly down again from lower superior share and lower volume compared to Q4 last year.

Moving then to EBIT. We see that our costs have increased slightly from what we have guided -- from what we have achieved earlier, and this is due to we have continued harvesting from a site in Q3 and had a higher capitalized cost to that inventory. This results in a higher farming cost that will also continue in Q1 as we will continue harvesting from this specific site. But we do see this as temporarily until this site is fully harvested out. But despite this, solid price performance ensures the group EBIT of NOK 142.9 million, corresponding to a NOK 19.4 EBIT per kilo.

Moving then my attention to some special items in the profit and loss statement, which includes the reversal of a previous write-down on one of our licenses in Rogaland. And this is done due to the demerger of our group company that kept the licenses of Grieg Seafood Norway, where we now reversed that write-down in this quarter. Moving then my attention to the net profit for the period from discontinued operations. And this number includes a gain of approximately NOK 900 million on the sale of Grieg Seafood Canada operations and our Finmark operations. And many might wonder why this is so much further below than NOK 10.2 billion equity value, and that is simply that the assets we sold also had an outgoing value from our balance sheet, but we still have -- we still have received the cash as stated in our cash flow statement. So this is basically the sold price or the price of what we have sold minus the asset value of what we have sold.

Moving on to cash flow. And as you might see, we don't have the catch function as things will have in our reporting formats. But overall, our net cash flow from operations came in at NOK 173 million for all 4 regions. This is positively impacted by operational EBITDA of NOK 408 million, but negatively impacted by changes in net working -- sorry, changes in working capital of slightly above NOK 400 million, which includes a biomass buildup of NOK 220 million across all 4 regions. And that also represents that both the regions that we have sold and Rogaland regions that we are maintaining have had good quarters in sea.

Looking then at the net cash flow from investment activities. This is also significantly impacted by the transaction. And not surprisingly, this is mainly due to the net proceeds related to the sale of around NOK 9.1 billion. But if we isolate the net CapEx investments, this came in around NOK 170 million. Out of this, NOK 140 million is related to the discontinued operations, which is, of course, mainly driven by continued construction of the Adamselv facility in Finmark. But this also shows that the Rogaland region have a very well-invested value chain and has no need for significant CapEx lifts in the year to come. And for 2026, we are doing the share issue in Ardal Aqua to build the on-site smolt facility of around NOK 45 million, which is NOK 15 million lower than what we guided on previous quarter.

If we then look at -- our eyes on 2027, we see that there's no significant CapEx plans except replacement and maintenance CapEx, which included here on the slide, which are conservative estimates. Going then down to net cash flow from financing, which is also heavily impacted by the inflow of cash from the transaction. All in all, when we received the settlement -- the proceeds in Q4, we distributed significant portions of this to repaying all our debt and credit lines in the previous bank syndicate. And this is quite obvious from this slide, but what is important to also note is that this does not include the bridge loan that we took on early Q4 to plug the CapEx needed for Adamselv facility in this quarter. Residual items include lease liabilities, interest costs and also the hybrid dividend.

Moving then to the net interest-bearing debt. So it's -- I think it's the first time that Grieg Seafood presents a negative net interest-bearing debt position. But what this can be translated to is that we have a cash positive position that go out of Q4. So starting on the net interest-bearing debt going out of our third quarter. We see that this has been positively impacted by the operational EBITDA across all 4 regions, negatively impacted by biomass buildup and gross investments as well as the hybrid dividend. But then there's a significant increase due to the reclassification of our hybrid bond. And just to pause there for one second is that this reclassification is due to the bondholders having a right to exercise their put until 28th of January, which means that going out of Q4, this had to be classified as short-term debt.

Now that we have exited this put option period, it will be once again reclassified as equity. And then it's also important to note that when we reclassified it to debt, it had to be reclassified at 105% and not 100%, but it will go back to equity as 100%. That's the technicalities that's important to note. And then you see that we have done the down payments of approximately NOK 4 billion, and we have other changes of around NOK 5 billion, which except some timing differences is purely with the NIBD going out of Q4 of negative NOK 2.4 billion, NOK 2.5 billion or alternatively a net cash positive position of NOK 2.5 billion.

Also moving to one -- I just want to highlight one thing is that in Q4, the Gardermoen facility entered our balance sheet with their leasing debt that we have entered into in terms of the construction of that facility. Moving then to a topic I received quite a lot of questions about in the past months. So overall, the Board will propose to an extraordinary general assembly that the company will distribute approximately -- or not approximately anymore, actually NOK 4 billion in shareholders meeting to shareholders. And the reason why we can't share all the details of ex-date and payment date, et cetera, is that we are still awaiting the finalization of the interim balance sheet and the audit of this balance sheet, which is formality criterias in order to pay out a dividend.

We do not expect this to be any issues, but it is a formality that we need to follow. However, we will say that you can expect the call for an extraordinary general assembly to be sent out by end of March, where all the details will be listed and hence, payment will be done shortly after the general assembly has been completed -- the extraordinary general assembly has been completed.

And with that, I will hand over to Nina, who will take us through the future building blocks.

Thank you, Magnus. As we wrap up the last quarter and under the previous Grieg Seafood structure of 4 regions, I want to highlight our key strategic building blocks going forward, strengthening, prioritizing and future-proofing our operations. Our focus in 2026 is strengthening the company and driving profitability, building the fundament for the future. Biological KPIs and performance remains the core benchmark of our success as fish farmers. Rogaland has in 2025, delivered high harvest weights, record volumes, optimal MAB utilization and an average operational EBIT of NOK 21 per kilo, if you look at the last 5 years, confirming our position as a top operator. Our goal is to further fine-tune and stabilize this.

Next, we will prioritize key initiatives for growth, both on land and at sea. Our progress towards 10,000 tonnes of land-based production demonstrates our ability to execute on our strategic choices. Through 2026, we will be evaluating the next phase of our land-based production. The ongoing expansion at Tytlandsvik and the pilot at Ardal for harvest sized fish are central to this part of our strategy. Looking ahead, future-proofing means preparing for opportunities with new technology and adapting to regulatory changes that we believe will come. Our partnership since 2019 with FishGlobe has provided valuable insights on closed containment and new technology, which we will leverage in the next steps.

So this fourth quarter represents a solid foundation for the future Grieg Seafood that we envision. We delivered good biological results, robust sales performance, made decisive decisions and ultimately achieved strong financial results.

And with that, I welcome Magnus back to the stage, and we open for questions.

Alexander Aukner, DNB Carnegie. So could you give an indication of how much of the hybrid bond has been recalled?

Yes. So it is obvious to us that many of the bondholders still believe that the bond should remain in our balance sheet given the financial position. So it was only one bondholder that exercised the right to put -- the put on 105, and we are in dialogue with many others. But we do expect -- we are keeping all options open when it comes to both redeeming the hybrid bond through replacement capital or tender offer. But as you can also see, it has been reclassified to debt this quarter. So we need to go into the dialogue with shareholders to the bondholders and find a solution with them how we can redeem this bond. But our intention is to redeem it indeed.

Okay. And the CapEx and the working capital buildup for the discontinued operations, is that already netted out in the net proceeds? Or will that be adjusted in Q1?

That's already netted out in the -- it should already be netted out in the proceeds, yes.

[ Martin Kardal ] ABG Sundal Collier. Will the sites with the higher capitalized costs be emptied out -- fully emptied out in Q1? And how does it look on performance, cost performance on the sites from Q2 and onwards?

Yes. The most challenging site will be harvested out in Q1. And we had a challenging Q3 and it -- but it was mainly this and a part of a few other sites, but it is mainly this that -- so it will be out during Q1.

And then you reiterate your long-term target of NOK 60 per kilo in Rogaland. Would that be within reach during 2026 or for the full year, given that the level will likely be a little bit high in Q1?

I think we have shown that the biological incident or biological challenging conditions in 2025 still gave us a cost EBIT per kilo of NOK 61.7. And for 2025, we don't expect to be achieving the NOK 60 long-term target, but we are working on a positive trajectory towards that over time.

Christian Nordby, Arctic Securities. You have increased the smolt weight substantially in '25 versus '24. Do we see full impact of that on your harvest guidance for '26? Or should we think that there will be more growth to come in '27 based on that?

There will come some more growth in '27 based on that.

And maybe important to mention also when a smolt size increases, we have higher costs going to biomass from land. Hence, you will see higher cost in our biomass numbers as well.

All right. Anything on the web.

There's one question on the web regarding if you can say anything about the total amount presented in the claim from the minority shareholder in Grieg Seafood Newfoundland AS and if there will be any legal proceedings regarding that?

So this is a Canadian former minority. And our assessment is that this is a claim which is not substantial in amount or probability. And this specific owner had an ownership of 0.5% of the Newfoundland shares. And we do not see this as something that are -- we are not provisioned for anything of this, but we mentioned it due to the fact that it has been made a letter, but not any formal legal claim. Thank you.

All right. Based on that, thanks a lot.

Thank you. Have a nice day.

Good morning, and welcome to Grieg Seafood's third quarter presentation. My name is Nina Willumsen Grieg, and I am the CEO of Grieg Seafood. Together with me for presenting today is also our CFO, Magnus Johannesen. Our agenda today is quite standard. I will start by presenting operations and some details, and Magnus will follow an update on financial review and capital allocation. Summing up, I will restate a little bit what we said last time on our strategy going forward. So starting with the highlights of the quarter.

I am pleased to report that we have received full regulatory clearance for both U.S. and Norway. That was important for us. The progress in -- process in Canada is progressing, and we remain confident in closing the transaction during Q4. This will allow us to going into 2026, focusing on our core Norwegian operations and strengthening our financial position.

Harvest volume for the quarter was almost 7,000 tonnes for continued operations. Due to lower market prices and higher costs, the operational EBIT for our farming activities was NOK 3.2 per kilo and close to 0 for the group. Operationally, Q3 has seen strong Freshwater results, but the environment at sea has been challenging as for many others. However, by taking out our nonperforming fish groups at higher cost this quarter, we were able to ensure a maximum MAB into Q4 and keep our guidance for the year at 30,000 tons. I will get back to the details on this.

This quarter has also been a lot about setting up the structure for the new Grieg Seafood and getting started on cost reductions. As we emphasized last quarter, we are moving forward with a clear direction. We will go from global to regional and from growth to profitability. Our goal is simple: operational excellence. And we have made significant progress this quarter even before closing of the transaction.

We have defined a new operating model with operational capabilities centered in Rogaland. We have reduced or postponed NOK 110 million in 2025 CapEx and made significant headquarter cost cuts -- cost cuts, sorry. Cost discipline remains a top priority. The main change we have done is the reduction of 55% of our staff across sales and shared service functions. It has been a tough task and a tough quarter for us, having to say goodbye to talented and valued colleagues. But today, we have a rightsized and highly capable team ready to deliver.

Deep diving into operations and the quarterly performance all our Freshwater facilities, including our joint ventures and delivered solid production. At sea, however, this quarter has been challenging, as I mentioned, with high water temperature and sea lice pressure. As a result, some pens have had increased mortality and lower growth, and we decided to change our harvest plan to take them out.

I am of the strong belief that success in fish farming is flexibility and robustness in our plants. Incidents will happen, but the higher average weight from post-smolt improves our risk profile and flexibility. The nonperforming fish we harvested was put to see as late as this year in March but was already at an average weight of 2.8 kilos. So while it's still small, it was ready for harvesting.

Having this flexibility to harvest, our actions ensured optimal MAB utilization for Q4 as well as fish welfare. As a result, the farming cost for the quarter was high at NOK 70.4 per kilo, mainly due to this harvesting of small fish and also write-downs of biomass in general. We expect farming costs to decrease in Q4, but it will still be somewhat above our long-term target of NOK 60.

So summing up, the key figures for this quarter, our cost level is not satisfying, but due to our high contract share, we are still profitable in Rogaland, with an operational EBIT of NOK 21.7 million. Post-Smolt is increasingly becoming the strategy for Norwegian salmon farmers, whether in closed containment or on land. However, few have advanced as far as we have in Rogaland. Our post-smolt is gradually increasing in average size, and we are seeing real economies of scale as both Tytlandsvik and Årdal Aqua are putting large smolt to sea.

Årdal is expected to increase fish sizing significantly in Q4, with one batch already above 2.6 kilos. The post-smolt we put to sea now is significantly higher than any of our peers. The distribution of smolt size has shifted dramatically over the last few years, as you can see on the middle chart, with more than 50% being above 1 kilo.

Our main objective for 2025 have been to minimize the lower-sized groups. And this year only our Broodstock smolt is below 500 grams. Finding the right sized smolt for each site is a key part of our production planning. And the benefits are clear, and we have presented them many times. We are seeing improved survival rates, reduced sea lice treatments and less time in sea per generation. This means that we can utilize our best farming sites more efficiently, and it is changing how we plan and how we optimize and how we harvest.

Turning to the opposite side of our value chain with some comments on sales and processing with high price volatility and changing consumer trends, maximizing the value of our fish is a key success factor. So even with lower volumes, we will retain an internal sales team as we see several positive effects.

While we are not focused on building brands, our packing station and sales team have a good standing within strong markets, and we have consistently outperformed the price benchmark. We also as we have tried to illustrate in the right chart here, we also see the value of strong collaboration between our farming and sales team.

While difficult to achieve, we strive to plan harvest timing, responding to price changes from week to week. Value-added processing will also be part of increasing the value of our fish. The new facility at Gardermoen will ramp up through next year towards 10,000 tonne capacity, 8,500 tonnes next year, utilizing both internal and external raw material. We are actively seeking partners for external fish. Constructions will be finalized in December, and we expect production to begin in early January with organization and training already underway.

And with that, I give the word to Magnus and finance.

Thank you very much, Nina, and good morning, everyone. My name is Magnus Johannesen. I'm the CFO of Grieg Seafood. As last quarter, these financial numbers have been prepared in accordance with IFRS 5, which means that we are splitting between discontinued and continued operations in our financial reporting. This makes the figures somewhat difficult to interpret when going through slide by slide, but I will make sure that we try to stay on the right path.

Starting with profit and loss for the continued operations. We see a decline in our sales revenues due to lower prices and lower average weights in combination with the lower volumes due to advanced harvesting. This is, however, offset by our very high share of contracts as well as very high superior share of the fish that we did harvest. All in all, we did come in with an operational EBIT of negative NOK 1 million, corresponding to a EBIT NOK 0.2 per kilo. However, it's important to note that this is heavily influenced by transitional cost increases coming from the changes that we are in. Hence, we do expect this to come down significantly moving forward quarter-by-quarter.

There's also some tax effects from the transaction that we are now doing. We have reversed a deferred tax benefit as we no longer see the Canadian loans being in a loss position. This is the reason why we have an increased cost in our taxes this quarter.

Moving on to cash flow. This is prepared for the continued and discontinued operations. Starting with the operational cash flow. We see net cash flow from operations coming in at negative NOK 304 million. It's driven -- it's positively contributing that we have a positive EBITDA of NOK 101 million. But at the same time, we have a significant biomass buildup in all regions, including the discontinued and continued.

Moving to investment activities. The net cash flow for investment activities is negative NOK 168 million. However, out of this NOK 130 million is relating to the continued financing of constructing the postman facility in Finmark. And this shows how much we need to do until closing despite being a locked-box transaction. To compensate, we have a positive contribution from our net cash flow from financing activities of NOK 340 million. This is due to the continued financing, both for operational losses but also the CapEx commitments that we have in our divested regions.

Isolating the discontinued operations, we have a net change in cash and cash equivalents of negative NOK 437 million, if were only looking at Finmark and Canada.

Moving then to net interest-bearing debt, which is prepared for the continued operations but have elements from a discontinued operations within the bridge. I will try to walk through those numbers. So we started with the continued operations having a net interest-bearing debt level of approximately NOK 3.7 billion. However, going through the quarter, we still have to finance the discontinued operations, both in terms of operations but also in terms of investments.

As such, we have an increase of net interest-bearing debt of a bit above NOK 700 million. But out of this, almost NOK 400 million is directly attributed to financing of ADAMSELV, Finmark operations as well as the Canadian operations. This shows how much pressure we still have on our liquidity and net debt levels from the discontinued regions but it's still a box transaction, and we do expect some of this to be repaid at closing.

Focusing then on capital allocation. We wanted to clarify the numbers that we communicated that we prioritized dividend last quarter. As such, we have a preliminary estimate of NOK 4 billion in dividend distribution to our shareholders following the closing of annual accounts next year. As such, this is both through the 2 important elements. Grieg Seafood will have a very strong liquidity position despite this dividend. But we do have to ensure that we do have to comply with the equity ratio constructions as we start new Grieg Seafood.

As such, we are focusing on 2 key aspects: we are still optimizing and reviewing our balance sheet. And as part of this, we are in the final phase of negotiating a new bank syndicate backed by Nordea and SEB. This will provide sufficient liquidity, sufficient financial partners as well as a very strong margin. As part of this exercise, we are optimizing our balance sheet as we move forward. And hence, we are -- we have every intention to redeem the hybrid bond either through a tender offer or through replacement capital.

Secondly, we are focusing on liquidity. We need to make sure that Grieg Seafood going forward have sufficient liquidity to be a strong player in the aquaculture industry. We stand firm on our estimate of our operational liquidity buffer of NOK 250 million, but we have yet to determine the amount of liquidity needed to account for other risk. But we have intention to comply with paying further dividend as we move along in line with our dividend policy.

And with that, I will give back the word to Nina to go through the future building blocks.

Thank you, Magnus. One slide to sum it up. I will restate our strategic building blocks because they are becoming important for us. Strengthening, prioritizing and future proofing our operations. To strengthen Rogaland and enhance profitability is our main focus going into 2026. As we have started, we will do this through post-smolt development, MAB optimization, aligning our cost base with a new scale and ensuring a strong sales performance. This will form the basis for any new future development.

Going along, we will consider potential growth opportunities. However, future investments will focus on projects that truly strengthen Rogaland, prioritizing the regional synergies that we can see there, not just increasing volume. And as our third building block, we will look into how we will position Grieg Seafood for the future. We are seeing a lot of regulatory uncertainties in our industry at the moment and our ambitions and plans remain flexible, but we are -- we will establish a structured process to expand the use of new technology also at sea.

The Q3 results have not met our expectations. However, looking at the underlying fundamentals of our production, the organizational changes we have implemented and a positive market outlook for 2026, I am optimistic ahead to next year.

Thank you. And I can open for questions.

Henrik Knutsen, Pareto Securities. You have quite a lot more biomass on your balance sheet. You're going to harvest out less volumes year-over-year in Q4. And still, you're only guiding 1,000 tonnes of growth into 2026. Is that conservative? Or should we think that you have a very tilt towards the first half of the year in 2026 in terms of harvest profile?

I think we -- for now, we stick with our -- what we have said, and we will get back with an updated trading update, but I think it is a -- I at least believe in that prognosis that we have set. So call it realistic.

On the harvest profile.

It's always naturally is good towards second half, of course, but we have a lot of big fish at sea.

Herman Dahl, can you say something about the size you're harvesting out in Q4 and compared to more challenging sites you've taken out in Q3?

Do you have the average size for Q4? I don't have that on the back of my head. But as I said, we -- of course, since we changed our harvest plan, we kept bigger fish, so some increase from this quarter.

And one more, if I may. The price achievement in Q3 was very good. What should we think about price achievement going into Q4 with regards to contract, particularly?

We still have a very strong contract position also in Q4, similar to the contract position we have had in Q3.

Christian Nordby, Arctic Securities. In terms of the hybrid bond, you talk about the tender offer or replacement capital. Can you elaborate what you mean by replacement capital?

Yes. So in accordance with the term sheet of our bond, we can replace the hybrid with subordinate capital to the hybrid and pay out the hybrid at [indiscernible] But we do -- we are important for us to maintain a good dialogue with the hybrid owners. So we will both see -- we have a dialogue with them in terms of a tender offer. And if a tender offer is not successful, we do have progressing discussions on our replacement capital facility.

[indiscernible]. Could you say something about the health of the fish groups expected to be harvested into 2026 and how that could compare to your long-term target of NOK 60 per kilo?

We are done harvesting out the challenging groups early and end up Q3, early Q4. So the health now is good. Of course, we don't know what will happen with downwards and winter wounds this year, but I'm positive with the trend we saw last year. So all in all, it looks much better now than it did during Q3.

Tore Andreas Tonseth, SB1 Markets. A follow-up first on the question. You state that you see a normalization of the cost in Q4, so that means that you're looking at around NOK 60 in Q1?

We don't guide specifically on that level, but towards our...

We -- so the cost for the full year is expected to slightly above NOK 60, around NOK 62.5 and that gives you the estimate for Q4 as well.

He asked for Q1.

Q1, that will be a very strong quarter.

And also a follow-up with the locked-box, you are allowed to have a minus NOK 100 million EBITDA. The locked-box ended in October. So what's the -- are you within that?

We are well within that yes. I would say, basically, it's -- there's no impact as of 30th September in terms of the EBITDA losses -- excess losses.

Maybe open questions from the web.

There are currently no questions from the web.

Good. With no other questions, thank you very much for coming.

Thank you. Have a nice day.