Bakkafrost U/Adr

Good morning and welcome to the presentation of BackupFrost's results for the first quarter, 2026. My name is Fagnar Jakobsen, CFO of BackupFrost. First, I will point your attention to our disclaimer on forward-looking statements. I will leave it for self-study. It's included in the published presentation. This morning, we will follow the usual agenda, beginning with a summary of the quarter, before we move on to markets and sales, finances, operations, and finally Outlook. So the first quarter was a solid start to the new year for BackupRust. Compared to the first quarter last year, our revenue increased by 11% to around 2.1 billion, and operational EBIT increased by 8% to 544 million. This was achieved in a market with significantly higher global supply and lower year-on-year prices. The main operational driver was the Faroe Islands, where harvest volumes increased by 33% to around 25,100 ton gutter weight. Scotland was broadly stable in volumes at around 6,200 ton. Feed sales also increased by 13% in the quarter, reflecting a strong biological growth in the farming operation. At the same time, fish meal sales and marine sourcing were lower. Around 51,000 ton of marine raw material were sourced in the quarter. Cash flow from operations declined to 453 million, down from 590 million the year before. And at the AGM in end of April, the dividend payment of 3.45 was approved for payment around 21st of May. The group delivered an all-inclusive margin or operational EBIT per kilo of 17.35 Danish kroner per kilo compared to 20.07 in the first quarter last year. Far Islands generated 22.76, slightly weaker than last year. Scotland recorded minus 4.58 compared to a positive margin of 11.22 in the same quarter last year. Now with that regional margin picture established, we can move on to market and sales. Starting with The supply side, how much salmon came onto the market and which regions drove their supply. Global harvest volumes increased by 12% year on year, while total sold quantities increased nearly 15%. This was a substantial supply increase, and it came from both Europe and the Americas. Europe grew by 10%, with Norway also up around 10%. Norway had good biology, Harvest rates were up 11%, reduced mortality, and generally strong growth with feed sales increasing 5% in the quarter. In the Faroe Islands, we grew almost 20% in harvest. The fish were large. We had 13% in increased feed sales. Sorry, 19% in increased feed sales, which was driven by strong growth with large malts. Iceland also showed a particularly strong percentage increase, but from a lower or smaller base. In the Americas, the supply increased 19% led by Chile, which grew more than 20%. Chile had a flat biomass development through the quarter though, so it's the growth that has been harvested. Feed sales were slightly down in Chile, minus 4%, and a slight increase in harvest weights. So overall, a strong extra supply coming to the market. And if we then move on to the sales and see where in which regions, which part of the markets that extra volume was absorbed. Demand was broadly stable across. Totals sold volumes increased by 14.6%. And as the largest market, Europe and the UK grew by 12%. This was slightly above the European supply increase of 10%. The strongest growth was in Asia and Latin America. Greater China increased by impressively 55%. ASEAN by 25% and Latin America by 30%. A large share of the excess supply that came from the Americas went into Asia and Latin America. The U.S. market was more moderate in growth, 4% increase, partly affected also by a weaker dollar, lower purchasing power for consumers. If you look at the Norwegians' sale to the U.S., there was a drop of around 30%. This demand and supply of course had impact on salmon prices. Average spot prices in the quarter for superior 4 to 5 kilo fish was 87.95 NOK per kilo, which was 5.2% lower than the same quarter last year, but 7% improved compared to the previous quarter. Higher overall supply affected the prices, and in addition, there was more supply of large fish coming to the market, so the price gap between small and large fish or the large fish premium, which is also referred to as, shrank quite significantly in the quarter. If we then move into finance, starting with the profit and loss. Revenues in the quarter increased from around 1.9 billion to 2 billion, 140 million, an increase of 214 million. Operational EBITs increased from 505 million to 544 million. Fair value adjustments were positive with 13 million compared to 307 negative 376 million in the same quarter last year. And profit after tax was 307 million compared to negative 6 in the same quarter last year. Adjusted earnings per share was 5.16 Danish kroner per share. And in that respect, this quarter was the strongest since the first quarter of 2024 for Bakker Rost. On the balance sheet, it remains strong at the end of the quarter. Total assets increased slightly to 19.2 billion with equity increasing by 305 million to 11.3 billion. Equity ratio improved from 58 to 59%. Property, plant and equipment had a modest increase of 35 million. Biological assets were broadly stable at around 3.4 billion. while inventory increased slightly. Receivables increased by 224 million to around 1 billion. On the cash flow side, from operations, we had a cash flow of 453 million compared to 590 million in the first quarter of 25. This was a decline of 137 million, but still represents strong operating cash contributions. Cash flow from investments improved from minus 304 million to minus 216 million, and financing cash flow also improved significantly from 516 million to minus 167 million. So from minus 516 to minus 167. So together these movements resulted in a positive net change in cash of 17 million, which left us with 370 million in cash at the end of the period. This leads us to the development in our net interest rate and debt. which decreased during quarter from around 3.9 billion to 3.8 billion, a reduction of 135 million. Liquidity remains strong. Undrawn credit facilities were around 1.6 billion at the end of the quarter, and then we have an accordion option of 150 million euros in addition to that. And then I will hand over to Reyen to go through the operations and outlook.

Good morning. Bakka Frost has a value chain second to none in the international salmon farming environment. Full control from feed production including fish meal and oil genetics to save. The value chain gives back-up roast control, flexibility, efficiency, differentiation, best traceability and resilience. When we move to the FOF segment in the first quarter, The most important is that our FOF operation supports the biological growth in our farming operations with healthy salmon. Low marine sourcing in this quarter due to seasonal patterns affected the results. The feed salt increased 13% up to 35,421 tons. 100% of the feed was sold internally. This is of course due to higher biomass and better growth. Marine raw material sourced was 51,199 tons, down 53% from last year. External fish meal sold was only 1,200 tons, 67% down from last year. Operational EBIT for the pop segment was 84 million Danish kroner, up 29% versus last year. The margin was 15% versus 13% last year. Feed sales are growing, which is directly linked to record biomass at sea and strong growth. Margin improvement up to 15%. good cost control and of course related to high efficiency and the capacity utilization. Less external fish meal sales, which means more are used in-house. Raw material sourcing is of course the big issue in feed in general. Costs are going up going forward. raw material prices have come significantly down from 23 when peaked, but the trends are upwards going forward. However, volumes are increasing which are improving our efficiency and we lift our target this year by 10,000 ton up to 175,000 ton for the full year. And we will continue our focus on the best feed quality and the best heat composition for FCR and fish health. However, we see better sourcing in April and May. So, year to date, up to today, we have sourced 130,000 tons. So, a bit better in April and May, but we are still behind last year. The top segment remains a key competitive advantage for Baccafrost, being self-supplied with increased flexibility in feed operation, especially with the new factory coming into operation from June. The yearly international blue-whiting spawning stock survey was conducted in April, a few weeks ago. in international waters and in various waters by scientific research. This 26 survey showed 32% biomass increase in stocks, where of 83% of the whole stock is younger stocks, which supports continued growth in the stock. So could be an early indicator of a healthy biomass at least going forward. We will see what that leads to for next week. Then, moving to freshwater Scotland, the key priority is steady control ramp-up of Applecross. We are prioritizing biological stability and small quality. In this quarter, we see One million small being transferred, 67% up from last year. Average weight, all small, 218 gram, 29% up. Average weight from up across was 269 gram. And the operational effort was minus 28 million. And this reflects both an issue in operation in the quarter with electricity causing some technical issues in the quarter related to the new operation. And also increased depreciation because of the size of the investment and only 30% utilization of the new site yet. We are happy that the volumes from Apple Cross are increasing quarter by quarter. And we see now a clear upward trend. The Apple Cross biomass is now the highest ever. Right now, 9 million pieces in the biomass. At the peak, we should see 18 million pieces. But also a higher average rate than we see right now. Focus is steady ramp up. not volume at the moment, but high quality. Apogros is set to produce 200 to 400 grams malt in 2026, which gives flexibility in the production planning. The negative epit is expected to turn positive within the wrap-up phase. We expect improving biological outcome step by step, and we expect an average weight from up across about 200 gram during this year. We see that the share of large malt is now increasing steadily in Scotland. This is our cornerstone of the de-risking strategy in the Scottish farming operation. Large malt shorter C-phase cycles, less exposure to the risk, and once at full capacity, this will fundamentally change our risk picture in Scotland. We see now the first batches of smalt coming out within 12 months, which means lower mortality, better average weights, and better feed conversion rates. The sea farming operation in Scotland is improving biologically, good growth, stable condition, low mortality. But in this quarter, the issues are mainly low prices and low volume. No scale. So that's the big issue. The harvest in this quarter was 6,198 tons flat from last year. The average weight is Pretty high, 6.4 kilos. However, minus 63 million in EBIT. And this is due to low prices and low scale. Half and half on both, I would say. Mortality improved year on year, tracking well below recent years. We are happy about the development in biology. It was a good quarter across most sites. Strong harvest weights, seed temperatures are normal, but the big issue was the lower prices and low volumes. We have two sites right now where they were both stocked in July last year. One of them is now 3.5 kilos in average, will be harvested out in July this year. This was 250 gram smalt from Uppercross. Then we have another stock which were stocked at the same time, at 90 gram external smalt, now 1.6 kilos. The Uppercross stock is 4% losses. The other one is 11.6% losses right now. Both will be harvested at the, or are planned to be harvested at 6 kilos. As I said, apical stock will be harvested in July this year. It means that there should be a low risk for those fish. The other one will be harvested from December to February next year. But they were both stocked in July. So that illustrates a bit the difference with larger smolt. And we see that with 250 gram, we see that we should be able to harvest the fish within 12 to 14 months. At least in this case, it's 12 months. So We are still positive on the case, but still need to improve that we can deliver. Freshwater in Faroes, better, larger, and cheaper in this quarter. This is the engine behind our strong biological performance at sea. In this quarter, we transferred 3.9 million smolt, 22% up. average weight 527 gram, 25% up. Operational EBIT from the segment was 90 million, 61% up. The smalt cost, despite larger, 10% down. We are particularly happy that we are hitting on all three dimensions, larger smalt, higher volumes, and lower cost. The 90-day post-transfer survivability improved. Clear evidence on better small quality and robustness. 26 survivability tracking above 21 to 24 range. All hatcheries are performing well. And we are working on reaching our goal for this year on 20 million of internal transferred smolt to our farms in Faroes. We are increasing capacity utilization across all the hatcheries in Faroes. This is also the key of low cost. Continues focusing on smolt quality, not just about size, but robustness and post-transferred performance. The new Skalavik hatchery is progressing well, planning to start the tags now in June, and then first transfer by the end of next year, in 27. That will bring our total capacity up to 24.4 million at 500 gram. The trend has been clear. We have gone from 300 gram average in 23 up to 527 gram in this quarter. We see clearly that larger smalt gives much shorter time in sea, less exposure to risk, and better cost profile in the sea. This is a structural competitive advantage that will continue to improve. And this is the foundation for us to reach 107,000 ton in the Faroes. in the company this year. Also, Faroe and Scotland combined. So, coming to farming, Faroe Islands, farming delivered an excellent quarter, significantly reduced costs, and the strong biological performance. The investments in freshwater small quality are clearly paying off at sea. Harvest volumes, 25,139 ton, 33% up from last year. Average weight, 5.8 kilos, 14% up. Operational effort, 386 million, up 2%. The margin, 28%. Ringside cost, 13% down. At this quarter, we harvested Around half of the fish was from Bukla fjord, where many of you have been. Half of the fish. 13,500 out of 25. And then around 10% was from A71, that's a communist fjord. And same from Haralsund and Kvarnasund nor, and Kunianäs. And then 5% from Undersøjo. So six sites harvested. in this quarter, all performing well. So I am very happy to see that costs came down 13% in this quarter, driven by larger smalt, better growth, operational efficiency. Ringside cost now down at 26.95, down from 31.15 one year ago. Volume growth 33%, harvested from record high biomass built through 25. Very strong growth at sea. The combination of low cost and high volume is, of course, a good combination. And this capacity utilization, that's also really important. And this is also key for our biological discipline and cost discipline, not compromising on fish health or volume. We will continue to optimize stocking patterns and harvest planning. Further cost improvement expected as small size continues to increase. However, we see a strong foundation for the coming quarters. with 57,000 ton biomass at sea. Feeding volumes up 30%, which indicates continued strong growth ahead. Structural cost advantage from integrated value chain and large malt is now delivering. We are well on track in 26 to target our delivery on volume, and that's why we increased our target from 92 to 97,000 ton for Faroe Islands. Then services. Services is a lot of different things, transports, farming supports, harvest packaging, biogas, etc. We have a solid underlying performance in this segment, but in this quarter we have a one-off which is taken out of the EPIT. So the EPIT was 41 million, 80% up, 8% up. One-off was 17 million, which is right off of delousing equipment, which was made obsolete by dual freshwater treatment. So this works well, and therefore we have written this old equipment off. We are happy about the strong development in the quarter. The dual freshwater treatment works really well, and therefore we don't need the other equipment. The high activity across all services, transports, treatments, harvest, packaging, biogas. Actually, biogas delivered 61% more green energy in this quarter, 3.3 gigawatt hours of electricity and the district heating to the people in Korsum versus 2.1 gigawatt hours last year. We are working on scaling the service capacity in line with the growing harvest volumes, continued efficiency in the dual freshwater treatment, reducing need for chemical, mechanical delousing, waste to biogas product production, circular value from the processing byproducts, and focusing on the service fleet an infrastructure to keep the pace up to our goal of 170,000, 17,000 ton in 2030. We see a stable good operation enable strong survivability in our farms and competitive assets to protect the sustainable growth strategy. So coming to sales and other segment. And this includes our WAP operation. Marketing conditions improved through the quarter. High volumes have been sold. We are actively diversifying our operations into US and Asia. In this quarter, we sold totally 31,337 ton gutted weight, 24% up from last year. Head-on gutted 25,432. WAP, 5,905, 34% off. So operation EBIT was 47 million, which is 12% up. 2.37 NOC per kilo EBIT margin. I would say pressured from high supply. But we are happy to have been able to sell this volume, especially of very large fish, which was a bit complicated. We had a lot of impacts of bad weather in the quarter. That impacted our ability to reach our premium markets and our premium prices, because we had to replan in many, many weeks in the quarter. That was an issue. Our BAP share is stable, around 23%. maintaining premium positioning. We see strong developments in all markets, but challenged by the global supply growth. Increased global supply puts pressure on premium prices, especially in some markets. We are working on increase our share to high value markets, product development, new products, focusing on new markets also, balance the flow across markets to reduce exposure on any single region. The market seems tight looking forward, and that will support stronger prices. And coming to the outlook, the supply picture seem more tight, more limited growth expected, Now, when we look forward, the biomass is tight, as Harkner mentioned, around the globe. And after a period with elevated supply, the market is tightening up. Low supply expected the remaining part of the year. We have around 14% supply growth behind us, a market where we expect around 2% for the full year. So as we see on this graph, The last half of the H2 26 is flat or zero growth in America's actual negative. So there will be tighter supply in front of us. In the first quarter, we saw 680,000 ton supply coming up from 592 last year. So that was a big volume increase in the first quarter. in a year where it should be relatively flat. So it will be very low going forward. And for back-up roast, we see our clear growth trajectory, 117,000 ton harvest target for this year versus 107 last year, well on track after a strong Q1 delivery. Faroe Islands lifted up to 97 from 92 and Scotland remains on 20 where we have delivered 31 in the first quarter. The quarterly profile relatively even in the Faroes between 23 and 25 per quarter. Scotland lower in second quarter but then in the third quarter and then ramping up in the fourth quarter. Freshwater plan in 26 remains at 30 million, Faroes 20 and Scotland 10, which is 50% up from last year when it was 26. And that supports also continued growth and biomass built up. And it's not only the numbers, it's also the average weight of the smolt, because they will be larger, meaning that the cycle will be shorter. On contracts, we intend to contract between 15 and 25% of expected harvest volume. But in general, the contracts are shorter than they used to be. Fish meal oil and feed, we expect lower production volumes of fish meal oil and feed in 26. We expect feed production up to 175,000 tons. up from 165, which was our previous target, so we lifted our target 10,000 tonnes, and this is all based on internal consumption. And the long-term targets from our CMD in June last year remains intact, capex around 5 billion for the period 26 to 30, harvest target in 2030 on 162,000 tonnes, And so this year, 117 and investment of around 5 billion in this period to reach our target in 2030. So we will focus on our disciplined execution, growing at pace, biology and market support. And we will of course, focus very much on cost discipline and especially now when we see the feed cost go up on our ability to balance our feed operation and that balance will improve with our new feed plant coming into operation now in June. So that was everything from this presentation and we are open to take some questions if there are any.

Hi, Alex Walkner from D&D Carnegie. So just on Scotland, you seem fairly content with the biological performance, and you say costs will be lower at scale. So how much lower at scale, and what is your definition of at scale?

So at the moment, we have an operation in Scotland which is – We have made some improvements, but we have not scaled the whole operation down to 20,000 ton. So we have an operation that in many areas are built for 40,000, but are producing 20,000. So when you compare the cost difference between Faroes and Scotland, you see maybe in this quarter it was really high, but over a longer picture maybe 20 kroner difference. I believe that there will be some difference also in the future, but maybe three quarters of that should be eliminated when we are producing at scale. So half of that will be improved with lower cost and half of it will be improved with better biology in Scotland. There are many examples if you go through the breakdown of costs, but for example a lot of fixed costs means today that per kilo they are four times higher than for example in Faroe Islands or five times higher than in Faroe Islands because we have a lot of assets that we need. But the volumes does not reflect them at the moment.

Very clear. Thanks. One other question on the raw material price, which you say will mitigate some of the good cost positions. When will the higher raw materials hit European oil?

On the feed?

No, on the guidance. You basically say that going forward, higher raw material prices will impact costs.

Yes, high raw material prices on the feed, yes. So we have a cycle of around 12 months in the sea now, where maybe the latter six months will, is, so what we harvest in the first quarter this year is a result of the feed that we used over the last 12 months in the sea. And that means that if the feed prices are going to, to increase in the second half of 26, that will especially impact early 27, late 26, but especially 27. We will, of course, need to see what we can do to mitigate some of the increase, but there will be an increase of feed cost as it stands at the moment, especially marine ingredients have increased significantly lately.

Thank you.

You mentioned six sites in Faroes being harvested and doing well. Can you say something about the sites you plan to harvest from in Q2?

So, first quarter was very, very low in cost. These are average sites, I would say. Maybe Foglav here, which had 50% of the cost in this quarter, was... was good, but there were no bad sides. There are no bad sides. But we will see when we go forward, as Alex asked about that, especially at the end of this year, we expect that cost will come up. We also expect that during this year, the cost will be higher than in the first quarter. I think the first quarter was lower than we will see going forward in 26, in the next quarters. There will be a few kroners higher costs going forward. A few kroners.

Thank you. And also you mentioned freshwater Scotland breaking even when you ramp up. When do you see that inflection point?

Yeah. We had some extra costs in this quarter. We should not see that in the future or at least much lower. And then as we gradually during 26 will come from 30% capacity utilization, maybe up to maybe 80% at the end of the year. I would say that we should expect later in 26 to see positive margins from freshwater.

Christian Nordby, Arctic Securities. You say you today have 9 million smolt in Applecross, and you should peak around 18 million. When do you expect that to hit?

So I believe that the full biomass at Applecross will be around the second quarter, 27th.

Okay, thank you. Could you mention how much feed prices have increased or based on the current raw material prices that you now see?

Well, in the second quarter, they increased slightly from the first quarter. But the marine ingredients have increased significantly now because of the low quotas in Peru. So that's in front of us. So we have not seen yet a very, very big increase in feed prices.

And how could that also impact your feed operations, feed segments, for example? Do you have inventories of fish meal, fish oil at lower raw material costs that will be sold to the farming segment so that you expect increased margins in the feed operations, although lower in the farming segment?

Yes, of course, you know, in our FOF segment, the way we calculate is that we do internal pricing at market from the fish, meat, and oil to the feed. So the feed, so there will be a margin on the internal meat and oil segment into the FOF, but that's within the FOF segment. But in between, there is a margin, but that goes out on the eliminations. But we have an internal inventory which reflects much of the use that we have in 26, which means that there will be an internal margin in the pop segment if prices go up. But that goes on the eliminations, and that means that the balance sheet is not affected by that most of the year. Then at some later point, there will be an increase if raw materials are going more up.

And does that mean that the EBIT margin you now have in the top segment is what you expect also for the coming quarters?

That's a difficult one. I believe that there is a risk that the margins can come down, especially if the raw material situation is challenged, which looks to be the case this year. So there is a risk that it could be a lower margin. Thank you. Very good. Thank you very much.