Mowi Asa

Good morning, everyone, both in the room and online, and welcome to the presentation of Movi's third quarter results of 2023. My name is Ivan Windheim, and I'm the CEO of Movi, and with me today to present the financial figures and fundamentals, I have, as usual, our CFO, Christian Ellingsen. And after the presentation, our IRO, Kim Dusvik, will routinely host a Q&A session. For those who are following the presentation online, you can submit your questions or comments in advance, or as we go along, by email. Please refer to our website at movi.com for the necessary details. Disclaimer, I think we leave for self-study. So then I think we are ready for the highlights of the quarter. It was another record-breaking quarter for Mowi in terms of top line and growth as both operation revenue of 1.36 billion euro and farming volumes of 135,000 tons were all-time high. And speaking of growth, we maintain our... Volume guidance for this year of record high 484,000 tons, which is up from 464,000 tons last year, and equivalent to a growth of 4.3% year over year, surpassing that of the wider industry by a large margin. For next year, we expect to harvest record high 500,000 tons, which is a milestone for us as we cross the magic 500,000 tons mark for the first time in Moe's 60 years history. As you can see from the chart here, as recently as 2018, we harvested 375,000 tons in Moe, which means we are up by 125,000 tons over the last six years. And speaking of six, a growth which alone would have been the world's six largest salmon farming companies, including ourselves. And which in practice is organic growth as we have lost as much volume as we have bought capacity in the period more or less. An equivalent to a CAGR of 4.9% in what I would say is in a low growth environment. So I simply cannot stress enough how important this is for us, because farming volumes are, in the end of the day, the mainstay of our business model and what everything hinges on in this industry. Everything. At the same time, we are 600 fewer people in Norway than back in 2018. So it's quite a transformational change we are going through on productivity throughout the value chain. So I think we in all humility can say we are in a better shape today than back then. So the world is going forward in more way too. But we can and we will do more. Take the smart farming concept, for instance. It's just at the starting blocks, not to mention the ongoing digitalization and automatization of our value chain. So there is definitely more to come. Meanwhile, I would like to take the opportunity to thank my 11,500 colleagues for the invaluable efforts in making this happen. It's, of course, much appreciated. When it comes to quarterly earnings, Operation Profit was 203 million euro in the third quarter and was with that in line with the trading update of the 18th of October. impacted by seasonally lower prices in addition to the elevated biological costs we typically see in the third quarter, and this year compounded by the weather phenomenon El Nino, particularly in our farming operations outside Norway. Realized then the farming cost, i.e. weighted farming cost for seven farming countries was therefore up from 5.60 euro per kilo in the second quarter to 5.73 euro per kilo in the third quarter. Cost of stock on the other hand was down quarter over quarter on the back of scale in addition to stable feed prices. And year-over-year cost to stock is stable in the quarter. As a result of this, we expect a stable realized blended farming cost for the fourth quarter, at least based upon the information we have today. Otherwise, once again, a heads up on FX or Forex Exchange in the wake of the weakening of the NOC we saw in the first half of the year. We remind that Moe as a Euro company has sedged away the FX gain our Norwegian peers have benefited from so greatly so far this year. And in the third quarter, this cost us alone 35 million euro or 41 euro cent per kilo and for 2023 in total so i accumulated we are talking about as much as 102 million euro or 48 euro cent per kilo so this is significant so please take that into account when you do your own benchmark comparisons for norway for the third quarter and for a year for that matter So much about farming. In terms of consumer products, our downstream business, we delivered another set of strong operational results in the quarter, I would say. Actually, record high for our third quarter. And the same goes for feed. And our feed performance was strong in the quarter, which was manifested in our harvest volumes and guidance. One thing to another, resource rent tax. Since previous quarter, we have updated our resource rent tax estimate for Norway. As you all know, this tax is only applicable for seawater operations in Norway. And after having carefully priced up our extensive and diverse value chain in Norway, together with leading tax experts, our new estimate for this tax is now about 10% in steady state. for Norway or for a Norwegian business across the value chain on top of corporate tax. Please bear in mind that this is still a preliminary estimate and consequently subject to material uncertainty. Since previous quarter, we have also revised our long-term debt targets in MoE from 1.4 billion euro to 1.7 billion euro to better reflect the growth we have been through over the past few years and thereby our improved debt service capacity. And yesterday we were notified that we are once again ranked as the world's most sustainable animal protein producer by the prestigious Colafair initiative. This is the fifth year in our time. And as we have said numerous times, sustainability is deeply ingrained in the bovine culture and at the core of everything we do. So this is most definitely something we appreciate internally. So kudos to our organization for this achievement. Finally, the board of directors has decided to distribute a quarterly dividend of 1.50 NOK per share after the third quarter, which compares roughly with 50% of underlying earnings per share, and as such is in line with our dividend policy. That, I think, does it for the highlights of the quarter. Then over to key financials. Christian, as usual, will go in depth on financial figures under his session, so as not to be too repetitive, we'll just touch briefly upon the most important ones now. And first, turnover. As you already have been through, we recorded a record high operation revenue of 1.36 billion euro in the third quarter, which is up by 8% year-over-year and 1% higher farming volumes. Operation profit, on the other hand, was down year-over-year, From 240 million euro in the third quarter last year to 203 million euro in the third quarter this year. At least when measured in euro. When measured in NOK, however, operation EBIT is quite stable year over year. 2.3 billion NOK in this quarter versus 2.4 billion NOK in the third quarter last year. Cash flow in the quarter I would characterize as good, at least adjusted for a tie-up of working capital and capital expenditures. And net interest rate in that came in at 1.71 billion euro, which is in line with our new debt target of 1.7 billion euro. Otherwise, equity ratio was of healthy 48% at the end of the quarter, and underlying earnings per share was 24 euro cents, and annualized return on capital employed was 15%. Both adjusted for our new resource rent tax estimate for Norway. In terms of regional margins to the value chain, Moe in Norway and Moe in Faroes stood once again out positively, whilst our margin for our Canadian operations in particular stood out negatively this time around due to algae-induced mortality in British Columbia. We will get back to further details and explanations shortly when we go through the different business entities. But first, briefly about the prices in the quarter. As expected, spot prices corrected down in the third quarter from record levels in the first half of the year due to a seasonally higher supply. Having said that, I think it's still fair to say that we saw reasonably good prices in Europe in that quarter, whilst we struggled somewhat more in America, which also follows the trend we already saw in the second quarter on more influx of volumes in the American market, including wild salmon. Year-over-year prices are also down for the salmon of Chilean origin by 4%, whilst it's somewhat up for the salmon of the other origins, at least adjusted for contracts. Then our own relative price performance in the quarter, which I would characterize as strong, as it was 9% above the reference price, which is the price we like to hold ourselves to internally. And we didn't have any particular negative outliers either this time around. Maybe with the exception of Canada East, where we harvested out some small isofish in the quarter. Otherwise, total contract share for the group was 24% in the quarter. And for the first time this year, contracts contributed positively to our price achievement. And unfortunately, I guess I should add to that. Then briefly about the EBIT waterfall. As we already have been through, and as we can see from this chart, operation EBIT decreased year-over-year from 240 million euro to 203 million euro. And as said, at least when measured in euro. When measured in NOC, however, operation EBIT was, as said, Quite stable year-over-year, 2.3 billion NOC in the third quarter this year versus 2.4 billion NOC in the third quarter last year. The driver in our business model is farming, which was a mixed bag in the third quarter, following a rather challenging biology, which is typical or quite typical for this time of year, and this time around also compounded by the weather phenomenon El Niño, particularly in our farming operations outside Norway. Consumer products and feed, only over 1, so strong financial figures in the quarter, and also improvements year over year. Which I think is a timely juncture to address the different business entities. Our first one out is, as usual, Moe Norway, our largest and most important entity by far. Operation EBIT was €185 million from over nowhere in the quarter and was with that down from €220 million in a comparable quarter last year due to first and foremost higher costs driven by inflation. Both spot price and harvest volumes were quite stable year over year. EBIT margin was 2.15 euro per kilo for Moenover in the quarter, and as addressed in the highlights, as a euro company, Moenover did not benefit from the weakening of the NOC we saw in the first half of the year, which cost us 35 million euro alone in the third quarter, or 41 euro cent per kilo. So just after that, operation EBIT for Moenover would have been 220 million euro, and not 185 million euro in the third quarter. And margin would have been 2.56 euro per kilo instead of 2.15 euro per kilo. Otherwise, we have seen good growth in sea form over Norway so far this year. And further to that, we have increased our farming or our volume guidance for this year to record high 295,000 tons from originally 290,000 tons. And further to record high 305,000 tons next year. It is a new milestone for us and a continuation of MoE Norway's impressive growth trajectory over the past few years and cementing our strong license utilization and production efficiency in Norway. As you can see from the chart here, we harvested 210,000 tons in MoE Norway as recently as 2017. So a growth of almost 100,000 tons, which in practice is organic growth, as our MEB reductions through the traffic light system are close to boat capacity in that period. So a big thank you to our Norwegian farming organization for this achievement. It's, of course, highly appreciated. Then shortly about the breakdown of the margins for the different regions moving over in the quarter. As we can see from this chart, we saw strong margins for both region north, region west and region south in the quarter at 2.61 euro per kilo, 1.86 euro per kilo and 2.48 euro per kilo respectively. For region mid parts, margin was adversely impacted by low harvest volumes in the quarter in addition to harvesting out problematic sites. On a positive note, however, our turnaround plan for this region is progressing slowly but surely. And for the fourth quarter, we expect improved financial performance on higher volumes in addition to harvesting from better performing sites. Then the last slide on Norway, our Norwegian sales contract portfolio. After having lost on our Norwegian contracts in the first and the second quarter, we finally profited on them in the third quarter. And unfortunately, as I said earlier, Contract level was 22% in the quarter, and by that, approximately in line with the guidance, for fourth quarter, we expect it to be around 29% at relatively stable prices quarter over quarter. As for 2024 contracts, since we are negotiating as we speak, we cannot say much about that today other than ask for your understanding that we will get back to it in February at our fourth quarter release. Meanwhile, you must keep things close to the chest. Then it's time to address the other farming countries. The first one out is Mowi, Scotland. After an encouraging first half of the year for a Scottish operation, the third quarter was, as expected, much tougher due to record high sea water temperatures in the wake of El Niño and subsequent issues with micro jellyfish and gills causing elevated mortality at some of our farms in addition to low harvest weights as we have been forced to harvest out some of our fish earlier than we would like. So although better than last year, this resulted in a, what I would say, soft margin of 63 euro cent per kilo for our Scottish volumes in the quarter. And an operational profit of 9 million euro. And in terms of course of events, I would say things went reasonably well for us until September when things escalated due to rapidly deteriorating water quality. And I think it's fair to say that we have experienced a challenging October as well. So a heads up on biological costs for the fourth quarter. And by extension, we have reduced our farming volume guidance for this year from 64,000 tons originally to 62,000 tons. And if anything, there is downside risk to this estimate. Then overseas to Moe Chile. Moe Chile saw an operational profit of 9 million euros in the quarter, and for their part, down from 22 million euro in the comparable quarter last year. Margin is also down from 1.27 euro per kilo to 0.48 euro per kilo, driven by both lower prices and higher costs. In regard to the latter, mainly due to inflation, as biology was reasonably good for Moe Chile in the quarter and year to date for that matter. The price we have already commented on, it's down year over year. Harvest volumes on the other end were quite stable year over year at 17,000 tons. Then far north to Maui, Canada. Maui, Canada made also 5 million euro in the third quarter, which is quite similar to last year and this year driven by what I said initially here, algae-induced mortality in British Columbia due to record high seawater temperatures in the wake of El Niño. In Canada East, on the overland, we saw steady operational performance in the quarter. And as for the fourth quarter, although both temperatures and mortality have normalized since the third quarter, we expect our fourth quarter numbers to be impacted by this as well. In addition to low dilutional costs due to little harvest and lack of scale. Which brings us to our smallest farming entities, Mowi Island and Mowi Faroes. For the salmon of Irish origin, we made an operation profit of 1.5 million euro in the quarter, with a margin of 75 euro cent per kilo on 2,000 tons harvest volume. This is substantially better than last year, when our numbers were marred by biological issues. In Moeferos, Moeferos' operating EBIT also improved year over year and came to 5 million euro, by means of a strong margin of 1.91 euro per kilo on 2,500 tons harvest volume. Operating metrics were also strong for Moeferos in the quarter. Then the latest addition to the Moe family, Arctic fish, our 51% owned Icelandic subsidiary, which we took over earlier this year. I think it's fair to say that the third quarter in Iceland did not live up to our expectations, as we just broke even on a decent harvest volume of 4,500 tons. This was mainly a result of increased biological costs in relation to lice issues, in addition to startup costs at our new processing plant in Bolungavik. Historically, lice haven't been a problem in Iceland, but now we see that Iceland is becoming more akin to the other farming countries in Europe. And we therefore need to build up de-licing capacity and implement appropriate procedures accordingly, which in all honesty are not in place today. Together with the authorities, we also have to streamline the bureaucracy around the delisting approvals so that we can take the right measures at the right time. That's critically important in this. Today it takes far too long, and in our humble opinion, the decisions are not always the right ones either. As a result of these life issues, we have regrettably found ourselves obliged to take down our farming volume guidance for Arctic fish for this year from 15,000 tons to 11,500 tons and further to 10,000 tons next year. Then I think we are ready for consumer products of downstream business. Operation profit was 40 million euro for consumer products in the third quarter and was with that our best third quarter to date and up from 30 million euro in the third quarter last year. On strong operation performance more or less across the board I would say in addition to capitalizing on lower raw material costs due to seasonally lower salmon prices. We also sold 6% more volumes year over year, which contributed positively to our quarterly earnings. In terms of overall demand, I think it's fair to say it's holding up reasonably well. I'm talking about the salmon, notwithstanding the economic slowdown we are facing. Then last one out, Moe Feed. The third quarter is high season for our feed division, but all that entails, and this quarter was no exception in that respect, as we can put behind us, a quarter with feed profit and feed volumes at record levels on strong demand from Mowi Farming. Operational EBITDA was €20 million in the quarter, while sold volumes were 169,000 tonnes. And the feed performance was, as usual, good, which is something we never take lightly as the world's largest salmon farmer by far. You've heard it before, and I say it again, the proof of the pudding is literally in the eating in this industry, all the way to the plate. So then, Christian, the floor is all yours, so you can walk us through the financial figures and fundamentals. Thank you so far.

Thank you very much, Ivan. Good morning, everybody. Hope everybody is doing well this morning. As usual, we start with the overview of profit and loss, which shows a record high revenue of 1.36 billion euro. And that's on all time high harvest volumes and somewhat higher achieved farming prices. Operational EBIT somewhat down from Q3 last year, as we realized higher cost from inventory driven by previous inflation. Cash feed prices have been rather stable this year. And with regards to the items between operational EBIT and financial EBIT, the fair value adjustment on biomass in the balance sheet is relatively stable, so limited P&L effect. Operational earnings from our associated company NovaSea was good in the quarter, 2.73 euro per kilo, including a temporary FX gain related to the weakening of the NOC. Net financial items increased on higher interest costs, partly offset by currency fluctuations. With regards to the financial KPIs, Underlying earnings per share was 24 euro cents in Q3 and 1.03 euro year-to-date versus 109 euro year-to-date last year. Net cash flow per share was 10 euro cents impacted by working capital tie-up and tax payments. And return on capital employed of 15% is adjusted for resource rent tax in Norway. X resource rent tax, the figure would have been 15.9%. Then over to the resource rent tax in Norway. This slide illustrates the value chain in our Norwegian operations. This is the most diverse value chain in the industry. Most of the activities we see here are subject to the ordinary 22% corporate tax only. And then in addition, of course, the seawater phase here, as indicated, that's subject to 25% resource rent tax from 1st of January this year. And as the work internally led by leading tax experts that has helped us externally has progressed, we have been able to update our estimate on the effective resource rent tax across the Norwegian value chain. And that estimate is 10%. And that is an estimate on a run rate basis. an indication of what this will be over time. Not necessarily per quarter or per year due to various adjustments, but an indication over time. And the reason, of course, that the effective rate is lower than the nominal rate is that all these other activities, such as breeding, smolt, feed, processing, distribution, they are not in scope for the new tax. They're only subject to 22% tax. Please note that this 10% estimate is preliminary and subject to material uncertainty. In accordance with IFRS, we have included this estimate in the tax cost in the P&L. Please also note that when we are talking about an obedient value chain, we exclude consumer products as this is activities abroad. Then over to cost. We have seen a leveling out of cash cost to stock as shown in the top graph here. We see 2023 in red and 2022 in gray. Feed prices have been stable this year, as mentioned already, and that's an important factor here. Many of the feed ingredients have reduced in price, but this has been offset by the development in marine ingredients, such as fish meal and particularly fish oil. The high fish oil prices have been driven by cancellation of the first season of the Peruvian anchoveta season. But on a positive note, the second season is progressing well, and the announced quota is 1.7 million tons. And we see here from the below graph that this is above the 10-year average of 1.5 million tons. And 70% of the quota is already caught. Also positive for cost to stock is the fact that biological KPIs in farming have improved year-to-date 2023 versus 2022. And with regards to realized P&L costs, we expect this to be stable in Q4 versus Q3, providing no material biological incidents. Before we leave the profit and loss entirely, we also need to remind you of the currency effects from the weakening of the NOC. Moe is a Euro company with a cash flow predominantly in Euro, financed in Euro. And this means that we remove currency fluctuations. The NOC has seen a significant weakening since 2012. As we see here, 56% versus Euro and as much as 96% versus US dollars. Quite considerable numbers. And the NOC weakening leads to FX gains for our Norwegian peers. And this gain is due to the difference between revenue immediately being realized at high rates and costs at a lower rate due to a time lag on currency impact on cost. Cash-wise, it takes approximately six months before a weaker NOC drives up cash costs. But it takes longer time for the full PNL effect to catch up due to the long production cycle. In the meantime, there is a gain, which is gradually reduced as time passes and is neutral in steady state. And the inverse is true when the knock is strengthening. Then there is an FX loss for Norwegian peers. Movi has hedged away these effects In Q3, the margin difference represents a loss of 41 euro cents per kilo for the Norwegian volumes, or 35 million euro nominally. And this means that the margin for Norway would have been 2.56 euro per kilo in Q3, adjusted for this effect. The year-to-date effect is 48 euro cents per kilo. Moving on to the balance sheet. From year end 2022, non-current assets have increased by approximately 100 million euro on higher fixed assets driven by investments, different projects in our value chain. Furthermore, current assets have increased driven by higher biomass. Norway has a strong financial position with a covenant equity ratio of 50.6% after implementing the resource rent tax in Norway in our numbers. With regards to our cash flow, the strong operational earnings were partly offset by tax payments and working capital tie-ups. Accordingly, NIBD moved from 1.67 billion euro to 1.706 euro and Q3. The long-term NIBD target has been increased to 1.7 billion euro from the 1.4 billion euro target set back in 2018, following volume and earnings increase and consequently higher debt servicing capacity. With regards to the updated cash flow guidance, the working capital tie-up for this year is indicated to 150 million euro, which is an increase from the previous guiding, following good growth in C, and the working capital tie-up in biomass, and also in the rest of our value chain from increased volumes. CapEx is reduced somewhat, while tax payments for this year somewhat increased, partly due to prepayments of tax. With regards to the financing, there are no changes in Morway's financing in the quarter. We have a strong financing in place where nothing matures until 2025 at the earliest. And the bank syndicate is the backbone of our financing. And we highly value our relationship with the banks listed here. Then we move on to supply and demand fundamentals, starting with the global supply, which decreased by 3% versus Q3 last year. Compared with the guiding between minus 1% to plus 2%, volumes from Europe were lower than expected due to generally more challenging environmental conditions and water quality issues, as well as lower harvest weights. especially in Scotland, but also to a certain extent in Norway. Norway decreased by 2%. And Scotland decreased by 9%. And closing biomass in Norway is up 3%, which indicates some supply growth ahead. Chile decreased by 3% versus guiding of minus 6%. So more volumes from Chile than Biological performance was stable, and we expect very limited growth in Chile next year. Consumption was reduced following lower supply. That being said, demand was reasonably good. In Europe, we had value growth and volume growth in retail. In several markets, including Germany, Italy, Spain, activity levels were partly driven by promotions. In the U.S., consumption increased by 1% in Q3 versus Q3 last year, driven by food service as retail was flattish in the U.S. China continued its good development, while the rest of Asia was impacted by lower supply. And as expected, prices corrected down from the first half of the year in Q3 on seasonally higher volumes. In Chile, we saw a volume increase in the first half of the year and consequently more pressure on prices versus Europe. For 2023, the industry volume development is expected to be between minus 1% and 0%. So this would mean that 2023 will be the second year in a row with the volume contraction in the market. For 2024, we expect a modest supply growth of 2-3%, supported by biomass data and current trends with regards to biological performance in the various regions. With regards to our own volumes, we maintain our 2023 guiding at 484,000 tons, although with some changes within the regions. And then the 2024 guiding is 500,000 tons, as already touched upon, a new milestone for the company. Then it's over to Ivan for some comments to the Outlook slide. Thank you.

Thank you, Christian. Much appreciated. And it's time to conclude with some closing remarks before we wrap it all up with our Q&A session hosted by our IRO, Kim Dusvik. As already said earlier this morning, the third quarter was another record-breaking quarter for Mowi in terms of top line and growth. And further to that, we have maintained our farming volume guidance for this year of record high 484,000 tonnes. which is up from 464,000 tons last year and equivalent to a growth of 4.3% year over year, surpassing that of the wider industry by a large margin. For next year, we expect to harvest record high 500,000 tons, which is a milestone for us as we cross the magic 500,000 tons mark for the first time in Moe's 60 years history. As recently as 2018, we harvested 375,000 tons in Moe, which means we have grown our farming volumes by 125,000 tons over the last six years, and which in practice is organic growth as we have lost as much volumes as we have bought in the period, more or less. An equivalent to a CAGR of 4.9% in what I would say is a low growth environment. At the same time, we are 600 fewer people in Mowi than in 2018. It's quite a transformational change we are going through on productivity. But we can and we will do more. That said, having products and being productive are not enough. We also need customers and a demand for our products. And in a challenging environment, I think it's fair to say that the demand for the salmon has held up well so far. And in my view, thanks to the salmon's fantastic product features, supported by strong megatrends, but also as a result of Moe's and others' tireless market efforts over time, because this doesn't happen by itself. As for the supply side, which is the over-decisive factor in the price equation, we expect the historical trend of tighter supply towards Christmas and into the new year to repeat itself this time around as well, which under normal circumstances should be supportive for the salmon price. And for next year as a whole, we expect, as Christian said here, a modest supply growth in the range of 2-3%. In the longer term, we expect the demand-supply discrepancy we have seen in recent years to continue because for a number of reasons, conventional salmon farming faces growth limitations in most countries that are suitable for conventional salmon farming. And so far, so-called new technologies are long overdue. And personally, I think it will still take many years before they will come into their own and start making what I would say would be a most welcome difference in the supply Because the fact is that neither we nor the industry have been able to meet the market demand for this fantastic protein over the past few years. Which is a pity for many reasons. And one of the things holding us back is the increasing tax level we see in many of the countries where we operate, which is eating into our capex budgets. I don't think I bite off more than I can chew when I say that the most controversial and talked about tax of them all is the Norwegian resource rent tax, also called the salmon tax. And as Christian just showed us, after having carefully priced up our extensive and diverse value chain in Norway, together with leading tax experts, our new estimate for this tax is now about 10% in steady state for Norwegian business across the value chain, on top of corporate tax. And please bear in mind that this is still a preliminary estimate and consequently subject to material uncertainty. Otherwise, we expect a stable realized blended farming cost for the fourth quarter, at least based upon the information we have today. And finally, we have revised our long-term debt target in MoE from 1.4 billion euro to 1.7 billion euro to better reflect the growth we have been through over the past few years, and thereby our improved debt service capacity. So with these closing remarks, Kim, I think we are ready for the Q&A session. If Christian can please join me on the stage.

Very good. So just a quick question from the web, from Alexander Jones, Bank of America. He's got a question about demand within food service. What are the latest demand trends you're seeing in the food service channel globally?

So, of course, food service has been great, I would say, since the end of the pandemic. And we... I would say we have been, to a certain degree, surprised by the strong development in that sector, despite the cost of living crisis and various challenges. The recent development in Europe is that we see some positive volume developments in retail and, of course, somewhat lower demand from food service. because volumes in the market is down. So if you grow some place, then you need to see a reduction somewhere else. But all in all, food service has performed very strong and And they're still at a good level, I would say. And in the U.S., still food service is holding up very well. And drives then increased in volumes in the market because retail is flat in the U.S.

Kristine Nordby, Capital Server. You've now had very strong growth in Norway for a number of years. What are your plans to expand this for the next five, six years under the current license regime? Are you solely dependent on new technologies or are there other measures to grow for you?

No, we have intrinsic growth capacity both in Norway and in the other jurisdictions where we operate. So we can, as I said initially here, or during the presentation, we have still many cards up our sleeves. So there is more to come. Thank you.

Knut Høybakken, Sparebanken Markets. You mentioned El Nino a couple of times. Can you go a little bit into detail about the biological situation in Chile? Do you see any signs of algaes now? And what are you doing to minimize the risk?

Yeah, what about Chile? It's still early days, so... This I think we can talk about in February. We are much better prepared this time around than last time when we had this big catastrophe together with the rest of the industry, including bubble curtains, the aeration. oxygen infusion, et cetera, plus all the procedures connected to it. So we are much better prepared. We are in a much better shape, but that doesn't give you any guarantees. Chile is challenging with regard to allergies in normal years. As you correctly said there, and as we said many times during the presentation, we have a linear ongoing. So in the Northern Hemisphere, it has taken its toll. Take Scotland, for instance, but also British Columbia. But how this will evolve or develop in Chile, we don't know. So there is really hard to say what the outcome of this is. But we are... We are on the alert, we are prepared, and our clear intention is to do well, as always. But in terms of timing, algae in Chile is more about February and March. So now we are November, so still early. So there are no signs now, which at least concerns me.

Okay, thank you. And then just another question. What is the split between East and West in Canada for 2024 volumes?

The guidance, we are not that accurate about it, but let's say we are about 10,000 tons in east, and then the residual is west, plus minus. So we always try to build in some slack in our guidance. As we have been through before, we like to deliver on our guidance, contrary to maybe some of our peers.

Thank you.

concludes the questions.

Okay, then it only remains for me to thank you for the attention, both in the room and online, and I hope we see you back in February at the fourth quarter release. Meanwhile, take care and have a great day ahead. Thank you.