Austevoll Seafood ASA

OSE:AUSS

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q3

[Arne Mogster, CEO & President]

It's a great pleasure for me to invite you to Austevoll Seafood third quarter presentation. I would briefly start taking you through the highlights of the quarter. Thereafter, I will try to take you through the different segments and our achievement during the quarter. Britt will take you more in detail through the numbers. And I will end the presentation by giving our different outlook in the different markets we are operating within. Starting up, I would say as an opening remark that the third quarter normally is a low fishing season for all our pelagic and whitefish activity. It's more or less the same for this quarter as well. But if you look into the activity in North Atlantic, it's partly advanced on an earlier startup of macro and hiring season compared with normally, and that is also giving us higher activity in Pelagia and also for our fishing vessels in the quarter compared with what is normal. I would say we have achieved quite good sales for our pelagic business during the quarter. And when it comes to the salmon business, we have achieved a record high revenue, a record high volume for the quarter, but we are delivering margins, which is partly lower than our own expectation for the quarter, which I will come back to during this presentation. So starting up, revenue of NOK 7.4 billion and EBITDA of NOK 1.15 billion, which is NOK 350 million better than the same quarter last year. EBIT of NOK 741 million and a pretax profit of NOK 839 million, which is also including a quite good performance from Pelagia in this quarter compared with same quarter last year. Looking at the EBITDA of the company, also including 50% share of Pelagia, you can see that we are just delivering below NOK 1.4 billion in EBITDA, whereas NOK 900 million is coming from the salmon activity and just below NOK 500 million is coming from the pelagic activity. Looking at full year numbers, a record high revenue of NOK 19.6 billion, EBITDA of NOK 3.5 billion, which is NOK 700 million better than the same 9 months in 2020, EBIT of NOK 2.3 billion and a pretax profit of NOK 2.3 billion, NOK 2.4 billion. Our balance sheet remains strong, NOK 42.6 billion in total assets and a net interest-bearing debt of NOK 4 billion. Then looking at the performance, both from the salmon segment and the pelagic salmon for the first months, you can see that total EBITDA is just about NOK 3.8 billion if you include the 50% share we have in Pelagia, and NOK 2.5 billion of that is coming from salmon activity and from the pelagic activity just below NOK 1.3 billion, which is approximately the double performance that we did in the first same 9 months in 2020. So I would say summing up, the pelagic company has delivered quite good result during the first 9 months in 2021. Looking at our operational overview, you can see on the right-hand side that in terms of volume this year, we are aiming to catch between 420,000 and 450,000 tonnes on our own vessels, on our all license this season. We are aiming to process pelagic raw material in our factories in about 1.8 million tonnes, 1.850 million tonnes. And we are also aiming to catch around 70,000 tonnes of whitefish and process approximately 30,000 tonnes in our land-based facilities. And we are aiming to slaughter, this year, approximately 210,000 tonnes of salmon. Starting off giving some insight on our pelagic activity, starting up in Peru. And what we can say is that we finalized the first quarter for the season by the end of July, and we are now waiting for a new season to start, hopefully somewhere close to this date. Peru has performed quite well, I would say, during this year, and it's mainly marked by -- that we entered the year with high stock due to good fishing season coming in from 2020. We have also had a very good first season, the prices has been increasing during the quarter, and we have also had a very good fishing in the South in our factories in Ilo, which has also contributed to our earnings. I would say we are doing -- we did quite a similar achievement that we did the same first season in 2020 in terms of all the parameters when it comes to quality and yield, and purchased raw material and quota. So a good start, and we are aiming, I would say, to hopefully start up fishery not far away from today, and we expect that the quota maybe -- will be announced in mid-November. And again, the final result of this year will depend on the startup of the season and, of course, the size of the quota. Chile, again, has done a very good year based on the circumstances they are operating within. The quota was increased with 15%, gave us approximately 40,000 tonnes of own quota, and we have purchased additionally 31,000 tonnes caught with their own vessels and produced in our own plant. We have also done some rental of our factories. So I would say that this year, it's been an optimal operation in our Chilean activity based on the raw material they have had available. And looking in for next year, we are also seeing that quota will probably increase with 15%, but this is also to be established in January. The Atlantic pelagic quota is also increasing compared with the ICES recommendation for 2021. And it's particularly driven by our increase in the North Sea herring quota, and it's also a pleasure to look at the development of both the Barents Sea capelin that they are opening, the capelin fishery in the Barents Sea, but also for the Icelandic capelin quota, which is far higher this year than it was last year. Looking at the other fisheries, you can see that herring is down by 8%, mackerel with 7%. And we are also seeing that blue whiting is coming down approximately 20% this year or next year, like they did in 2021. So a downward trend when it comes to the blue whiting quarter. Looking at the meal and oil segment this quarter, I would say, is a seasonable low production quarter mainly based on trimmings and this segment is doing all the raw material purchases in the beginning of first half year and are selling the main source of products in the 2 last quarter of the year. And the sale has been committed quite good and it's been higher sale in this quarter compared with the same quarter last year. What we can also mention is that Hordafor, which is doing protein concentrate production based on salmon offals and whitefish and pelagic offal, is also consolidated 100% from 1st of July and are also contributing quite good to the numbers of Pelagia during this quarter. What's different for the human consumption activities, the advanced start of catch for the mackerel and the spring spawning herring season is increased quota and started up the mackerel fishery in August, which has impacted the landed raw material numbers, but also earnings in the quarter. And I would say that both in terms of margins and activity, they've done a good job for the human consumption during the third quarter. And you can see in the numbers, this number is inflicted by a one-off after the consolidation of Hordafor on approximately NOK 140 million. But nevertheless, they are doing quite good quarter this year compared with same quarter last year, and delivering a revenue of NOK 3 billion, EBITDA of NOK 455 million and EBIT of NOK 379 million compared with much lower figures same quarter last year. Then moving to salmon whitefish. We are delivering an EBIT of NOK 579 million. What I can say is that we have had record high revenue, record high volume in the quarter. But the margins we have presented has been a bit lower than also our own expectation in the quarter, and it's mainly due to that we did some advanced harvesting for fish in the North and in the West region, which had biological challenges. And we had to take the fish out on lower average rate, which impacted both cost and also price achievement for the quarter. Also have a bit lower growth in the West in the quarter, which has also impacted the cost. But all in all, I would say that harvest volume on 56,000 tonnes, spread by 16,000 tonnes Lerøy Aurora, 23,000 tonnes in Lerøy Midt and Lerøy Sjøtroll approximately 18,000 tonnes in the quarter. Now looking at the EBIT per kilo is NOK 9.6, including sales and distribution margins. And if you look at the harvesting margins, we are having approximately NOK 9.3 per kilo in the North and NOK 9 per kilo in the Mid, and approximately NOK 4 per kilo in the West side. Leaving the quarter with the NOK 3.5 billion in net interest-bearing debt. [ Q3 ] also, a lot of growth in the quarter. We have taken down some of the estimates for 2021 and both from the North and also from the West Coast and a bit on Mid-Norway. So totally, we have reduced our volume guidance for 2021 in Norway from 192,000 tonnes down to 187,000 tonnes and expecting for 2022, an increase of 190,000 tonnes. Looking at the wild catch segments. We are doing both better in the land-based activity and also the fishing activity this quarter compared with same quarter last year. And it's pleasant to see that improvements for the land-based industry is also contributing to some of the margins. We are seeing prices is coming back after being harmed during the COVID period. And in particular, the haddock and saithe prices is up with 59% on haddock and 35% on saithe, which is also pleasant. And what I can say here is that we have approximately 11,000 tonnes more to catch of the cod, which is the highest value fish to the end of the year. So expecting a good contribution from this segment in fourth quarter as well. Then I give the floor to Britt.

[Britt Kathrine Drivenes, Chief Financial Officer]

Thank you, Arne. We start with this table, and that sums up the raw material intake for the fishing business, both in South America and here in the North Atlantic. And as Arne mentioned, we had an early start of the mackerel season, which has given higher raw material volumes for the North Atlantic business compared with last year. We have also had record high harvest volumes for salmon and trout. I would like to start to say that we have had a very positive development, both in revenues and earnings in third quarter this year compared with last year, and that goes for all the companies in the group. As Arne has already taken you through the key figures, I will start at the EBIT level, and we have an EBIT in third quarter this year of NOK 741 million, and that is substantially higher than the NOK 415 million in same quarter last year. We've also had a nice increase in the income from associated compared to last year, NOK 194 million. And the largest contributor are -- is Pelagia and that is NOK 151 million in third quarter this year. But as Arne said, they have had a good quarter, but it's also -- this figure is also inflated by one-off of the -- coming from the purchase of Hordafor of approximately NOK 70 million included in this NOK 151 million. We have a pretax profit, and that's before the biomass adjustment of NOK 839 million, and that is more than double from the NOK 393 million in same quarter last year. The net profit is NOK 517 million in the quarter, up from NOK 363 million. And this gives us an earnings per share, and that is excluded biomass adjustment of NOK 2.26, up from NOK 0.86 in same quarter last year. Looking at the figures year-to-date, Q3, we had a revenue of NOK 19.6 billion, up from NOK 16.7 billion; and an EBITDA of NOK 3.5 billion, up from NOK 2.8 billion; and an EBIT before biomass adjustment of above NOK 2.3 billion, up from NOK 1.7 billion same period last year. Also year-to-date, the income from associated companies are quite -- are much higher than last year, NOK 305 million, compared to NOK 158 million. And it is the 2 largest associated companies that contribute to this figure, and that is Pelagia with NOK 177 million and Norskott with NOK 104 million. Looking at the net finance of this is total NOK 269 million. The net interest are NOK 213 million, and that is down from NOK 228 million in the same period last year. And this gives us a pretax profit, and that is also excluded the biomass adjustment of above NOK 2.3 billion, up from NOK 1.5 billion in the same period last year. And the net profit is NOK 2.5 billion, up from NOK 931 million. And this gives us an earnings per share of NOK 5.39, up from NOK 3.25 in the same period last year. Looking into live Lerøy Seafood Group, they had a revenue of NOK 6.3 billion in the quarter, up from NOK 4.8 billion in the same quarter last year; and the EBITDA was NOK 895 million, up from NOK 656 million; and the EBIT, NOK 579 million, up from NOK 370 million. You can look at the harvest volume, which is record high this quarter. It's above 56,000 tonnes, up from 44,000 tonnes in the same quarter last year, and an EBIT per kilo of NOK 9.6, up from NOK 9.2. However, this quarter, they have made some adjustment to the harvest profile, and they have had some challenges on some sites in Lerøy Aurora and Lerøy Sjøtroll. And harvesting weights are lower. They have a lower average harvesting weights on this fish. And that is, of course, impacting price realization, but also has a higher cost. Looking into the whitefish, the wild catch and land-based operation, there is an EBIT in the quarter of NOK 17 million, which is substantially higher than the negative EBIT last year of minus NOK 50 million. Looking at the Austral Group, they have had as normal seasonal low activity in third quarter. They finalized their first fishing season, July 26. But they have had a good sales volume in the quarter. When we look at the fishmeal sales, they are approximately at the same level, but you can see they have a substantially higher volume of fish oil sold in third quarter this year compared with same quarter last year. The fishmeal prices are up 10% compared with the same period last year, and the fish oil price is up by 16% compared with the same period last year. Going into fourth quarter, they have an inventory of 11,500 tonnes of finished products. And of course now, we are waiting for the announcement of the second season quota, and of course, the size of the quota and when it will start. The company has done maintenance work on the fishing vessels and the factories in the remaining part of third quarter, but also into fourth quarter. Also in Foodcorp, we have had seasonal low activity. Actually, their main season are in the first half of the year. They have sold 1,000 tonnes more approximately of frozen products in this quarter compared with same quarter last year. And what we can see -- what we have seen is that we have had increased prices during the year of the frozen products. And also in third quarter, the price achievement for frozen products are substantially higher than what we saw in the same quarter last year. They have 3,400 tonnes of finished products going into Q4, and Q4 will be -- there will be low activity in Q4. And they have also spent remaining part of third quarter and fourth quarter for maintenance of the fishing vessels and the factory. Looking at the farming part of Br. Birkeland, as we said when we released our second quarter figures in August, there was an ISA outbreak on one of the sites of the Br. Birkeland Farming. This was -- and this fish should be harvested before the end of August, beginning of September. And at that time, we said that we expected a loss at the EBIT level between NOK 25 million to NOK 28 million. And that is also the impact, as we can see here in the third quarter figures. They have harvested 2,300 tonnes, and it's a negative EBIT of minus NOK 30 million, and of course, a negative EBIT per kilo of minus NOK 12.8 million. The fishing vessel part of Br. Birkeland, the 2 pelagic vessels, they have started their mackerel season early this year. They started in the beginning of August. So they have taken the major part of their mackerel quota in the third quarter. That was the opposite last year, then the major part of the quota was taken in Q4. The vessel fishing snow crab stopped the fishing at July 1, and the total quota for Norway was taken. So they have been doing maintenance work in this period. However, we have sold volumes of finished products with snow crab in the quarter. In addition, we have purchased a secondhand vessel for the replacement of Northguider, which sank late 2018. And the vessel is now installing new factory equipment, et cetera. And we expect this vessel to start operation mid-first quarter next year. The revenue in third quarter was NOK 119 million and the EBITDA was NOK 41 million, and the EBIT NOK 31 million, and of course, impacted by the early start of the mackerel season. Looking at the financial -- statement of financial positions, we have total assets of NOK 42.6 billion. This is an increase from September last year, but also from the end of 2020. And looking into right-of-use assets, we have taken on some new contracts on well-boats, but -- and also some tangible fixed assets. We are in the end of the -- finalizing the small facility up in Belsvik. The other thing I would like to mention here is the cash position is substantially higher and impacted by the bond loan that Lerøy issued now in third quarter. Net interest-bearing debt by the end of September was a little bit less than NOK 4 billion, including the right-of-use assets liability, it was NOK 5.6 billion. And the equity ratio was 57%. We have a strong balance sheet, and that is also our strategy because we would like to support organic growth, but also strategic investments if they appear. And we would like to be able to keep our dividend policy. There has been a strong cash performance in Q3 and also year-to-date. You can see, in Q3, we had cash from operating activities of above NOK 1.5 billion. Cash from investing is minus NOK 343 million. And as mentioned, we are in the end of finalizing the small facility up in Belsvik now in fourth quarter. There is a positive cash from financing of NOK 460 million, and that is caused by the bond loan that was issued by Lerøy now in third quarter of NOK 1.5 billion. We started the period with a cash position of NOK 3.7 billion, and we end the third quarter with a cash position of almost NOK 5.4 billion. Then I give the word to you again.

[Arne Mogster, CEO & President]

Then starting off looking at the markets and the different segments we're operating in. Starting up with the fishmeal market. And again, if you look at the left-hand table, you can see that the production among the largest producer is up with approximately 6.5%, and it's mainly driven by volume from Peru, which is up approximately 32.5%. Prices have been partly increasing during the period and now we are achieving prices on approximately just below -- just above $1,400 per tonne for low-quality fishmeal and up to $1,650 per tonne on high-quality fishmeal. Again, China is the main consumer. And if we jump to the Chinese market, you could see that the stock situation in China is far higher than it was same period last year. And that has been the trend the last 3 quarters. And still, I would say that prices has been on a very high level in China and has maintained good prices both for fishmeal and also for fish oil during the period. And if you are jumping to the fish oil situation, you can also see that the production is up by 7%. And prices have been quite stable, I would say, since week 18. Until now, where you are seeing the full prices from Peru, just about $2,000 per tonne for feed and a premium of $2,300 in for the Omega-3 industry. Then jumping to the supply of salmon. And as you can see, it's an increase from Europe in 2021 with approximately 12%, a decrease from Americas from 9%, and in total, an increase of 4%. And I would say, in particular, in Norway during 2021, the increase has been a bit higher than what we expected. And in particularly in September, we saw new records out of Norway week for week during the whole September period. And that was also the period where we will slaughter most of our fish at lower prices than what you're seeing in the average prices for the quarter. Going into 2022, you also see that it's expected a global growth of 5%, whereas Norway and, what I would say, the rest of Europe is approximately 4%, and the America driven by Chile. Chile has come back, it's up with approximately 6.9%. Market is, I would say, strong looking at the volume we have seen in Norway. However, if you look within third quarter, it's been a deviation of prices of NOK 15 from the highest to the lowest price achieved during the quarter. So there's a lot of fluctuations, although you see that the underlying prices is good in the third quarter. And I would also say we are expecting a nice development going in for the end of the year. Consumption during 2021 is driven by consumption from EU and in particular from U.S., which is up as per tonne to 18%. And also, you can see other markets is participating with 9% of the increase. So summing up, I would say that we expect a salmon volume from Lerøy of 204,000 tonnes this year in 2021, an increase of approximately 3,000 tonnes. We are doing a building of a new [indiscernible] facility in Mid-Norway, but the effect of that, you will not see before 2023. The whitefish segment continue to be a healthy outlook to the end of the year. If you look to the next year quotas, we see that the increase of quota we had both in haddock and cod has reversed into 2022, and -- but also have a contribution on increased prices, we believe, during 2022. Looking at the pelagic segment, we are seeing that in particular that we are having general inflation in all our logistical change, and we are seeing an increase in cost, both on our inputs on cost. However, we are also seeing that, in particular in South America, that has been handled quite well during 2021, both the production and -- we are expecting a good season in Peru now, and also looking forward to start the next year season in Chile when we are turning into 2022, where we expect an increase of quota of 15%. Looking in the North Atlantic, it's a bit earlier start of the mackerel quota and herring quota, giving less raw material in for fourth quarter. And if you look in for next year, you see it's marginally drop in herring and mackerel quota, and we are seeing Northsea herring is up, and it's going to be interesting to see the effect of the capelin season to our factories. So that was all. Thank you for following.