Higher costs eat away into earnings, but AKVA ends year with record high order intake

“Market activity is good in most markets and opportunities exists on a broad basis to further strengthen AKVA’s position,” the company said.

The aquaculture tech company provider AKVA Group is ending the quarter with a EUR 143 million backlog of orders – a record high for the company.

Revenue in the fourth quarter of 2018 ended on EUR 74.2 million (a 17.2% increase when compared to Q4 2017) with an EBITDA of EUR 5.8 million (a decrease of 3% when compared to the same period last year).

A half-yearly dividend of 0.75 NOK per share will be paid out in March 2019.

The Norway headquartered company said that compared to last year, margins have been lower in ASA Nordic due to ongoing manufacturing issues at suppliers, which have caused increased barge costs and the implementation of new manufacturing lines at Helgeland Plast has led to lower efficiency. Though order intake from this part of the company still contributed to half of the total in the quarter, almost EUR 50.9 million, and of that, orders from the newly acquired Egersund Net brought in EUR 20.2 million.

The activity in the Americas is also high, with an order intake of EUR 17.4 million, driven by the large fleet contract with Grieg NL. AKVA group North America signed a sales and supply contract for Grieg NL’s in-construction mega project in Q3 2018 but the contract is not included in the order backlog yet, pending finalisation of design work.

“Land-based RAS plants are soon accounting for 50 percent of our revenue,” said AKVA group director Trond Severinsen back in 2018. For now, EBIT for the land-based tech arm of the company was EUR 1.1 million, the same as the period before. A contracts was signed with Ænes Inkubator (15.3 million euros) in Chile. Order intake in Q4 2018 was EUR 22.2 million compared to EUR 3.3 million in Q4 2017.

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