“Weakened demand and an increase in supply in these fewer markets severely impacted prices”

Salmones Camanchaca’s financial performance impacted by lowest price in several years.

Salmones Camanchaca posted its latest quarterly results on the Oslo Stock Exchange on Wednesday evening. Q3 revenue was USD 55.3 million, down 27.8 per-cent from the same period before. EBIT was USD 12.1 million, down from USD 23.2 million in Q3 2019.

The decrease is due to an 8 per-cent lower sales volume, combined with a 24 per-cent drop in prices for Atlantic salmon.

Atlantic harvest volumes down 17 per-cent from Q3 2019 to 13,368 tonnes.

Salmones Camanchaca vice-chairman Ricardo García said poor performance was down top the “pandemic effect on demand”.

“While our operational performance was good and better than our long-term targets, and marketing strategies were as we planned, our financial performance was poor but attributed almost entirely to the pandemic effect on demand and consequently on prices. More supply to key markets such as the US and Brazil, in line with continued exclusion from Russia of several producers, and significant demand depression in China, limited our market access,” he said.

“These market restrictions and dynamics forced Chilean producers to sell in fewer markets. For Salmones Camanchaca, 80% of our Q3 sales stems from the US, Mexico and Japan, in value-added formats. A weakened demand and an increase in supply in these fewer markets severely impacted prices,” he said.

Looking ahead, García added: “Despite the weak market conditions, our underlying operational performance is good. With both farming and processing costs inline or below our long term targets, and the continuous utilization of our processing flexibility to optimize product offerings, we are in good condition to pursue our ambition of resource-efficient growth and benefit as soon as markets recover in what I expect to be early 2021”.

Volume guidance for 2020 is 53,000 tonnes. 2021’s is 55-57,000 tonnes.