The calendar turning to 2024 marks 60 years in the salmon-farming business for Bergen, Norway-headquartered Mowi, which recently posted its best financial results to date.
Delivering its Q4 and full-year 2024 results in Oslo, Norway, on 14 February, Mowi CEO Ivan Vindheim said that though the company is celebrating a milestone anniversary, it has “more up its sleeve” and expects to see even stronger performance in the near future as its post-smolt investments start materializing.
Mowi’s total revenue for Q4 2023 reached a record level for the period at almost EUR 1.43 billion (USD 1.53 billion), compared with EUR 1.36 billion (USD 1.46 billion) in Q4 2022. Its operational earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) slipped 15 percent, or EUR 35.8 million (USD 38.3 million), to EUR 203.1 million (USD 217.3 million).
For the full year, the company’s revenues amounted to EUR 5.5 billion (USD 5.9 billion), which was up from 2022’s record EUR 4.9 billion (USD 5.2 billion). Mowi’s FY 2023 operational EBIT of EUR 1.03 billion (USD 1.11 billion) and its total harvest volume of 475,000 metric tons (MT) were also both all-time highs, with the latter achieved despite biological challenges the company’s Scottish operations experienced.
“I can’t think of a better way to start off Mowi’s 60-year jubilee than by rounding off another record-breaking year,” Vindheim said.
Vindheim said as recently as 2018, Mowi’s harvest volume was 375,000 MT, and that in the subsequent five years, it has added 125,000 MT. This is equivalent to annual growth of 4.9 percent, compared to a projected growth rate for the industry of 2.9 percent.
With the post-smolt program that Mowi launched at its Capital Markets Day in 2021 now starting to bear fruit, Vindheim said Mowi’s volume growth is likely to continue. By the end of 2024, Mowi’s post-smolt capacity will be almost 40 million post-smolt, equivalent to around 25 percent of the group’s total smolt. This, Vindheim said, would make it the largest post-smolt producer in the world.
“This marks a new era for us and will provide the basis for continued organic growth for Mowi Farming in the coming years, in addition to improved biological and financial metrics,” Vindheim said. “It’s also no secret that we have six other post-smolt projects in the pipeline in Norway, with framework conditions pending to enable them to be realized.”
Mowi's total harvest volume in the closing three months of 2023 slipped slightly on the corresponding period of 2022 at 129,234 MT gutted-weight, compared to 130,549 MT gutted-weight in Q4 2022.
Vindheim acknowledged this was lower than previous guidance. He said it was mainly due to ...
Photo courtesy of Ivan Vindheim/LinkedIn
