Atlantic Sapphire ASA (AASZF) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Atlantic Sapphire ASA (OTCQX:AASZF) Q3 2022 Earnings Conference Call November 15, 2022 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Karl Øyehaug - MD & CFO
Johan Andreassen - Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO

Conference Call Participants

Johan Andreassen

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Atlantic Sapphire's Q3 operational update. I am Johan Andreassen. And with me to present today is as always our CFO, Karl Øyehaug.

Karl Øyehaug

Hello, everyone. As usual, we will open up for a Q&A session after the presentation. [Operator Instructions]. We also remind you that we only answer questions from attendees that have identified themselves with name. Johan?

Johan Andreassen

Thank you, Karl. We will start with a summary of the biological performance in the third quarter. The net biomass gain in the quarter came in at 1,560 tonnes, which is up from 1,240 tonnes in Q2. We saw good performance in July and August then a slowdown in biomass gain in September, which is linked to the issues that we experienced with appetite drop and elevated mortality in certain systems. We, in response, also elected to slow down feeding to derisk while we're investigating the root cause of the issue.

On a positive note, we are continuing to see very low maturation levels across all batches that we currently have in the farm. As of September 30, we had approximately 3,250 tonnes of standing biomass in the farm, which is lower than we expected in the Q2 update. And this is tied to early harvest and a lower biomass gain. In Q3, we ended up harvesting approximately 1,050 tonnes head-on-gutted rates. As a result of the lower-than-expected feeding and early harvest, the steady-state standing biomass of 4,200 tonnes around living rate is now expected to be by the end of the first quarter of next year. That being said, we do have plenty of fish in the Bluehouse that