Lerøy Seafood (LSG)

Business Overview

Lerøy shows in its own filing what integration adds to a salmon farmer's profit per kg. In FY2025 its farming earned NOK 6.7/kg of operational EBIT, the profit measure salmon farmers report that leaves out the accounting revaluation of fish still in the sea. Add its processing and sales, and the same fish earned NOK 13.3/kg.

It harvested 195,555 t gutted weight of salmon and trout in Norway. That excludes Scottish Sea Farms, a 50% joint venture that reaches Lerøy only through its share of profit. The second figure adds Lerøy's segment for value-added processing, sales and distribution. A farmer without such a segment reports only the first, so compare Lerøy's farming figure with other farmers' farming figures, and its value-chain figure only with groups that count the same downstream margin.

How the Numbers Read

Farming operational EBIT was NOK 1,303m, down from NOK 2,258m in 2024; Lerøy puts the fall down to a lower salmon price. The value-chain figure fell from NOK 18.4/kg to NOK 13.3/kg on the same tonnes.

Lerøy's commercial licences allowed 117,500 t of maximum allowed biomass (MAB) at its capital markets day in March 2026. MAB caps the weight of live fish in the sea at any one moment. Fish are stocked and harvested through the year, so the stock turns over and a year's harvest can exceed the cap. New capacity takes 12-18 months to show up in harvest, as the MAB guide explains.

Biology got worse in 2025. Survival in sea fell to 93.7% from 94.5%, which Lerøy blamed on lice treatments and viral diseases. As warm sea temperatures raised lice pressure across Norway, it treated 1,956 cages for lice, against 1,463 in 2024. Low lice counts do not mean few treatments: in 2024 its three Norwegian regions averaged 0.08-0.22 adult female lice per fish, under the legal limit of 0.5, because farms treat to stay under it. The biological risk guide ties those markers to Norway's capacity rules and treatment costs.

Net interest-bearing debt needs its definition. Lerøy's Q4 2025 report gives three for 31 December 2025:

• NOK 6,869m excluding all lease liabilities;
• NOK 8,022m including NOK 1,154m of lease liabilities to credit institutions, the definition Lerøy uses;
• NOK 10,227m including all lease liabilities.

On Lerøy's definition, debt was 3.2 times FY2025 group operational EBIT of NOK 2,502m.

Valuation Framework

Valuing Lerøy starts with a choice: farming alone, or the integrated value chain. Since 1 January 2023 its Norwegian farming profit has carried 22% corporate tax plus a 25% resource-rent tax, a 47% marginal rate. Processing, sales and wild catch do not bear the rent tax, so a cash-flow valuation taxes the two legs differently.

Lerøy's market value covers the whole value chain and its whitefish business, so dividing its enterprise value by its farming harvest mixes downstream earnings into a farming measure. The EV/kg guide explains how analysts strip out non-farming value.

Revenue moves with the salmon price. The worked examples on this site use an illustrative long-run price of 68 NOK/kg; Statistics Norway's weekly export price for fresh farmed salmon averaged NOK 81.79/kg in 2025 (table 03024).

What to Watch in the Financials

The gap between the two EBIT per kg figures. If the processing and sales margin shrinks, the uplift from integration shrinks with it even when farming holds.

Cages treated and survival in sea. Each treatment is a cost and a stress on the fish; both measures worsened in 2025.

Key Risks

Biological cost. More treatments and lower survival feed straight into farming EBIT per kg. On a margin of NOK 6.7/kg, each NOK 1/kg of extra cost removes about 15% of farming EBIT.

Several businesses in one set of accounts. Whitefish, wild catch and processing spread earnings but blur the farming picture. Downstream margin can offset a weak farming year, or both can weaken together when the salmon price falls.

Capacity. The licence cap grows only through Norway's traffic lights, which grade each production area on the harm farm lice do to wild salmon, through growth the state sells in green areas, and through a low-lice exception open in any area. A yellow area offers no area-wide growth and a red one cuts it.

Salmon price. A lower price reaches farming EBIT per kg first. The processing margin can move the other way, since processing then buys fish more cheaply, or follow with a lag.