Cash at AquaGen rose 150.3% to NOK 198m in the year before its change of owner

Net profit sat above operating profit, and cash piled up

AquaGen AS, based in Trondheim, breeds salmon and trout and sells eggs to fish farmers. In its financial year from July 2024 to June 2025 it took NOK 962m in revenue, up 17.3% from NOK 820m a year earlier. Operating profit, what the business earns from breeding and selling before interest and tax, rose 21.1% to NOK 286m. Net profit, after financial items and tax, rose 22.5% to NOK 367m.

That last pair is the odd one. In most companies net profit is smaller than operating profit, because interest and tax come off. At AquaGen it is the other way round. The net margin reached 38.2% of revenue, above the operating margin of 29.7%. The year before showed the same pattern: net profit of NOK 300m against operating profit of NOK 236m. Whatever sits below the operating line added more than tax took away, in both years.

Cash moved too. It rose from NOK 79.1m to NOK 198m, an increase of NOK 119m. These are the accounts of AquaGen AS on its own, not of the whole group, and that scope matters for how the profit reads.

Why a parent company can earn more than its operations

When a company owns other companies, its standalone income statement records their contribution as financial income, not as operating profit. In a Norwegian aksjeselskap (AS, the equivalent of a limited company) this usually means dividends from subsidiaries, group contributions (a Norwegian way of shifting taxable profit between group companies), income from associates, interest on cash and loans to group companies, and currency gains. A breeder that sells eggs abroad and holds part of its business in subsidiaries can collect a good deal of income this way.

The accounts do not break the gap down. The line that would settle it is net financial items, split into income from group companies, interest and currency effects. That split decides how repeatable the profit is. A dividend from a subsidiary is a decision made each year by the owner, so it can rise, fall or vanish. Interest on a growing cash pile is steadier while rates hold. A currency gain depends on the krone and can reverse the following year.

The operating business itself looks solid. Revenue went from NOK 728m in the year to June 2023 to NOK 820m and then NOK 962m, a rise in both years. The operating margin widened from 28.8% to 29.7%, a gain of 0.9 pp, so the extra sales came with slightly better margins rather than at their expense. I would not call that a breakthrough, but it is a business that earns well from what it sells, before any help from below the line.

The balance sheet is equally comfortable. Equity grew 12.0% to NOK 1.5bn, against total assets of NOK 1.9bn. The equity ratio, the share of assets funded by the owners rather than by creditors, slipped from 81.1% to 79.3%, a fall of 1.8 pp. That small decline comes from assets growing faster than equity, not from any strain. A company with an equity ratio of 79.3% is not short of room.

A new owner, a new board and new subsidiaries

After the year closed, AquaGen AS changed hands and reshaped its group. According to Brønnøysundregistrene, the Norwegian company register, AquaGen AS recorded a change of control in late October 2026. On the same day it registered new subsidiaries: AquaGen Chile SA, AquaGen Holdings Ltd and Aquasearch Ova ApS. The next day it recorded a new chair of the board, further board members and a new chief executive (daglig leder, the Norwegian title).

None of this is in the accounts for the year to June 2025. It does bear on how to read them. Restructuring a group around a change of owner tends to move subsidiaries in and out of a parent company. The income those subsidiaries pass up to the parent then moves with them. If part of the net profit above came from companies now held elsewhere in the group, or if new subsidiaries start paying up to AquaGen AS, the standalone figures for the next year will shift for reasons that have nothing to do with how many salmon eggs were sold.

The operating line is the part of the profit that belongs to the breeding business itself, and it grew. The gap between operating and net profit belongs to the group structure, and the group structure has just been redrawn.

What to check in your own company

If your company owns other companies, or holds a large cash balance, the same gap may sit in your own income statement. Open your last annual accounts and put operating profit next to profit before tax. If profit before tax is higher, your financial items are adding to profit, and you should know exactly why.

Ask your finance team for one table: net financial items split into dividends and group contributions from subsidiaries, interest received, interest paid and currency effects. Then mark each line as either decided by someone (a dividend, a group contribution) or earned by the market (interest, currency). The first group is only as reliable as the decision behind it. The second moves with rates and exchange rates, and it can reverse without warning.

If you are about to restructure, sell part of the group or bring in an investor, do the same exercise before the deal, not after. Work out which subsidiary pays what into which parent. Otherwise the year after a reorganisation can show a fall in profit that nobody in the operating business caused, and a board meeting spent explaining it.

AquaGen's operations earned more on more revenue, and its balance sheet is strong. The part of its profit that came from below the operating line now belongs to a group with a new owner and a new shape, so the operating margin is the figure that will tell the truer story next year.