Australian yellowtail kingfish-farming firm Clean Seas has issued a new update on its lowered harvest guidance that led the company’s stock price to reach a new low.
Clean Seas first announced on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) on 1 November that it was experiencing higher mortalities than expected and that it revised its sales volumes for FY 2025 to between 2,550 metric tons (MT) and 2,650 MT, resulting in a breakeven or modest loss in operating EBITDA. Less than a month later, the company issued another update saying the mortalities in the 2024 year class cohort due to warmer summer months were even higher than the earlier update.
Then, on 20 December, the company issued new harvest guidance that it said would be lower than the 1 November 2024 update by roughly 600 MT – though it didn’t indicate what the projected impacts on its operational EBITDA would be.
The reaction of the stock market was immediate, with the company’s stock price dropping from AUD 0.13 (USD 0.08, EUR 0.07) on 19 December to under AUD 0.09 (USD 0.05, EUR 0.05) on 20 December. Overall, the company stock price has dropped 40 percent in the last month.
The company said that it first noticed a decline in the performance of its 2024 year class cohort in March 2024, as growth rates for the fish began to fall below expectations.
“At that time, overall performance remained broadly consistent with historical trends, and no reduction in harvest expectations was considered necessary,” Clean Seas said.
The company said that in response to those issues, it implemented ...
