By Mikael Holter

(Bloomberg) — When the worth of a 10-pound (4.5-kilogram) Atlantic salmon jumped above the price of a barrel of crude final month, no one within the oil business was celebrating.

For John Fredriksen, who constructed a fortune on oil tankers and offshore drilling, it did at the least present some comfort. While his whole web value fell 40 p.c to $10.6 billion prior to now 18 months, the worth of his funding on the earth’s largest salmon producer climbed by half as fish costs rose to a document.

Fredriksen, who laid the muse of his delivery fortune within the Nineteen Seventies and Eighties by making daring bets within the conflict-ridden Middle East, has seen his about 25 p.c stake in Marine Harvest ASA flip into his most beneficial fairness holding. That’s proving to be a boon for the 71-year-old Norwegian-born billionaire amid the worst crude market in a era.

“Getting into fish was undoubtedly a smart move,” Kolbjoern Giskeoedegaard, an analyst at Nordea Bank AB, stated in a telephone interview. “What’s important for a system like the Fredriksen system, and which they’ve focused on increasingly these past years, is to put their eggs in several baskets.”

Fredriksen’s $1.6 billion Marine Harvest holding is now seven occasions as helpful as his similar-size stake in offshore driller Seadrill Ltd., previously the mainstay of his empire earlier than tumbling to document lows as oil-company demand dried up. Indeed it exceeds the mixed worth of his pursuits in Seadrill, crude-shipper Frontline Ltd. and oil dealer Arcadia Petroleum Ltd., in keeping with Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.

Salmon Farming

The delivery tycoon received concerned in salmon farming in the course of the final decade as animal illnesses similar to avian influenza had been prompting some customers to hunt different sources of protein, similar to seafood. Just as Seadrill prospered throughout the oil-boom that adopted its founding in 2005 and helped Fredriksen climate an prolonged downturn within the tanker market, Marine Harvest is offering a cushion to the stoop in crude.

One of Fredriksen’s advisers didn’t reply to an e-mail searching for remark.

Fredriksen, now a citizen of Cyprus, has signaled he intends to carry on to his place in Marine Harvest, Chairman Ole Eirik Leroey stated in an interview in Aalesund, Norway final week.

“He’s one of the most logically thinking people I’ve met,” Leroey stated. “He likes operations, he likes organic growth, he has an unbelievable ability to identify good performances and to demand continuous improvement.”

Fredriksen additionally has a document of tapping his firms for dividends. The 12-month dividend yield at Seadrill was near 11 p.c in August 2014, when it introduced its final payout, earlier than market turmoil compelled the corporate to halt distributions a number of months later. Marine Harvest has a coverage of distributing at the least 75 p.c of free annual money circulation to its house owners.

“We have a main shareholder who makes sure we keep that up,” Leroey stated throughout a speech. “You can rest assured of that.”

Seadrill has dropped 93 p.c since June 1, 2014 because the collapse in oil costs led producers to chop spending, eroding demand for companies similar to drilling simply as a wave of recent vessels added to oversupply. Fredriksen’s stake in Seadrill is now value about $212 million, just like his preliminary 2005 funding within the firm, in keeping with Bloomberg estimates.

Marine Harvest has jumped 75 p.c over the identical interval as shortages pushed up salmon costs and demand rose from Europe to Asia. The shares final week climbed to the best ranges since October 2003, earlier than the corporate was acquired by Fredriksen’s PAN Fish ASA in 2006.

While the world is drowning in oil, it will possibly’t get sufficient salmon.

“Global production potential has been capped, at least for a while,” Nordea’s Giskeoedegaard stated. Even after the latest inventory surges, “we see a 15 to 20 percent upside potential in the salmon industry,” he stated.

© 2016 Bloomberg L.P