EMAS On Hold for U.S. IPO

Singapore-listed, Ezra Holdings, has put on hold a plan to list EMAS AMC, Ezra’s subsea services division in the United States, due to unfavourable market conditions, Reuters reports.

“Given where the markets are, we have effectively put that on hold,” Eugene Cheng, group chief financial officer of Ezra, told Reuters.

Cheng said comparable companies were trading in the U.S. at three to four times EBITDA, down from seven to eight times when Ezra was first considering the option.

EMAS, experienced a decrease in revenue for 1Q15 due to the lower revenue contributions from the vessel Lewek Express which has been in planned mandatory dry dock for 1Q15 and the urgent maintenance and repair of Lewek Champion due to the gangway malfunctioning while the vessel was on a project during the quarter, causing the vessel to be out of operations since October 2014.

In October last year, EMAS Offshore, formerly known as EOC, made its debut on the Main Board of the Singapore Exchange Securities Trading (SGX-ST), placing it as the first company to dual-list in Norway and Singapore for capital raising.

Recently, EMAS secured a subsea construction contract with Apache Energy in Australia valued in excess of A$130 million (US$105 million).