Siem Offshore Slides to Loss

Siem Offshore has seen red in the third quarter as the challenging OSV market continued the negative trend from the previous quarters with softening rates and decreasing utilization.

The Oslo-listed company recorded net loss of $9.8 million compared to net profit of $23.3 million in the year-ago quarter. The net loss attributable to shareholders was $8.9 million.

In the previous quarters this year, Siem Offshore booked net loss of $25.5 million and $45 million, which amounted to year-to-date loss of about $78.4 million attributable to shareholders. To remind, the company recorded $45.2 million profit for the year-earlier period.

Siem’s operating revenues were $82 million, down from $153.4 million in Q3 2014.

For the first nine months of 2015, revenues were at $332.4 million, versus $376.2 million in the corresponding period in 2014.

According to the company, the fleet in operation at the end of the second quarter totalled 45 vessels, including partly-owned vessels, two vessels in lay-up and two vessels operated on behalf of a pool member.

Siem had six Offshore Subsea Construction Vessels (OSCVs) in operation at the end of the quarter which earned operating revenues of $26.3 million and had 88% utilization.

The Company had 9 vessels under construction as at September 30, 2015. Six vessels were under construction in Poland, two in Germany and one in Brazil.

The total contract backlog of firm contracts for the Offshore Support Vessels segment at September 30, 2015 was $1.2 billion, including Big Orange XVIII, Secunda and the vessels under construction.

“Vessel owners continue to put vessels into lay-up and additional lay-ups are expected. We see similar trends world-wide and the outlook for the OSV market is expected to remain challenging for several years. Siem Offshore Contractors experienced an increased tendering activity for EPIC-based contracts for both medium and high-voltage power cables in the offshore windfarm (OWF) market with scheduled marine installation activities in 2017, 2018 and 2019,” said the company in a statement.