Singapore: Swiber Delivers Good Nine-Month Results

Singapore Swiber Delivers Good Nine-Month Results

Swiber Holdings Limited (“Swiber” or together with its subsidiaries, “the Group”), a world class integrated construction and support services provider to the offshore oil and gas industry reported a 14.0% increase in net profit to US$46.0 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2012 (“9M2012”), in tandem with a 47.0% surge in revenue to US$689.3 million over the same period.

The strong revenue growth was driven by various offshore construction contract wins that are concentrated beyond the Group‘s traditional markets of Southeast Asia and South Asia to include Latin America. Gross profit held steady at 15.7% for 9M2012, within the 15 – 16% range, notwithstanding higher cost of sales in line with the rise in revenue.

Said Mr. Francis Wong, Group Chief Executive Officer and President of Swiber, “We are pleased to have delivered a good nine-­month performance, which has surpassed FY2011 topline and bottomline results. Our strategies of expanding our capabilities and geographical reach have continued to bear fruits.

“Our latest sizeable US$143 million win in Southeast Asia and Latin America is a strong endorsement of our capabilities by oil majors. We will continue to build on our strong foundation to expand our market share and establish Swiber as the pre-­‐eminent offshore oil and gas services provider beyond the Asian region.

“Looking ahead, we see tremendous opportunities in the sector as the oil and gas industry resumes its capex investment after the recent financial crisis, in response to the increasing appetite for energy in developing economies. We have seen this in the form of new order wins by Singapore rig-­‐builders. This would in turn create demand for offshore services down the road when exploration and production work begins. We will continue to evaluate opportunities to further expand our capabilities to offer synergistic services and diversify our market reach.”

Other Performance Review

For 9M2012, Swiber saw its share of profit from associates and joint ventures surge over 7 times to hit US$11.5 million, from US$1.6 million in 9M2011. The increase was due to the delivery of positive results from certain associates in Southeast Asia.

Other operating income decreased by 61.2% from US$30.2 million in 9M2011 to US$11.7 million in 9M2012 as the last corresponding period included higher fair value gains from convertible bonds and realised gain on interest rate swap contract as well as a gain on assets held for sale.

Other operating expenses, on the other hand, rose 166.1% to US$8.0 million in 9M2012 as compared to US$3.0 million in 9M2011 mainly due to a US$6.7 million foreign exchange loss incurred in 9M2012. At the same time, in line with business expansion, higher bank borrowings, as well as redemption of medium term notes and partial redemption of convertible bonds in October 2012, the Group incurred higher administrative expenses of US$40.2 million and finance costs of US$24.1 million respectively in 9M2012, which had some impact on bottomline.

Swiber’s basic earnings per share, based on its 9M2012 results, was 5.1 US cents from 6.1 US cents in 9M2011, while net asset value per share rose to 82.0 US cents as at September 30, 2012, from 71.1 US cents as at FY2011.

For the three months ended September 31, 2012 (“3Q2012”), the Group achieved a 92.6% surge in revenue to US$265.3 million as compared to US$137.7 million in the same corresponding period last year (“3Q2011”), driven by strong contract wins in Southeast Asia,South Asia and Latin America.

Correspondingly, gross profit climbed 63.4% to US$37.3 million in 3Q2012 from US$22.8 million in 3Q2011. For 3Q2012, gross profit margin stood at 14.1%, 2.5 percentage points down from 16.6% in 3Q2011. Net profit declined by 21.1% to US$12.5 million in 3Q2012 from US$15.9 million in 3Q2011.

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Press Release, January 15, 2013