Petrofac confirmed this morning that it had fallen further into the red in its last financial year, with Covid taking a toll on its performance.
The international service provider to the energy industry reported EBITDA losses of £110million in 2022, compared to a deficit of £69million the year before.
Net losses widened to £248million from £196million previously.
Revenues fell to £2.076billion, as against £2.434billion in 2021.
The new CEO, Tareq Kawash, said: “Petrofac’s performance for 2022 was severely impacted by the challenges in the group’s legacy energy & construction portfolio, which continues to feel the direct and indirect effects of pandemic delays.
“We are working resolutely to put these challenges behind us, and to rebuild our backlog – such as the recent multi-year, multi-platform framework agreement in support of TenneT’s 2GW offshore-wind programme.
Attractive growth opportunities
“Meanwhile, integrated energy services is performing well, and asset solutions continues to provide us with attractive growth opportunities.”
At the end of March, Petrofac and Hitachi Energy said they had secured the landmark deal with TenneT worth around £11.6billion.
The Dutch-German transmission system operator is working to expand offshore wind capacity.
The framework agreement - the largest in Petrofac’s history - covers six projects.
The deal includes an initial commitment to deploy six renewable integration systems - five of which will connect offshore wind farms to the Dutch grid and the sixth to the German grid.
Mr Kawash also said today: ““I joined Petrofac because I see the business is a trusted project-delivery partner, with significant opportunity for growth and value creation.
Differentiated competitive position
“I have known the business for many years and believe strongly in the business model and Petrofac’s differentiated competitive position.
“We have an exceptional engineering, procurement, construction and operations capability that is well positioned to deliver and support critical energy infrastructure.
“In an increasingly-active market, we must be selective and disciplined as we grow our order book over the coming years. I am impressed by the people at Petrofac and I’m excited to work together to deliver the group’s potential.”
Petrofac said in the results that the near-term objectives for the group were clear: to leverage its healthy pipeline of opportunities to increase backlog; and to release existing working capital to support liquidity.
It added: “Good progress has been made in the year to date with the TenneT award, an extension of bank debt facilities and efforts to release working capital.”
Shareholders in the firm, whose office locations include Aberdeen, have had a tough time of it in recent years.
Shares well off highs
Petrofac’s share price are well off their peaks achieved in the last decade.
They had risen to more than £15 back in 2012, but fell to less than 50p last month. They slipped by more than 1% to 62.3p earlier this morning.