WTI $38.24 -$2.21, Brent $42.69 -$2.27, Diff $4.45 -51c, NG $2.65 -3c

Petrofac

A very short blog this morning as it is likely to be this week with so many results and meetings going on.

Petrofac has announced its results which under the ‘challenging’ circumstances appear to be pretty robust. I am attending the meeting shortly and of course will comment afterwards should anything material change but on the face of it the numbers dont give too much cause for concern.

Revenue is up 25% as OEC projects move to the execution phase which means that as expected profits will be seriously 2H weighted and interim profits were down 4%. ECOM new orders were $6bn year to date and show a ‘healthy pipeline’ and the backlog is $20.9bn up from the December number of $18.9bn. With the ECOM backlog up 14% at 17.8bn showing ‘excellent revenue visibility’ CEO Ayman Asfari is remarkably upbeat. Laggan-Tormore is finally getting behind them but not without one last farewell with another £30m of costs before they finally escape those shackles. With Stella now on target for production n ext year and significant cost savings things might have been a lot worse. I’m sure some analysts will pick up on an increase in debt from $0.7bn to $1bn which is for Stella and the offshore vessel but it looks manageable although the vessel stirs some strong feelings amongst followers.

As I said more later, but the divvi is held at 22c and the statement is as confident as it could be, others reporting this week are unlikely to be quite so solid but so far the UK stocks have avoided the minefield we might have expected.