Irish-Malaysian engineering group Kentz today reported a 19 percent rise in its full-year adjusted pretax profit, before floatation costs, a strong backlog of orders.
Revenue in 2008, excluding joint ventures, increased by 18.1% to $643.4m from $544.6m in 2007. Profit before tax in 2008 increased by 18.7% to $40.7m, before flotation costs of $4.695m, from $34.3m in 2007.
The orders backlog at the end of 2008 increased by 68.3% to over $1bn, from $596.4m in 2007.
A final dividend of 3.8 US cents per share, has been declared.
Kentz said it remains well positioned to deliver strong growth in the coming year despite the challenges presented by the poor state of the global economy. The strategic developments that we have implemented over the last two years have created robust and profitable business lines.
The company said in a statement:"We have entered 2009 with a backlog in excess of US$1bn, the largest in the Company’s history and a pipeline of target project prospects with a value in excess of US$2.15bn. Our strategy of focusing on oil and gas, petrochemicals and energy projects in developing regions has been highly successful, and we have continued to build on the strong foundations in our core markets.
We are encouraged by the fact that a large number of International Oil Companies (IOC’s) and National Oil Companies (NOC’s) increased their exploration and production capital spending to record highs in 2008. Whilst capital expenditure plans for these companies vary considerably for 2009 due to the instability of the global economy, we are seeing positive capital investment sentiments for upstream exploration and production projects from important Kentz clients, such as Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and Saudi Aramco."
Kentz listed on the London AIM exchange in February 2008.
