May 2014: Kentz

Paul Acton, client director, SAS and Adrian Griffin, Group commercial contracts and risk officer, Kentz

Global engineering specialist provider, Kentz continues its strong financial position which is supporting significant growth prospects.

Kentz is a global engineering specialist solutions provider, which serves blue chip clients primarily in the oil and gas, petrochemical and mining and metals sectors. Listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), Kentz has over 14,500 employees in 36 countries.

In the year ending December 2013, the company generated revenues of $1.66bn and profit before tax of $118m.

In May this year, Kentz Corporation – the holding company of the Kentz engineering and construction Group – released its first quarter results for 2014. It showed: year-to-date performance in line with management’s expectations; the prospect pipeline increased to $16.3bn and the order intake for the first four months of the year was $1.8bn. The Global Business Unit’s realignment announced earlier this year has already shown positive signs and the Group continued its strong financial position which is supporting further growth.

Kentz’s performance has been in line with expectations and it is expected that 2014 will produce considerable revenue growth for the Group.

Christian Brown, chief executive of Kentz, said: “Our increasing order backlog to record levels provides us with great confidence for the continued success of Kentz. We are continuing to see further investment from our clients throughout the world and are extremely pleased that the addition of Valerus to the Group has been seamless to date and offers additional opportunities for growth.”

In April, Kentz announced the award of an AUS$615m (US$570m) contract to it’s Australian subsidiary for the electrical and instrumentation (E&I) construction packages for the Ichthys Project Onshore LNG Facilities in Darwin, Australia. Kentz also secured a further scope of work on the telecommunications contract for the Fort Hills Oil Sands Project in Canada. Kentz Canada is the main telecom contractor for the project and the scope has been extended to include full engineering, design and procurement of the project telecommunication systems. In May, Kentz completed the purchase of Alegro Projects and Fabrication, an organisation offering fabrication and construction services to the industrial sector in Western Canada.

In addition, Kentz was also award of a major five-year cost reimbursable contract by Fluor Kuwait Company, with an estimated value of $125m.

According to Brown: “Following very significant growth in our Technical Support Services (TSS) business in 2013, we are continuing to see further opportunities for our services in our core markets. With a greater focus by oil and gas companies on controlling costs and rigorous capital discipline, we anticipate that there will be further opportunities for our TSS services throughout the operational phases of client projects as we support owners by ensuring the most efficient use of their shareholder cash and improving their returns.”

He is also optimistic about the future outlook for Kentz. “We have had an excellent start to 2014 and are extremely pleased with the order intake to date. We have identified other exciting project opportunities across all business units and regions which we expect will continue to provide Kentz with significant growth. Our clients continue to invest in both capex and opex and having such a differentiated service offering allows Kentz to participate in many areas of our clients’ developments. This is evidenced by the growing pipeline of prospects which stands at $16.3bn. Overall, we are confident of delivering on our targets for 2014 and remain focused on continuing to grow our company in 2015 and beyond.”