Expro finance chief Jean Vernet has bowed out after delivering a huge improvement in the company’s balance sheet.
The international oilfield services firm narrowed losses to £2.1million during the 12 months to March 31, from £555.4million a year earlier, as it reshaped its business in response to new trading conditions.
Expro’s revenue still suffered – down 25% year-on-year at £523.5million – as the global oil and gas market continued to contract.
But the Aberdeen and Reading-based group said core areas of the business, including well testing and well intervention, had maintained market share.
Mr Vernet, delivering his last report as Expro’s chief financial officer before he took up a new job this week as president and chief executive of US-based engineering services firm John Crane, part of Smiths Group, also had a key role in a major capital restructuring.
Last October, Expro’s shareholders and lenders representing about 98% of borrowings converted mezzanine loans worth more than £600million into equity.
The move is saving the company about £31million a year in interest payments, while the new shareholders ploughed in an extra £77million of investment.
Expro’s former investment consortium, Umbrellastream, comprising Arle Capital Partners, Goldman Sachs and Alpinvest, was wound up.
Wider restructuring during the 2016/17 trading year saw Expro’s global workforce shrink by about 8% to 4,100 people.
Mr Vernet said the job cull was less hard on the group’s operations in Aberdeen, where the group now employs 620 after a 5% drop.
Expro’s careful approach to cost management had delivered an adjusted operating margin of 19.3%, he said, adding the firm – like others in the global oil and gas supply chain – was now waiting for a boost from oil prices.
He said: “It will encourage customers to start investing again. Operational and production maintenance-related work is coming back slightly.
“What we don’t see just now is new projects being signed up for – but we know they are out there and there is good bidding activity. Customers are constantly reviewing their plans.”
Mr Vernet said it was impossible to tell when the industry’s “inflexion point” would come.
But with demand for hydrocarbons growing it was only a matter of time, he said, adding: “I expect everybody will rush back at once and that when the rebound comes it will be sudden.”
Expro said revenue from operations in Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) fell 25.1% to £125.7million, with the UK, Norway and CIS accounting for most of the drop.
Recommended for you
