International energy service company Hunting revealed the second of four planned acquisitions yesterday.
It has bought PTSMB Industri, a premium-threading operation based in Batam, Indonesia, for £6.56million.
The money is payable on completion, which is conditional on regulatory clearances from the Indonesian authorities. PTSMB employs about 190 staff and provides threading and machining services to Hunting’s regional operations in Singapore.
Hunting said the acquisition would strengthen its geographical presence in the marketplace with much needed capacity and increased reliability of supply.
PTSMB was founded in 2007 and is owned privately by two Malaysian businessmen. Its 2008 pre-tax profits were £1.19million and its net assets at December 31 were £4.06million.
The first of Hunting’s four deals was announced in April, when Hunting paid about £38million in cash for privately owned, Houston-based National Coupling Company, which develops and manufactures subsea hydraulic equipment.
Hunting chief executive Dennis Proctor said of yesterday’s Indonesian buy: “This acquisition secures essential manufacturing and threading capacity for our growing Asia-Pacific regional activities. PTSMB is well known to Hunting and operates to our exacting standards of quality assurance.”
Four deals were highlighted by Hunting following its sale last year of Canadian subsidiary Gibson Energy for about £517million to private-equity firms Riverstone and Carlyle.
Hunting said in February the acquisitions would be worth about £94million in total and would involve a manufacturing company in America with about 300 patents worldwide, a steel-processing firm in the US, an intervention and rental-product business with operations in the Middle East and Aberdeen, and a manufacturer in Indonesia.
Mr Proctor said the buys would add about 400 people to the company’s global workforce of 1,600 – about 280 of whom work at a tubulars business at Portlethen, near Aberdeen, at the Hunting Cromar wireline and pressure-control business in the Granite City and at another tubulars operation at Montrose.
Mr Proctor said in February he expected all four deals to be agreed within a few months.
Hunting also said it had net cash of £372.3million at the end of last year following the elimination of borrowings.
It has its principal operations in the UK, US, Canada, China, France, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Singapore and United Arab Emirates.