International oilfield service company Expro yesterday announced worldwide contract wins worth £250million.
Chairman and chief executive Graeme Coutts said the future looked particularly bright for the business, which has its headquarters in Aberdeen.
He added: “Though the market has experienced a downturn and operator activity has been slow, we are now seeing the predicted recovery, with an upturn in contract activity across our regional operating structure and across many of our global product lines, which is very encouraging.
“Expro’s teams across the world have secured some significant contract wins with both new and existing customers, re-inforcing our position as a leading provider of the products, services and expertise required to help develop even the most challenging reserves. Our commitment to developing solutions to technical hurdles is again evidenced by a record level of investment in technology development.
“While there is no doubt that business has been challenging, I am very pleased with progress at Expro as we continue to outperform many of our peers across a difficult marketplace. Over recent months, Expro has displayed strong characteristics despite the economic environment.”
In the North Sea, Expro has recently won contracts and extensions worth more than £100million.
The company said these deals underlined a more positive outlook in a declining but stable region.
Expro added: “Customers in the North Sea are increasingly interested in enhanced recovery from their older existing assets, which is now becoming a global phenomenon.”
The firm currently has a global order book of more than £700million – around 10% up on a year ago.
Expro employs 5,000 people in 50 countries, including 700 in the Granite City.
The company had reported lower revenue and operating profits for the year to March 31 because of the downturn in upstream oil and gas activity fuelled by lower oil prices.
Revenue for the period was down 18.8% on the year before at £688.44million. Adjusted operating profits, or earnings before interest, depreciation and amortisation, were 16.2% lower year-on-year to £204.95million.
Pre-tax losses more than doubled to £431.45million. Financial controller Mark Collis said this was accounted for by non-cash charges.
Mr Coutts explained yesterday that these had been one-off charges.
He added that Expro was now generating cash at record levels and would return to profitability at the pre-tax level this year.
Expro was sold for £1.81billion in July 2008 to private-equity interests – a consortium made up of Candover, Goldman Sachs Capital Partners and AlpInvest Partners.