Petrofac shares plummet 17pc on profit warning
Petrofac, the energy services firm, has seen its shares plunge over 17 per cent this morning, after warning its net profit for this year will fall by as much as 11 per cent.
A disappointing performance by its Integrated Energy Services (IES) division will see profit fall to between $580m and $600m.
Petrofac had said it was expecting to see little or not growth from the $650m it reported in 2013. The news saw £700m wiped off the firm’s market value.
Delays related to two contracts in the North Sea and Romania fuelled the problems with the division, hitting its earnings.
For some time Petrofac had focused on a target to double 2010 net income by next year, but it scaled back the aim last November.
Chief executive Ayman Asfari highlighted the operational progress that’s been made in engineering, contraction, operations and maintenance, with the group taking more than $5.5bn of orders in the year to date. At the end of March, its backlog stood at record levels of $18.6bn, "giving [us] good revenue visibility for 2014 and beyond."