Northbridge Industrial Services Plc (LON:NBI) Chief Executive Officer Eric Hook caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss what the company does, how Crestchic and Tasman have performed and the outlook for 2019.
Q1: For anyone who’s not familiar with Northbridge Industrial Services, can you just give us a quick overview of what the company does?
A1: We provide an industrial services operation to two different sectors although they are linked probably by energy.
Firstly, we manufacture equipment that’s used to commission and test power plants and we also rent that into the sector as well. Secondly, we have an operation which provides drilling tools to the gas, oil and geothermal sectors for off-shore and on-shore drilling, this is mostly done in the Far East, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and also in the Middle East.
Q2: You’ve just provided an update to the market ahead of year-end results, how did Crestchic perform over the year?
A2: Pretty well. It’s a very resilient business, it operates in the more advanced economies in Western Europe and USA where power reliability is very important in terms of data processing, in terms of liability of power systems etc.
In the rest of the world where it’s more focussed towards resources, oil and gas, mining etc, it’s had a tough couple of years but in general, I would say that things are gradually improving underpinned by the very resilient market we’re involved in in Western Europe.
Q3: How has Tasma performed?
A3: Tasman has suffered obviously very badly from the downturn in oil and gas, but we’ve seen a very marked change of sentiment, beginning in 2018 which is beginning now to turn into a more optimistic view of what activity might be in the future.
So, we see more drilling rigs being deployed, more final investment decisions being made by oil companies in exploration and production and a more positive outlook in terms of what the future might hold.
At the moment rates are still low but there is more activity in the market so we’re hoping that will continue into 2019.
Q4: How do you view the outlook for 2019 for Northbridge Industrial Services?
A4: I think, at the moment, we’re happy with the forecasts that are out in the market. There’s quite a change over the last 3 or 4 years in energy market and we’re expecting that that will continue, we see no reason why it should not, but things have happened unexpectedly in the past.
At the moment, we have no negative things on the horizon and we’re quite positive about what the future might hold.
