Northbridge Industrial Services plc (LON: NBI), the industrial services and rental company, has today issued the following pre-close trading statement in advance of its preliminary results announcement for the year ended 31 December 2019, which is scheduled to be released on 7 April 2020.
Trading during the second half of 2019 continued to achieve the improved performance that was experienced in the first six months of the year and remains in line with the Group’s forecasts, which show a considerable improvement on 2018. The positive impact of consistent revenue generation enabled our operational gearing to benefit Group cash flow, resulting in trading EBITDA continuing to increase.
Recovery in the oil and gas market remains on track, with Brent Crude price around $60bbl, and investment by the main oil & gas majors continuing to flow through. Consequently, the Group is confident that the results for the full year ended 31 December 2019 will be in line with management’s expectations.
Northbridge has two core activities, Crestchic Loadbanks and Tasman Oil Tools.
Crestchic is a specialist electrical equipment business which manufactures, sells and rents loadbanks and transformers from its base in Burton on Trent and has depots in France, Germany, Belgium, UAE and Singapore. Crestchic also has satellite locations in China and the USA.
Tasman Oil Tools rents drilling equipment to the oil, gas and geothermal industries from its sites in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and the UAE.
Crestchic- Electrical power reliability
The UK and European activities of Crestchic continued to perform well as it is largely resilient to market conditions. The US operation, which we started in 2016, has continued to grow and revenues have increased further. Our other overseas markets for power projects, principally relating to natural resources and shipyards, have shown signs of renewed activity and this has continued into 2020, as the recovery in the energy market remains evident. Crestchic has started 2020 with its largest ever new year order book for the sale of manufactured equipment, surpassing its 2019 record.
Tasman – Drilling tool rental
The improvement in sentiment in the oil and gas market experienced during the first half of 2019 continued into the second six months. Australia in particular continued on its improvement, supported by increasing demand for natural gas and LNG for both domestic consumption and for export.
As a result, activity levels in our rental business of Tasman continued to improve. Our focus on quality, service levels and modest ongoing investment, enabled Tasman to increase its market share in our key Asia Pacific region of operation. Consequently, year-on-year revenues are now showing significant gains in large parts of our market, albeit from a low base.
Outlook
Underlying sentiment in Northbridge Industrial Services’ main markets continues to improve, and despite recent events regarding global trade currently having an impact on business confidence, we believe the resilience of the recovery in our markets is not in doubt and we expect further good progress during 2020, and look forward to a profitable future.
