5th Mar 2015 07:47
LONDON (Alliance News) - Hunting PLC Wednesday said it has increased its final dividend by 5% despite its pretax profit falling in 2014 due to impairment charges.
For the year ended December 31, the energy services company reported revenue of USD1.38 billion, a significant rise from GBP1.29 billion reported a year earlier. The rise came from its well completion and well intervention units, partially offset by a fall in revenue from its well construction unit.
Profit from continuing operations, before impairment charges, totalled USD217.8 million, up from USD200 million a year earlier.
The company recorded a USD103.9 million impairment charge in 2014, attributable to the Hunting Electronics and Drilling Tools business units alongside a further USD11.3 million charge against its exploration and production assets. This is compared to a total of USD61.1 million in impairment charges in 2013.
This resulted in a pretax profit of USD108.5 million in 2014, down from USD136.4 million a year earlier.
Despite the fall in profit, the company increased its final dividend by 5% to 22.9 cents per share from the 21.8 cents per share paid a year earlier, as Hunting has "confidence in the longer term fundamentals of our industry," it said.
"The sharp reduction in the global price of crude oil did not affect our trading results during 2014, however, we continue to monitor our customer activity levels closely going into 2015," said Hunting.
The company also warned in February that the the full impact of lower oil prices would not hit the company until the second quarter of 2015, and said it will be curtailing any non-essential costs across its global supply chain.
In February, Hunting said its well completion and well construction businesses will be hit the most by reduced activity resulting from the low oil price, whilst its well intervention business will be impacted "to a lesser extent".
By Joshua Warner; [email protected]; @JoshAlliance
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