John Wood sees revenues rise

23rd Aug 2011 07:46

John Wood Group, the rapidly transforming oil and gas services firm, is seeing 'good momentum' across its business, with the order book remaining strong and the bid pipeline healthy.Earnings before interest, tax and amortisation (EBITA) in the first half of 2011 rose 25% to $192m from $153.3m last year. Profit from continuing operations before tax and exceptional items rose 49% to $102.4m from $68.8m last year. Total revenues were up by 17% to $2.83bn from $2.41bn last year.On the back of the strong financial performance the group will boost its interim dividend by 15% to 3.9 cents from 3.4 cents last year."The group has delivered good growth in the first half and anticipates that full year performance will be in line with expectations," Sir Ian Wood, Chairman, and Allister Langlands, Chief Executive, said in a joint statement."Market conditions have continued to improve during the period with global exploration & production spending forecast to increase in 2011 and 2012. Despite the recent volatility in financial and commodity markets, we continue to see good momentum across our business," the statement continued. The last year has been a dramatic one for John Wood. It paid $955m to merge its production facilities support division with smaller rival PSN back in December. It then sold its Well Support operations to American giant GE in February for $2.6bn, returning $1.7bn back to shareholders.The shares are up almost 50% over the last year and rose 7.5p to 526p on the announcement of the results.BS