Engineering news
Britain’s largest oil and gas engineering group Amec Foster Wheeler made a pre-tax loss of £235 million in 2015, compared to a pre-tax profit of £155 million a year earlier.
However, the company reported its overall revenue grew by 37% to £5.45 billion.
The Americas continued to deliver the highest revenue for the group, generating £2.6 billion in 2015. A total of £1.49 billion was generated from Northern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, while the Asia, Middle East, Africa and Southern Europe regions produced £1.05 billion of revenue for Amec Foster Wheeler.
The Cheshire-headquartered company said its £6.6 billion order book, a year-on year increase of 4%, gives it “confidence” for the year ahead.
Amec Foster Wheeler said it plans to halve its net debt over next 15 months, through non-core disposals - including Global Power Group - and cash generation.
Ian McHoul, chief financial officer and interim chief executive, said: "Our focus is to maintain our solid operational performance and drive our cost reduction and efficiency programmes. We are also making good progress with our portfolio review, and have identified a number of non-core assets, including GPG, which we intend to sell over the next 15 months. We are targeting to halve our net debt over this timeframe, from disposal proceeds together with the cash generated from our core businesses. The successful refinancing we announced last week further strengthens our position.
"2016 is expected to be another year of challenging market conditions across upstream Oil & Gas and Mining. However, our exposure to a number of end markets, including downstream Oil & Gas, renewables and government work means we expect to see only a slight fall in like-for-like revenue, and a reduction in trading margins significantly less than the decline in 2015."