RUS

Sovcomflot profit soars

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TradeWinds

Russian owner Sovcomflot (SCF Group) has benefited from strong spot tanker markets to post a big increase in first half earnings.

Net profit to 30 June rose to $216.3m, against $63.6m in the same period of 2014.

Gross revenue was up 11.8% to $754.9m, while EBITDA increased 46% to $368m.

CEO Sergey Frank said: "Sovcomflot achieved very strong results exceeding our own forecasts for the period and reflecting a sustained contribution from both the conventional tanker and industrial shipping segments.

"The tanker markets were favourable towards shipowners, and Sovcomflot was well positioned to benefit from the anticipated rise in the spot tanker freight markets given the quality and size of its fleet and efficient chartering policy based on in-house analytics.

"We are cautiously optimistic about the second half of the year with good trading continuing based on strong supply-demand fundamentals in most tanker segments which we operate in.”

Crude tanker time charter equivalent (TCE) revenues grew 27% to $280.5m. Products carriers added 24% to reach $126.6m.

Gas ships saw income rise 50% to $63.6m, while its offshore shipping operations produced TCE revenues of $114.4m, up from $109.8m.

The company took delivery of two new LNG carriers in the period

CFO Nikolay Kolesnikov added the group’s total future contracted revenues stood at $8.7bn.

He said: "Importantly, the group’s credit ratings were confirmed at their current levels during the period, and the group continued to enjoy access to debt finance markets with financing of around $0.9bn from a number of international commercial and export credit banks signed in the course of the past nine months.”