Big catch: Vard’s profits surge 40% in 1H14

A stellar second half awaits.

Vard Holdings reported its impressive 2Q14 results today. The firm’s earnings surged 56.2% year on year to NOK 189m ($37.8m), while profit after tax for 1H2014 rose almost 40% year-on-year to NOK 190 million ($38m).

Revenues for 2Q2014 were NOK 2.94 billion ($588m), remaining flat when compared to 2Q13. Revenues for 1H2014 registered at NOK 5.61 billion ($1.12b), a slight decline from of 1.4% yoy.

According to OCBC, “We believe this was due to the absence of cost overruns, coupled with an impairment charge of NOK70m in 2Q13 for one of its Brazilian yards. We expect 2H to come in stronger than its 1H performance. VARD clinched NOK2.7b worth of new orders in 2Q14, and ended the quarter with an order book of NOK21.6b, which would provide visibility to its revenue streams. We will be speaking with management later to get more details.”

Here’s more from Vard:

In 2Q2014, VARD recorded a healthy order intake of NOK 2.7 billion following five new vessel contract wins across all three of VARD’s major vessel segments.

These five vessels include one Offshore Construction and Anchor Handling Vessel for Rem Offshore, newly developed by Vard Design, one Offshore Support Vessel for Island Offshore, a repeat customer that VARD has delivered more than 30 vessels to in the past, and three Platform Supply Vessels (“PSV”), one for Carlotta Offshore, and two for Nordic American Offshore.

On the back of seven vessel deliveries, VARD concluded 1H2014 with a strong order book value of NOK 21.6 billion and 43 vessels in the order book. The existing order book stretches into 2017, and includes 27 vessels of VARD’s own design.