illus. courtesy Aker Solutions

Super supplier-contractor Aker Solutions reported higher second-quarter profits on Thursday, and said its billion-dollar backlog built on a sub-sea upswing and big jobs had the company “well prepared to meet the global economic downturn”.

The company's newly organized sub-sea organization was reportedly seeing brisk business and helped the group turn in 792 million kroner ($131.2 million) in net profit, up 33 million kroner ($5.5 million) over 2008 — Year of Record Highs and lows for many businesses. The result came on solid revenues and big new contracts in Russia that accrued to 14.32 billion kroner ($2.37 billion), about 700 million kroner ($116 million) less year-on-year.

Aker Solutions managers cited the same uncertainty in the markets as has been the pattern since the credit crunch began to bite toward the end of 2008.

“There is a tendency of clients postponing milestone payments more often than before, but the working capital level is expected to normalise during the second half of 2009,” management said, adding that while uncertain in the short-term, “long-term market fundamentals” remain positive.

Indeed, the company backlog has ballooned to 61.92 billion kroner ($10.26 billion), or bigger by 16 percent and not eaten away since the order feasts seen in the record years before second-half 2008.

Sub-sea revenues, too, were up nearly 30 percent to 3.96 billion kroner ($656 million) on fewer contracts.

The only new warning from company leadership was that “spare capacity is likely to become available in the group during 2009”, often a sign of impending layoffs.

But in a tactic apparently aimed at warding off worker strife, the board said “Existing capacity must be utilised where possible, and an important measure will be to move capacity in-house across both business areas and geographical regions."

Tags: Aker Solutions