Singapore yard Sembcorp Marine made an overall loss of $192m in the first half of the year, despite revenue from its offshore platforms business growing 165% on last year to $130m on the back of contracts for jacket foundations and topsides for the Hornsea 2 offshore wind farm.
The loss, which was wider than the $7m loss in 1H 2019, followed the shutdown of production activities at all its Singapore yards since April as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, it said.
It said since April, when the Singapore government imposed its Covid-19 ‘circuit breaker’ measures, in particular movement restrictions that disallowed migrant workers from leaving their dormitories for work, there was a substantial reduction in the group’s operating yard workforce from 20,000 to about 850 people.
Therefore, the company’s Singapore yards had to stand down and discontinue production activities, resulting in significant delays to project executions.
“As a consequence, all segments posted losses for the six months period, with the exception of Repairs & Upgrades which reported higher profits on better product mix of higher margin upgrade projects which were executed during the first quarter of 2020,” Sembcorp said.
Overall, group revenue for the first half of 2020 totalled $906m, compared with $1.54bn booked in 1H 2019.
The group posted negative EBITDA of $72m in 1H 2020, compared with positive EBITDA of $125m in the same period last year.
Group operating loss for 1H 2020 was $173m, compared with 1H 2019 operating profit of $3m.