Wood Group chief executive Ken Gilmartin has said the company is "winning" on all fronts as the energy services group reported solid trading in the first half of the year.
In an update to shareholders, Aberdeen-headquartered Wood said revenues for the six months to the end of June are expected to come in at around $2.9 billion (£2.2bn), up 15% on the same period a year earlier. Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) will be roughly 6% higher at $195 million.
The group also boosted its headcount during the period by 5%, taking its total workforce to 35,600 people as it bagged "significant" new contract wins. Mr Gilmartin further highlighted that the business will return to generating positive cash flow in the second half of this year.
READ MORE: Wood Group: Do investors have the patience for a three-year plan?
“We are on the right track, the strategy is working and we’re starting to deliver and providing that delivery consistently, which is making us all very excited right now in Wood," he said.
The group is seven months into a three-year growth plan that Mr Gilmartin said will boost returns to shareholders following a failed takeover approach earlier this year.
Wood was the subject of repeated and unsolicited bid approaches from US private equity group Apollo Global Management. It knocked back multiple proposals from the New Tork-headquartered firm on the basis that they undervalued Wood's business.
Following "feedback" from shareholders, the board of directors agreed in May to open the books to Apollo with an eye towards advancing a bid of 240p per share, valuing Wood at nearly £1.7bn. Apollo relented later that month, announcing that it had decided against making another takeover bid.
Mr Gilmartin said Wood, ranked among the FTSE's 250 largest quoted companies, put in a solid performance across all of its major geographies in the first half of the year.
"We are seeing strong growth in the UK, we have seen growth in the Americas, we have seen growth in the Middle East, and we have seen growth in Southeast Asia, particularly in India," he said.
"What is really driving that is our ability to win work. We are continuing to win, and we are continuing to win in the right markets in line with the strategic direction we are going in."
New contract wins in the first half included a $250m operations renewal, and a large minerals contract in Europe, and a significant life sciences contract in the US. The latter is a deal with GSK to provide design services for a series of retrofits and upgrades across a number of the pharmaceutical giant's production facilities.
READ MORE: Sorry tale as yet another company, Wood, faces takeover
That contract contributed to the growing level of revenues from "sustainable" project work as Wood seeks to diversify away from its traditional roots in the oil and gas sector. More than a third of contracts that Wood is currently in the process of bidding for are "sustainables" across projects such as biofuels, carbon capture and storage, and blue hydrogen.
In total, the group's order book stood at approximately $6bn at the end of June. That was an increase of 3% on a constant currency basis which also excluded operations in the Gulf of Mexico, where Wood finalised the sale of its offshore labour supply operations in the region earlier this year.
Mr Gilmartin said the group has experienced significant wage inflation, though this has not hampered the business.
“Last year we saw, particularly in certain geographies, inflationary pressures [and] we did a lot of salary reviews in order to alleviate that," he said.
"This year it has been a little bit less but inflation as it pertains to our overarching numbers is not a big issue just because of our ability to pass it through to our clients, and they are willing to pay it.”
Wood, which employs about 8,000 in the UK, will publish its half-year results on August 22. The company's shares closed yesterday's trading unchanged at 138.2p.
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