This morning the Belfast shipyard group Harland & Wolff (LON:HARL) has been lined up for the mid-life upgrade and dry docking of a large vessel.
The contract which is due to signed within the next couple of months or so, would be executed in the first half of next year, with a value of between £60m to £70m, with a £5m payment being made later this year to commence various workstreams before the vessel arrives at the UK’s largest drydock.
This contract adds to the group’s growing order book, now worth some £900m, while its active opportunities pipeline being worked upon has a worth of over £3.6bn.
Analyst Peter Renton at Cenkos Securities rates the group’s shares as a Buy at the current 11p.
He estimates that the year to end December will rule off revenues nearly quadrupled at £100m (£28m) while almost halving pre-tax losses from £70.4m to £38.6m and its earnings from a 42.7p per share loss to just 22.3p loss.
He does note that the group’s net cash position will worsen from debt of £59.9m to £104.5m this year.
Going forward he is already pencilling in £200m of revenues next year, with halved losses and earnings of £20.5m and 11.8p per share respectively.
We can expect to be given much more detail on the £26m capitalised group’s current year trading when it issues a Business Update and Outlook within the next few weeks.
This new contract, when signed, can be seen as the group making strides forward in its corporate strategy, which can only be seen as very positive for its shares which were trading at 25p in late November last year.