Good news day for Saipem. After the dramatic profit warning it made last week collapse of the stock on the stock exchange of 34% in a single session, today the plant engineering company of the Eni group announces that it has obtained new contracts for a total value of approximately 3,2 billion euros from November to today. “The portion relating to the month of December is equal to 1,4 billion”, reads the press release. By mid-morning, the company's shares were up by more than five percentage points in Piazza Affari. After the close of the markets, at 18 pm, a conference call will take place to update the financial community on the new estimates for 2013.
In Canada, in the onshore E&C sector (engineering and construction), Saipem "has agreed with Husky Oil the turnkey value for the Sunrise Central Facility project, which it is already developing". In Nigeria, on the other hand, the company signed an EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) contract with Dangote Fertilizer, for a new ammonia and urea production complex to be built in Edo State. In addition, Saipem "signed additional contracts and negotiated changes in the scope of work of existing contracts in Australia and Iraq".
In offshore E&C in Saudi Arabia, Eni's subsidiary has been awarded a turnkey contract by Saudi Aramco, which extends the scope of the original work, agreed in early 2011 for the development of the Arabiyah and Hasbah fields, in the Arabian Gulf . In the North Sea, the company "has been awarded various T&I type contracts (transport and installation) by Statoil, which envisage the use of the 'Saipem 7000', in both the Norwegian and British sectors". The company also "has won new contracts and negotiated scope-of-work changes to existing contracts, primarily in the Middle East, North Sea and West Africa."
In offshore drilling, then, Saipem signed contracts with Eni, for a value of approximately 900 million euros, for the extension of the charter for drilling activities of the 'Saipem 10000' for a period of 5 years, starting from October 2014 , and of the 'Scarabeo 4' for a period of one year, until August 2014.
Despite everything, last week Saipem has revised downwards the estimates on earnings for 2012 and those on the accounts for 2013. Orders slowed down in the last quarter and "negotiations of new contracts - admitted the company - will end with lower results than expected". All of this means less money to distribute to shareholders, who have therefore started to get rid of the shares.
However, the sensational thud in Piazza Affari also hides aspects that are less easily explained. Starting with the suspicions circulating around the mysterious “institutional investor” which last Monday sold in full its substantial stake in Saipem's capital, equal to 2,2% (according to the records, excluding Eni, the only investor to have more than 2% of Saipem is the Fidelity fund, which but he said he was extraneous to the story). The operation was concluded in haste a few hours before the profit warning: a timing that allowed the investor to avoid a very serious loss. Consob has launched an investigation into the matter.
Meanwhile, the Milan prosecutor's office has sent a guarantee notice to Pietro Franco Tali, the former CEO of Saipem replaced by Eni in early December. The suspicion is that he paid bribes to close an important contract in Algeria.
