awards for offshore construction projects ground to a
halt earlier this year. In recent weeks, however, this has
started to rebound meaningfully. Based on our
bottom-up review of the deepwater market, we expect
this trend will gain momentum over the next 12 months.
An increase in contract awards will allow the wider
offshore construction sector to start rebuilding backlogs.
Historically, this has been a powerful catalyst for the
stocks. To gain exposure to this, we recommend
building positions in Saipem, Subsea 7, Acergy and
SBM Offshore on any weakness going into year-end.
Conditions in place for uptick in contract awards…
At current oil prices all deepwater projects offer
attractive economics. At the same time, we believe
prices for oilfield services are close to bottoming out,
which removes an important incentive for oil companies
to delay projects.
…which is already visible: Not a single contract for
the construction of a floating production platform was
awarded between Aug-08 and Aug-09. However,
recently offshore construction contracts have been
awarded for the Papa-Terra, Aseng, Bonga NW,
Escarvos and Goliat fields by Petrobras, Noble Energy,
Shell, Chevron and Eni, respectively, for an estimated
total of $5bn.
Strong outlook for 2010 and beyond: Based on our
project-by-project analysis of deepwater fields, we
estimate the number of contract awards for floating
production platforms will more than double from 8 in ‘09
to ~20 in 2010 (although oil companies are planning as
many as 39) and will continue to increase in ‘11 and ‘12.
Upgrading Saipem, Acergy and Subsea 7 to
Overweight: These companies offer strong exposure to
the improvement in offshore construction activity and we
see upside to 2011 consensus estimates. They join
Wood Group, SBM and PGS as our Overweight names.