Oil and gas (O&G) services provider Sapura Energy Bhd bagged home the Asia Pacific Company of the Year Award under Energy Services, Offshore and Marine category at the Asia Pacific Energy Award Dinner held here by Energy Council, Wednesday.

Sapura Energy “toppled” Houston-headquartered Schlumberger and Singapore-based Sembcorp Marine which were the other two contenders for the award.

Sapura Energy Bhd is seeing more jobs in the horizon in addition to the US$14.3 billion already in prospects this year despite a sharp decline in oil price to below US$60 a barrel.

The integrated oil and gas services company, which has presence in over 20 countries, believes the current oil price level will not put a brake on contract flows in the years to come.

Sapura Energy Berhad has received shareholders approval for the 50:50 strategic partnership with Austria’s OMV Aktiengesellschaft. The group said the proposal was passed with 99.98% of the votes in favour at the extraordinary general meeting.

Sapura Energy Bhd has “successfully” raised about RM4 billion from its rights issue that closed on Jan 16, though the rights issue of new ordinary shares sweetened by free warrants under the exercise was undersubscribed. The cash call also involved a rights issue of Islamic redeemable convertible preference shares (RCPS-i).

Sapura Energy Bhd has achieved its target to raise at least RM4bil from its rights issue exercise, even as some shareholders chose not to subscribe their portion of the shares. The rights share offerings that came with free detachable warrants were 81.5% subscribed. For its Islamic redeemable convertible preference shares, the group saw 100% valid acceptances.

As part of the cover story – Fixing the Economy – for its year-end edition, The Edge asked a select group - a minister, a former minister, a banker, economists and business leaders - for their views on the outlook for 2019. Our President and Group CEO, Tan Sri Shahril Shamsuddin, shared his thoughts on the challenges and policy expectations. Below is his opinion piece in full.

SEB Upstream Sdn Bhd (SUP), a joint venture between Sapura Energy Bhd and OMV Aktiengesellschaft (OMV AG), plans to obtain financing facilities from local and foreign financial institutions and/or its Austrian partner for between US$350 million (RM1.46 billion) and US$550 million (RM2.29 billion) to repay part of its debt and for working capital.

Integrated oil and gas group Sapura Energy Bhd has been awarded four new contracts and one extension with a combined value of RM760 million.

The jobs involve three drilling contracts and two contracts for the engineering and construction (E&C) segment, the group said today.

Maintain buy with an unchanged fair value (FV) of 55 sen: We have maintained our “buy” call on Sapura Energy Bhd, with an unchanged FV of 55 sen a share, based on a 25% discount to our estimated diluted book value of 73 sen a share, assuming an ex-proposed rights issue of up to RM4 billion. This implies a 24% discount to our ex-sum-of-parts valuation.

Sapura Energy Bhd’s net loss for its third quarter ended Oct 31, 2018 narrowed significantly to RM31.09 million from RM274.41 million a year ago, on higher revenue contribution.

Quarterly revenue grew 17.4% to RM1.5 billion from RM1.28 billion previously, the group said in a filing with Bursa Malaysia.