US-based Global Power Equipment, a designer, engineer and manufacturer of equipment for gas turbine power plants, has reported some strengthening in bid activity, particularly in the Middle East and Northern Africa. “Our bid activity in Saudi Arabia is almost at a new high and local partner in the kingdom is a tremendous asset for us,” said group CEO Larry Edwards.
“Saudi Arabia is working on a number of upgrade and retrofit projects as well as some new power plants… Egypt has a new 750-megawatt plan in development that has attracted interest from all the major gas turbine OEMs and there are new projects in the Emirates, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait,” he added.
“In these countries, the scope of projects runs from co-generations to LNG to (inaudible) to fully integrated power plants. And obviously, there should be a significant potential for us in Iraq once rebuilding begins in earnest.”
Regarding Iraq, Edwards added that prior to 1991, the country had roughly 9,000 megawatts of installed electrical generation capacity. Just three months ago, before the war, the capacity was reported to be down to less than 4,000 megawatts. “With the goal of restoring Iraqi crude production to 2.5 million barrels per day along with new refineries and other infrastructure improvements in the rebuilding effort, Iraq's power sector will need to substantially increase output.“
“Bechtel has been selected to lead the recent construction efforts for the various infrastructure needs including electrical power systems. We are optimistic since we've worked extensively with Bechtel in the past on power projects and believe American sub-contractors and vendors should have an advantage in winning work for Iraq.”
During the first quarter of financial year 2003, 81 percent of Global Power Equipment’s bookings originated from projects inside the United States. First quarter bookings were slightly under $60 million, against revenues of approximately $77 million, resulting in a $17 million drop in backlog from the end of 2002.
This is the smallest quarter-to-quarter decline in the past 18 months, stated Mike Hackner, company CFO. “We ended the quarter with $258 million in backlog. We currently estimate that our backlog at the end of the second quarter, will be between $225 million and $250 million, based on our firm bookings to date, our sales pipeline, preliminary customer indications and what we expect to convert into revenue.”
Hackner concluded that “Some of the projects that we are chasing in the Middle East are very, very large and for competitive reasons we are trying to not provide numbers. Or even specific numbers down to the country level.” — (menareport.com)
© 2003 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
