Warthog keeping Taliban at bay

Vehicle’s success has led to a rethink on British tactics in Afghanistan

EVEN as hardware made by Singapore Technologies Engineering (STE) were put through their paces by the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) at the National Day Parade yesterday, a tracked fighting carrier made by the group has continued to win battlefield accolades in the service of British forces.

In a report last Friday, The (London) Telegraph highlighted the success of the Warthog, a 22-ton tracked armoured vehicle whose off-road ability allows it to frequently outflank the fleet-footed Taliban in Afghanistan. The vehicle’s success has led to a rethink on British tactics as it is not only able to deliver troops and supplies, it can also bring down heavy firepower from unexpected directions, the paper said.

The Warthog, a variant of the Bronco which is used by the SAF, can carry up to a dozen soldiers who can be deployed either to fight insurgents or engage with the local population to build up an intelligence picture of tribal communities.

‘It has almost certainly saved lives after 11 Warthogs were hit in one tour by large IEDs (Improvised Explosive Device) without anyone inside being killed although two were badly wounded,’ The Telegraph reported. The Warthog has also proved adept at being able to drive through the notoriously difficult terrain of Helmand province’s irrigated ‘green zone’.

In one epic six-week-long battle earlier this year, the vehicles provided a perimeter defence for the Royal Engineers as they laid a key road in central Helmand called Route Trident. With heavy weaponry such as heavy machine guns and grenade launchers, the Warthogs kept the Taliban at bay.

‘You can put Warthog into places you would not dream of with other armoured vehicles as it has very low ground pressure giving us the ability to move around the battlespace in a completely different way,’ Major James Cameron, the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment squadron commander, the first to use the vehicle on operations, was quoted as saying. ‘We have been able to manoeuvre in an extraordinary way. Literally we can go over ditches, swim rivers or go up ravines getting right in behind the enemy where they least expect us. We run on them at speed and before they know anything about it we are right on top of them.’

Towards the end of the unit’s six-month tour, radio intelligence showed that Taliban commanders were warning their men, ‘Don’t fire at the tank’.

The Warthog was first introduced to the British forces in 2009. It was the first armoured vehicle to be built for a Western army by an Asian company. When ST Kinetics, the land division of STE, won a £150 million contract for 115 vehicles from the British, it represented a major breakthrough for the Singapore company.

STE produced the first Warthog within nine months of the order, on time and ahead of schedule although there was a delay of several months as the armour protection was improved. The Warthog was ordered to replace the BAE Systems’ Viking, which is being withdrawn from service after almost a quarter of the fleet was destroyed by Taliban bombs.

STE beat BAE Systems, which had offered a Viking II variant, to the British contract.

ST Engineering Q2 net up 5%; revenue dips

Interim dividend of 3 cents per share declared

SINGAPORE Technologies Engineering’s second quarter net profit rose 5 per cent to $130.5 million from a year ago, even as revenue dipped 2 per cent to $1.48 billion.

If not for the US dollar’s depreciation against the Singapore currency, the group said it would have posted a revenue increase and stronger profit growth.

For the half year ended June 30, the conglomerate’s net profit grew 11 per cent to $241.6 million, while revenue rose 6 per cent to $3.1 billion. The impact of the US dollar’s slide relative to the Sing dollar was even greater on the half-year results – revenue growth would have been 10 per cent, or $120 million higher otherwise.

Earnings per share for the group rose to 4.29 cents for Q2, from 4.11 a year ago. For the first half, EPS was 7.93 cents, up from 7.18 cents a year ago.

The group’s net asset value as at the end of Q2 also rose to 50.28 cents, from 48.63 cents at the end of the same quarter last year.

For the second quarter, its Marine arm was the only one to post 5 per cent revenue growth, thanks to higher shiprepair activities.

Both the Aerospace and Electronics divisions posted marginal revenue growth of 1 per cent each. For Aerospace, higher revenue from the engines repair and overhaul business was offset by the impact of a weakening US dollar on aircraft maintenance and modification business turnover. Electronics, meanwhile, saw higher revenue from the completion of the Integrated Resort and communication projects under its communication and sensor systems business offset by lower value project milestone completions under its large-scale systems business.

Land Systems was the only arm to post a 14 per cent drop in revenue, due to lower scheduled project deliveries from its automotive business group.

The group, which also supplies to military customers globally, said that commercial sales made up 62 per cent or $925 million of its Q2 revenue.

At the results briefing yesterday, ST Engineering president and CEO Tan Pheng Hock said the second half is likely to be challenging globally, with Europe not fully out of the woods and US debt still facing a ratings downgrade risk. But he was confident that the group would achieve higher profits in the second half compared to the first.

The group’s order book stood at $10.8 billion as at end June. In the second quarter, aerospace secured new projects worth over $260 million, Electronics secured $126 million worth of contracts and Marine won a shipbuilding contract worth about $171 million.

Its board of directors yesterday announced an interim ordinary dividend of 3 cents per share, to be paid on Sept 2.

ST Engineering gained two cents to close at $3.05 yesterday, before its results were out.

ST Engineering Q2 net up 5%; revenue dips

Interim dividend of 3 cents per share declared

SINGAPORE Technologies Engineering’s second quarter net profit rose 5 per cent to $130.5 million from a year ago, even as revenue dipped 2 per cent to $1.48 billion.

If not for the US dollar’s depreciation against the Singapore currency, the group said it would have posted a revenue increase and stronger profit growth.

For the half year ended June 30, the conglomerate’s net profit grew 11 per cent to $241.6 million, while revenue rose 6 per cent to $3.1 billion. The impact of the US dollar’s slide relative to the Sing dollar was even greater on the half-year results – revenue growth would have been 10 per cent, or $120 million higher otherwise.

Earnings per share for the group rose to 4.29 cents for Q2, from 4.11 a year ago. For the first half, EPS was 7.93 cents, up from 7.18 cents a year ago.

The group’s net asset value as at the end of Q2 also rose to 50.28 cents, from 48.63 cents at the end of the same quarter last year.

For the second quarter, its Marine arm was the only one to post 5 per cent revenue growth, thanks to higher shiprepair activities.

Both the Aerospace and Electronics divisions posted marginal revenue growth of 1 per cent each. For Aerospace, higher revenue from the engines repair and overhaul business was offset by the impact of a weakening US dollar on aircraft maintenance and modification business turnover. Electronics, meanwhile, saw higher revenue from the completion of the Integrated Resort and communication projects under its communication and sensor systems business offset by lower value project milestone completions under its large-scale systems business.

Land Systems was the only arm to post a 14 per cent drop in revenue, due to lower scheduled project deliveries from its automotive business group.

The group, which also supplies to military customers globally, said that commercial sales made up 62 per cent or $925 million of its Q2 revenue.

At the results briefing yesterday, ST Engineering president and CEO Tan Pheng Hock said the second half is likely to be challenging globally, with Europe not fully out of the woods and US debt still facing a ratings downgrade risk. But he was confident that the group would achieve higher profits in the second half compared to the first.

The group’s order book stood at $10.8 billion as at end June. In the second quarter, aerospace secured new projects worth over $260 million, Electronics secured $126 million worth of contracts and Marine won a shipbuilding contract worth about $171 million.

Its board of directors yesterday announced an interim ordinary dividend of 3 cents per share, to be paid on Sept 2.

ST Engineering gained two cents to close at $3.05 yesterday, before its results were out.

ST Marine makes play for OSV market

With oil industry demand rising, it’s chasing jobs, seeking more yard space

ST Marine is joining its more high-profile yard brethren in the black gold rush, in pursuit of contracts to build offshore support vessels (OSVs).

As the business division of ST Engineering that is known more for its military contracts turns its attention to the oil bonanza, its president Ng Sing Chan has his hands full these days, simultaneously courting the offshore market and looking for more yard space.

‘I’m doing things in parallel – chasing jobs, looking for additional capacity,’ Mr Ng told BT.

While he is toying with the idea of running a project in parallel in two existing sites or buying a site from someone else, he has ruled out greenfield sites because they will take too long to get up and running.

‘By the time you finish infrastructure development, the market could be changed,’ said Mr Ng.

The urgency is, in a way, a proxy for how quickly the tide is turning in favour of the offshore industry, with demand rising first for oil rigs in the last quarter of 2010 and trickling down the chain to the OSVs involved in the dozens of operations spawned by drilling activity.

While yards under the Sembcorp Marine and Keppel banners spent the last few quarters bagging big-digit deals for platform supply vessels and dive support construction vessels, ST Marine largely flew under the radar where commercial vessels were concerned.

‘When the rest of the Singapore yards were building jack-ups and semisubmersible rigs and floating production, storage and offloading vessels, ST Marine was not,’ Mr Ng said.

Over the last decade, ST Marine has been more preoccupied with naval vessels, roll on/roll off carriers and – as part of a recent development – environmental services. But as drilling activity in deeper waters intensified, ST Marine began looking closer at the OSV market in 2008.

The approach paid off, too; by 2010, the business division crossed the $1 billion revenue mark for the first time, driven by its shipbuilding and ship repair segments.

Now, ST Marine is intent on making up for lost time.

‘We intend to be a player in every segment of the OSV market: anchor handling tug supply (AHTS) vessels, platform supply vessels, seismic research vessels. We have touched on every segment of the market, with the exception of the big construction support vessels,’ said Mr Ng.

The orders have already started coming in at a fast clip in the first half of the year. Its US shipyard (VT Halter Marine) won a contract to build an offshore tug; Swire Pacific Offshore Operations has ordered four AHTS vessels at one go; and it has a deal to convert an accommodation vessel to a multi-purpose offshore vessel.

The venture into new territory inherently implies uncharted waters, but ST Marine appears serious about wading into the OSV market, even if it means building up a track record from scratch.

One of its yards is currently doing something it has never done before: converting a rig into a mobile offshore production unit. The yard will have to extend the legs of the rig so that it can function in deeper waters.

‘It’s a first for us, but we’re confident we will do well. Does that mean that we’re now experts in jackups? No, not yet,’ said Mr Ng.

ST Engg to expand presence in US as Europe growth slows

Singapore Technologies Engineering, Asia’s largest aircraft-maintenance company by sales, wants to expand its presence in the US to make up for slower growth in Europe.

Sales to Europe-based customers fell 17 per cent last year, the only of its four geographic regions to post a decline, the Singapore-based company said in its earnings statement for 2010. Revenue from US customers increased 6.4 per cent, it said.

‘We are not a big player in the US, so there is lots of room to grow,’ said chief executive officer Tan Pheng Hock in an interview in Singapore on Monday. ‘Growth in Europe is still a little hard, short-term wise, especially when the outlook in Europe is still negative.’

European leaders are attempting to fix the region’s sovereign debt crisis. Standard & Poor’s said on Monday that the effort to pull Greece back from the brink with a rollover plan serving as the basis for talks between investors and governments would qualify as a distressed exchange and prompt a ‘selective default’ rating.

US manufacturing unexpectedly expanded at a faster pace in June, a sign the industry is rebounding after shortages of parts and components from Japan slowed production. The Institute for Supply Management’s factory index rose to 55.3 last month from 53.5 in May, according to data released last week. Economists estimated the index would drop to 52, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey. Figures greater than 50 signal expansion.

ST Engineering’s sales to European customers dropped to 4.8 per cent of its revenue in 2010 from 6.3 per cent in the previous year, while those from US clients were little changed at 24.2 per cent from 24.5 per cent, it said in the statement. Revenue from Asian companies made up 70 per cent of its overall sales, up from 68.3 per cent in 2009, it said.

‘We need to find the right niche to get into’ for the US market, Mr Tan said after speaking at the Future Global 100 Initiative forum in Singapore.

ST Engineering shares dropped 12 per cent this year, compared with the 1.2 per cent decline in the Singapore benchmark Straits Times Index. — Bloomberg