AFTER more than seven hard years of an oil and gas slump that was punctuated by a pandemic-fuelled historic oil crash to boot, this could be the year the stars start to align for Singapore’s offshore & marine (O&M) heavyweight Sembcorp Marine : S51 0% (Sembmarine).

If anything, the loss-making company’s latest FY2022 should imbue hope. For the year ended December 2022, the group’s losses narrowed significantly to S$261 million versus the previous year’s loss of S$1.2 billion. In the second-half period, Sembmarine turned Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation) positive while the key financial metric remained negative for the full year, albeit 99 per cent improved from FY21.

Sembmarine attributed the better showing to strong execution and delivery of 22 and 12 projects, respectively, over the course of the year ended December last year.