PETALING JAYA: A slew of downgrades has piled on for energy infrastructure company Yinson Holdings Bhd after a surprised cancellation of a major tender.
Analysts wasted no time in cutting their stock price targets for the group after it was reported on Friday that Brazilian oil major Petrobras had cancelled its tender for a project involving the redevelopment of the Parque das Baleias (PDB) offshore oil fields in Brazil’s CamposBasin, as it could not agree to Yinson’s daily charter rate offer of US$645,750 (RM2.73mil) per day.
“Petrobras has cancelled its tender for the Parque das Baleias project, thereby failing to reach an agreement with Yinson which emerged as the project’s sole bidder.
“Meanwhile, in other tenders, Yinson is also reportedly losing out in Pecan (Ghana), despite being initially touted as a favourite, while competition in Limbayong (Sabah) remains tight,” Kenanga Research said in a report.
It said given recent developments, it believed the likelihood of Yinson securing a new contract, especially within the year, had significantly diminished.
“As such, we downgrade (Yinson) to market perform with a lowered target price of RM5.10,” Kenanga said.
UOB Kay Hian in its report said given new developments on the PDB and Pecan floating production storage and offloading (FPSO), it is less likely that Yinson will secure mega FPSO contract wins in the foreseeable future.
“The competition for the Limbayong FPSO is also intense,” he said.
However, UOB Kay Hian said it was still factoring in a contract win potential of one mid-sized FPSO but was removing its earlier assumptions for the need of a rights issue exercise to fund new FPSO projects, given the uncertainties of securing a large FPSO job in the near term.
“Overall, our contract win potential is revised from RM3.98 per share to RM1.80 per share,” the research outfit said.
Elsewhere, it pointed out that Yinson was also aggressively pursuing renewable energy (RE) projects, which will be positive for its environmental, social and governance (ESG) agenda to transit to net-zero carbon emissions.
“Aside from solar projects, Yinson may secure offshore or onshore wind farm projects in the near term,” UOB Kay Hian added.
Meanwhile, CGS-CIMB has not written off the Pecan and Limbayong jobs for Yinson, saying instead that it would like to highlight that Yinson has a busy bid book for various FPSO projects, despite the news about Petrobas’ PDB.
“Three of Yinson’s FPSO bids may be awarded by the respective oil companies before end-2021, i.e. Petronas’ Limbayong (offshore Sabah), which may be awarded after October, Aker Energy’s Pecan (offshore Ghana), and Enauta’s Atlanta phase two (offshore Brazil).”
It noted that Yinson will exit syariah status at the Securities Commission’s late November review.
“This and the bad news on PDB could trigger selling, which may widen the 30% upside gap to our target price of RM6.18.
“This opens up opportunity for long-term investors to buy Yinson for potential future FPSO contract awards, including its new RE investments in Chile, Italy and India.”