Norwegian offshore support vessel player Dof has endured a tough start to 2020 but is cautiously optimistic about the market.
Chief executive Mons Aase said on a conference call that the final three months of 2019 had been "operationally a good quarter" and the best since the second quarter of 2016.
"We are very happy with performing at that level in today's market," he added.
Large platform supply vessels have improved rates. "We believe that trend will continue," Aase said.
"With anchor-handlers, we had a good ride in quarter four helped by bad weather. But it was the opposite so far this year. We've had an extremely bad ride so far in quarter one.
"The weather has been so bad we have seen rigs waiting a month at least for a weather window."
But he said: "We will have some good periods in the North Sea spot [market]. A small positive trend overall."
Aase also said quite a lot of the North Sea fleet is leaving for work in other regions from March onwards, so the vessel supply is "lower than we've seen in years".
Its 83% charter backlog shows that the first quarter "will not be a disaster", Aase said.
The figure for the second quarter is 65%.
Brazilian developments
The company believes a big challenge this year is contract renewals for anchor-handlers in Brazil. It has a lot of vessels coming off deals, Aase said.
But he added: "We are very optimistic on Brazil."
Subsea utilisation is improving and its overall forecast is for 2020 to be better than 2019.
"But we said that last year, and perhaps we were a little bit optimistic," he said.
The company also revealed Brazilian development bank BNDES has approved a refinancing of loans taken out by its Brazilian subsidiary Norskan.
This extends the debt to 2023.
The borrowings are secured on Brazilian-flagged vessels on long-term contracts.
The company is aiming for an overall financial solution to get it to the end of 2023, Aase said.
"It's moving slowly in the right direction," he added.
"We are still discussing. We hope by the end of the quarter we can come to an agreement with all stakeholders."
The company is plotting injections of NOK 700m in new equity while stretching bond maturities.
Dof's net loss in the final quarter was NOK 512m ($54m) against NOK 774m in the same period of 2018.
