Shares in Tidewater plummeted after the offshore vessel giant reported lower-than-expected profits in the third quarter.
The shares lost 12.2% in late-morning trading on Friday to reach $56.33 on the New York Stock Exchange.
That came after the Houston-based company reported a quarterly profit of $46.4m in the period, up from $26.2m a year earlier.
The results translated into diluted earnings per share of $0.87, well below the $1.76 average estimate of five analysts polled by Yahoo Finance.
The earnings miss came despite revenue rising to $340m, which chief executive Quintin Kneen described as meeting the shipowner’s expectations.
The figure, which was better than the $299m earned a year earlier, was still well below the $381m average estimate of analysts.
“In particular, the average day rate and average leading-edge day rates in our large PSV and anchor-handler fleets continued to show sequential quarterly improvement,” Kneen said, referring to platform supply vessels.
“Utilisation declined in all of our geographic segments and is principally related to project start-up delays, but also due to higher-than-expected idle time between contracts and days in dry dock.”
Costs and expenses rose to $270m during the third quarter, up from $244m a year earlier.
The quarterly result brought nine-month profit to $144m, up from the $59.5m in the first three quarters of 2023.
Looking forward, Kneen said Tidewater is confident about the visibility of free cash flow growth in the next two quarters, although that is not the case for the rest of 2025.
“The visibility into the continued pace of growth in offshore activity throughout 2025 is more limited. We will be closely monitoring market dynamics in the coming months and look forward to providing updated thoughts around full-year 2025 in our next earnings press release,” he said.
“Global industry discussion on new vessel orders and reactivations, which popped up briefly over the summer, has dropped off significantly from that time due to the same limited visibility.”
Tidewater, which owns 216 vessels, finished the quarter with $281m in unrestricted cash and equivalents out of $2.05bn in total assets, and it reported $597m in long-term debt.
