Offshore drilling contractor Ocean Rig UDW Inc. (ORIG) on Wednesday reported a turnaround to profit in the first quarter on strong revenue growth from drilling contracts. Revenue for the quarter beat analysts' estimates. The company's shares gained more than 3 percent in extended trades.
Ocean Rig, a subsidiary of Greece-based dry bulk shipping company DryShips Inc. (DRYS), said its first-quarter net income was $6.38 million or $0.05 per share, compared to net loss of $46.35 million or $0.35 per share in the year-ago period.
On average, eleven analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to report loss of $0.20 per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.
Revenues from drilling contracts surged 51 percent to $246.44 million from $163.00 million in the same period last year and beat analysts' consensus revenue estimate of $223.23 million.
George Economou, Chairman and CEO of Ocean Rig said, "During the first quarter of 2013, our results were adversely impacted by the scheduled drydock, for contract-related upgrades, of the Leiv Eiriksson which commenced drilling operations for Rig Management Consortium offshore Norway on April 15th 2013. During the quarter, we also experienced certain blowout preventer-related downtime with respect to Eirik Raude and the Ocean Rig Mykonos which resulted in low operating efficiency for those two units."
Economou added, "Our remaining four ultra-deepwater or UDW units performed at an average of 97% operating efficiency during the quarter, which we find satisfactory."
ORIG closed Wednesday's trading at $17.20, down $0.32 or 1.83 percent on a volume of 587,703 shares. In after-hours, the stock gained $0.54 or 3.14 percent to $17.74.
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