New Fortress Energy’s profit plunged because of its delayed Fast LNG offshore project in Mexico.
The US-listed company reported a net loss of $86.9m for the second quarter, compared with net income of $120.1m a year earlier.
Revenue declined to $428m from $561.4m.
The company suffered a first-half net loss of $30.2m, down from net income of $271.7m a year earlier. Total revenue reached $1.11bn compared with $1.14bn in the first half of last year.
Chief executive Wes Edens said: “Our adjusted Ebitda in the second quarter of $120m was well below our expectation of $275m.
“This was entirely the result of delays in placing our FLNG 1 project into service, which was originally expected to occur at the beginning of the second quarter.”
The cost of this delay is about $150m per quarter in lost operating margin, which represents the vast majority of the adjusted Ebitda shortfall for the quarter, he said.
“Our goal was to bring it online for April of this year. For a variety of reasons, we missed this by several months,” he told the company results call, adding: “Delays happen.”
However, the project is up running as of 19 July and has been performing “very well”, according to Edens.
As promised, its first partial cargo was loaded today onto the 138,000-cbm Energos Princess (built 2003).
Edens confirmed that after this first load, the 1.4m tonnes per annum capacity Fast LNG will undergo a scheduled maintenance outage of about a week.
“Once it is fired back up, it will achieve full production levels shortly thereafter.”
New Fortress also provided an update on its 3 mtpa, floating storage and regasification unit-based terminal in Nicaragua, which will support a 290-megawatt power plant.
This project, which was due online in June, is 90% complete and is expected to begin operations by the fourth quarter.
