SINGAPORE - Mainboard-listed ST Engineering announced on Friday a 16.2 per cent decline in net profit for its fourth quarter ended Dec 31, 2014, to $140.3 million, while revenue fell 4.6 per cent to $1.85 billion.
The smaller revenue came from lower contributions from the group' aerospace, electronics and marine sectors which saw a drop of between 6 per cent and 11 per cent in their revenues. The land systems sector achieved an 8 per cent year-on-year increase in revenue, said the company.
For the full year, net profit fell 8.4 per cent to $531.95 million on a 1.4 per cent dip in revenue to $6.54 billion.
Earnings per share fell 9 per cent to 17.06 cents, from 18.73 cents a year ago.
The group said revenue for all its sectors - aerospace, electronics, land systems - were comparable to year-ago levels, except for marine which reported higher revenue, but revenue from "others", mainly attributable to Miltope, fell 18 per cent. Miltope makes militarised and rugged computer equipment and commercial computer-related products for the aerospace market.
Said Mr Tan Pheng Hock, president & CEO of ST Engineering: "A challenging business environment in Europe, the weakness in our specialty vehicles business in China as well as the poor performance in our US shipbuilding operations impacted our performance.
The group secured contracts worth about $4 billion and ended the year with a healthy order book of $12.5 billion, of which about $3.8 billion is expected to be delivered in 2015. Mr Tan cash & cash equivalents including funds under management remain high at $1.7 billion.
"Barring unforeseen circumstances, the group expects revenue and profit before tax for FY2015 to be comparable to FY2014," he added.
A final dividend of 11 cents per share has been proposed, comprising an ordinary dividend of four cents and a special dividend of seven cents. Together with the interim dividend of four cents paid to shareholders in September 2014, the total dividend for the full year will amount to 15 cents per share, unchanged from FY2013.
