Continued strong performance in marine site characterisation and recovery of marine asset integrity resulted in a high-single digit EBIT margin from continuing operations, up from mid-single digit in the third quarter last year.
Despite strong growth in offshore wind, revenue growth was limited to 1.8% mainly due to decline in land.
Seabed Geosolutions (classified as held for sale and therefore not included in results from continuing operations) showed increased activities and improved performance.
Net debt/EBITDA ratio[1] improved to 2.2 and is expected to further improve towards year-end.
Positive free cash flow in the quarter.
Strong backlog growth in both marine and land.
Outlook 2019: continued revenue growth, close to mid-single digit EBIT margin and positive free cash flow from continuing operations.
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Mark Heine, CEO: ‘The continued recovery of our results is supported by most regions and business lines. It is encouraging to see the strong performance in the Europe-Africa region and the turnaround in Asia-Pacific. In the Americas, after a difficult start of the year, results picked up due to a higher utilisation of our vessel fleet.

In line with the past quarters, the results of our marine site characterisation activities continued to improve. As anticipated, our marine asset integrity business is now also showing higher margins and backlog, as the result of selective tendering, asset rationalisation, and a gradually improving market in specific geographies.

Despite a better performance of our land asset integrity business, the overall land business is underperforming. The previously announced restructuring measures should lead to structurally higher margins, resulting in improvements during the following quarters.

A year ago we announced our Path to Profitable Growth strategy and since then, we have been rapidly expanding in new growth markets such as renewables, hydrography and water management. Together with infrastructure, these markets now represent half of our business. Capitalising on our position as the leading Geo-data specialist offers great opportunities for Fugro in a rapidly changing world.’

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