Acergy Causes Some Agitation

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Last quarter, we decided that offshore player Acergy SA (Nasdaq: ACGY) was sitting pretty. After reviewing the latest results, I'm half-pleased to report that not much has changed in the past three months.

Why only half-pleased? Acergy's business remains subdued as long as major deepwater oil & gas installations keep getting delayed. The status quo isn't exactly ideal, but there are countless companies in worse shape than this well-capitalized offshore engineering outfit.

For the quarter, revenue was $558 million and adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations came in at $110 million. Those figures compare to $526 million and $113 million in the prior quarter. Clearly margins slipped a bit this time around, but they appear to have beaten Acergy's expectations. The company raised its margin guidance for the year, pointing to better-than-envisioned vessel utilization, among other reasons.

In addition to the fair-sized contract win with Petrobras (NYSE: PBR) that we mentioned last time, the quarter also saw Acergy snag a decent $110 million conventional gig with Total SA (NYSE: TOT) and BP (NYSE: BP) in Angola. More recently, the company picked up a $170 million award from Apache (NYSE: APA) in Australia. These sorts of awards help Acergy to tread water until bigger awards pour in.

Acergy remains a waiting game in more ways than one. The company keeps stacking cash on its balance sheet, with the total now exceeding $800 million. This has certain analysts and investors increasingly agitated. I don't entirely disagree with the fellow from Carnegie who delivered this blunt message to management on the conference call: "If you exit 2009 with the same cash position, that's going to be a horrible decision in terms of capital allocation."

Acergy certainly could have been more opportunistic over the past 12 months. It's really a shame that some suboptimal governance got in the way of an aggressive share repurchase program.