Emerson (EMR) Wins Nexen's Metering Management Contract

Diversified manufacturing giant Emerson Electric Co. (NYSE:EMR) secured a five-year contract from oil and gas operator, Nexen Petroleum U.K. Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of CNOOC Limited to provide metering management services.

Per the contract, Emerson will provide onshore metering engineers as well as offshore technicians for Nexen’s UK offshore facilities, including the Golden Eagle and giant Buzzard developments. Metering systems deliver exact, reliable measurements which are crucial for custody transfer, fiscal accounting and taxation purposes.

Emerson’s team will be in charge of validating and reporting measurement data and metering, sampling, analytical and test equipment. It will also be responsible for supporting offshore metering maintenance and verification actions.

The task will be controlled from Emerson’s new US-based solutions centre in Aberdeen.

Precision and integrity of fiscal and custody transfer metering systems are vital for maintaining customer confidence for oil and gas companies.

Through its proven metering management services, Emerson can ensure accuracy of measurement equipment, enabling such companies to boost production revenues. The contract validates Emerson’s established success in assisting companies to attain these goals, in addition to persistently reducing metering costs.

Emerson – which has its headquarters in Missouri – has a solid history of winning lucrative contracts in the energy infrastructure space, which is conducive to its top-line growth. During the recently reported third-quarter fiscal 2016 results, this manufacturing giant clinched several contracts, including a deal to supply control systems and project services to a new waste-to-energy power plant near Knaresborough Allerton, a contract to provide automation technologies and services to Longview Power’s 700-megawatt power plant in Maidsville; and a deal to offer technologies to help regional wastewater utility meet the needs of southeast Virginia.

However, Emerson is grappling with numerous critical headwinds, which continue to hurt its operations. Challenging demand conditions in key markets, global economic uncertainty, weakened industrial spending and oil price volatility are major concerns for the company. Business investments growth has also been negative for the last nine months and the company expects this trend to continue till 2017, thus adding to its concerns. Given such tough economic conditions and dwindling order numbers, the company expects underlying sales to be down 5–6% in the fiscal. Moreover, stiff competition and escalating restructuring expenses may weigh on its financials in the near term.

Emerson currently has a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell). Better-ranked stocks in the same space include Franklin Electric Co., Inc. (NASDAQ:FELE) , AO Smith Corp. (NYSE:AOS) and EnerSys (NYSE:ENS) , each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).