Trading Update

Gulf Marine Services (GMS), a leading provider of self-propelled and self-elevating support vessels for the offshore oil, gas, and renewables sectors, is pleased to announce it now anticipates EBITDA in the range of US$83m to US$86m (previously: US$77m-US$85m) for the 12 months ending December 2023 and US$87m to US$95m for the 12 months ending December 2024.

Mansour Al Alami, GMS Executive Chairman, expressed his enthusiasm for this guidance, stating:

"Given significant improvement in backlog visibility and market outlook evidenced in the recently announced contract awards, alongside future opportunities we're bidding for, we are confident to increase our market guidance for 2023 and to provide an even higher initial guidance for 2024. We continue to see strong interest for our vessels to support maintenance projects as well as new initiatives to meet growing energy requirements, for Oil and Gas as well as for renewables, and across different geographies. The recent contracts announcement allows us to benefit from a more balanced geographical distribution of our fleet."

GMS Chief Financial Officer, Alex Aclimandos, added:

"EBITDA growth will make a positive contribution to our deleveraging journey, accelerating the transfer of value towards shareholders. We recently made an additional US$7.0m prepayment towards the debt, on top of what we contractually had to pay the banks, bringing the amount we have prepaid the banks in 2023 to a record US$30.2 m. We now expect to end 2023 with a Net Leverage Ratio* in the range of 3.2 to 3.3:1. For 2024, we expect to reach by year end a Net Leverage Ratio* in the range of 2.3 to 2.7:1. For perspective, this compares to a Net Leverage Ratio* of 8.1:1 at the end of 2020, 5.8:1 at the end of 2021 and 4.4:1 at the end of 2022."

(*) Net Leverage Ratio represents the ratio of net bank debt to Adjusted EBITDA (with Adjusted EBITDA being operating profit after adding back depreciation, amortisation, non-operational items and impairment charges.)