Sovcomflot (SCF) booked $354.5m in profit in 2015, a year-on-year increase of more than four-fold compared to $83.9m in 2014.

Like its peers in the crude tanker market, SCF enjoyed “a significant increase in demand”, pushing TCE revenues up 28.7% year-on-year to $542.1m.

However, the group was also able to make a 65.3% increase in LNG carrier revenues to $137.5m, weathering a downturn in the sector thanks to a long-term chartering strategy. The improvement was aided by the delivery of 170,200 cu m LNG carriers SCF Melampus and SCF Mitre.

“Looking ahead, our core strategy remains unchanged,” said SCF president and ceo Sergey Frank. “Sovcomflot will continue to build a robust pipeline of fixed income projects in LNG and offshore services.”

Evgeniy Ambrosov, SCF senior executive vp, said: “We pay particular attention to replacing lower income generating conventional assets with higher specification vessels that significantly improve our fleet income per operating day ratio. Over 2015 Sovcomflot took delivery of two tri-fueled LNG carriers for long-term time charter to Royal Dutch Shell."

“We look forward to taking delivery over 2016 and 2017 of three shuttle tankers, four ice breaking platform support vessels, and one ice breaking LNG carrier, all fully financed and secured against long term charter contracts,” he added.

SCF is bullish on the company’s future prospects. “Total future contracted revenues amounted to $8.5bn,” said Nikolay Kolesnikov, executive vp and cfo. “Leverage has fallen from 46.4% in 2014 to 42.7% in 2015 and net debt to EBITDA ratio stood at 3.5 times at the year end.”