Analysis: the half-year statement narrows one question and opens two

The July statement is a narrative release, not a set of accounts, and its two hard numbers point in opposite directions. The backlog stood at 1.233 billion euros at the close of 2025 and at 1.148 billion euros at the end of June, so the order book is smaller than it was six months earlier even as the company describes commercial activity improving through the second quarter. Tubacex did not reconcile those two statements, and without a revenue figure for the half a reader cannot tell whether the backlog moved because work was executed or because intake slowed.

Within that total, subsea moved decisively the other way. In February the company put its umbilicals visibility at around 12 months and its new awards at 26 million euros. By July it described more than 18 months of backlog in the business and over 100 million euros of umbilical orders booked during 2026. Those are the company’s own descriptions on two dates, and they are the clearest evidence in the disclosure that the premium end of the mix is where intake is happening.

The Abu Dhabi line is the item a reader should mark. The 2025 annual report presented the plant entering full operation as one of the year’s milestones and as a strategic asset at the geographical centre of global CRA OCTG demand for gas. The July statement lists restoring full operational normality there as the first second-half priority. The company ties the disruption to the situation in the Middle East rather than to the asset itself, but a plant described as fully operational in February and as needing normality restored in July is a change in status that the half-yearly financial report should quantify.

What the statement does not establish is the size of anything. A double-digit EBITDA margin covers a wide range, and the 2025 comparison point is 14.7 percent. The first SMR order is described as secured but not valued. The careful reader’s next document is the half-yearly financial report itself.

What the documents say

Tubacex, S.A. (BME: TUB) published a first-half trading statement on 24 July describing six months in which the Basque tube maker held its EBITDA margin in double digits and closed June with an order backlog of 1.148 billion euros. The statement carried no revenue line and no profit line. It set out the direction of the margin, the size of the backlog and a short list of commercial milestones, leaving the audited detail to the half-yearly financial report that Spanish law requires within three months of the period end.

The company framed the period as an unusually hard one. In its own words: “The first half of 2026 unfolded in a particularly challenging commercial and geopolitical environment, marked by continued uncertainty around investment decisions and significant operational and logistics disruption linked to the situation in the Middle East.”

What the statement contains

Tubacex attributed the double-digit EBITDA margin to operating discipline, the contribution of premium products and the group’s industrial and geographic diversification. It said the second quarter showed some improvement in commercial activity across several strategic areas, naming subsea, nuclear, aerospace and defence.

The subsea business, on the company’s account, now has more than 18 months of backlog and has secured over 100 million euros in umbilical tube orders during 2026. In nuclear, Tubacex said it added references together with its partners and secured its first order for a small modular reactor project. Aerospace and defence brought new orders and progress in space and aircraft engine applications. The order backlog stood at 1.148 billion euros at the end of June, with what the company described as a strong concentration in high value-added products and long-cycle applications.

For the rest of the year the company listed five priorities: restoring full operational normality at its Abu Dhabi facility, improving logistics flows, reducing working capital, protecting margins, and strengthening cash generation and conversion.

The 2025 baseline against which the half reads

Tubacex closed 2025 with revenues of 719.3 million euros, a decrease of 6.3 percent on the 767.5 million euros of 2024. Adjusted EBITDA was 105.8 million euros against 107.0 million euros the year before, and the adjusted EBITDA margin improved to 14.7 percent from 13.9 percent. Adjusted EBIT came to 58.3 million euros, a margin of 8.1 percent, adjusted profit before tax and non-controlling interests to 27.1 million euros, and adjusted net profit attributable to the parent company to 15.9 million euros, or 2.2 percent of revenues.

Those adjusted figures sit before non-cash accounting adjustments the company recorded at the end of 2025, which it valued at 30.7 million euros on EBITDA, 49.3 million euros on EBIT and 47.2 million euros on net profit. The company linked them to a review of inventory valuation and to the impairment of certain fixed assets, mainly at the Durant plant.

The order book closed 2025 at 1.233 billion euros, with 79.6 percent of it in E and P Gas, a share that includes the ADNOC contract for gas extraction. Revenues in 2025 broke down as 52.3 percent from E and P Gas and E and P Oil together, 25.6 percent industrial, 7.5 percent PowerGen, 5.3 percent aerospace and 9.3 percent other activities. By geography, Asia and the Middle East accounted for 44.0 percent, Europe for 28.0 percent, America for 25.0 percent and Africa for 3.0 percent. The board proposed a distribution of 6.4 million euros under a policy of paying 40 percent of adjusted net profit.

Subsea, the segment carrying the story

The umbilicals business Tubacex singled out in July had already produced its own disclosure in February, when the company announced three umbilical tube contracts worth a combined 26 million euros from three global clients, covering projects in the Gulf of Mexico, Brazil, the Europe to Mediterranean axis, Australia and Africa. Tubacex said it had delivered more than 20,000 kilometers of umbilical tubes over the past decade and that it had around 12 months of visibility in the segment at that point. Execution runs through centres of competence in Spain and Austria.

In the same February release the company set out the market backdrop it works from, citing a Rystad report: global subsea and SURF spending on equipment, installation and services growing by around 10 percent through 2027, Brazilian spending rising 18 percent year on year, a record 45 exploration wells in Europe and Norway, and deepwater accounting for about 86.8 percent of the market. Tubacex named Oceaneering, SLB and TechnipFMC among the largest umbilical system integrators by market share.

The reporting obligation behind the statement

Article 100 of Ley 6/2023, de 17 de marzo, de los Mercados de Valores y de los Servicios de Inversión requires issuers whose shares or debt securities are admitted to trading on a regulated market, where Spain is the home member state, to publish and disseminate a half-yearly financial report covering the first six months of the financial year. The deadline is three months from the end of the period, and the issuer must keep the report publicly available for at least ten years. The report comprises half-yearly financial statements, an interim management report and responsibility declarations on their content. The same article adds a second half-yearly report covering twelve months where the annual financial report required by article 99 has not been published within two months of the year end.

That is the document that will carry Tubacex’s first-half revenue, EBITDA and net result. The July release is the company’s own summary ahead of it.