I wish all my dearest friends a very happy New Year of Monkey! After the New Year of solar calendar of 2016 and before the traditional lunar Chinese New Year, in accordance with the succession plan of company, Mr. Pi Zhifeng is elected as the new CEO. As the dedicated Chairman of Board, I start to get used to my new position but still feel I need to do one thing: the annual New Year speech. It is a bit special this year as it's now the traditional lunar Chinese New Year and what I deliver is a Monkey Year speech.
In 2015, we witnessed extreme volatility of world economy and the plunge of oil price. The whole oil field service industry was suffering from the torment and likewise Anton did not achieve satisfactory performance. Since 2014, Anton has failed to attain the satisfactory goals for consecutive two years and we have suffered from repeated defeats. However, over the past two years, especially in 2015, Anton still made remarkable progress.
We become more confident and hopeful. Anton has long been dedicated to building up the global presence by the advantageous regions in China, and in 2015 we integrated several regional companies in China into a complete Chinese company for better synergy effect. In domestic market, we grasp the opportunity of shale gas development and reform of state-owned enterprise (SOE) so that our domestic revenues tend to be stabilized after decrease for consecutive two years. Anton also speeded up the exploration of international market and achieved sustainable development in Iraq; Anton had a stride forward in services to the overseas oilfields invested by Chinese private enterprises; as a Chinese company, Anton has comparably advantageous position in the international marketdespite of significantly withering market in the locality, Anton America maintained stable revenue and we enjoy steady upward momentum and higher proportion of international revenues. In 2015 the handhold orders of Anton reached the historic high and the cash flow also recorded the best performance over the years. In general, Anton has carved out a promising globalized path of development.
We are stronger and stronger. In 2015, Anton continued development and improvement of full life cycle integrated services and products strategy, integrated the original product lines as per the principles of "Grand Well Drilling, Grand Well Completion, and Grand Oil Extraction" and realized the scale effect and synergy effect of product lines. We saw rapid expansion of oil extraction business of long-term contracts and stable revenues. At the same time, Anton laid off 40% employees in 2015 that greatly cut down cost and uplifted profitability. In the past year, Anton fully optimized management of core businesses, enhanced budgetary management and risk control awareness, and fully triggered IT management. Facing the severe challenges in future, Anton will join competition with no burden.
We are braver and braver. Although we cut down the payrolls, we still attach importance to talent introduction and promotion and we are good at training and finding talents in competition. Since 2013, Anton started improvement of teamwork style, and fully implemented Anton's value concept. Under the severe conditions every single employee is required to jointly bear the undertaking of Anton. In addition, Anton improved the reimbursement system and incentive system and established accurate guiding mechanism for consistency of interests between employees and employer. By the end of 2015, Anton fully summarized and reviewed the results of teambuilding and restructured our teams so that the new teams are prepared in taking action against future challenges.
It will be another tough period in 2016 but we have set the annual goals of profit-making under low oil price and returning to the track of growth. By light-asset strategy, technology operation and assets operation, we will maximize the assets utilization efficiency and carry forward the globalization strategy that further enlarges the proportion of international market with no compromising in Chinese market. Apart from that, Anton requires the entire management to have a top-down view and focus on every individual project to fully implement the whole-process operation management of project and "squeeze" benefit from every single part of project. We are convinced in 2016 Anton will return to normal track and gain a satisfactory result.
The wise never talk about success indiscreetly and the brave never fear failure. Anton is on her way to success!
Luo Lin
Chairman of Board
February 15, 2016