3 reasons why Keppel just can't be knocked off top spot

Aside from its whopping $14.7b order book.

According to CIMB, Keppel is still its preferred yard in Singapore.

Here are the reasons the firm cited:

1) Its better strategy in this rig cycle, taking on calculated risks in bidding aggressively for the jack-up rigs in 2010-11 and hence dominating about 45% of the market share;

2) Its scalable overseas yards, to benefit from any nationalist sentiment (local content) among oil companies; and

3) Lower execution slippage risk for Brazilian orders thanks to its 12 years of operations in the country, building familiar product-semi-subs.

We keep our order estimates for 2013 at S$5.5bn. Keppel Corp has secured about S$10.5bn of orders YTD (including S$6.4bn from Sete Brasil) with order book at about S$14.7bn.