Even though it turned in a loss for the first half of the year, Aberdeen-based energy services company Wood said it was riding a wave of market recovery

The company, formally Wood Group, reported a $52 million loss for the first six months of the year. Net debt, not counting the load carried by its joint venture partners, more than tripled to $1.6 billion.

Total revenue, however, improved 13 percent and the company said other performance indicators were at the upper end of its guidance range for the first half of the year. The company added that it planned to unload hundreds of millions of dollars worth of non-core assets as part of a deleveraging plan.

"Our full year outlook is unchanged," Chief Executive Robin Watson said in a statement. "We are seeing recovery in our core oil and gas market and good contract awards in broader industrial sectors."

The services sector, part of the upstream component of the oil and gas business, was hit hard by a market downturn characterized by sub-$30 per barrel oil in early 2016. The company in 2016 cut about 35 percent of its payroll and drew down overhead costs by $96 million. By June of last year, the company said it was still facing headwinds in its core oil and gas market, with only modest recovery elsewhere.

This year, Paal Kibsgaard, the chairman and CEO of Schlumberger, the largest company of its kind, said spare capacity on the market, the amount of oil or gas a producer could churn out on short notice, was at a premium. To correct for future supply-side shocks, he said the market needed to spend lavishly on the services sector in order to keep up.

Earlier this year, Watson said that last year's merger with energy services company Amec Foster Wheeler was expected to yield significant benefits in the year ahead.

Wood in 2017 made plans to purchase the company for $2.6 billion in a move that combined two of Britain's largest energy services companies. Amec Foster Wheeler said it would sell off parts of its exploration and production business in anticipation of concerns from the British Competition and Markets Authority.

Watson in May said the merger made him confident about returning to growth in 2018.

"Our overall outlook is unchanged and we are confident of returning to growth in 2018," he said in a statement.

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