Halliburton Co.’s profit tumbled in the last quarter after a yearlong crude-market crash forced customers to slam the brakes on oilfield work.

The world’s largest fracking-services provider said second- quarter net income fell to to $54 million, or 6 cents a share, from $774 million, or 91 cents, a year earlier. Excluding certain items, the per-share result was 44 cents, the Houston- based company said in a statement Monday on Businesswire. That was more than the 29-cent average of 34 analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

“Underlying activity for the whole industry in the U.S. fell by more than we all thought a handful of months ago,” Jeff Tillery, an analyst at Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. in Houston who rates the shares a buy and owns none, said in an interview before the results were released. “Oil price is going to be the barometer of what the future looks like.”

Halliburton, the second-largest oilfield services provider, is looking to sell assets to win regulatory approval for its acquisition of rival Baker Hughes Inc., valued at $34.6 billion when it was announced. Explorers have cut more than $100 billion from global spending plans for the year after oil prices fell by half from a high in June 2014.

Prices that service companies charge for hydraulic fracturing, which blasts water, sand and chemicals underground to release trapped hydrocarbons, are expected to fall as much as 35 percent in North America this year, according to IHS Inc. Half of the 41 fracking companies operating in the U.S. are expected to close down or be sold by the end of 2015, Weatherford International Plc said in April.

Halliburton and Baker Hughes are attempting to combine to attain a larger footprint and broader technology portfolio as they compete with Schlumberger Ltd. They’ll seek to close the deal no later than Dec. 1, the companies said July 10 in a statement.

Halliburton, which has 26 buy ratings from analysts, 9 holds and 2 sells, fell 1.9 percent in the quarter.

Source: www.bloomberg.com

Please leave comments and feedback below