Halliburton stock dips on mixed Q2 results

Halliburton reported a mixed second quarter report, with earnings topping analyst estimates, but revenue just shy of what was expected. The oil services company also reported weakness in North America sales, but an increase in international sales. Yahoo Finance Live breaks down the numbers,

Video transcript

- Earnings in focus for Halliburton. Shares in focus this morning after releasing its latest quarterly report card.

Now, it was a mixed bag for Halliburton. Earnings beat at $610 million, $0.68 a share, $0.77 a share on an adjusted basis. Revenue came up short at just under $5.8 billion so you're seeing the stock get dinged as a result of that miss there. Stock down a little over 8% in terms of Halliburton.

So you know, they have some challenges in front of them. But I mean, one thing that could be helpful in the long run is the price of oil.

- Yeah, price of oil, which is actually crude right now, up on the month, up about 6%. So demand seems to be improving on that side.

One thing that stood out to me from this release was that North America revenue fell sequentially, 2% quarter over quarter to $2.7 billion while international revenue actually increased 7% led by improvements in Latin America, Argentina, and Mexico. So more drilling overseas than in the US.

- Which makes sense given the forecast from OPEC, you know, which they predicted that demand would still be there.

- And Halliburton, like the-- you know, as an oil services company, like the oil majors, is continuing to try to support its stock by returning cash to shareholders. In this case, it bought back $248 million of stock during the quarter and also highlighted its free cash flow in the quarter of $798 million.

So this is-- you know, you could argue that this creates a floor under many of both the oil exploration and production and oil services stocks that they continue to pay out to their shareholders.