Halliburton Company (NYSE: HAL), the largest fracking services provider in North America, sees activity across the shale patch stabilizing as it reported another net loss this year due to reduced demand for oilfield services.
"The pace of activity declines in the international markets is slowing, while the North America industry structure continues to improve, and activity is stabilizing," Halliburton's chief executive Jeff Miller said in a statement.
Halliburton, as well as all other oilfield service providers, has felt the pain from reduced drilling activities across North America and internationally, after exploration and production companies scaled back drilling plans, curtailed production, and removed frac crews and rigs after oil prices and oil demand crashed in March.
Halliburton has laid off workers and cut costs since the spring.
The company's completion and production revenues slumped by more than half in Q3 compared to the same quarter of 2019, and drilling and evaluation revenues also fell. Revenue in North America-the biggest source of revenues for Halliburton-plunged to US$984 million from US$2.949 billion for Q3 2019. Compared to Q2 2020, North America revenue fell by 6 percent.
However, excluding severance and other charges, Halliburton booked an adjusted net income for Q3 of US$100 million or US$0.11 per diluted share. The adjusted net income per share beat the consensus estimate of US$0.08 income per share of analysts in The Wall Street Journal.
According to Miller, Halliburton is now on track to generate over US$1.0 billion in free cash flow for the year.
Last week, the world's largest oilfield services provider, Schlumberger (NYSE: SLB), reported its third consecutive quarterly loss this year, and although CEO Olivier Le Peuch warned of a "fragile" near-term recovery, he said that "In North America, the conditions are set for continued momentum, with improving DUC well completion activity in US land and a modest drilling resumption in the US and Canada."
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More