After a Tough Year, Oil Services Companies are Set to Report Earnings Results

The oil services industry got hit as hard as any during the first quarter of 2020. Many of the stocks fell over 50%. The stocks have since rebounded and a number of them are trading at or near the same levels they were at before the meltdown.

Three of the biggest companies in the industry will report earnings next week and all three are expected to see significant declines in their EPS compared to 2019.

Halliburton (HAL) is scheduled to report on January 19, Baker Hughes (BKR) will report on January 21, and Schlumberger (SLB) will report fourth quarter results on January 22.

If you look at the weekly charts of all three stocks, all three are in overbought territory based on their 10-week RSIs and the weekly stochastic indicators. The stocks rallied off the March lows, dropped back down in the fall and have rallied again since October. The questions is, can the stocks keep the rally going with earnings expected to be down compared to last year’s results?

I put together the following table to show where the EPS estimates are for each company and how that compares to Q4 2019 and to the third quarter. As you can see, Baker Hughes is expected to see a pretty big jump from quarter to quarter, but it’s still expected to report a decline of 40.7% compared to last year.

Halliburton is expected to see a 36.4% increase in EPS on a quarter over quarter basis, but a 53% drop compared to the same time period of 2019. Schlumberger is expected to see a small decline on a quarter over quarter basis and a 56.4% decline compared to Q4 2019.

Tickeron’s AI Platform has Baker Hughes rated as a “sell”. Halliburton is rated as a “buy” and Schlumberger is rated as a “strong buy”. On the fundamental analysis screener, each of the companies gets three poor readings. Baker Hughes and Schlumberger each get two positive readings, both being the Outlook Ratings and the Valuation Ratings. Halliburton doesn’t have any positive readings. All three stocks have poor SMR Ratings and all three get a 100 in the Profit vs. Risk Rating. That’s the worst score a company can get.

The stocks fare much better on the technical analysis screener. Baker Hughes has four bullish signals and one bearish signal currently active. Halliburton has four bullish signals and two bearish signals. Schlumberger has two bullish signals and one bearish signal. The areas where we see a consensus are bullish signals for all three stocks from the MACD indicators and the Momentum indicators. All three received bearish signals from the Bollinger Bands within the past five days.

It will be interesting to see how investors react to the earnings reports after rallying so sharply over the last few months. For the complete analysis from Tickeron on how the three stocks compare to one another and other stocks, continue reading.