The world’s largest oilfield services company surpassed Wall Street expectations on third-quarter revenue, but took a huge hit on the bottom line due to pretax charges, Kallanish Energy reports.
Schlumberger reported an $11.4 billion loss on $8.54 billion of revenue during the quarter, a loss per share of $8.22 for common stockholders.
One year ago, the company recorded net income of $659 million, or 47 cents per share of net income on $8 billion of revenue.
Schlumberger attributed the third quarter loss to $12.7 billion of pretax charges for the impairment of goodwill, intangible assets and fixed assets. Out of those figures, $8.8 billion were attributed to writing down the value of two past acquisitions while another $1.6 billion was specifically attributed to the company’s North American hydraulic fracturing business.
Without those one-time charges, the company earned 43 cents per share, beating Wall Street expectations of 40 cents per share. The company also generated $1.7 billion of cash flow from operations during the third quarter.
Schlumberger CEO Olivier Le Peuch focused on the year-over-year revenue growth but acknowledged challenges in the North American market.
“Sustained international activity drove overall growth despite mixed results in North America,” Le Peuch said, in a statement. “The North America business saw strong offshore sales with minimal growth on land due to slowing activity and further pricing weakness.”
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