Oil prices continue to surge higher, with the June contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange hitting a 31-month high near $113 a barrel. That’s just the ticket for Baker Hughes, the world’s third-largest oil services provider.
The company provides a full array of services to all kinds of exploration and production companies in more than 90 countries, including:
• Drilling, evaluation, and fluids.
• Completions, production, and chemicals.
• Pressure pumping.
• Reservoir development services.
The pressure pumping services come courtesy of Baker Hughes’ $5.5 billion acquisition of BJ Services last year. The move turned Baker Hughes (BHI) into a one-stop shop for oil services. That particularly helps the company overseas, where many oil companies want all their services in a single package.
Given Baker Hughes’ prominent position in a growing market, you may want to take a look at its stock.
The company’s profit almost tripled to $381 million in the first quarter from $129 million a year earlier, easily beating analysts’ estimates. Revenue soared 78 percent to $4.53 billion, also topping analysts’ forecasts.
The BJ Services purchase, an improvement in profit margins overseas and a surge of oil and gas drilling in the U.S. fueled the gains. The company said its pressure-pumping services are sold out in North America.
As for foreign profit margins, they rose to 12.2 percent in the first quarter from 9.1 percent a year earlier. The company expects continued improvement, with the margin possibly reaching the mid-teens next year.
“High oil prices have spurred both international oil companies and national oil companies to accelerate their spending plans,” Baker Hughes CEO Chad Deaton said in a statement.
“Assuming oil prices do not increase to levels high enough to destroy demand, we expect oil-driven spending growth to be sustained for multiple years.”
Standard & Poor’s analyst Stewart Glickman has a four-star buy rating on Baker Hughes. “We think BHI's post-BJ Services merger cost-cutting efforts continued to bear fruit,” he writes. “We also see prospects for activity and pricing gains in 2011 and 2012.”
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