Halliburton Investors Cheer Q2 Results

Halliburton Company HAL reported second quarter results Wednesday morning which exceeded analyst expectations.

The stock ticked about about 0.6 percent.

The provider of services and products to the upstream oil and natural gas industry said it lost $0.14 in the second quarter on revenue of $3.84 billion. Wall Street analysts were expecting the company to lose $0.19 per share on revenue of $3.75 billion.

During the same period a year ago, Halliburton earned $0.44 per share on revenue of $5.92 billion, exceeding Wall Street's estimate of $0.31 per share and $5.89 billion.

This year's inferior results were due to a 15 percent decline in Halliburton's North America's revenue segment to $1.5 billion while the average U.S. rig count in the quarter was down 23 percent. In fact, the company noted that after falling 78 percent from the November 2014 peak, the average U.S. rig count "reached a landing point" during the quarter and has improved by 26 percent over the past few weeks.

International revenue in the quarter fell 4 percent from a year ago to $2.3 billion, Latin America revenue fell 12 percent to $476 million, Europe/Africa/CIS revenue rose 2 percent to $795 million, and Middle East/Asia revenue rose 3 percent to $1.0 billion.

By segment, Completion and Production revenue fell to $2.114 billion from $3.444 billion a year ago while Drilling and Evaluation revenue fell to $1.721 billion from $2.475 billion over the same time period.

"We believe the North America market has turned," said Dave Lesar, Chairman and CEO. "We expect to see a modest uptick in rig count during the second half of the year. With our growth in market share during the downturn, we believe we are best-positioned to benefit from any recovery, including a modest one. Internationally, we are maintaining our service footprint, managing costs and continuing to gain market share."