Halliburton Is Setting Up For A Short

Halliburton issued their second-quarter earnings report today.  The beat the expectations on earnings, but was short expectations on sales.

“International revenue increased 6% sequentially, confirming our expectation of high single-digit international growth for all of 2019. Momentum is building internationally and activity improvement should continue into 2020,” said eff Miller, Chairman, President and CEO. “Both of our divisions made meaningful contributions to growing North America revenue and margins in the second quarter. We are successfully executing our strategy of controlling what we can control and managing our business to perform well in any market conditions.”

Source

That was enough for the stock to receive a couple of upgrades.  Citigroup’s Scott Gruber reiterated a Buy rating and $33 price target and Stephens analyst Tommy Moll reiterated an Overweight rating and $45 price target on the stock, highlighting Halliburton’s ability to deliver “higher margins in North America despite macro headwinds.”

But here’s the problem, the Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLE) is lagging the S&P 500,

and Halliburton is lagging the XLE

Although oil has risen since January lows, it’s still below $60.  Thus, there isn’t a lot of incentive for the producers to produce because they are marginally making a profit, so don’t have a lot of need for the service companies such as Halliburton.

Thus, despite the upgrades, the chart suggest to short Halliburton at the weekly supply at $25.25

This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.