I do not understand the action in this stock. There's a 140 million share overhang from the oversubscribed KBR spinoff, and the thing goes up? Heck, 100 million shares were tendered by guaranteed delivery, meaning they were not going to be in the hands of purchasers until settlement.... probably all bought by arbs and the stock goes up? I don't get it . Oil was down big,SLB was down early in the day, etc. I realize the market was up, but all you had to do was buy HAL, tender by GD , amke 80+ cts on the spread, and sell the excess HAL you were going to get back--this at a profit too.
HAL is going up because its in a better position than it has ever been to make buku profits, independent of oil prices, with a far lower tax and regulatory burden than ever before. It is the "go to" oil services firm of the Persian Gulf now.
Great but that's more of a long term view. There should have been an overhang at the open but it was up stong with much lower oil.
A good case can be made that oil and oil services will not track each other, so long as oil stays above the magical $55/brl price point, IMO. In fact, there is a great deal of speculation that some of the major fields in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are going to need the special TLC that Halliburton is reknowned for to keep their production from waning. For all the talk of peak oil, the more imminent problem seems to be the concern of a potentially waning supply of light sweet crude, that the Persian Gulf is famous for.