Energy

Why Whiting Petroleum Will Be Doing Well Just Breaking Even

Oil drilling rig
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Whiting Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: WLL) reported second quarter 2015 results after markets closed Wednesday afternoon. For the quarter, the oil & gas E&P company posted adjusted diluted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.04 on revenues of $590 million. In the same period a year ago, the company reported EPS of $1.40 on revenues of $835.62 million. Second-quarter results compare to the Thomson Reuters consensus estimates for a break-even quarter and $676.62 million in revenues.

Whiting increased production by 2% sequentially on production of 15.5 million barrels of oil equivalent in the quarter. Some 89% of production came from liquids.

CEO James J. Volker gave the company’s outlook statement:

Assuming no further asset sales in 2015, a Q4 2015 production rate of approximately 153,000 BOE/d, an eight rig program (six in the Bakken and two in the Niobrara) in 2016, and $50 per Bbl / $3 per MMBtu NYMEX prices, we expect 2016 capex and discretionary cash flow to be approximately equal at $1 billion and 2016 production to flatten out and average approximately 147,000 BOE/d.

However, Volker also said that “we anticipate further non-core asset sales by year end.”

Consensus estimates call for a third quarter loss of $0.05 per share on revenues of $643.93 million. For the full year analysts are expecting a net loss of $0.29 and $2.5 billion in revenues.

Two weeks ago Whiting announced, among other things, that it planned to increase capital spending for the second half of the year to raise the full-year total from $2 billion to $2.3 billion. In today’s report full-year capex is forecast at $2.15 billion.

Shares traded down about 2% in the after-hours session, having closed at $23.18 in a 52-week range of $20.17 to $92.92. Thomson Reuters had a consensus analyst price target of around $42.14 before today’s report.

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