Halliburton Sees Unusually High Options Volume (NYSE:HAL)

Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) saw some unusual options trading on Monday. Stock traders acquired 29,467 call options on the company. This is an increase of approximately 56% compared to the typical volume of 18,840 call options.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Halliburton

A number of institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Cary Street Partners Asset Management LLC grew its position in shares of Halliburton by 56.5% during the third quarter. Cary Street Partners Asset Management LLC now owns 157,085 shares of the oilfield services company’s stock valued at $4,563,000 after purchasing an additional 56,707 shares in the last quarter. Canada Pension Plan Investment Board increased its position in Halliburton by 146.0% during the second quarter. Canada Pension Plan Investment Board now owns 842,355 shares of the oilfield services company’s stock valued at $28,455,000 after acquiring an additional 500,000 shares during the last quarter. Mackenzie Financial Corp raised its position in Halliburton by 105.2% in the 2nd quarter. Mackenzie Financial Corp now owns 186,961 shares of the oilfield services company’s stock worth $6,316,000 after purchasing an additional 95,864 shares during the period. Pacer Advisors Inc. raised its holdings in shares of Halliburton by 23.1% in the third quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. now owns 16,782,174 shares of the oilfield services company’s stock worth $487,522,000 after buying an additional 3,150,986 shares during the period. Finally, Quest Partners LLC increased its stake in Halliburton by 2,418.9% in the third quarter. Quest Partners LLC now owns 78,387 shares of the oilfield services company’s stock worth $2,277,000 after purchasing an additional 75,275 shares during the period. 85.23% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several brokerages have weighed in on HAL. Griffin Securities downgraded Halliburton from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating in a research report on Friday, December 20th. Morgan Stanley lowered their price objective on shares of Halliburton from $35.00 to $34.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a report on Monday, November 18th. Stifel Nicolaus dropped their target price on shares of Halliburton from $45.00 to $42.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Friday, October 11th. Raymond James cut Halliburton from a “strong-buy” rating to a “market perform” rating in a research report on Monday, January 6th. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. dropped their price target on shares of Halliburton from $35.00 to $33.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, January 2nd. Seven investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and fourteen have given a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, Halliburton currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $38.95.

Halliburton Price Performance

Shares of NYSE:HAL opened at $28.20 on Wednesday. The firm’s 50 day moving average price is $28.96 and its 200-day moving average price is $30.20. The company has a quick ratio of 1.62, a current ratio of 2.21 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.74. The stock has a market capitalization of $24.77 billion, a PE ratio of 9.83, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.55 and a beta of 1.91. Halliburton has a twelve month low of $25.51 and a twelve month high of $41.56.

Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, November 7th. The oilfield services company reported $0.73 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.75 by ($0.02). The company had revenue of $5.70 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $5.83 billion. Halliburton had a net margin of 11.04% and a return on equity of 28.33%. The company’s revenue was down 1.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $0.79 earnings per share. Equities research analysts expect that Halliburton will post 3 EPS for the current year.

Halliburton Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, December 26th. Stockholders of record on Wednesday, December 4th were paid a $0.17 dividend. This represents a $0.68 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 2.41%. The ex-dividend date was Wednesday, December 4th. Halliburton’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 23.69%.

About Halliburton

Halliburton Company provides products and services to the energy industry worldwide. It operates through two segments, Completion and Production, and Drilling and Evaluation. The Completion and Production segment offers production enhancement services that include stimulation and sand control services; cementing services, such as well bonding and casing, and casing equipment; and completion tools that offer downhole solutions and services, including well completion products and services, intelligent well completions, and service tools, as well as liner hanger, sand control, and multilateral systems.