SLB increases dividend and buyback after Q4 hit
By Aarti Somasekar and Seher Darren
(Reuters) – SLB reported quarterly earnings and accelerated share buybacks on Friday after posting better than fourth-quarter profit, helped by strong demand for drilling equipment and technology.
The company boosted its quarterly profit by 3.6 percent and said it would be buying back $2.3 billion in stock at a faster rate than usual.
“While upstream investment growth will continue to weaken in the short term due to global supply constraints, we expect oil supply imbalances to gradually decrease,” said SLB CEO Olivier Le Peche. His business.
SLB, formerly known as Schlumberger. Shares rose 2.6 percent to $42 in premarket trading. TD Cowen analysts said the dividend increase was small but “somewhat unexpected”.
Focused on its global business to offset North American revenue growth, SLB posted a 3 percent quarterly increase in overseas revenue, the slowest growth since the first quarter of 2021, as demand from the Covid-19 pandemic slowed.
Latin America revenue fell 5 percent year-over-year, primarily due to lower drilling activity in Mexico, the company said. The decline was offset by 7% growth in the Middle East and Asia, on the back of strong activity in the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Kuwait, East Asia and China.
Revenue from international trade accounts for 80 percent of SLB’s total revenue.
Meanwhile, North American revenue grew 7 percent, the highest digital sales since the second quarter of 2023 and activity in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, despite lower drilling activity on U.S. land.
Total revenue of $9.28 billion beat analysts’ average estimate of $9.18 billion, data compiled by LSEG showed.
Excluding charges and credits, SLB earned 92 cents per share in the quarter, compared with analysts’ average estimate of 90 cents.
The suit includes a $223 million restructuring charge.
(Reporting by Arathi Somasekar in Houston and Seher Darin in Bengaluru. Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Mark Potter)