Halliburton Co. booked a $2.1 billion expense in the first quarter for cutting jobs and writing off assets, giving some results early and delaying the full earnings release as it strives to wrap up a takeover of rival Baker Hughes Inc.
The world’s largest provider of fracking services eliminated 6,000 more jobs in the quarter to reduce costs, according to a statement Friday. The release of its full earnings report is being postponed to May 3 from April 25 because of the deadline to complete the deal with Baker Hughes by the end of this month, Houston-based Halliburton said.
“It makes sense to delay this until after April 30, but the timing is just a little odd, doing it the Friday before the report,” Luke Lemoine, an analyst at Capital One Southcoast in New Orleans, said Friday in a phone interview. “It does probably show that they’re trying to work on this deal really hard for the April 30 deadline, and they just don’t need any distractions right now.”
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