Wall Street expects a year-over-year decline in earnings on lower revenues when Halliburton (HAL) reports results for the quarter ended December 2018. While this widely-known consensus outlook is important in gauging the company's earnings picture, a powerful factor that could impact its near-term stock price is how the actual results compare to these estimates.
The earnings report, which is expected to be released on January 22, 2019, might help the stock move higher if these key numbers are better than expectations. On the other hand, if they miss, the stock may move lower.
While the sustainability of the immediate price change and future earnings expectations will mostly depend on management's discussion of business conditions on the earnings call, it's worth handicapping the probability of a positive EPS surprise.
This provider of drilling services to oil and gas operators is expected to post quarterly earnings of $0.37 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of -30.2%.
Revenues are expected to be $5.89 billion, down 0.8% from the year-ago quarter.