Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) and Petrofac (OTCMKTS:POFCY) Critical Comparison

Petrofac (OTCMKTS:POFCY) and Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) are both energy companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their dividends, analyst recommendations, valuation, profitability, institutional ownership, risk and earnings.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings for Petrofac and Halliburton, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Petrofac	0	0	0	0	0.00
Halliburton	0	7	17	2	2.81

Halliburton has a consensus target price of $31.48, indicating a potential upside of 14.19%. Given Halliburton’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Halliburton is more favorable than Petrofac.

Risk and Volatility

Petrofac has a beta of 2.79, meaning that its share price is 179% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Halliburton has a beta of 1.03, meaning that its share price is 3% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Petrofac and Halliburton’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Petrofac	N/A	N/A	N/A
Halliburton	5.91%	20.12%	8.29%

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Petrofac and Halliburton”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Petrofac	$2.50 billion	0.01	-$505.00 million	N/A	N/A
Halliburton	$22.14 billion	1.05	$2.50 billion	$1.51	18.25

Halliburton has higher revenue and earnings than Petrofac.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

85.2% of Halliburton shares are held by institutional investors. 0.6% of Halliburton shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Summary

Halliburton beats Petrofac on 12 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Petrofac

Petrofac Limited designs, builds, manages, and maintains infrastructure for the energy industries in the United Kingdom, Algeria, Thailand, Oman, Kuwait, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands, and internationally. It operates through three segments: Engineering & Construction (E&C); Asset Solutions; and Integrated Energy Services (IES). The E&C segment provides onshore and offshore engineering, procurement, construction, installation, and commissioning services. The Asset Solutions segment offers concept, feasibility, and front-end engineering design services, as well as manages and maintains onshore and offshore operations. The IES segment focuses on delivering value from the existing asset portfolio. The company was founded in 1981 and is based in St Helier, Jersey.

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. This segment also provides electrical submersible pumps, as well as artificial lift services; production solutions comprising coiled tubing, hydraulic workover units, downhole tools, and pumping and nitrogen services; pipeline and process services, such as pre-commissioning, commissioning, maintenance, and decommissioning; and specialty chemicals and services. The Drilling and Evaluation segment offers drilling fluid systems, performance additives, completion fluids, solids control, specialized testing equipment, and waste management services; drilling systems and services; wireline and perforating services consists of open-hole logging, and cased-hole and slickline; and drill bits and services comprising roller cone rock bits, fixed cutter bits, hole enlargement, and related downhole tools and services, as well as coring equipment and services. This segment also provides cloud based digital services and artificial intelligence solutions on an open architecture for subsurface insights, integrated well construction, and reservoir and production management; testing and subsea services, such as acquisition and analysis of reservoir information and optimization solutions; and project management and integrated asset management services. Halliburton Company was founded in 1919 and is based in Houston, Texas.