Muted 2025 growth expectations

Following Q1 earnings calls by some of the oil service companies, 2025 outlooks appear more challenging than previously. Baker Hughes expects international upstream spending to decline by mid- to high-single digits, while Halliburton sees its international revenues flat to slightly down. Furthermore, Weatherford expects 2025 international revenue to decline by low double- to mid-double digits. Precision Drilling flagged additional rig suspensions by Saudi Aramco, and SLB highlighted a slow start...

ENI capex cut but maintains shareholder returns

Driven by macro headwinds and uncertainty around trade tariffs, ENI was the first large oil company to introduce capex cuts for 2025, contributing to a more challenging business environment for oil services. Over the past five years, we estimate ENI to have been the oil major with strongest offshore spending growth, and it has been considered active and opportunistic while others have been more conservative. Hence, we see its reduction as a soft datapoint for oil services. ENI has optimised its ...

Another abrupt change

The US Trade Representative on 17 April published revised US port fees with significant changes to the initial proposal based on industry feedback. In its current form, the fees will primarily discourage use of Chinese-controlled maritime trade services to the US, and directly affect the use of Chinese-built vessels in US ports (with several considerable exemptions to avoid harm to US trade). The previous broader fees based on fleet composition and share of Chinese-built vessels has been scrappe...

Welcomed tender from Petrobras

Updates suggest Petrobras yesterday launched a new tender for “one or more” deepwater rigs for the Buzios field starting late-2026/early-2027. As it has been a while since the last Petrobras tender, and there has been uncertainty related to the timing of upcoming tenders, we believe a new Petrobras tender would offer relief for investors. As we count nine rigs already contracted with Petrobras to match the start-up window, we expect the requirement would be filled by rigs already in the country,...

Looking at required day-rates

Although there are several ongoing deepwater tenders, the lack of recent deepwater fixtures has created uncertainty among investors related to day-rates. Consequently, we have analysed the required day-rates to support current share prices and valuations. Given the high operating leverage and multiple variables involved (utilisation, lifetime and cost of capital), we estimate the sector requires 7G drillship day-rates from the mid-USD300k and above to support the current share prices.

Stolt-Nielsen Limited: 1 director

A director at Stolt-Nielsen Limited bought 5,000 shares at 222.000NOK and the significance rating of the trade was 60/100. Is that information sufficient for you to make an investment decision? This report gives details of those trades and adds context and analysis to them such that you can judge whether these trading decisions are ones worth following. Included in the report is a detailed share price chart which plots discretionary trades by all the company's directors over the last two years...

Solid Q1, but outlook less encouraging

E&P spending sensitivity explored

With an oil price at the mid-USD60s/bbl level, focus on the oil major overspending situation, and resulting impact on the outlook for offshore-focused oil services, is set to increase further. While oil companies would likely cut, or even eliminate, buyback programmes first, we expect increased focus on spending reductions and efficiencies, creating a more challenging business environment for oil services. Hence, we see a risk of oil companies taking a more cautious approach, resulting in projec...

Stolt-Nielsen (Buy, TP: NOK470.00) - Don’t stop believin’

While lower chemical volumes weighed on Stolt-Nielsen’s earnings and Q2 guidance, we see a positive trend in the early innings, with chemical volumes up 10% MOM in March and accelerated unwinding of OPEC+ cuts, to potentially re-ignite more positive tanker sentiment. We find the stock attractive at a 2025–2026e average P/E of 3.8x (tanker peers: 5.1x). We reiterate our BUY, but have cut our target price to NOK470 (480).

Small Q1 miss, partly countered by share buybacks

Chemical tanker spot rates are rebounding

Stolt-Nielsen (Buy, TP: NOK480.00) - Attractive Tankers-driven cocktai...

Tanker rates are healthy, and the outlook is solid on a record-high tanker fleet age and limited 2025e deliveries. We believe Stolt-Nielsen screens as attractive, trading at an average 2025–2026e adj. P/E of 4.3x (tanker peers 5.5x), despite other segments with more stable revenues accounting for c40% of our 2026e EBIT, which should allow for a premium, in our view. We reiterate our BUY, but have cut our target price to NOK480 (540).

Pemex seeks national partnerships to accelerate developments

In line with its earlier communication about Pemex looking for partners to re-start drilling activities and fight oil production decline, local news reports suggest that Pemex is seeking partnerships for 17 blocks (11 offshore and six onshore) to secure external capital. It is mostly considering local partners and intends to take the role as operator in most of the blocks. At first glance, the expected volume from the partnerships looks to be small, with only 66kbd to be added by year-end 2025. ...