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Should You Keep Rowan Companies (RDC) in Your Portfolio?

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We issued an updated research report on contract drilling player, Rowan Companies plc on Jan 3, 2017.

The company is poised to benefit from the recent deal between OPEC and non-OPEC players. However, Rowan underperformed the Zacks categorized Oil & Gas-Drilling industry over a period of last one year. 

As a result, Rowan currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Rowan’s focus on high-spec resources, along with impending tendering activities for multi-year drilling programs in key markets including the North Sea, Southeast Asia, Australia and Saudi Arabia, will likely support the requirement for high-spec units. Further, Rowan’s strong relationship with Saudi Aramco, the largest oil company of the world, intends to boost production significantly. This will augment the company’s order backlog.

Rowan’s strong backlog not only reflects steady demand from its customers but also offers an attractive level of earnings and cash flow visibility. This enables Rowan to navigate the current uncertain environment better than many of its peers.

Moreover, with the latest decision of both OPEC and non-OPEC players to cut oil production to grapple with the oversupplied commodity market, crude have started improving again. The development in this front will definitely be beneficial for U.S. exploration and production. Following this, drillers like Rowan are expected to get more contracts for their drilling rigs.

However, despite the recent recovery in oil prices, it is still way below the mid-2014 mark. As a result, drillers could get lesser contracts than expected.

Additionally, over past one year, Rowan failed to cope up with the improvement of the Zacks categorized Oil & Gas-Drilling industry. During the period, Rowan improved almost 11% as compared to 15.3% gain for the broader sector.

Stocks to Consider

Some better-ranked players in the energy sector are Noble Midstream Partners LP , Suncor Energy Inc. (SU - Free Report) and Abraxas Petroleum Corporation (AXAS - Free Report) . Noble Midstream and Suncor sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) while Abraxas carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Over the past 60 days, Abraxas saw the Zacks Consensus Estimate to improve to a loss of 1 cent from 3 cents loss for the current quarter.

Noble Midstream also witnessed the Zacks Consensus Estimate to improve to earnings of 70 cents from 54 cents profit during the aforesaid period.

Suncor posted an average earnings surprise of 40.55% for the last four quarters.

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