Saturday, April 22, 2006

Halliburton income soars 33%

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DALLAS: Oilfield services conglomerate Halliburton said that first-quarter net income rose 33 per cent, a boost driven largely by increased sales and robust rig activity in North America.

The Houston-based company reported net income of $488 million, or 91 cents a share, compared to $365m, or 72 cents a share in the same quarter last year.

Stripping out 1 cent for discontinued operations, the results were three cents a share better than the 87 cent per share profit among analysts polled by Thomson Financial.

Revenue rose to $5.2 billion from $4.8bn in the same period of 2005, short of Wall Street's estimate of $5.62bn.

"These are solid looking gains year-over-year," said Jeff Tillery, an analyst with Pickering Energy in Houston.

Halliburton was led from 1995 to 2000 by Vice-President Dick Cheney, and it has been criticised since the beginning of the Iraq war for its large government contracts, some of them awarded without a bidding process.

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