Marathon Oil 4Q Net Down 38%, Revenue Up 31%
Marathon Oil Corp.’s net income dropped 38% in a “difficult” fourth quarter marked by record crude-oil prices and delays in a key North Sea project, the company said Thursday.
Profit for Houston-based Marathon declined to $668 million, or 94 cents a share, from $1.08 billion, or $1.53 a share, earned in the final three months of 2006.
Net income, adjusted for special items, would have been $500 million, or 70 cents a share, down from a comparable year-earlier profit of $838 million, or $1.19 a share.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial had forecast that Marathon would come in with earnings of 86 cents a share, on average.
Quarterly revenue improved to $17.7 billion from the prior year’s $13.27 billion.
The company cited a handful of factors as affecting results for the latest quarter, including lower downstream margins driven primarily by rapidly rising crude prices as well as relatively flat upstream production due to delays in its Alvheim project in the North Sea.
Other costs included unscheduled downtime for warranty repairs at Marathon’s Equatorial Guinea LNG production facility, unscheduled downtime at its Athabasca oil-sands project in Canada, and higher exploration expenses.
Late Wednesday, Marathon announced an $8 billion capital, investment and exploration budget for 2008, representing an increase of 67% over 2007 spending of $4.8 billion.
In a broadly weaker market Thursday,, shares of Marathon sank 3% to stand at $49.32.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment