Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) Declares Quarterly Dividend of $0.17

Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) declared a quarterly dividend on Wednesday, February 12th,RTT News reports. Stockholders of record on Wednesday, March 5th will be given a dividend of 0.17 per share by the oilfield services company on Wednesday, March 26th. This represents a $0.68 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 2.62%.

Halliburton has raised its dividend by an average of 55.7% per year over the last three years. Halliburton has a payout ratio of 22.2% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Analysts expect Halliburton to earn $2.98 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $0.68 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 22.8%.

Halliburton Price Performance

NYSE:HAL traded down $0.51 during trading hours on Wednesday, hitting $25.98. The stock had a trading volume of 7,305,752 shares, compared to its average volume of 11,067,494. The company has a 50 day simple moving average of $27.52 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $29.24. The firm has a market capitalization of $22.82 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 9.18, a P/E/G ratio of 3.53 and a beta of 1.89. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.68, a current ratio of 2.05 and a quick ratio of 1.54. Halliburton has a one year low of $25.16 and a one year high of $41.56.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several equities research analysts recently issued reports on HAL shares. Susquehanna dropped their price objective on Halliburton from $42.00 to $40.00 and set a “positive” rating for the company in a research note on Friday, November 8th. Wells Fargo & Company decreased their price objective on shares of Halliburton from $39.00 to $34.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research report on Tuesday, December 17th. Raymond James lowered shares of Halliburton from a “strong-buy” rating to a “market perform” rating in a research report on Monday, January 6th. Stifel Nicolaus decreased their price target on shares of Halliburton from $42.00 to $37.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, January 23rd. Finally, Griffin Securities cut shares of Halliburton from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating in a research report on Friday, December 20th. Seven analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and fourteen have given a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Halliburton has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $37.42.

Insider Buying and Selling at Halliburton

In other news, CFO Eric Carre sold 141,206 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, February 11th. The shares were sold at an average price of $26.13, for a total transaction of $3,689,712.78. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer now directly owns 127,101 shares in the company, valued at approximately $3,321,149.13. This represents a 52.63 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through this hyperlink. Corporate insiders own 0.61% of the company’s stock.

Halliburton Company Profile

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.