Murphy Oil (MUR) To Post Q2 Earnings: What's In The Cards?

Murphy Oil Corporation (NYSE:MUR) is set to release second-quarter and 2019 results on Aug 8. In the last reported quarter, the company delivered positive earnings surprise of 50%.

Let’s see how things are holding up prior to the announcement.

Factors to Consider

Murphy Oil is continuously working toward its shift to an oil-weighted company as well as undertaking divestures and acquisitions. To focus on domestic oil assets, it sold two of its Malaysian assets in March and acquired Gulf of Mexico (“GOM”) assets in June. In addition, the acquired GOM assets are immediately accretive to cash flow of the company. We believe that U.S. onshore and North American offshore assets will drive production in the second quarter.

However, the company expects second-quarter productions to be affected by planned downtime and maintenance outages in some its facilities. Murphy Oil expects net production in the range of 143,000-147,000 barrels of oil equivalents per day (boe/d).

Q2 Expectations

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for second-quarter 2019 earnings per share is pegged at 18 cents. The projected figure suggests year-over-year decline of 50%. The consensus mark for revenues is pegged at $606 million, calling for year-over-year decline of 1.94%.

Earnings Whispers

A stock needs to have a positive Earnings ESP (which represents the difference between the Most Accurate Estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate) and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) to beat estimates. Murphy Oil does not have the right combination as elaborated below.

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Earnings ESP: The company’s Earnings ESP is -16.26%. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they’re reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

Zacks Rank: The stock sports a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell).

Stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) or 5 should never be considered going into an earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions.

Stocks to Consider

Here are a few players in the same industry that have the right combination of elements to post earnings beat this quarter.

Cheniere Energy, Inc (NYSE:LNG) is expected to release second-quarter 2019 results on Aug 8. It has an Earnings ESP of +88.46% and a Zacks Rank #2.

Berry Petroleum Corporation (NASDAQ:BRY) is scheduled to announce second-quarter 2019 results on Aug 7. It has an Earnings ESP of +3.70% and a Zacks Rank #2.

KLR Energy Acquisition Corp (NASDAQ:ROSE) has an Earnings ESP of +51.32% and a Zacks Rank #3. It is scheduled to report second-quarter 2019 results on Aug 8.

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