Halliburton Shares Short Increases

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Apr 22, 11:16AM EDT

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Halliburton (HAL) has not had a distinguished year. Over the last twelve months its shares have fallen about 21%. Investors did not seem to be impressed that the company spun off its construction unit, KBR (KBR), and that is improved HAL’s credit rating. And, there was great rending of clothes and gnashing of teeth when the company announced its would move its headquarters from Texas to Dubai. The company’s excuse, which was that much of its business is in the Middle East, did not seem to draw much sympathy.

Well, short sellers do not seem to like Halliburton either. Shares short in the company rose from 60 million in March to 113.8 million in April.

As Morningstar points out, Halliburton has a number of reasons for investors to stay away: the company is increasing capital spending and much of its revenue base is in North America "exposing the firm to volatile natural-gas prices."

The company has certainly done everything it can to drive shareholders away. It recent earnings warning was no comfort. "During the first quarter, the Production Optimization and Fluid Systems Divisions of Halliburton’s Energy Services Group have experienced reduced activity in North America," the company said. "A significant portion of these lower than anticipated results is attributable to decreased drilling and completion activity in Canada and the northern U.S."

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.