ConocoPhillips and Hess Earnings Preview

Over the course of this week, a number of energy and oil stocks will be reporting earnings. On Thursday and Friday we will hear from major oil companies Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) and Chevron (NYSE: CVX) and you can bet these two reports will garner plenty of attention, especially after the rally in oil that has taken it from $40 a barrel earlier this year to over $80 in recent weeks.

Before we get to these two reports, we will get little preview of what we might see out of XOM and CVX. Two lesser known and smaller companies in terms of market capitalization will report before the market opens on Wednesday.

ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) has lagged its brethren in the major oil and integrated gas sector over the last two years, but the company recently announced plans to try and boost its return on equity. In their previous earnings report, according to Yahoo Finance, COP ranked 12 out of 12 in the sector for revenue growth and 11 out of 12 for ROE with a rate of -32.3%. Analysts are expecting the company to report earnings of $0.94 for this quarter, an increase of 10.6% over last quarter’s results. In the third quarter of last year, COP earned $3.06 per share, so the company is looking at a 71.7% decline in earnings per share.

Hess (NYSE: HES) is also scheduled to report before the open on Wednesday. I did receive a bearish signal on HES in the Stark Report back on October 20 and it has played out for about a 4.6% gain so far. HES looks to have solid support between 52.50 and 54, so any pullback on earnings could be halted in this range.

Analysts are expecting HES to report earnings of $0.55 for the quarter, after reporting earnings of a penny last quarter and losing money in the first quarter. This seems like a lot to ask, but oil has been climbing sharply over the first nine months of the year.

Disclosure: No positions