- Baker Hughes (BHI -2.6%) is poised to become the comeback story of 2016-17 despite the collapse of its merger with Halliburton, Evercore ISI’s James West and his analyst team argue.
- BHI has the unique opportunity to leverage a clean balance sheet to right-size the company for the downturn, bolster its core-of-the-core service offering, and align its business flows to expand quickly when the market improves in 2017, West believes, adding that management clearly grabbed the bull by the horns in moving past the broken merger, showing speed and conviction in announcing a plan to execute its strategy.
- But BHI had struggled in some areas even before oil prices plunged and now re-enters the market at an even more difficult time, with too many players and not enough work to go around, says Piper Jaffray's Bill Herbert.
- Now read Baker Hughes: Cash and untied hands