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Strategies & Market Trends : Dividend investing for retirement -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Spekulatius who wrote (31155)	4/25/2019 11:12:20 PM
From: JimisJim	2 Recommendations Recommended By Black Blade rnsmth Respond to of 34328

When I was with Varco, Fluor had their west coast HQ nearby a mile or so south of John Wayne airport in Orange Co., Cal... we never worked for them, nor they for us, but we often worked on the same projects... quite an outfit... but that segment of offshore in particular is close to being all or nothing, all feast or all famine and rarely in between except for periods of trend inflection pts... Bechtel also had a large operation nearby (at the time -- maybe still true -- Bechtel was the largest (by revenues) privately held company in the world... Anyway, for large companies involved in any segment of oil/gas, companies like Fluor might be the most volatile in terms of biz... they had some nice years in the 1990s and early 2000s when China was building more of everything than anyone else, possibly their most stable growth years... I have heard rumors, but have no factual info, that some divisions at Fluor have been quite grim since the floater boom years leading up to 2010 and the impact of Deepwater Horizon followed by the bust in 2014-15... there were still new floaters being finished up in shipyards around the world, but all newbuilds were "paused" or canceled after that. That really hit the companies that actually make platforms (spars were "it" but FPSOs began their ascent about then, too), masts, drawworks, etc. very very hard... the capital equipment makers struggled, too, but at least the shale boom required a lot of the same equipment the major offshore operators had already been using... until new orders for either tapered off longer and lower than I've ever seen before... Fluor's potential market is by nature all boom/bust and enjoyed their most stable years while China and India were catching up fast in certain industries (and surpassing others, such as coal-fired power generation... for a period back then, China was on average building/completing one (or more) new plants a month all by itself. Fluor always fascinated the little kid in me (Bechtel, too, but that's another story) and what was impressive (to me anyway) about Fluor is they maintained a very high level of competencies across their market sectors they served... they also had the coolest looking office complex in the Irvine/Costa Mesa area just south of SNA airport in Orange Co. Sorry for rambling -- I have no point to make here, just nostalgic by the names and what turned out to be the very tip top of the capital equipment, platforms -- major, major projects -- in my working career... Petronus, Hibernia, Perdido, etc. used to rule the world in terms of size, etc., and likely are still in the top 5-10 largest rig/platforms in the world. Most people automatically about Saudi Arabia when talking oil production or E&P operations, but there are as many rigs in the GoM as the rest of the world combined -- almost -- and combined, the GoM still produces about 20% of the oil/gas in the world on any given day... the GoM is like the Ghawar/Saudi fields except under water. If opening up to outsiders again by Brazil/PBR continues, I expect they will approach the GoM and am quite sure that will happen if you add offshore W. Africa -- the S. Atlantic is proving to be a major unexploited potential oil/gas supply -- even compared to the much vaunted Arctic -- except the Arctic gets all of the attn and love because it is a lot closer to major infrastructure (for now) than the S. Atlantic... Extrapolating the growth and increasing sophistication/capabilities of things like FPSOs might be the "disruptive" catalyst going forward for offshore, and remember that while 70% of the world is under water, only a very small fraction of that has been explored and all that water masks a lot of ancient (in geologic terms) asteroid impact craters such as the one in the Mexican area of the GoM (Cantarel) where the super-giant basins and fields were created. dvdw some years ago caught my attn with the concept of nucleation... further digging informed that nucleation is a major factor, IMO, in how/where/why super giant fields can be found under the floors of the world's oceans... not just for oil/gas, but for many "resources" required for current and future applied technology. Here I've turned into that typical retired guy on the front porch reminiscing about my "glory years"... hah!!! ("And you kids get off of my lawn or I'll crack your empty skulls with my walker and stick your heads on pikes next to the sidewalk -- and your flea-bitten dogs, too!") ... <grin/cough>

To: Spekulatius who wrote (31155)	4/26/2019 3:37:02 AM
From: Ditchdigger	Respond to of 34328

MSCI to change KBR's GICS® Code to IT Consulting & Other Services This GICS® code more accurately reflects the company's transformed business mix, where more than 60% of KBR's consolidated results stem from the government segment................ As a general rule, a company is classified in the sub-industry whose definition most closely describes the business activities that generate more than 60% of the company's revenues. finance.yahoo.com