On 3rd July PFC announced that it was trading well ahead of expectations. Not surprisingly, sp jumped but has now fallen back pretty much to the same level as before the announcement.

While perhaps not as exciting as finding the next Cairn, remember that in the goldrush days, it was rarely the prospectors who made the money, but rather the suppliers of the spades and tents and stuff - e.g. Levis if memory serves me aright.

sold LAM friday at 122 after a couple of months of the 108 - 120 yoyo !! as you say better to take any profit than a loss.

LAM is a long term (for me!) holding as i have a lot of faith in that company, or more precisely in the general resurgence of oilfield service companies.

that said, i believe Wellstream (WSM) issued a profit warning the other day and of course go hammered

rf .... from your AFR post ..... not sure who is big enough and/or would want to swallow PFC

Business Financial Newswire
"Oil and gas services group Petrofac raised its interim dividend 43% after reporting first-half net profit up 20% to $145.6m from $121.2m.

Revenue for the six months to June 30 rose 1% to $1.586bn from $1.576bn. Net margin rose to 9.2% from 7.7%.

The company said its first-half order intake was $5.8bn against $1.7bn in 2008, with its backlog more than doubling to $8.4bn at June 30 against $4bn at the end of December.

CEO Ayman Asfari said, 'Notwithstanding the significantly lower oil price environment experienced in the first half of the year the group has performed well and, subject to any unforeseen circumstances, we are confident that we will deliver earnings growth for the full year of at least 20%.

'With over $6 billion of new contract awards secured in the year to date the group has record backlog giving outstanding revenue visibility and underpinning the group's confidence that strong growth in earnings will continue well beyond the current year.'

EBITDA rose 16% to $207.5m from $179.2. Gross cash balances were $900.2m, up from the end December figure of $694.4m.

Diluted earnings per share rose 22% to 42.7c from 35.13c. Interim dividend was raised to 10.7c from 7.5c. Ex-divi date 23/09/09, paid 23/10/09"

Shell, BP, etc...and a few asian companies....to answer your question Cynic.

i am not sure that true oilies - e.g. Shell - would perceive PFC as adding to their core biz asset base.

anyway, i see that all the papers seem to have greeted yesterday's numbers with a fair amount of enthusiasm

Tempted to sell once the divi date has passed as this rise can't go on like this forever!

"Petrofac downgraded to underperform from neutral at BoA Merrill Lynch, 930p target held"
Business Financial Newswire

Nowadays : you have to sell before the exdividend date, because the sp drops far more than the dividend is worth.

Great, now you tell me! ;o)
However am expecting a bounce, so will put a limit sell on the system & hope for the best.

"US investment houses Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch dealt oilfield support services group Petrofac a double-blow on Friday with some bearish comment.

Merrill Lynch has downgraded Petrofac to underperform from neutral, with a price target of 930p."
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..Oh they do go on don't they -):

depending on general market conditions, a bounce at 930/935 looks a distinct possibility - always assuming you rate the stock

Sold this morning at 958p, so have got a little profit plus the divi.
I wonder where the brokers will send it once it gets to 930p?

Well done H, that's the way to do it.

A lot of blue chips have pulled back....POG, HOC,HOIL,DGO to mention some....if oil and gold turn around again these and Petrofac will rise again....market overall has done very well as of late so a little pullback was bound to happen, nothing goes in straight lines...we must just hope there is not another crash around the corner (it doesn't look like it)....good weekend all !.

am looking for (at least?) another 100 point retrenchment on FTSE to a little below 5000

You might not get it...might stabilise around this mark for a couple of weeks....I think that this year we will get a christmas advance but at what point is just guesswork...

cynic we agree stats from US and elsewhere not good enough to justify any further advance for the time being.ioho.

"The Government is investigating a tax loophole that has allowed the North Sea oil industry to avoid paying hundreds of millions of pounds in national insurance contributions, the Times has learnt. The scheme, which has been exploited for years by scores of companies, including the FTSE 100 oil services group Petrofac, is depriving the Treasury of as much as 70 million a year, according to estimates from one of the worlds biggest accountancy firms."

PFC. (and some other in the sector) SPs unaffected so far.

clearly it was a legit loophole so nothing claimable by the gov't retrospectively ..... meanwhile, companies are likely to change their domicile or similar if gov't is going to get stupid