- Weatherford (WFT -6.5%) sinks to a 52-week low after Barclays (LON:BARC) downgrades shares to Equal Weight from Overweight with a $3.50 price target, slashed from $6, saying the company has been severely impaired after two decades of mismanagement, poor execution and a culture unaccustomed to accountability.
- Barclays believes CEO Mark McCollum is the "right man for the job" but could be constrained by WFT's $7.1B in net debt and the low-hanging cost opportunities that already were picked up in the third year of a turnaround.
- "In light of the heightened execution risk and limited means to delever its balance sheet, shares of WFT should trade at a healthy discount to its larger peers, after which leaves little equity upside even after giving credit for planned asset sales and much of the targeted improvements, most of which will be implemented in 2019," the firm writes.
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