Seadrill Q2 Profit Falls - Quick Facts

(RTTNews) - Seadrill Limited (SDRL) reported that its net income attributable to the parent for the second quarter of 2014 fell to $605 million from the prior year's $1.727 billion, with earnings per share decreasing to $1.24 from $3.53 in the same quarter last year. The prior year results included gain on sale of tender rig business of $1.256 billion.

Quarterly revenues dropped to $1.222 billion from $1.268 billion in the year ago quarter.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to report earnings of $0.74 per share and revenues of $1.28 billion. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

The Board has resolved to maintain the regular quarterly dividend at US$1.00 per share. The Board had communicated earlier that this dividend level is sustainable until at least the end of 2015. With the recent contract announcements and the solid execution on the financing side, the Board said that it feels increasingly comfortable that this period can be extended well into swithout any significant recovery in the market.

The ex-dividend date has been set to September 4, 2014, record date is September 8, 2014 and payment date is on or about September 18, 2014.

Third quarter EBITDA is expected to be roughly in line with second quarter results for the Seadrill Group on a consolidated basis and the Group is on track to earn $10 million in EBITDA per day by the end of the year. Expectations for the third quarter includes approximately 106 days of downtime experienced on our deepwater rigs quarter to date.