With few exceptions, most oilfield services companies are located in Houston. So, finding an underfollowed member far from Texas is noteworthy, especially as the sector remains attractive amid higher crude oil prices.
For those reasons, I'm intrigued by Superior Well Services (Nasdaq: SWSI), a company that helps producing companies wring as much oil and gas from their wells as possible. The company is based not on the bayou, but in Indiana, Pennsylvania, a town whose claim to fame is being the home of the confusingly named Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Superior Well's services include stimulation services, such as acidizing and fracturing to increase a well's production, as well as cementing. It also provides casing attachments for the large tubular goods that provide integrity to the well's structure. Its logging unit provides an array of "down-hole" information. And despite its headquarters' location, the company plies its trade as far away as the Southwest and the Rocky Mountains.
Superior Well has a market valuation around $450 million, so it's hardly a Baker Hughes (NYSE: BHI) or a Halliburton (NYSE: HAL), with which it competes to a small degree. It's also smaller than W-H Energy Services (NYSE: WHQ), a similar Houston company with about three times Superior Well's market value, and Basic Energy Services (NYSE: BAS), a Midland, Texas, company that also provides many of the same services as Superior, but is almost twice the size.
After earning $1.63 a share for 2006, Superior Well is expected to generate about 13% more, or about $1.85 this year, before tacking on another 17% to about $2.17 in 2008. Meanwhile, its forward P/E is only about nine, and the company is nearly debt-free.
Given my interest in the energy sector and my feeling that the group will remain important for about as far as the eye can see, I keep a file on up-and-coming members of the group. Superior Well is prominently displayed on my watch list.
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