Halliburton's Financial History in Charts (2023 edition)

The big three oilfield service (OFS) companies are all named after their founders.

• Marcus and Conrad Schlumberger - Schlumberger

• Baker Oil Tools later renamed Baker International was named after Reuben Baker and Hughes Oil Tools get its namesake from Howard Hughes Sr. His son, Hughes Jr was played by Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator

• Halliburton was founded by Earl Halliburton during the 1920s oil boom in Oklahoma and Texas.

So if you want to start a successful OFS company name it after yourself.

Before Halliburton founded his company he got his start working for The Perkins Oil Well Cementing Company in California learning the process of cementing oil wells.

He had a falling out with the owner, packed up, and moved his family to Oklahoma where he would successfully apply the new well cementing technology to jobs for Skelly Oil.

Erle founded his company, Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company or HOWCO in 1920 and incorporate in 1924.

I was going through some old annual reports and came across a table in their 1949 annual that had net income, dividends, and shareholders’ equity back to 1924.

If you know me any opportunity to make a ~100-year chart is never passed up.

And let’s just say Earl was like Uncle Scrooge, swimming in a vault full of $$$.

The early HAL days were “strong to quite strong”!