FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) _ Range Resources Corp. (RRC) on Wednesday reported a third-quarter loss of $300.9 million, after reporting a profit in the same period a year earlier.
On a per-share basis, the Fort Worth-based company said it had a loss of $1.81. Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, were 3 cents per share.
The results surpassed Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of 15 analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for a loss of 4 cents per share.
The independent oil and gas company posted revenue of $415.9 million in the period, which also topped Street forecasts. Eight analysts surveyed by Zacks expected $392.4 million.
Range Resources shares have declined 46 percent since the beginning of the year, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 index has climbed 1.5 percent. In the final minutes of trading on Wednesday, shares hit $28.83, a decrease of 57 percent in the last 12 months.
“Our operational results in the third quarter continued to improve during this challenging commodity period.,” said Jeff Ventura, Range’s chairman, president and CEO, in a statement. “Range is expecting to deliver our 20 percent production growth target in 2015 from a significantly lower capital budget of only $870 million, compared to $1.5 billion in 2014. We believe Range has one of the most capital efficient operations in the industry and we expect to continue improvements in 2016 and beyond.”
Ventura said Range was working on “potential non-core asset sales for areas in our portfolio that cannot compete against the Marcellus for capital.”
Range is looking to close one or more non-core asset sales before the end of the year, he said. Sale proceeds will be used to reduce debt and strengthen the company’s balance sheet.
Parts of this story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on RRC at http://www.zacks.com/ap/RRC