HAL Conference Call and the Dividend

HAL CEO said that they plan to raise the dividend another 20%....cool.  Here is a link to the full transcript.

http://www.thestreet.com/story/12920220/1/halliburton-hal-earnings-report-q3-2014-conference-call-transcript.html

A summary excerpt appears below from the CEO of HAL:

Dave Lesar (CEO):

"Thank you, Kelly, and good morning to everyone.

I can tell you, I am really pleased with our third quarter results. Even with all the noise out there this quarter, on things such as Russian sanctions, disruptions in Libya and Iraq, the supply chain challenges we faced, and customer delays in the Gulf of Mexico, I believe we met these challenges head-on, fought through them, and were successful. And I'm really proud of our employees who made it happen.

Now here are the headlines; record Company revenue of $8.7 billion. We also delivered industry-leading revenue and operating income growth, both sequentially and year-over-year, once again outgrowing our peer group.

New quarterly revenue records for both North America and the Eastern Hemisphere, with double-digit sequential revenue growth in Latin America. And one I know you're going to want to hear is that the exit rate for this quarter for North American margins was over the 20% margin mark, a major milestone in delivering our Analyst Day commitment to you, our shareholders.

In addition, our job board in North America remains sold out, and we are delivering new stimulation equipment that will allow us to add incremental work in the fourth quarter with no negative impact on our margins. We believe that Macondo cases is essentially over for Halliburton , based on our settlement and the judge's ruling in the litigation.

And lastly, we continue to focus on delivering higher shareholder returns to you. This quarter we repurchased an additional $300 million in stock; and our Board of Directors has approved an additional 20% dividend increase, meaning we now have doubled our quarterly dividend over the past two years."

And this blurb from the CFO:

"We announced today that our Board of Directors approved a 20% increase to our quarterlydividend, from $0.15 to $0.18 per share, resulting in a cumulative 100% increase to our quarterly dividend over the last two years. As previously stated, our intention going forward is for our dividend payout to equal at least 15% to 20% of our net income."