Oil & gas companies Q4 news flow most positive in past 8-quarters
Total SA leads positive news coverage among top 10 oil & gas companies in 2017
Global oil & gas companies witnessed a significant improvement in underlying news sentiment for December 2017 quarter. Crude oil prices are at its highest level in past 8-quarters (Image 1), which has led to improvement in prospects of earnings, production and growth-oriented activities for the oil & gas companies. As a result, news coverage on top 100 global oil & gas companies during Q4 was most positive in the past 8-quarters.
FiND, an alternative data platform developed by Heckyl has accurately captured movement in news sentiment for the oil & gas sector. For the past 8-quarters, our positive to negative news ratio for top 100 oil & gas companies showed near perfect positive correlation (0.95) with Dow Jones Global Oil & Gas index (Image 2).
(The ratio value higher than 1 indicates mostly positive news sentiment. On the other hand, the ratio value lower than 1 signals broadly negative news sentiment.)
2017 turned out to be a good year for oil & gas companies globally in terms of improvement in positive news flow. Sentiment has improved across top news categories during 2017 (Image 3). Earnings, estimates, production, M&A, and contracts were top 5 topics that dominated positive news coverage for oil & gas companies in 2017.
Among top 10 global oil & gas companies, news flow for French oil giant Total SA was most favorable as the volume of positive news outpaced negative news volume by nearly 5 times in 2017 (Image 4). On the other hand, Exxon Mobil, the world largest integrated oil & gas company, topped the volume of both positive and negative news items during the year.
At the same time, Total SA’s news sentiment 200-DMA was in the uptrend since February 2017 (Image 5). Currently, news sentiment 200-DMA for French integrated oil & gas company is at the highest level among its global peers.
In our view, strong positive correlation signals that the Heckyl news sentiment is an alternative indicator to capture the underlying sentiment for both oil & gas sector as well as individual companies.
FiND offers high-end Media analytics by tracking mainstream news and social media in real-time and analyzing movement in underlying sentiment around it for all listed and unlisted companies across the globe.
To know more about Find, email us at find@heckyl.com
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