Out Fox The $treet

Ocean Rig priced a perplexing secondary offering below the market price and substantially below book value. The apparent negative secondary has the positive outcome of reducing the ownership position of DryShips. The stock offers a compelling value at or below the offering price. The news of the day on Ocean Rig (NASDAQ: ORIG ) continues to highlight the risks of owning a stock with a weak owner. Prior to the news of the last few weeks, DryShips (NASDAQ: DRYS ) was listed as owning 59.2% of the outstanding shares. Prior to the recent moves, the position in Ocean Rig was worth more than the valuation the market gave DryShips showing the concern or its financial position. Read the full article on Seeking Alpha. Disclosure: No positions mentioned. Please review the disclaimer page for more details. 

For investors who only read the earnings headlines, a ton of additional information can usually be gleaned by reading the details of the earnings report and comparing to competitors. For investors interested in the domestic land-drilling market, Helmerich & Payne ( NYSE: HP     ) happens to be one of the better providers of useful numbers. The driller had some encouraging signs on new rig orders and increasing rig revenue per day, but the numbers show more stability than growth. As with Patterson-UTI Energy ( NASDAQ: PTEN     ) and Nabors Industries ( NYSE: NBR     ) , the troubling sign continues to be that customers want the new rigs at the expense of idled rigs. Read the full article here . Disclosure: No positions mentioned. Please review the disclaimer page for more details. 

Interesting stats from Reuters on the average age of offshore oil and gas drilling rigs. Its interesting because a lot has been made of the recent order boom for offshore rigs. Looking at the below data though it suggests that new rigs are very much needed. Seadrill (SDRL) is the only company in the list with an average age below 15. Now I'm sure the rigs for Diamond Offshore (DO) still do a good job, but rigs that are over 30 years old surely can't compete with new modern rigs. Atwoods Oceanics (ATW) has been a favorite of Stone Fox Capital for a while. The company has recently gone on a building spree [see Atwoods Oceanics Is Drilling for New Rigs ]. The company has 6 new rigs on order which is impressive considering the company only has 9 ships now. The industry clearly has an issue with aging fleets. SDRL has some appeal as an investment though they are heavily indebted.  For now we'll remain focused on the investment in ATW and sleep much better knowing the buildi...