As oil prices entered their third bear market in 15 months, Schlumberger (SLB, Financial) shares continued to underperform relative to the broad equity indices. We continue to see SLB as a best-in-class service provider that is aggressively investing in its integrated services offerings. We think SLB's unique advantage, which includes its industry leading army of oil and gas engineers, allows them to perform roles usually more associated with asset managers - not necessarily growing by quantity of services rendered, but by increasing the performance and output of the assets under management of their clients (in SLB's case, oil and gas wells), then capturing a fee for driving that performance. In-line with this shift, SLB recently announced the acquisition of Cameron International for close to $15 billion in total consideration. We see Cameron's core competency as being focused on "surface" equipment and services. This complements what we think is SLB's market share leadership in "down hole" services, providing SLB with more resources to continue their shift towards more fully managing E&P client assets. As oil service industry consolidation continues apace, we think SLB will emerge from this cycle in an enviable competitive position, relative to talent-starved E&P clients. While the negativity in SLB shares has been palpable and oil price volatility unseen in a generation, we think the long-term, pent-up earnings power of their business is very attractive relative to today's historically depressed valuations, so we added to our weighting in shares.
From David Rolfe (Trades, Portfolio)'s Wedgewood Partners third quarter 2015 letter.
