Great quarter for Precision

Article Excerpt

PRECISION DRILLING CORP. $13 (Toronto symbol PD; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Resource sector; Shares outstanding: 275.7 million; Market cap: $3.6 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.5; No dividends paid since February 2009; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk; www.precisiondrilling.com) provides contract-drilling services to land-based oil and gas producers in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. Precision owns 359 drilling rigs. The company earned $0.23 a share in the three months ended March 31, 2011. If you exclude a one-time charge related to the early repayment of certain notes, Precision would have earned $0.30 a share. That’s up 50.0% from $0.20 a share a year earlier. Revenue rose 40.8%, to $525.4 million from $373.1 million. The company continues to see strong demand for rigs that use horizontal drilling techniques to extract oil from hard-to-reach deposits. Precision Drilling is a buy. buy…