Helmerich & Payne, Inc. [stckqut]HP[/stckqut] issued its quarterly earnings data on Thursday. The company reported $0.15 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the Thomson Reuters’ consensus estimate of ($0.07) by $0.22, Market Beat.com reports. During the same period last year, the firm posted $1.70 earnings per share.

An institutional investor recently raised its position in Helmerich & Payne stock. Simplex Trading raised its position in Helmerich & Payne, Inc. by 302.2% during the fourth quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the SEC. The firm owned 14,670 shares of the company’s stock after buying an additional 11,023 shares during the period. Simplex Trading’s holdings in Helmerich & Payne were worth $785,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several equities analysts have recently issued reports on the company. Scotiabank raised Helmerich & Payne from a “sector perform” rating to a “sector outperform” rating in a report on Friday, October 9th. Stephens lowered Helmerich & Payne from an “outperform” rating to an “equal weight” rating and cut their price target for the company from $79.00 to $74.00 in a research note on Tuesday, November 3rd. Zacks Investment Research lowered Helmerich & Payne from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research note on Thursday, October 15th. Guggenheim upgraded Helmerich & Payne from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $70.00 price target for the company in a research note on Monday, November 30th. Finally, Scotia Howard Weill upgraded Helmerich & Payne to a “sector outperform” rating in a research note on Thursday, October 8th. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, fourteen have assigned a hold rating, nine have issued a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. The stock currently has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $60.38.

Source: Helmerich & Payne, Inc. (HP) Releases Quarterly Earnings Results, Beats Estimates By $0.22 EPS – Zolmax

Amazon.com reported its highest quarterly profit ever. Wall Street made the mistake of expecting even more.

The e-commerce giant reported fourth-quarter sales and earnings late Thursday that fell short of analyst expectations. Investors haven’t historically given much thought to profits at Amazon. They have instead focused on top-line growth with the expectation the company’s heavy investment would pay off at some undetermined point in the future.

But that had changed in recent quarters as Amazon’s rapidly growing cloud business, Amazon Web Services, posted significantly higher operating margins than the retail business. Now those profit hopes appear to have gotten ahead of themselves.

There is no question Amazon has become more profitable. Operating income was $2.2 billion in 2015 versus only $178 million in 2014. And operating margins at Amazon’s cloud business expanded to 28.6% from 25% in the third quarter and 16.9% in the fourth quarter of 2014.

Source: Amazon Doesn’t Deliver to Wall Street