By Tara Patel
Nov. 7 (Bloomberg) -- CGGVeritas, the world's largest seismic surveyor, said third-quarter profit rose 73 percent after it earned higher prices from offshore oil exploration.
Net income climbed to $162 million from $94 million a year earlier, the Paris-based company said in a statement. CGGVeritas confirmed its target of a stronger second half, compared with the first six months. It didn't provide any targets for 2009.
Record oil prices in the third quarter spurred exploration spending as drillers embarked on more costly and technologically complex projects to boost reserves, especially offshore. CGGVeritas conducts studies and sells equipment for estimating the size of oil and gas deposits.
``A good operational performance,'' wrote Bertand Hodee, an analyst at Kepler Capital Markets with a share target price of 22 euros, in a report today. ``Uncertainties remain for 2009, especially in marine,'' which are already discounted in the stock price, he said.
CGGVeritas rose as much as 1.38 euros, or 11 percent, to 13.50 euros and was trading at 13.24 at 9:04 a.m. in Paris, valuing the company at 1.82 billion euros ($2.33 billion).
Group revenue increased 28 percent to $1.06 billion while the order backlog rose 15 percent to a record of almost $1.9 billion, providing ``good visibility well into 2009,'' the company said in the statement.
In February CGGVeritas said it expected to ``grow at least in line with the market,'' which in 2008 should expand by about 15 percent worldwide. Crude reached a record above $147 a barrel in July, before tumbling more than $80 as the economic decline weighed on fuel demand.
The surveyor was created in 2006 when Massy, France-based Compagnie Generale de Geophysique SA bought Houston-based Veritas DGC Inc. Geophysique was founded in 1931 by Conrad Schlumberger and carried out its first survey in West Africa.
To contact the reporter on this story: Tara Patel in Paris at tpatel2@bloomberg.net
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