Rystad Energy: Tracking 150+ Oil Field Services Companies Quarterly
Built and maintained a quarterly financial tracking system across six energy service segments for institutional clients
Arhan Parikh
Investment Analyst at Iron Pillar
From their time as
Financial Analyst
Rystad Energy • 2024 - 2025
Overview
Arhan joined Rystad Energy's research team as a Financial Analyst, working closely with colleagues based in Norway on macroeconomic and sectoral research across the global energy services industry. His core responsibility was to build and maintain a financial tracking system covering more than 150 oil field services companies, organized across six subsegments: rigs, vessels, well services, seismic, engineering, and fabrication.
The Story
Arhan joined Rystad Energy's research team as a Financial Analyst, working closely with colleagues based in Norway on macroeconomic and sectoral research across the global energy services industry. His core responsibility was to build and maintain a financial tracking system covering more than 150 oil field services companies, organized across six subsegments: rigs, vessels, well services, seismic, engineering, and fabrication.
He first structured the universe by subsegment, creating a classification framework that allowed meaningful comparison within each category. From there, he tracked each company's quarterly financials, reviewing revenue, EBITDA, margins, and growth rates, and reading management commentary to understand the drivers behind results that came in above or below expectations.
Calling Out Seasonality in the Analysis
One of the more consequential analytical decisions Arhan made was how to handle seasonality in the quarterly data. He noticed that activity levels in drilling, shipping, and offshore exploration dropped materially during winter months in the North Sea, driven by harsh weather conditions that made offshore operations impractical. He learned through management transcripts and conversations with senior colleagues that this was a structural, recurring pattern, not a one-off performance issue.
Rather than presenting quarter-on-quarter comparisons that would mislead readers unfamiliar with the industry, he reframed the analysis around year-on-year quarterly comparisons, Q1 2025 versus Q1 2024, and explicitly called out the seasonality dynamic in the narrative. This was particularly important given the ongoing volatility in energy markets driven by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which added a geopolitical layer to what was already a cyclical sector.
Client-Facing Output
Arhan synthesized the aggregated financial data into charts and written commentaries that were published on Rystad's client portal for institutional investors. The reports showed quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year trends across subsegments, highlighted which segments were leading or lagging, and contextualized the performance of major players like SLB, Halliburton, and Baker Hughes within the broader sector picture.