Seadrill Limited (SDRL) Stock Price & How to Invest

Seadrill owns and operates offshore drilling rigs and hires them out to exploration and production companies under multi-well or multi-year contracts. The fleet is concentrated in the high-specification end of the market: seventh-generation ultra-deepwater drillships plus harsh-environment semi-submersibles, working mainly in Brazil, the US Gulf, and West Africa, with Petrobras, ExxonMobil, and other majors as the counterparties. Seadrill does not own the oil it helps find. It sells rig days, so a contract states a dayrate (the fee per day the rig is under contract) and a duration, and revenue is essentially dayrate times contracted days times how much of that time the rig actually operates. Economic utilization ran around 94.6% in early 2026, which is the operational half of the equation. The company also manages rigs for third parties and has periodically bought and sold units rather than building new ones, since a newbuild drillship costs several hundred million dollars and takes years to deliver.

The investment picture rests on three things: backlog, dayrates, and the balance sheet Seadrill emerged with after Chapter 11. Contract backlog stood at roughly $3.1 billion as of the first-quarter 2026 report, having absorbed about $860 million of additions in a single quarter (extensions on West Neptune and West Vela worth roughly $260 million, a seven-well option exercise in Angola, and a three-year West Polaris extension in Brazil). That backlog is the visible revenue; the argument for the stock is that ultra-deepwater supply is finite, the newbuild orderbook is close to empty, and utilization tightening should push dayrates higher into 2027. The argument against it is that offshore is a cycle business with lumpy, discretionary customer spending, and a quarter or two without a major award can leave rigs idle at full cost. The 2022 restructuring equitized roughly $4.9 billion of secured bank debt, which is why the current capital structure carries about $625 million of gross principal debt against roughly $329 million of cash, or net debt near $296 million. That is unusually light for a capital-intensive driller and is the single biggest structural difference between this Seadrill and the pre-2021 version.

Offshore drilling is one of the most cyclical businesses in energy, and customer capital budgets are set annually, so a soft oil strip can push a tender out by quarters. Rigs that roll off contract carry most of their cost whether or not they are working, which is why idle time between contracts, not the headline dayrate, is usually what breaks a quarter. Results are lumpy for the same reason: Seadrill posted a net loss of about $7 million in the first quarter of 2026 even while adjusted EBITDA improved to roughly $97 million and revenue reached roughly $358 million, because depreciation on a drillship fleet is heavy. Contract concentration means a single dispute or early termination with a large national oil company can move backlog by hundreds of millions. And the light balance sheet is a current condition, not a permanent one, since fleet acquisitions or a stacked-rig reactivation cycle can consume cash quickly.

8 analysts publish price targets on SDRL, averaging $56.25 against a $43.24 price as of August 2026, or +30.1%. The published targets run from $45.00 to $80.00, a moderate spread, and the ratings split 7 buy, 1 hold, 0 sell. Over the last six months there have been 5 raises and 0 cuts among the published actions. A price target is what an analyst published on a date, not a prediction, and sell-side ratings skew positive across the whole market.

Read the full SDRL forecast and price target for the target table, the recent rating actions by firm, and how the consensus has shifted.

We give no verdict on Seadrill Limited. Both cases are real, which is why the question is contested at all, so here is the strongest version of each.

The case for buying. Backlog conversion and replacement. Backlog of roughly $3.1 billion is the contracted revenue that has already been won, and the market watches how fast it converts to sales versus how fast new awards refill it. The most optimistic published target, $80.00, assumes this works close to its best case.

The case against. Offshore drilling is one of the most cyclical businesses in energy, and customer capital budgets are set annually, so a soft oil strip can push a tender out by quarters. The most pessimistic target, $45.00, is roughly what SDRL is worth if this bites instead.

Read the full bull and bear case on SDRL, including what would have to change to break either one. Walnut is not an investment adviser.

A simple financial snapshot. These are approximations and refresh quarterly; for current figures see Seadrill Limited's investor relations page or your broker.

• Revenue (Q1 2026): ~$358 million, up from ~$335 million a year earlier
• Adjusted EBITDA (Q1 2026): ~$97 million, ~27% margin
• Net income (Q1 2026): ~$7 million loss
• Contract backlog: ~$3.1 billion
• Net debt: ~$296 million (~$625 million gross debt, ~$329 million cash)
• Market capitalization: ~$3.1 billion

Seadrill screens on EV/EBITDA rather than earnings, because heavy depreciation on a drillship fleet keeps GAAP net income near or below zero even in quarters when cash generation improves. The company raised its full-year 2026 revenue and EBITDA guidance alongside the first-quarter report, citing early contract starts and operating discipline. Second-quarter 2026 results were scheduled for August 10, 2026, so the figures above reflect the first quarter and are the most recent reported at the time of writing.

Other names that sit close to SDRL: same theme, named as a direct competitor, or held beside it in the same funds. Each entry says which. Worth a look if you are thinking about diversification within a thesis rather than concentration on one ticker.

There are three common ways to get SDRL exposure. Buy shares (or fractional shares) directly at any major broker. Hold an ETF that includes it, which spreads the position across many companies. Or build it into a focused thematic portfolio, so SDRL sits alongside other stocks that express the same thesis.

Walnut takes the portfolio route. Describe a thesis where SDRL fits (for example “AI infrastructure” or “dividend-growth large-caps”) and the AI proposes 5 to 6 constituents with target weights. You review the plan and fund it through your own broker when you're ready.

New to this? Start with how to invest in stocks, see how to analyze a stock with AI, or compare the best AI stock analyzers.

Seadrill is a cleaned-up, lightly levered offshore driller whose value tracks the ultra-deepwater dayrate cycle and the pace at which its ~$3.1 billion backlog gets replaced.

Whether SDRL is worth buying today depends more on your time horizon and what you already hold than on any single call. We walk through valuation, what would have to go right, and the risks in is SDRL a buy or a sell?, and where the stock could go from here in the SDRL stock forecast.

For income investors, whether SDRL pays a dividend and how the payout looks is covered in does SDRL pay a dividend? And to weigh SDRL against a peer, read the full side-by-side comparisons: SDRL vs RIG and SDRL vs NE.