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, plus a growing presence in Southeast Asia. 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. More awards followed on October 12, 2026: an 880-day firm contract for West Carina in Indonesia worth about $420 million, an extension of West Capella in Malaysia through February 2028, a roughly three-year extension of the Sonangol Libongos in Angola through January 2030, and a short Kosmos job for Sevan Louisiana in the US Gulf. Seadrill said more than 85% of available drillship days across the fleet are now contracted for 2027. The second quarter of 2026 was the first clean earnings print in a year: revenue jumped to about $449 million from $358 million in the first quarter, net income was about $29 million, and EPS of $0.47 beat the ~$0.28 consensus. 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, and Yahoo Finance now reports about $754 million of total debt against roughly $337 million of cash, or net debt near $417 million. That is still 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 net losses in each of the three quarters through March 2026 (about $11 million, $10 million and $7 million) before earning about $29 million in the second quarter, and trailing net income is only about $1 million, because depreciation on a drillship fleet is heavy. Consensus for the third quarter is EPS of about $0.12 on roughly $381 million of revenue, well below the second quarter, so the strong June print is not expected to repeat in full. Legal exposure is live as well: on October 13, 2026 Norway's Borgarting Court of Appeal unanimously upheld a ruling that Seadrill breached its agreement when it returned the Hercules rig to SFL in December 2022, and ordered it to pay about NOK 525 million (roughly $55 million) including interest and costs; a further appeal needs leave from the Supreme Court. Contract concentration means a single dispute or early termination with a large national oil company can move backlog by hundreds of millions. And the balance sheet is a current condition, not a permanent one, since fleet acquisitions or a stacked-rig reactivation cycle can consume cash quickly; operating cash flow over the trailing twelve months was about negative $52 million.

9 analysts publish price targets on SDRL, averaging $54.00 against a $48.28 price as of November 2026, or +11.8%. The published targets run from $26.00 to $80.00, a wide spread, and the ratings split 7 buy, 2 hold, 0 sell. Over the last six months there have been 0 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 at the first-quarter 2026 report 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, $26.00, 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.

No. Seadrill Limited (SDRL) has not split its stock in the last 10 years. That is a statement about the window we check rather than about the company’s entire history, so an older split is possible. It also matters less than it once did: fractional shares mean a high price per share no longer keeps smaller investors out, which removed most of the practical reason to split.

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

• Revenue (TTM): ~$1.48 billion; Q2 2026 ~$449 million, up ~19% year on year
• Net income: ~$29 million in Q2 2026; ~$1 million TTM
• EPS (Q2 2026): $0.47 vs ~$0.28 consensus
• Margins (TTM): ~35% gross, ~17% operating
• EBITDA (TTM) / EV/EBITDA: ~$413 million / ~8.0x
• P/E (forward): ~13.8x (trailing P/E not meaningful on ~$0.03 of EPS)
• Net debt: ~$417 million (~$754 million debt, ~$337 million cash)
• Market capitalization: ~$2.9 billion; no dividend

Seadrill screens on EV/EBITDA rather than trailing earnings, because heavy depreciation on a drillship fleet kept GAAP net income near zero over the past year; at about 8x trailing EBITDA and roughly 1.0x book, the market is paying for the 2027 contract coverage rather than for current profit. Analysts expect about $3.39 of EPS in 2027, which is where the ~13.8x forward P/E comes from, and the nine-analyst mean target is about $54 against a $46.74 close. Third-quarter results are due November 3, 2026, with consensus at about $0.12 of EPS on roughly $381 million of revenue.

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, moderately levered offshore driller whose value tracks the ultra-deepwater dayrate cycle and the pace at which its backlog gets replaced; a profitable second quarter, new awards in Indonesia and Angola, and a stock up about 34% in 2026 set the bar for the November 3 third-quarter report.

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.