Jefferies & Company Lowers Pride International Estimates; Maintains Buy Rating

With a premium UDW fleet, good earnings visibility, and outsized
EPS growth in 2011 relative to its peers, Jefferies & Company is maintaining its Buy rating on Pride International, Inc. (NYSE: PDE) “as the Company is an attractive acquisition target as well as a pure play on the long-term growth of the deepwater market.”

Jefferies & Company said that PDE reported recurring 3Q10 EPS of $0.21, “which was below both our estimate and the Consensus of $0.28 due to $30MM in unrecorded revenue from a customer dispute.” Including the unrecorded revenue, 3Q EPS would have been $0.33 and a solid operational beat.

“We are lowering our 4Q10 EPS estimate to $0.43 from $0.55 to account for management's near-term revenue and cost guidance and tweaking our 2011 EPS to $2.70 from $2.81 to account for downtime on the Pride Rio de Janeiro and the Pride Brazil,” Jefferies & Company writes.

Pride International currently trades at $33.40.