Dallas, Texas 11/01/2013 (Financialstrend) – The S&P 500 index covered Marathon Oil Corporation (NYSE:MRO) has a market cap of $25 billion. On October 30, the company provided two positive updates which failed to enthuse the market and the investors. In the first announcement, the oil producer declared 3Q dividend payout for its shareholders. The company announced that it will pay out dividend of $0.19 per share to all share holders on record as of November 20 and will be paid out on December 10. The stock is expected to go ex-dividend on November 18.
On the same day the company announced that it had made “significant discovery” of hydrocarbons in its property in Kurdistan. The company had filed a SEC report indicating that its exploratory well Mirawa 1 has led to the discovery of “multiple stacked oil and natural gas producing zones” in Iraq’s Harris Block reserve. Making the announcement, Lee Tillman who is the Chief executive officer of Marathon has disclosed that “the well found significant resources and demonstrates the importance of this region as a potential major hydrocarbon producer.” Readers should know that the Harir block is jointly owned by Marathon, Total (TOT) along with the state of Kurdistan. While marathon had a major 45% stake, Total has 35% and the local government has 20% operating interest in the operations.
In spite of these positive news nuggets, the stock failed to respond with a bull run. In the past week of trading the stock had shed close to 1% of its market value while had gone down by 5.6% in the past 90 days. As of close of business on October 31, the stock was trading at $35.26 per share as against a analyst price target of $41.83. Investors would be hoping that the stock would soon post strong increase in value based on its inherent potential