I only started as a low level manager in 2015 so I know very little about history of Weatherford. Does anyone know how we ended up with 127% debt to equity ratio? I understand smaller emerging startup may have high debt due to initial investments but how can this happen to Weatherford?
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Most of that debt is from shitty development decisions. Spending millions of dollars to develop software and then scrapping it! MORE THAN ONCE! MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. Dumb.
the debt was exchanged for Bernard's ego. Paid in full.
There was a lot of growth through acquisition. And typical oilfield mentality managing the business.
A lot of debt was from just bad business management. Green lights on inventory build up that sat has gotten us in a lot of trouble. We had to spend cash to pay our suppliers but wasn't able to turn it over into cash from operations. So this deficit was financed under short term debt to pay the bills with the though the inventory would move. It wouldn't/hasn't. That short term debt was often rolled into longer term to slow the cash drain and pull out a little extra money for cap ex.