Seadrill Limited (SDRL): Among Billionaire Paul Singer's Stock Picks with Huge Upside Potential

We recently published a list of Billionaire Paul Singer’s 10 Stock Picks with Huge Upside Potential. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Seadrill Limited (NYSE:SDRL) stands against other stock picks with huge upside potential.

Paul Singer founded Elliott Investment Management in 1977 in New York. It is one of the oldest hedge funds under continuous management and is also one of the largest activist funds in the world. It is the management affiliate of American hedge funds Elliott Associates and Elliott International Limited. Launched in 1994, Elliott International Limited has consistently outperformed the S&P 500 index by ~5 percentage points annually since its inception, which is a track record mirrored by Elliott Associates. Paul Singer earned a BS in psychology from the University of Rochester and a JD from Harvard Law School. He then spent 4 years working in corporate law firms and the investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette before founding Elliott Investment Management. Elliott Management has 38 clients and discretionary assets under management (AUM) of $97.37 billion, according to the Form ADV dated 13 February 2025. The last reported 13F filing for Q4 2024 included $16.66 billion in managed 13F securities and a top 10 holdings concentration of 82.44%.

Singer has built a reputation on Wall Street for his aggressive tactics that often generate significant shareholder value by exploiting weaknesses in various asset classes. His initial approach to investing was to target companies and even governments while purchasing extremely distressed debt. In February 2025, Singer appeared on a Podcast titled ‘In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen’, where he also discussed what he believes is the reason behind bad investments. While bad luck remains a relevant factor, he believes that these failures result from oversights and inadequate and/or incorrect hedging strategies:

“Sometimes it’s bad luck, but more frequently it’s (that) we missed something. We missed. Or the hedges weren’t, they weren’t the right hedges. The tracking error was much more than we expected. At the beginning of my career, 1977 to like 1987, hedging was much more simple, because we were long a convertible bond and short the stock into which the convertible was convertible. So that’s very straightforward. And tracking error wasn’t really a factor. We’ve become much more sophisticated in hedging, in creating bespoke hedges for different kinds of trades. But even those don’t work out exactly, you know, all the time. But sometimes, you know, the worst trades, and I don’t mind mentioning them, it’s a kind of a form of therapy and a pedagogical exercise. The worst trades are the trades that you misunderstand the risk. You put it into the wrong category.”

Our Methodology

To compile the list of billionaire Paul Singer’s 10 stock picks with huge upside potential, we sifted through Q4 2024 13F filings of Elliott Management from Insider Monkey. From these filings, we checked the upside potential from CNN for the top 20 stock picks and ranked the stocks in ascending order of this upside potential. We have also added Elliott Management’s stake in each stock as well as the broader hedge fund sentiment for it.

Note: All data was sourced on May 8.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).

Seadrill Limited (NYSE:SDRL)

Elliott Management’s Stake: $144.19 million

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 42

Average Upside Potential as of May 8: 66.08%

Seadrill Limited (NYSE:SDRL) provides offshore drilling services to the oil & gas industry worldwide. It owns and operates drill ships and semi-submersible rigs for operations in shallow and ultra-deep water in benign and harsh environments. It serves oil super-majors, state-owned national oil companies, and independent oil and gas companies.

The company reported a $1.3 billion contracted backlog in 2024, which saw a net increase of $700 million during the year. This backlog provides revenue visibility, which extends through 2028 and into 2029, with ~90% of the midpoint of the 2025 revenue guidance already secured within this backlog. This revenue guidance is between $1.3 and $1.36 billion. According to the CEO, Seadrill is positioned to navigate market volatility due to a strong balance sheet and durable backlog.

Seadrill Limited (NYSE:SDRL) secured two significant long-term contract awards in Brazil in December 2024 as well, which are to commence in 2026. These added $1 billion to the company’s backlog and included a mobilization fee exceeding $70 million. These awards for the West Jupiter and the West Telus are for 3-year terms each with Petrobras.

Patient Capital Opportunity Equity Strategy is positive on the company and stated the following regarding Seadrill Limited (NYSE:SDRL) in its Q1 2025 investor letter:

“Seadrill Limited (NYSE:SDRL) is the fourth largest pure play deepwater drilling specialist. The company emerged from bankruptcy in February 2022 with a net cash position and is positioned to benefit from limited supply and increasing demand in the deepwater drilling rig market. Nearly half of all deepwater drilling rigs worldwide were scrapped during the last decade, while industry consolidation has created a more rational competitive landscape than we’ve seen historically. Although oil demand has remained reasonably healthy, surprisingly strong onshore production from the USA, Canada and Russia has helped keep a lid on prices. While this has negatively impacted contract rates near-term, we believe that long-term future shale supply growth will be limited, and more offshore supply will be required benefitting offshore drillers. Given its highly specialized rig fleet and minimal debt, we believe the company is well positioned to benefit from improving prices when demand rebounds. We believe Seadrill could either lead industry consolidation or become an acquisition target.”

Overall, SDRL ranks 2nd on our list of billionaire Paul Singer’s stock picks with huge upside potential. While we acknowledge the potential of SDRL as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold great promise for delivering high returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than SDRL but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires.

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.