NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Marathon Oil shares are declining, down 1.6% to $25.82 in trading on Tuesday, as the stock declines along with the rest of the sector as oil prices touched six-year lows today. West Texas crude for February delivery is down 1.24% to $45.50 per barrel while Brent crude is down 3.06% to $45.98 per barrel in trading today. Exclusive Report: Jim Cramer's Best Stocks for 2015 STOCKS TO BUY: TheStreet Quant Ratings has identified a handful of stocks that can potentially TRIPLE in the next 12 months. Learn more. Oil prices have declined for seven consecutive weeks with oil hitting a six year low today as prices dipped below $46 a barrel. Oil prices have fallen 55% since June even as officials from Venezuela and Iran attempted to convince OPEC to cut production amid the drop in prices, according to the New York Times. "We believe this bear market will likely be characterized by more of a U-shaped recovery in which markets take longer to recover and will likely rebound to far lower prices from where they sold off from,"according to a note from Goldman Sachs analysts today. TheStreet Ratings team rates MARATHON OIL CORP as a Hold with a ratings score of C. TheStreet Ratings Team has this to say about their recommendation: "We rate MARATHON OIL CORP (MRO) a HOLD. The primary factors that have impacted our rating are mixed - some indicating strength, some showing weaknesses, with little evidence to justify the expectation of either a positive or negative performance for this stock relative to most other stocks. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its reasonable valuation levels, good cash flow from operations and largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures. However, as a counter to these strengths, we also find weaknesses including unimpressive growth in net income, a generally disappointing performance in the stock itself and feeble growth in the company's earnings per share." Highlights from the analysis by TheStreet Ratings Team goes as follows: Net operating cash flow has slightly increased to $1,774.00 million or 7.84% when compared to the same quarter last year. In addition, MARATHON OIL CORP has also modestly surpassed the industry average cash flow growth rate of -1.95%. The current debt-to-equity ratio, 0.32, is low and is below the industry average, implying that there has been successful management of debt levels. Despite the fact that MRO's debt-to-equity ratio is low, the quick ratio, which is currently 0.67, displays a potential problem in covering short-term cash needs. Reflecting the weaknesses we have cited, including the decline in the company's earnings per share, MRO has underperformed the S&P 500 Index, declining 19.37% from its price level of one year ago. Turning toward the future, the fact that the stock has come down in price over the past year should not necessarily be interpreted as a negative; it could be one of the factors that may help make the stock attractive down the road. Right now, however, we believe that it is too soon to buy. The company, on the basis of change in net income from the same quarter one year ago, has significantly underperformed when compared to that of the S&P 500 and the Oil, Gas & Consumable Fuels industry. The net income has decreased by 24.3% when compared to the same quarter one year ago, dropping from $569.00 million to $431.00 million. You can view the full analysis from the report here: MRO Ratings Report STOCKS TO BUY: TheStreet Quant Ratings has identified a handful of stocks that can potentially TRIPLE in the next 12 months. Learn more.
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