Baker Hughes Inc. said its second-quarter loss widened as the oil-services company's revenue slumped amid continued weak demand and pricing pressures as the result of the prolonged commodities downturn.

The per-share loss, excluding certain items, was wider than analysts' feared—though revenue beat expectations.

In early May, Baker Hughes and Halliburton Co. called off their planned merger deal, once valued at nearly $35 billion, as regulators claimed it would hurt competition in the sector.

A day later, Baker Hughes said it planned to use the $3.5 billion breakup fee from Halliburton to help improve its balance sheet and unveiled plans to restructure its business. The deal to combine the second- and third-largest oil-field services businesses after Schlumberger Ltd.—announced in November of 2014—had prevented Baker Hughes from cutting costs and making other changes in response to a commodities rout that reduced demand for drilling wells and pumping oil and natural gas.

Both Halliburton and Baker Hughes have cut thousands of jobs amid the commodities downturn.

In prepared remarks Thursday, Baker Hughes Chief Executive Martin Craighead said that despite an extremely tough market environment, he was encouraged to see that Baker Hughes's second-quarter revenue declined only 10% from the first quarter despite a 19% drop in the global rig count. Mr. Craighead said he attributed the revenue decline mostly to the continued steep drop in activity and to pricing pressure.

For the second half of 2016, excluding the seasonality in Canada, Baker Hughes doesn't expect activity in North America to meaningfully increase because customers require a more sustained improvement in oil prices before committing to any material increase in spending, he said.

However, activity outside North America is expected to continue to decline in most countries, with a steeper decline in markets with higher lifting costs, Mr. Craighead said.

Over all, Baker Hughes reported a loss of $911 million, or $2.08 a share, compared with a year-earlier loss of $188 million, or 43 cents a share. Excluding write-downs, restructuring charges, the breakup fee and other items, the adjusted per-share loss was 90 cents, compared with a year-earlier adjusted loss of 14 cents. Revenue slumped 39% to $2.41 billion.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected a per-share loss of 62 cents and revenue of $2.32 billion.

Write to Tess Stynes at tess.stynes@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 28, 2016 08:15 ET (12:15 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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