Investing.com -- Viridien shares are up 3.8% on Tuesday after Goldman Sachs initiated coverage with a Buy rating, describing the company as a differentiated way to play a recovery in global exploration spending.

"Following its transformation from CGG, Viridien has repositioned itself, shifting its model from a capital-intensive acquisition one, to a technology-led geoscience franchise, with leading positions in subsurface imaging (Geoscience), multi-client data (Earth Data) and seismic equipment (SMO)," wrote analyst Michele Della Vigna.

She argued the market underappreciates the quality of that geoscience franchise, the earnings leverage in a seismic upcycle, and the gradual balance sheet improvement underway. Goldman forecasts an 8% compound annual growth rate in cash flow from operations, excluding working capital, from 2026 to 2030.

Central to the thesis is a view that the industry is at the start of a new oil capital spending upcycle focused on reserve replacement.

Goldman noted reserve life has contracted 25% since 2013, while capex per barrel remains around 40% below its peak and exploration is down about 60%. Investors, it said, are beginning to reward reinvestment, with longer reserve-life companies outperforming by about 17 percentage points over the past six months.

The bank called subsurface imaging the key driver of its rating and the most underappreciated part of the story.

"The business holds >50% global market share (>70% in specialist OBN imaging), with its share rising from 41% in 2020 to c.55% in 2025," wrote Della Vigna.

The analyst added that the franchise is protected by a technology moat built on more than 300 PhDs, proprietary algorithms and a high-performance computing platform.

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