Paul Harris, CFA Canadian Oil Sands COS-T COMMENT Dec 31, 2015

They have a hostile bid from Suncor (SU-T). They own the same asset, Syncrude, an oil sands producer. This has been down over the last few years because the price of oil has gone down, also the whole oil sands situation and the difficulty in getting it to market. There is likely a higher bid forthcoming. Dividend yield of 2%.

Suncor (SU-T) is being opportunistic in making an offer. They are taking a risk. He thinks that at some point the expected value of what the stock is worth is going to be the bid. If he were a shareholder, he would probably wait this out.

Hold or Sell? We know that Suncor (SU-T) is very aggressive because it is the hostile takeover bid and they want to get more oil sands assets. The classic risk/reward strategy is in your favour, so Hold onto your shares.

(Market Call Minute.) Sell it, take your profits and move on.

Should the offer from Suncor (SU-T) be accepted? He thinks Suncor is going to do a better job with those assets than Canadian Oil Sands. This is very opportunistic of Suncor to be doing this at this time. Doesn’t expect there will be a better offer coming. There aren’t a lot of companies that can buy an asset this size.

SU-T is being very opportunistic because oil is cheap. Over the next 5 years, it will pay off. He’d like to see a lot of competition to buy it to boost the price up, so you may not want to tender your shares.

100% correlated to the price of oil, and he is not bullish on the price of oil. This is the biggest part of Syncrude, which keeps having operational problems. Thinks Suncor (SU-T) wants to buy this and become the majority owner of Syncrude, throw Imperial Oil (IMO-T) out as an operator, and run it themselves. He would tender to Suncor’s offer.

If you hold this, you should tender it. There are no alternative bids. If not enough shares are tendered then the deal may not go through and the stock will drop back. SU-T played this beautifully.

He does not think the deal will close. He does not think enough shareholders will tender their shares. He prefers SU-T due to the downstream assets.