Stock price when the opinion was issued
Q4 missed on downstream margins. Upstream projects are on schedule and on budget. Expects FCF to inflect meaningfully as spending drops and production starts to kick in. Sector faces headwinds, but this is a name you can go to. Way cheaper than peers. Nice production growth, cashflow growth, shareholder returns of 8%. Would be adversely hit by tariffs. All in, he'd be a buyer.
High exposure to price of oil and to the differential of Canadian heavy oil (back to almost-new lows). Upstream is going exceedingly well. But downstream has poor utilization rates, mishaps, negative EBITDA; those are all the reasons it's massively lagged peers. Fix that, and good rerate potential; won't play out until latter half of 2025 or early 2026.
If you own, he'd hesitate to sell. He's watching, near the top of his list to deploy capital. You could wake up one morning to a big pop in the stock price.
Lots of capex to fix issues with refining assets. Sold last September when sentiment soured on price of oil. Investor sentiment muted even when company reached deleveraging targets. Nothing materially wrong with it, whole industry has rolled over. Sharp management, committed to investors.
When he's ready to get back into energy, he'd buy this at a much smaller weight and buy some SU as well.
He owns and likes both. The difference is that SU has downstream operations with gas stations. Cenovus is integrated with long-life reserves in production plus many refineries (which has suffered major compression), so the upstream looks attractive. Both have great balance sheets and free cash flows and pay similar dividends. Another difference: it's unlikely Suncor can be bought whereas maybe Cenovus could. He gives the edge to Suncor.