Stockchase Opinions

Glenn MacNeill, P.Eng. Cenovus Energy CVE-T COMMENT Jan 19, 2010

Stock price should continue to go up. About 58% natural gas but in its asset mix it has Christina Lake, an excellent heavy oil production facility. Also a big play in Foster Creek. Also involved in refining.
$25.520

Stock price when the opinion was issued

oil gas
It's the ideal tool to help you make quicker, more informed decisions for managing and tracking your investments.

You might be interested:

SELL
Sell, and switch to PPL?

She doesn't own any producers, and she owns PPL, so she likes that idea.

BUY

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.

DON'T BUY

A value trap. The ultimate catalyst (fixing their downstream) keeps getting deferred and deferred. Share buybacks in recent months is sluggish. A very cheap stock, but downstream keeps biting them. He's cheering for them, but look at CNQ instead.

WATCH

Coming into the time when you want to own energy, between mid-February and May/June. Chart shows it's at, or maybe below, support. He'd need to see a bounce to be bullish on it. Watch for another 2 weeks or so; if it breaks down, you have to get out.

DON'T BUY

Downstream operations have been extremely weak. Look at the dividend history. They've cut the dividend in the past, so not a stable dividend payer. Dividend looks high because stock price is low. Look elsewhere.

HOLD

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.

COMMENT

Unique in that they own US refineries. Negative energy story has brought stock down. 

PAST TOP PICK
(A Top Pick Apr 16/24, Down 39%)

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.

WAIT

They are righting the ship, as seen in their last quarterly call. They've always held super upstream assets with no mine-life depletion issues. Fair value is higher, but they lack a catalyst. We won't see improvement in their downstream until Q3. Likes the management team.

BUY

Likes energy right now. Stock's come off sharply, energy prices have not been friendly. Decent long-term prospects. Energy prices should rebound, doesn't see them plummeting. With a long time horizon, pullback is a buying opportunity.