Robert Lauzon Questerre Energy QEC-T HOLD May 09, 2011

Has a couple of knocks. One is the regulatory environment on shale in Québec, which doesn’t look overly promising. Partnership with Talisman (TLM-T) increases its stake in its odds. Doesn’t see any visibility for gas prices moving higher.

(Market Call Minute.) Doesn’t see any reason why you need to hold a gas producer.

These things are really stuck. It is the Energy East Pipeline. Quebec and New Brunswick have put a ban on drilling. There are a lot of other things we can do now in terms of energy investing.

They had a really, really big discovery in Québec shale, and the potential was quite impressive. Then the province stepped in with a moratorium to limit exploration, so the stock got crushed. Recently, the government changed their mind. It is now much more interesting than it was before. A longer-term play.

The Québec government has finally put the ability for the “go forward” strategy on the Utica Shale to happen. Their partner is Repsol. The wells coming out of the Utica in the US are fabulous. He likes the company and their team. His problem is that if the government gives the green light to go ahead as fast as they can, does this company have the wherewithal to fund it. If it backs off below $0.60, you are just paying for Western Canada and you get Québec for free again.

Quebec is moving forward. They are having fabulous wells. They have higher net backs because of the lack of need for transportation. On a little bit of weakness the stock is one to keep an eye on.

QEC is a very small oil and gas company with market cap at $94.27M. QEC had a flat year in terms of price in 2023 but did display some volatility. Both revenues and net income margins had negative growth in Q3. The balance sheet looks good with essentially no debt and a net cash balance of $34.8M. Quarterly cash from operations is a small positive and has not dipslayed too much volatility over time. Price-to-book valuation looks decent at 0.6x but trailing price-to-sales and price-to-earnings are expensive. We think QEC is risky due to its size, while upside will be limited and volatile to the underlying value of the commodities the business is tied to. There was no company-specific news to account for the move on Friday, and in fact QEC has not issued a press release since early November. 
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