Opinions
Eric Nuttall
U. S. Silica Holdings
SLCA-N
COMMENT
Nov 15, 2017
Stock price when the opinion was issued
You might be interested:
A big supplier of sand that fracers use for drilling. This is what he would put on the “too hard to understand” pile, because sand has a relatively low average selling price, which means it is very sensitive to what freight costs are for moving it. If you were to get involved, it should be relatively short-term.
Trading in the middle of 5-year range. Fracing in the US requires a lot of silicone sand. Trading at about 11X earnings. He was really interested when he saw a big move from one side of the boat to the other side of the boat by the street. It’s coming up as a Top Pick in a lot of reports. As long as they maintain their pricing power and as long as activity stays high in rig counts in the US, it is supported. Dividend yield of 0.7%. (Analysts' price target is $43.)
(A Top Pick June 19, 2017. Down 19%). The bull thesis on fracking sand has played out. There has been a chronic worry about too much regional supply. There are very few active analysts for this category, so the stock prices whip around unnecessarily. Sentiment is horrific. He would rather own pumpers, which are also severely undervalued but without the fear of oversupply.
EPS has gone from negative to positive, but the stock is still lagging. The market concern isn’t around today, but about next year. The demand for frac sand is growing hyperbolically because there has generally been a strong relationship between using more proppants on a well that you frac and getting better results. Texas has not been an area of sand production, and due to transportation being 65%-70% of the overall sand costs, there is a financial motivation to try to find local sand sources. The concern has been that there will be too much supply being built in Texas, that will crush the price of 100 mesh and will trickle down reducing the price to $40.70. He is very bullish on frac sand but has taken his weight down because of the bogeyman of too much supply for the next couple of quarters, so they may lag. (See Top Picks.)