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Screening for undervalued O&G companies

Thiveyen Kathirrasan
Thiveyen Kathirrasan • 3 min read
Screening for undervalued O&G companies
Given the surge and significant volatility in crude oil prices over the past few weeks, investors should be cautious when investing in commodities. Photo: Wendy Wei/ Pexels
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Given the surge and significant volatility in crude oil prices over the past few weeks, investors should be cautious when investing in commodities. One way to reduce risk is to invest in stocks or companies whose primary business involves commodities, as discussed in the previous issue. This article will score the largest selected oil and gas (O&G) companies globally to uncover potentially undervalued stocks.

The 20 companies to be scored are shown in Table 1, along with their market capitalisation and the exchange on which they are listed. Certain companies are excluded primarily due to investability restrictions, as these markets are unavailable to domestic investors for trading.

Table 2 is a purely quantitative scoring table for 20 globally listed, investable oil and gas companies. The scoring table considers the following six quantitative aspects:

  1. Historical performance, which looks at the company’s historical financials over the past 10 years or since inception, where discounts are given for poor performance and inconsistency.
  2. Profitability, which looks at profitability ratios such as return on equity, return on assets and margins.
  3. Yields and Relative valuation, which compares the company’s fundamental yields against the risk-free rate and its relative valuation to peers.
  4. Financial safety, which examines the company’s balance sheet, comprising liquidity and solvency ratios, the quality of its shareholder equity, and any external credit rating on the company.
  5. Sentiment, which looks at analyst ratings and forward price ratios on the company.
  6. Price-to-value analysis, which compares price growth to weighted value growth across multiple periods. This weighted value includes revenue, net income and cash flows in ascending order.

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Investors should also qualitatively study any high-scoring companies they wish to invest in, since this scoring table is quantitative. From Table 2, New York-listed EOG Resources, ConocoPhillips, and Hong Kong-listed China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) are the top-scoring companies.

Chart 1 shows the returns of WTI crude oil relative to those of these three companies over a one-year period. Charts 2, 3, and 4 show the 10-year financials for the highest-scoring companies. Investors seeking exposure to commodities, specifically O&G, should strongly consider the companies examined in the scoring table.

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Disclaimer: This article is strictly for information purposes only and does not constitute a recommendation, solicitation or expression of views to influence readers to buy or sell investment instruments, including the ones mentioned. Any personal investments should be made at the investor’s own discretion and/or after consulting licensed investment professionals, at their own risk. The author of this article does not hold or own any investment instrument(s) featured in this article or have a vested interest in it at the time of writing.

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