Exxon -57% in 77 days and now BULL MARKET?Thanks for viewing.
- Exxon lost 57% in 77 days and has since bounced strongly - so are we in a new bull-market?
I would give my answer as a resounding no. Why?
- Mostly because crude oil is at 30 year lows which renders all upstream activities drastically unprofitable - how unprofitable? Some estimates of Exxon's break even price per barrel are over $70 a barrel ($74 in this article; www.theguardian.com). So each barrel produced, is produced at a significant loss. It would be far more profitable to buy crude on world markets and stop all exploration or production. This would probably not be a long-term solution, but it is being considered instead of locking in a $60 plus loss per barrel.
- It seems that at these crude prices that Exxon may even need to write down the value of all exploration and production assets to, or close to, zero. This happened recently for unprofitable shale oil producers - all their equipment was specialised, involved in a now universally unprofitable industry, with few buyers, and would have cost more to transport than would be gained from any sale - so when reality struck, it struck hard.
- If suddenly forced to re-value oil reserves they would have a negative value as the oil would cost far more to extract than to leave in the ground. The option to "just stop extraction" isn't there in some cases - as capping a well may damage the resource and incur significant future expense to re-open.
- This is a situation similar to that faced by European (and soon American) Banks due to negative interest rates; They now have liabilities on both sides of the balance sheet. The liabilities remain liabilities, but what were once assets are now cash-flow negative. Pretty hard to make money like that.
- What hope is there? Oil prices may rise, but not in 2020 I feel. So some pain will need to be incurred.
- The Fed is acting as buyer of last resort picking up corporate debt at 100 cents on the dollar with no regard to the credit-worthiness of the issuer. Although, they are not targeting individual Companies yet and Oil and Gas businesses continue to announce bankruptcy.
- The consumer (downstream) activities may still be profitable, although the overall revenue should be expected to be down.
I read two forecasts for EPS to be reported tomorrow. $0.04 from Investing.com and a consensus expectation of $0.02 from another site that had a view that prices would rise 10%. If you are bullish on earnings like that, I don't see how.
Anyway, let's see what happens. Protect those funds (I see prices below $23 before the end of '20).
