Tag: BP

Segro Results, BP Acquisition and Boltholes in Portugal

Segro (SGRO), a property company with large warehouses, issued their final results this morning. Adjusted profit was up 8.4% but IFRS earnings per share were down substantially. This curate’s egg of results arose because the assets were revalued down by 11% to reflect the general fall in commercial property valuations particularly in the second half of the year, while rental income was up by 18.9%.  Rental income rose due to strong like-for-like rental growth (a 23% average uplift on rent reviews and renewals) and development completions. The full year dividend is increased by 8.2%.

Comment: These results would look really good if the fall in the value of their properties was ignored. They have no control over the latter of course which are affected by macroeconomic conditions, the cyclical nature of property investments and investors’ general view of commercial property which is very negative as other assets such as offices and retail have declined while interest rates have risen. The market has responded positively to these results after an initial hiccup. For the longer-term it’s starting to look very positive.

Energy company BP (BP.) yesterday announced they were acquiring TravelCenters of America for $1.3 billion. TravelCenters operate a network of EV charging points in the USA.

BP is paying about six times Travelcenters EBITDA and their share price rose by 71% on the news. BP is also planning to invest $1 billion in electric vehicle charging across the USA by 2030. This is part of BP’s five “transition growth engines”.

As a shareholder in BP, this looks a sensible investment and is a rebuttable of those who say big oil companies are not doing enough to move away from oil.

Tesla is also expanding its charging network and making it accessible to other vehicle makes. The electric vehicle revolution is clearly accelerating in the USA partly due to US government encouragement.

The bad news today for wealthy investors was that according to the FT Portugal is scrapping its golden visa scheme that gives non-Europeans the right to claim residency in return for investment. With Portugal having low tax rates and a good climate this was a good location for the moderately rich (it only required property investment of Euro500,000).

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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BP Results + BEIS Restructure

BP (BP.) produced some great financial results yesterday and the share price rose 8% on the day and is still rising. Other oil companies rose in unison. What I particularly liked as a holder was the improvement in Return on Capital which is forecast to grow to 18% in 2025 and 2030. This is after many years of quite mundane returns when I judge such a metric to be a key factor in any investment decision.

With increasing share buy-backs and dividend increases you can see why shareholders are happy. Their view might also have been affected by the following comment from the company CEO: “It’s clearer than ever after the past three years that the world wants and needs energy that is secure and affordable as well as lower carbon – all three together, what’s known as the energy trilemma. To tackle that, action is needed to accelerate the transition. And – at the same time – action is needed to make sure that the transition is orderly, so that affordable energy keeps flowing where it’s needed today”.

He is in effect saying that BP will continue to invest in oil/gas production while also investing in “transition growth engines” which includes “bioenergy, convenience and EV charging, hydrogen and renewables and power”. Production of oil/gas will be around 25% lower than BP’s production in 2019, excluding production from Rosneft, compared to the company’s previous expectation of a reduction of around 40%. BP correspondingly now aims for a fall of 20% to 30% in emissions from the carbon in its oil and gas production in 2030 compared to a 2019 baseline, lower than the previous aim of 35-40%.

It is good to see that reality has crept into their plans and forecasts. But the company’s results are clearly very dependent on the price of energy whose cost has shot up sharply because of the war in Ukraine, There is a worldwide energy shortage and investors should keep a close eye on trends in that market if they hold companies such as BP and Shell.

There was an amusing post on Twitter by Philip O’Sullivan pointing out that the Annual Report of Shell in 1944 was all of 8 pages long – see first page above. Last year it was 359 pages!

That would be a good example for Shell and other companies to follow when annual reports are now way to long and voluminous in most cases. This is partly down to increased regulation and expanded accounting standards driven by increases in bureaucracy emanating from the Government BEIS Department  (“The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy”). For many years this used to be called the Department of Trade and Industry (the DTI) before politicians decided it was a good idea to rebrand it.

Now the Government has decided to split it up into three new Departments to be called “the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, and the Department for Business and Trade”. What the benefit of this restructuring will be is not at all obvious and the name “Department for Energy Security and Net Zero” is a particular oxymoron as aiming for Net Zero is not going to improve energy security.

The downside is likely to be another year of musical chairs for civil servants in these departments when one of the issues is lack of continuity of expertise in specialist areas of government such as company law and stock market regulation.

Shuffling responsibilities does not help.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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Adjustments, Adjustments and Adjustments at Abcam, Oil+Gas Companies and FCA Decision on Woodford/Link.

Abcam (ABC) published their interim results yesterday (on 12/9/2022). I have commented negatively on this company and its Chairman before despite still holding the shares.

The same game continues – revenue up but reported operating profit down and cash flow from operations down. But adjusted operating profit up. What are the adjustments? These include:

£2.6 million relating to the Oracle Cloud ERP project (H1 2021: £2.0m); £6.0 million from acquisition, integration, and reorganisation charges (H1 2021: £3.5m); £9.0 million relating to the amortisation of acquired intangibles (H1 2021: £4.0m); and £13.0 million in charges for share-based payments (H1 2021: £6.7m).

The ERP project costs continue and I very much doubt that they are getting a justifiable return on the investment in that project now or in the future. Together with the acquisition, integration and reorganisation charges it just looks like a whole ragbag of costs are being capitalised when they should not be.

The company also announced there would be a webinar for investors on the day and a recording of it available on their web site later. Neither was available on their web site on the day or at the time of writing this. More simple incompetence!

The share price of Abcam has been rising of late which just tells you that most investors are unable to look through the headline figures and the sophistry of the directors.

As a change from investing in technology companies such as Abcam who of late are massaging their accounts, and not paying dividends, my focus has turned to commodity businesses. I have even been buying oil/gas companies such as Shell, BP, Woodside Energy and Serica Energy plus several alternative energy companies. There is clearly going to be a shortage of energy worldwide for some time while institutional investors have been reducing their holdings in some oil/gas companies simply from concerns about the negative environmental impacts and long-term prospects as Governments aim to reduce carbon emissions. But in reality the progress on carbon reduction is slow and I feel oil/gas companies will be making good profits for a least a few more years. Energy has to come from somewhere and these companies should do well and can adapt to the new environment easily. In the meantime, they will be paying high dividends and/or doing large share buy-backs.

I am generally not a big holder of commodity businesses as their profits can be volatile and unpredictable as they depend on commodity prices. These can be moved by Government actions or political disruptions such as the war in Ukraine. Will the war end soon? I have no idea. But even if it does there is likely to be a new “cold war” if Putin or other hard line Russian leaders remain in charge. I never try to predict geopolitical changes but just follow the trends in the stock market.  

The partially good news for Woodford investors is that the FCA has formed a provisional view that Link Fund Solutions may be liable for £306 million in redress payments to investors for misconduct rather than losses caused by fluctuations in the market value or price of investments. In other words, it may be nowhere near covering investors losses in the Woodford Equity Income Fund. They have announced this simply because Link is currently subject to a takeover bid which they have approved subject to a condition to commit to make funds available to meet any shortfall in the amount available to cover any redress payments. I suspect this is going to make gaining a full recover for investors somewhat problematic.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson  )

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Frying in Hell and Investing in Oil Companies

Last night and this morning, the national media were dominated by the news from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that we are all going to fry in a rapidly rising world temperature unless we change our ways. CO2 emissions continue to rise and even to limit temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius requires unprecedented changes to many aspects of our lives.

The suggested solutions are changes to transport to cut emissions, e.g. electric cars, eating less meat, growing more trees, ceasing the use of gas for heating and other major revolutions in the way we live.

So one question for investors is should we divest ourselves of holdings in fossil fuel companies? Not many UK investors hold shares in coal mines – the best time to invest in coal was in the 18th and 19th century. That industry is undoubtedly in decline in many countries although some like China have seen increased coal production where it is still financially competitive. See https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels for some data on trends.

But I thought I would take a look at a couple of the world’s largest oil companies – BP and Shell. How have they been doing of late? Looking at the last 5 years financial figures and taking an average of the Return on Assets reported by Stockopedia, the figures are 2.86% per annum for Shell and 0.06% per annum for BP – the latter being hit by the Gulf oil spill disaster of course. They bounce up and down over the years based on the price of oil, but are these figures ones that would encourage you to purchase shares in these businesses? The answer is surely no.

The figures are the result of oil exploration and production becoming more difficult, and in the case of BP, having to take more risks to exploit difficult to access reserves. It does not seem to me that those trends are likely to change.

Even if politicians ignore the call to cut CO2 emissions, which I suspect they will ultimately not do, for investors there are surely better propositions to look at. Even electric cars look more attractive as investments although buying shares in Tesla might be a tricky one, even if buying their cars might be justified. Personally, I prefer to invest in companies that generate a return on capital of more than 15% per annum, so I won’t be investing in oil companies anytime soon.

But one aspect that totally baffles me about the global warming scare is why the scientists and politicians ignore the underlying issue. Namely that there are too many people emitting too much air pollution. The level of CO2 and other atmospheric emissions are directly related to the number of people in this world. More people generate more demand for travel, consume more food, require more heating and lighting and require more infrastructure to house them (construction generates a lot of emissions alone). But there are no calls to cut population or even reduce its growth. Why does everyone shy away from this simple solution to the problem?

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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