Topic: How To Invest

CENOVUS ENERGY $18.66 – Toronto symbol CVE

CENOVUS ENERGY $18.66 (Toronto symbol CVE; Shares outstanding: 828.5 million; Market cap: $15.9 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Average; Dividend yield: 5.7%; www.cenovus.com) gets 35% of its revenue from its oil sands projects and conventional oil and gas wells in Western Canada.

Refining supplies the remaining 65% of Cenovus’s revenue. The company ships oil to its 50%-owned refineries in Illinois and Texas. Phillips 66 (New York symbol PSX) owns the other 50% of these operations.

Cenovus has now agreed to sell its royalty lands to the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan for $3.3 billion. The company collects royalties from firms that drill for oil and gas on these properties, which total 4.8 million acres in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Cenovus could use the funds—plus the $1.8 billion in cash it already holds—to pay down its long-term debt of $6.0 billion. That will put it in a strong position to profit when oil prices rebound.

Meanwhile, to conserve cash, the company has cut its 2015 capital spending by 40%, to between $1.8 billion and $2.0 billion, and laid off 15% of its workforce. Based on current oil and gas prices, Cenovus expects its 2015 cash flow to cover its capital spending.

It should also let the company maintain its current dividend rate, which yields a high 5.7%.

Cenovus is still a buy.

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