Topic: How To Invest

CENOVUS ENERGY $21.19 – Toronto symbol CVE

CENOVUS ENERGY $21.19 (Toronto symbol CVE; Shares outstanding: 833.3 million; Market cap: $17.7 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Average; Dividend yield: 3.0%; www.cenovus.com) gets 35% of its revenue from its Western Canadian oil sands properties and conventional oil and gas wells. Chief among these assets are its 50%-owned Christina Lake and Foster Creek oil sands projects.

Refining—which gains from lower oil prices— supplies the remaining 65% of Cenovus’s revenue. The company ships its oil to its 50%-owned refineries in Illinois and Texas. (Phillips 66 owns the other 50%.)

In the three months ended September 30, 2015, the company’s production rose 5.7%, to 210,422 barrels a day from 199,089 a year earlier. However, lower oil prices cut its cash flow per share by 59.2%, to $0.53 from $1.30.

Cenovus has laid off workers and found other efficiencies that should lower its operating costs. It’s also conserving cash through a recent 39.9% cut to its dividend. The shares now yield 3.0%.

These actions put the company in a better position to stay profitable until oil prices recover. The stock also trades at a low 7.9 times Cenovus’s projected 2015 cash flow of $2.67 a share.

Cenovus is still a buy.

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