Big projects will pay off for Cenovus

Article Excerpt

CENOVUS ENERGY INC. $32 (Toronto symbol CVE; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Resources sector; Shares outstanding: 756.5 million; Market cap: $24.5 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.3; Dividend yield: 3.3%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.cenovus.com) gets about 40% of its output from its oil sands projects in Alberta. Conventional oil and natural gas wells supply the other 60%. U.S.-based ConocoPhillips (New York symbol COP) owns 50% of Cenovus’s main Foster Creek and Christina Lake oil sands projects in Alberta. These properties produce heavy bitumen, which Cenovus ships to its 50%-owned refineries in Illinois and Texas. Phillips 66 (New York symbol PSX) owns the other 50% of these refineries. In 2013, refining accounted for 66% of Cenovus’s revenue and 40% of its earnings. A long record of successful expansion Thanks to rising production and oil prices, Cenovus’s revenue increased 62.0%, from $11.5 billion in 2009 to $18.7 billion in 2013. Earnings gained 50.5%, from $1.09 a share (or a total of $818 million) in 2009 to…