Lower costs would help Imperial offset tariffs

Article Excerpt

Imperial Oil’s shares have dropped recently in response to threatened U.S. tariffs on Canadian oil imports. However, the company’s falling operating costs should help reduce any tariff-related impact. In fact, Imperial is so confident in its prospects, it just raised your dividend by 20%. IMPERIAL OIL LTD. $101 is a buy. The integrated oil producer (Toronto symbol IMO; Conservative and Income Growth Portfolios, Resources sector; Shares outstanding: 523.4 million; Market cap: $52.9 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.1; Dividend yield: 2.9%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.imperialoil.ca) gets 99% of its production from oil sands operations in Alberta. Imperial also has conventional oil and natural gas operations in the West. Its other operations include three refineries (one in Alberta and two in Ontario) and a petrochemical plant in Sarnia, Ontario. In addition, it supplies gasoline to over 2,000 Esso and Mobil gas stations in Canada. ExxonMobil (New York symbol XOM) owns 69.3% of the company’s shares. As the economy rebounded from the COVID-19 shutdowns, Imperial’s revenue soared 166.5%, from…