I'm all about empowering retail investors. I write my blog and my subscriber paid copy to help them gain back an edge against the institutional money that gets better information faster in the markets. I mean, how many retail investors have a paid analyst at their call?
That's why I'm excited to put some analytical power in your hands. My colleague Michel Massaad has created The Oil and Gas Analysis (OGA) website - www.oilandgas-analysis.com - which hosts data on more than 400 oil and gas stocks trading on the TSX and the TSXV.
The Oil and Gas Analysis site offers easy to use yet powerful tools for screening oil and gas stocks. Its feature set will let you edit the balance sheet of a stock, compare it to peers, apply commodity price scenarios, production scenarios… producing your own target price estimates.
This initial version of OGA covers Canadian stocks, for now, and mostly junior/intermediate producers. We'll be expanding it, but in the meantime we want YOU to play with it for free, and tell us what you like, don't like, and also more of what you want to see.
The stocks are distributed in 5 categories:
1. Junior producers
2. Intermediate producers
3. Senior producers
4. Oilfield Services
5. Pipelines
Other tools allow you to compare peer valuations on multiple metrics:
1. production
2. cash flow
3. cash flow multiple
4. debt to cash flow
5. Price to NAV
6. commodity prices
7. dividend sustainability (payout ratios)
8. netbacks
9. price per flowing barrelA metric used to determine the value of an oil and gas company. Equation: [Market Cap + Debt - Cash] / Production Barrels Per Day
For me, one valuable tool here is calling up all the junior producers with netbacks over $50. Then I compare their cash flow multiple as a quick, initial screening process to see who might be undervalued. It's a good starting point for Do-It-Yourself researchers.
I think www.oilandgas-analysis.com has the potential to be a great tool for armchair analysts.
Curious about finding out what your stock is worth following an M&A scenario? Michel's software allows you to plunk in recent metrics-he keeps track of the latest M&A-into your favourite stock to determine a potential takeout price.
OGA also offers a filtering system that allows you to build your own market view. You can:
· Display the top 5 daily movers per category or for the whole market.
· Display the top 10 year-to-date performers per category or for the whole market.
· Display only the dividend payers per category or for the whole market.
· Apply ascending or descending order to any column of your choice.
· Filtering your stock list by price, above or below any price you chose.
Looking at the sector from the angle of your choice helps you spot momentum, trends or simply get a feel on market sentiment in general.
Michel doesn't cover every energy stock in Canada-just the ones worth investing in ;-). He has put his software background to work with a passion and come up with a product that I think has a lot of potential, and he is continually adding new stocks into his system.
BONUS:
Other than its intrinsic value, I'm offering one-year subscriptions for free to my OGIB trading service for the two people who email us the highest quality feedback on how to improve this service.
If you're a novice investor, this is your chance to dive into oil and gas investing and learn all about it. Michel has included a tutorial that explains how each variable affects the stock.
If you're an experienced investor, I think this will complement your strategy by increasing your efficiency in spotting opportunities and evaluating companies based on multiple data points.
OGA is open for OGIB Free Alert subscribers to use (for a limited time).
Click here to get started: www.oilandgas-analysis.com - and scroll down to the register/sign-in area.
Please give this new tool a try, and be sure to bookmark the site.
And more importantly, tell us what you liked, and didn't like-and what you would like to see that's not there. Remember, the two people who give us the most helpful feedback get my OGIB service FREE for a full year.
Good luck!