Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Nuvista Energy, Opportunity or Value Trap

Okay This one does not pay a dividend, I have taken a rather big position in NVA, and I am very excited about it.

It is trading at a serious discount to its assets. and there is nothing wrong with it as far as I can tell.

The price is now $6.25
The CIBC analyst said this about the stock when it was trading at $9.15
NuVista trades at 63% of Risked NAV and 4.2x 2011E EV/DACF versus its peers at 75% and 5.5x, respectively. We believe investors are not paying much for significant upside that NuVista has in its asset portfolio, hence our Sector Outperformer rating
According to their math, the stock is trading now at 43% of risked NAV and %72 or core NAV.
This means if you value all their unexplored (probable) and undeveloped (proven) reserves at $0 then take the assets that are currently producing discount them by 28% you'll get $6.25 a share

RBC Analyst also thinks this stock is undervalued, it is rated as Outperform, and given a price target of $9.00

Ontario Teachers is invested in this company. They own 18% of the stock. They last bought shares at $9.50 in March 2011 so we are getting a 35% discount to what Teachers paid. Those guys have done their research and invested 8 months ago. This gives me more confidence in this stock.

Daylight energy
These guys operate in roughly the same areas daylight energy is operating, which gives more confidence to the NAV numbers, The Chinese bought Daylight at 1.2x risked NAV here we have a chance to buy at 0.43x risked NAV.

Management Team
The CEO who recently joined comes from Talisman Energy an oil major and has many years of experience and seems like a very qualified guy for the job. I've read good praise about the management team from CIBC and RBC.

Earnings are coming out on Nov 10th, The company gave an operational update in August saying everything is on track to meet the projections.

It is clear that this stock is undervalued, when will it appreciate is a different story. The only risk I see to owning this is that you could miss out on the other oil and gas stocks that are cheap right now while waiting for this one to appreciate.