ConocoPhillips Looking Better or Less-Bad (COP)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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conoco-logo1ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) has reported earnings.  The Buffett-oil trade posted earnings of $1.298 billion, or $0.87 EPS. As oil price are down significantly over last year, this compares with earnings of $5.439 billion or $3.50 EPS. Revenues were reported for this last quarter as $35.4 billion, down from $71.4 billion for the year-ago period.  This is still better than the Thomson Reuters estimate of $0.85 EPS.  There were less than a handful of estimates for revenues to come in around $39 billion.  If you look through the individual metrics of the business, this is actually not as bad as it could have been.

  • There is a full earnings preview that included ConocoPhillips, but that also has detailed previews for Exxon, Apache, First Solar, and even Chevron…

The company generated $2.6 billion in cash from operations during the quarter, funded a $2.9 billion capital program and paid $0.7 billion in dividends.

Conoco noted significantly lower commodity prices and lower margins than a year ago, but it noted that E&P production was up 7% and cost reductions helped.  Its total production with its share of LUKOIL was listed as 2.3 million barrels per day and its worldwide refining crude oil capacity utilization rate was listed as 88%.

Exploration and Production, or E&P, segment reported second-quarter earnings of $725 million,  down from $3.999 billion in the second quarter of 2008.

Daily production from the E&P segment averaged 1.87 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, which is actually 122,000 BOE per day higher than the second quarter of 2008 due to new developments in the United Kingdom, Russia, Canada, Norway, China and Vietnam.

Conoco’s Midstream segment had second-quarter earnings of $31 million, down from $162 million in the second quarter of 2008.

The company’s Refining and Marketing segment reported a second-quarter LOSS of $52 million, down sharply from a reported earnings of $664 million in the second quarter of 2008; refining crude oil capacity utilization rate was 88%, down from 93% percent in the second quarter of 2008.

Its LUKOIL segment had earnings of $682 million in the second quarter, down from $774 million in the second quarter of 2008.

The Chemicals segment reported earnings of $67 million, up from $18 million in the second quarter of 2008 due to lower operating costs and partially offset by lower margins.

All said and done, this report was probably better than a baseline scenario might have indicated when you consider the performance of this stock compared to peers.  But ConocoPhillips might not be entirely in charge of its own trading destiny today with oil down so much on CFTC trading and speculation curbs being put in place.  Shares closed at $44.90 yesterday and shares are down at $44.20 in early indications; its 52-week trading range is $34.12 to $85.43.

Jon C. Ogg
July 29, 2009

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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