What to Look for in BP Earnings

There has been chatter that BP could be acquired (there are not many suspects to buy a company with a market cap of around $132 billion), but the British government declared earlier Monday, “Over our dead bodies!” BP is not a national oil company, and the British government does not even own a piece of it. That doesn’t mean that it is not British through and through. A brief look at the history of BP tells the story well.

At the same time, the government’s stance does not mean that half-British Royal Dutch Shell PLC (NYSE: RDS-A) couldn’t make an offer for BP — except that Shell just finished making an offer to buy BG Group for $70 billion. Even Shell is probably not large enough to swallow BP and BG at the same time. And neither Exxon nor Petrochina, both of which are larger than Shell or BP, is likely to want to test the government’s determination to keep BP British.

So, what are BP’s earnings going to look like? The company continues to sell assets as it builds a balance to pay the remaining liabilities the company faces for the April 2005 explosion of its Macondo well that killed 11 workers and spilled millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Morningstar recently estimated remaining after-tax outflows related to the explosion at $27 billion, yielding a fair value estimate of $45 per ADS, less than 5% above where the ADSs trade in the noon hour Monday.

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If BP can meet its first-quarter earnings per share estimate, that would be a good showing for the company. However that may be wishful thinking. The company lives and dies on oil production, and with prices low, making profits is tricky. It all boils down to whether higher crude oil prices in March can overcome the weak prices of the first two months of the quarter.

The ADSs traded down about 0.1% in the noon hour Monday, at $43.44 in a 52-week range of $34.88 to $53.88.