ConocoPhillips Keeps Improving

Since sharply cutting its dividend a year ago, ConocoPhillips has made steady improvements to shore up its balance sheet. The most recent quarterly results show the company has made significant strides in 2017.

ConocoPhillips is the world’s largest publicly traded pure exploration and production (E&P) company. As a bellwether for the oil industry, I always pay close attention to the company’s quarterly results for insight into the health of the industry.

For the 3rd quarter of 2017, ConocoPhillips reported earnings of $0.4 billion, compared with a third-quarter 2016 loss of $1.0 billion. The company generated $1.1 billion in cash from operations (CFO) and another $3.0 billion in asset sales, which was used to reduce debt, buy back shares, and fund capital expenditures.

During the quarter, the company spent $2.5 billion to reduce debt, $1.1 billion in capital expenditures and investments, $1.0 billion in buying back shares and $324 million to pay dividends.

The $1.0 billion share buyback during the quarter reduced the share count by 2% (following a 2% reduction in Q2 as well), and the company announced it is on track to buy back a total of $3 billion in shares in 2017.

With the $2.5 billion in debt reduction, the company ended the quarter with total debt of $21 billion, a decline of more than $6 billion since the beginning of the year. This reduction has lowered interest expenses by more than $60 million per quarter since year-end 2016. ConocoPhillips said it expects to end the year with debt below $20 billion.

The company began the quarter with $10.3 billion in cash, primarily a result of the sale of its Canadian oil sands properties earlier in the year. The one knock on Q3 results was that for the first time in more than a year, quarterly CFO wasn’t enough to cover capital expenditures and the dividend. So cash on hand declined during the quarter to $9.6 billion.

Excluding Libya and disposed of assets, production for the quarter came in at 1.2 million barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) per day, up 1.4% year-over-year (YOY). But because of share buybacks and debt reduction, production on a debt-adjusted share basis was up 19% YOY.