₪ David Pescod's Late Edition June 27, 2007
FALCON OIL & GAS (V-FO) $1.68 -0.49
ULTRA PETROLEUM (US:UPL) $54.75 +1.74
Well, I guess we got the answer to that question, we posed ... Back on February 5th, we wrote about Falcon Oil and Gas, “We wonder what comes first...a new management team...a billion shares outstanding...or what the chart says might be their next stock price, $1.50?”
Today Falcon hits a low of $1.44 as they announce “it has retained BMO Capital Markets as its exclusive financial advisor to help identify potential strategic partners. Falcon will focus on companies which can add value to the Company’s oil and gas project in Hungary by contributing to the technical understanding of the assets, accelerating development…”
While Falcon President, Chairman and CEO, Marc Bruner has to be credited with being a genius, having first recognizing the potential for unconventional gas and putting together some of the most intriguing land packages around the world, managing and developing those assets always demands a different set of skills.
While Bruner has to be credited with putting the land package together for what became one of the success stories of the last decade - Ultra Petroleum—which ultimately became a 100-bagger, that company teetered at the abyss until management under Michael Watford was brought in, which cut a burgeoning staff dramatically. He made cuts where he had to at a time when unconventional gas had a whole bunch of technical and operational problems and made the changes that had to be made so that Ultra would thrive and become the success story it has become.
If Falcon can find some partners that could hasten development of their project, or for that matter, bring in new management that can get things done a lot quicker than they have been doing to date, this could be quite good for Falcon.
On the other hand, they now have over half a billion shares outstanding and still don’t know what they’ve got.
That’s not a lot of leverage ...
Tomorrow, they will host an investment conference call ... and that will be interesting.
First question...someone ask just how many shares are outstanding—fully diluted?
We are short.
CRUDE OIL: (August Contract) $68.97 +1.20
According to CNN reports out of Tehran, there is rioting in the streets of Iran and line ups by hundred of thousands of car owners for miles as the government has decided to institute a policy to ration fuel allotments.
Yes, you’ve got that right...Iran, the huge producer of oil, the prominent member of OPEC and a country that has the technology to enrich uranium...can’t refine oil.
While Iran is a big exporter of oil, it’s very short refinery capacity, so it has to export oil and get someone else to come up with the refined products.
The riots in the streets were also caused by a huge increase in gas prices of more than 20% ... to 11 cents per litre (or 41.7 cents a gallon). Don’t you feel sorry for them?
PACIFIC RIM MINING (T-PMU) $1.07 +0.12
“The key,” Canaccord mining analyst Graeme Currie suggests, “is in the volume and liquidity” He is referring to the Junior Mining market, which is suddenly seeing volume drop from over 300 million a day to as little as 170 or 175 million shares a day. He thinks it is caused in part by a recent metal price weakness and concerns about interest rates.
But the concern regarding liquidity is with all the financings (and we’ve seen record numbers over the last few months) usually done by private placements, he suggests, “when people are watching their favorite stocks, be very cognizant of when there most recent financing was done.”
Four months later when that private placement is suddenly tradable, if it is tradable in a suddenly weak market, things could get a lot cheaper, a lot quicker.
“Time to be looking at charts”, he suggests as we are in what looks like a typical summer correction and start looking at charts to find out where levels of support might exists.
When we ask him for his favorites, he says his list is relatively short and he points to Pacific Rim Mining. He reminds us that the entire gold sector whether it’s juniors or the big guys as well, is down almost 25% over the last six months as people seem to care a lot less. As far as Pacific Rim, he suggests they’ve currently got a market cap of only roughly $100 million and he feels this stock could be close to a double for their El Dorado Project in El Salvador.
If you would like a copy of Graeme Currie’s report on Pacific Rim, just e-mail Jennifer at Jennifer_lagdamen@canaccord.com.
If you would like to receive the Late Edition, email Debbie at debbie_lewis@canaccord.com |
