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To: CommanderCricket who wrote (49968)	8/27/1999 1:02:00 PM
From: JoeDi1213	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 95453

Nor too make things too complicated. All crude in the this hemisphere is priced against WTI. Most European grades priced against Brent. Middle East grades have an official selling price and prices based against the OSP. All grades are narrowing in price wise to WTI. WTI mostly a paper BBL. I bet less than a million a day produced. The spread narrowing means that people are paying up real money for real product, as opposed to what goes on at the NYMEX. Brent usually trades WTI less transportation and storage costs. The bigger the discount the more it's ARB over here. No discount and the ARB window shut although refiners that need to buy do so wether the arb is open or not. If you need Brent you need Brent.

To: CommanderCricket who wrote (49968)	8/27/1999 2:32:00 PM
From: upanddown	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 95453

CC Glad to see someone else thinks TCMS is a keeper. People talking of HOFF as a real buy at $8 might want to compare these two. Both marine construction companies with HQ in Houston who probably are direct competitors for many projects. TCMS sells for 50% book while HOFF sells for 160% book. TCMS has a D/E ratio of .49 while HOFF is at .70. TCMS has twice the sales of HOFF but TCMS has a market cap of 61.2M while HOFF is 150M (calculated with TCMS at 6 and HOFF at 8). TCMS sales for first six months of 1999 were 100M, up 26% while HOFF was 36M, down 32%. The only advantage for HOFF I can find is TTM profit margin was 8.1% while TCMS was an anemic 1.2%. I'am just not convinced that is really conclusive since margins prior to TTM were similar. Maybe TCMS was lowballing bids to keep work coming in while HOFF refused to bid low. The relative value between these two similar businesses just doesn't make sense. I'll stick with TCMS. John