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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul Senior who wrote (14727)	7/2/2002 2:16:37 PM
From: Paul Senior	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78715

Ah nuts. Another death spiral for me. I've given up hope on LDP and buried it. Sometimes I have gone for the full ride: all the way up and then back down and below. Painful, but small positions and diversification help. Not very much in this market though -g-.

To: Paul Senior who wrote (14727)	7/5/2002 9:29:01 PM
From: Spekulatius	Respond to of 78715

El Paso - EP I have a position in EP as well and trying to understand the pretty complex balance sheet, in particular the risks associated with the energy trading. Per 10k from 3/15, the total assets of the trading operation are: Caption: ASSETS FROM TRADING PRICE RISK MANAGEMENT ACTIVITIES AS OF DECEMBER 31, 2001 ------------------------------------------------------------ BELOW INVESTMENT GRADE(1) INVESTMENT GRADE(1)(2) TOTAL(3)(4) ------------------- ---------------------- ----------- (IN MILLIONS) Energy marketers....................... $1,472 $370 $1,842 Financial institutions................. 349 -- 349 Natural gas and oil producers.......... 141 13 154 Natural gas and electric utilities..... 1,291 83 1,374 Industrials............................ 21 18 39 Municipalities......................... 223 -- 223 Natural gas and electric utilities not publicly rated....................... 99 2 101 ------ ---- ------ Total assets from trading price risk management activities................. $3,596 $486 $4,082 ====== ==== ====== I was unable find the same table for the quarterly report 5/10/2002. On the assest side EP does list: Assets from price risk management activities.............. 2,131 2,702 but this does not match with the 10k table. So i still wonder how large the real risk exposure is. Besides that, EP has spend more than 1/3 of its EBIT (before charges) for interest payments (1.15B$ out of roughly 3B$) which is a very high leverage. This does not look quite as good as management present things, IMO. I am holding on my shares for now, since i believe that EP is cheap but I continue to see significant risk in the energy sector. If anyone can find more info about EP,s risk exposure, please post.