Stock Spotlight: WHITING PETROLEUM CORPORATION (NYSE:WLL)
Whiting Petroleum Corporation is a Denver-based independent oil and gas company that was founded in 1980. WLL is concerned with the development, exploration & acquisition of crude oil, natural gas / natural gas liquids in the USA. Major projects of the company are in the Bakken and three Forks plays in North Dakota.
The company has Enhanced Oil Recovery fields in Texas and Oklahama. Its main focus is on Crude oil with same being 86% of the company’s proven resources. The company produces 55,663 barrels per day of oil & around 2M CBM per day of natural gas.
Whiting has 607,524 Acres (net) of developed land which is allocated or assignable to productive wells or wells capable of production with 3,806 (net) wells. It also has proven and probable reserves of oil & LNG of 297 million bpd & 70 million bpd.
For natural gas, the reserves are 8 billion CBM and 5.97 billion CBM respectively. The company had a budget of $1.6B for capex in 2012. PV10% of net income from reserves is approximately $7.4 B (pre-tax). (source: WLL-Annual report 2011& www.whiting.com).
Its current market capitalization is $5.6B with sales being $1.86B in 2011 ($917M in 2009). The corresponding net income in 2011 was around $ 491 million (net loss of $106M in 2009). In trailing twelve months (TTM), WLL has reported sales of $ 2.06B with net income of $394M (NPM of 19.15%).
Return on equity & return on assets were 12.49 & 6.73% respectively. The diluted EPS is 3.32 which translates into a P/E of 14.31. PEG (five year estimate) is 1.0 and Price to Book ratio is 1.67. Debt on books is $1.6B with debt-equity ratio being 47.52. The company is majorly held by institutional investors (87%). The company has not paid any dividend in its recent history. Earnings for the last quarter will be declared on 18th Feb 13.
As evident from the above long-term chart, the stock is trading above its 50 and 200DMA but 50DMA is presently below 200DMA. All time high of the company is above $70 and the 52W high / Low for the stock is around $36 & $64 respectively. The stock is up 64% during the last 52 weeks. The beta for the stock is 2.05. (Source: Yahoo finance)
Broker Opinion
General consensus is positive as recent broker opinion shows:
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