oil and gas

Bird Construction Inc., $10.81, symbol BDT on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 42.5 million; Market cap: $459.4 million; www.bird.ca), focuses on projects in a number of markets, including industrial, commercial, institutional, civil construction and mining. The company began operating 95 years ago in Medicine Hat, Alberta. Today, it has offices in Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Seattle. Bird’s industrial projects (which supplied 57% of its 2014 revenue) include work in the petrochemical, oil sands, mining, refinery and water- and wastewater-treatment sectors....

ENERFLEX LTD. $14.35 (Toronto symbol EFX; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk)(403-387-6377; www.enerflex.com; Shares outstanding: 78.7 million; Market cap: $1.1 billion; Dividend yield: 2.4%) rents and sells equipment and services for natural gas production, including compression and processing plants, refrigeration gear and power generators.

On June 30, 2014, Enerflex completed its $431- million U.S. acquisition of two businesses owned by privately held Axip Energy Services: an international contract compression and processing subsidiary and a division that provides aftermarket services.

In the three months ended March 31, 2015, Enerflex’s revenue gained 43.0%, to $475.3 million from $332.4 million a year earlier. Earnings per share jumped sharply, to $0.29 from $0.05.

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CIMAREX ENERGY $116.31 (New York symbol XEC; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk) (303-295-3995; www.cimarex.com; Shares outstanding: 87.7 million; Market cap: $10.1 billion; Dividend yield: 0.6%) produces and explores for natural gas and oil. Gas makes up 69% of the company’s output; the remaining 31% is oil.

Cimarex’s properties are mostly in the Wolfcamp shale area of the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico, as well as the Cana-Woodford shale region in western Oklahoma.

In the three months ended March 31, 2015, Cimarex’s production averaged 946.7 million cubic feet of natural gas equivalent a day, up 27.9% from 740.4 million cubic feet a year earlier.

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DEVON ENERGY CORP. $65.82 (New York symbol DVN; TSINetwork Rating: Speculative) (405-235- 3611; www.dvn.com; Shares outstanding: 411.0 million; Market cap: $26.6 billion; Dividend yield: 1.5%) is one of the largest U.S.-based oil and natural gas explorers and producers. Its production mix is 40% gas and 60% oil.

The company narrowed its focus with its July 2014 sale of some of its properties to Linn Energy for $2.3 billion. The deal included holdings in the Rockies, the onshore Gulf Coast and the Mid-Continent region (which includes Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas).

The sale lets Devon focus on what it views as lowrisk/ high-reward properties, especially the oilproducing assets it bought in Texas’s Eagle Ford shale formation for $6 billion in 2013.

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BCE INC., $53.88, Toronto symbol BCE, reported higher-than-expected quarterly results this week. In the three months ended March 31, 2015, the company’s overall earnings rose 12.6%, to $705 million from $626 million a year earlier. But per-share profits gained just 3.7%, to $0.84 from $0.81, on more shares outstanding. These figures exclude unusual items, such as costs to integrate BCE’s November 2014 purchase of the 56% of Bell Aliant it didn’t already own. On that basis, the latest earnings beat the consensus estimate of $0.79 a share....

ISHARES CHINA LARGE-CAP ETF $51.98 (New York symbol FXI; buy or sell through brokers) is an exchange traded fund that aims to track the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) China 50 Index, which is made up of the 50 largest, most liquid Chinese stocks. All of the companies in the index trade on the Hong Kong exchange. Some also trade as American depositary receipts (ADRs) on New York. The fund’s top holdings are Tencent Holdings, 8.8%; China Mobile, 8.0%; China Construction Bank, 7.5%; Industrial & Commercial Bank, 6.8%; Bank of China, 5.9%; Ping An Insurance, 4.5%; China Life, 4.4%; CNOOC Ltd., 3.9%; PetroChina, 3.8%; China Petroleum and Chemical, 3.4%; and China Overseas Land & Investment, 2.5%. The fund’s holdings give it the following industry breakdown: Financials, 48.1%; Telecommunications, 11.7%; Oil and Gas, 11.6%; Technology, 11.1%; Industrials, 6.2%; Consumer Goods, 6.4%; and Utilities, 2.1%. Its expense ratio is 0.74%....

BONAVISTA ENERGY $8.02 (Toronto symbol BNP; Shares outstanding: 203.8 million; Market cap: $1.7 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk; Dividend yield: 5.2%; www.bonavistaenergy.com) explores for oil and natural gas in Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia. Its production is 70% gas and 30% oil. In the three months ended December 31, 2014, Bonavista’s cash flow per share rose 1.6%, to $0.63 from $0.62 a year earlier. The company’s output gained 14.3%, to 85,810 barrels of oil equivalent a day from 75,072. However, lower oil prices mostly offset the production increase and higher realized gas prices....

Pennsylvania-based Vanguard Group is one of the world’s largest investment management companies. In all, it administers almost $3 trillion U.S. in 170 mutual funds. Vanguard, which went into business in 1975, offers low-fee index mutual funds. Generally speaking, Canadians can’t buy units of mutual funds that are registered in the U.S. because they aren’t registered with provincial securities commissions. For that matter, some Canadian funds aren’t available in all provinces. Canadians can, however, buy Vanguard exchange traded funds (ETFs) that trade on stock exchanges. We don’t recommend all of Vanguard’s ETFs, but here are two we do see as low-fee buys....

Union Pacific Corp., $107.51, symbol UNP on New York (Shares outstanding: 881.3 million; Market cap: $94.1 billion; www.up.com), owns Union Pacific Railroad, the largest railroad in the U.S. by track miles and revenue. Union Pacific has nearly 31,974 route miles serving the western two-thirds of the country. The company’s revenue mix is as follows: industrial, 20%; intermodal (merchandise in containers hauled by ship, train and truck), 20%; coal, 18%; agricultural, 17%; chemicals, 16%; and automotive, 9%. In the three months ended December 31, 2014, Union Pacific’s revenue rose 9.3%, to $6.2 billion from $5.6 billion a year earlier. Earnings per share gained 26.6%, to $1.62 from $1.28, as the company raised its prices and improved its productivity....

With one big contract lost, cuts in energy spending and older-generation rigs, Hercules Offshore faces a sharp decline in earnings.