Michigan gas purchase looks like a bargain

Article Excerpt

ENCANA CORP. $33 (Toronto symbol ECA; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Resources sector; Shares outstanding: 748.7 million; Market cap: $24.7 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.7; Dividend yield: 2.5%; SI Rating: Average) continues to expand its unconventional natural-gas holdings. In May 2010, the company bought 250,000 acres in the Collingwood shale-gas deposit in Michigan. Shale gas is natural gas that is trapped in rock formations. To extract it, companies must pump water and chemicals into the rock. This fractures the rock and releases the natural gas. Early test wells indicate that Collingwood could hold as much gas as Encana’s other major shale-gas holdings in Louisiana and northeastern B.C. Encana paid $37.5 million for this land (all amounts except share price and market cap in U.S. dollars). That’s small next to the $1.2 billion, or $1.57 a share, of cash flow that the company generated in the three months ended March 31, 2010. Encana is a buy. buy…