Buy these two for oil and gas exposure

Article Excerpt

IMPERIAL OIL $41.46 (Toronto symbol IMO; Shares outstanding: 844.3 million; Market cap: $34.7 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Average; Dividend yield: 1.5%; www. imperialoil.ca) is Canada’s second-largest publicly traded oil company, after Suncor. ExxonMobil (New York symbol XOM) owns 69.6% of Imperial. About 90% of the company’s crude production comes from its Alberta oil sands operations, including its 25% stake in the Syncrude project. Imperial manages that operation, although Suncor holds a 53.74% share. Imperial also has conventional oil and gas fields in the West and stakes in offshore projects in Atlantic Canada. In the three months ended September 30, 2017, overall revenue fell 3.8%, to $7.2 billion from $7.4 billion a year earlier. The company sold its 497 Esso retail stations for $2.8 billion earlier this year. The loss of that revenue offset higher oil and gas sales. Imperial used cash from the sale of the Esso stations to pay down its debt. As a result, its long-term debt is now $5.2 billion, or just…