This purchase lifts cash flow

Article Excerpt

OVINTIV INC. $51 is a buy. The company (Toronto symbol OVV; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Resources sector; Shares outstanding: 244.5 million; Market cap: $12.5 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.7; Dividend yield: 3.1%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.ovintiv.com) operates four core properties: Montney (B.C.), Permian (Texas), Anadarko (Oklahoma) and Uinta (Utah). In addition to natural gas, these fields produce large amounts of oil and natural gas liquids. Ovintiv recently agreed to pay $4.275 billion (73% in cash, 27% in shares) for 1,050 wells in the Permian basin from private equity firm EnCap Investments L.P. To help offset the cost, the company is selling its holdings in the Bakken basin to EnCap for $825 million U.S. The new operations should increase Ovintiv’s annual cash flow per share by 14%. For 2023, the company’s cash flow will probably total $16.41 U.S. a share, and the stock trades at just 2.3 times that estimate. As well, with the June 2023 payment, the company is raising your quarterly dividend by 20.0%, to $0.30 U.S….