Higher production ahead

Article Excerpt

CENOVUS ENERGY $30.31 (Toronto symbol CVE; Shares outstanding: 755.8 million; Market cap: $23.3 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Average; Dividend yield: 3.2%; www.cenovus.com) operates three heavy oil projects in Alberta and one in Saskatchewan. It gets about half its output from the oil sands. Conventional oil and natural gas wells supply the other half. The company’s reserves should last 23 years. In the three months ended June 30, 2013, Cenovus’s production rose 2.2%. The increase helped push up revenue to $4.5 billion from $4.2 billion. However, higher operating costs from new projects caused the company’s earnings to decline 8.1%, to $0.34 from $0.37. Cash flow per share fell 5.7%, to $1.15 from $1.22. Cenovus’s outlook is positive, and it plans to spend $3.3 billion to $3.7 billion annually over the next 10 years to increase its production. The stock trades at 17.1 times the $1.77 a share that Cenovus should earn in 2013. But it trades at just 6.4 times its projected…