The company’s credit default swap (five years, in US dollar) has declined in recent years: it has decreased from nearly 160 back in September 2011 to nearly 71 as of last week. Moving even further back, the company’s CDS reached 630 basis points back in mid-2010. The current price of 71 means the annual premium is $71 thousand in case of a default of $10 million of debt within the next five years. The sharp fall in the CDS is another indication for the company’s slow recovery and regaining the confidence of both bondholders and shareholders in this company’s financial stability.
The chart below presents the developments of the 5 year CDS price in the past few years (weekly prices).
One of the reasons for the decline in the CDS price is the company’s drop in uncertainty vis-à-vis its oil spill cost. Moreover, BP was able to raise $38 billion from the $42.2 billion the company decided to allocate for funding the cost and fines of the 2010 oil spill. But not all is well, the company still faces the civil trial of the states that could result in a higher than planed compensation. The suing States include Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. Some analysts speculate these States’ will demand for an additional $34 billion for economic and property damages. For now, these numbers aren’t substantiated but are likely to impede the growth of BP’s stock; as the trial will progress it will become clearer if there is any reason for BP to start selling additional assets to cover additional cost for the oil spill.
BP’s revenues inched down by 0.7% during 2012 (year-over-year). But BP wasn’t the only company that didn’t have growth in revenues in 2012. Other leading oil and gas companies including Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE:XOM) and Royal Dutch Shell plc (ADR) (NYSE:RDS.A) have also had a no-growth year: Exxon’s revenues also declined by 0.8% during 2012 and Shell’s revenues fell by 0.6%. BP’s operating profit, on the other hand, took a beating and declined from 10.3% in 2011 to 5.1% in 2012. After controlling for goodwill provision and other accounting provisions the company’s operating profit would have reached 6.8%. This a much lower rate than its top competitors: Exxon’s profitability was 16.3% in 2012 and Shell’s was 11%. So even though BP’s revenues didn’t grow in 2012, other leading oil and gas companies also didn’t record any growth in revenues.
BP is also offering a relatively high dividend yield of 4.92%. In comparison, Shell is offering a slightly higher yield of 5.16% and Exxon offers an annual yield of only 2.57%.
During 2012, the price of oil (WTI) declined by nearly 7.1%. All things being equal, this could suggest the company’s profitability and total revenues were adversely affected by the fall in oil prices during 2012.
Alternatively, the natural gas prices rose during 2012 by almost 5.9%. The rise in natural gas prices may have curbed some of the fall in the company’s revenues. Nonetheless, since the share of natural gas revenues out of BP’s total revenues in the upstream operations account for only 10%, the rise in natural gas prices have had little effect on the company’s total revenues growth. Currently, it seems that natural gas won’t tumble to its low prices recorded during the first half of 2012, but the price is expected to remain low compared to the five year average.
I still hold the opinion that BP will keep recovering and investors will slowly come back to this company. The company’s high dividend yield and its positive free cash flow are among the company’s strong points. BP still has a long way to go until it will be out of the woods completely. In the coming months, as the civil trial will enfold it will become clearer if this company will need to raise more cash for a settlement. In any case, it seems that the worst for BP is over.
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The article Is This Oil Company Recovering? originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Lior Cohen.
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