11-11-2015, 11:00 PM
Wednesday, 11 November 2015
IT SEEMS as if Hollywood actor Shia LaBeouf is about as terrible a picker of stocks as he is a selector of film scripts.
The star of such well-regarded films as the first three highly lucrative if cheesy Transformers films and the one Indiana Jones movie almost everyone agreed was terrible first tipped Papua New Guinea player InterOil as a stock going place in 2010 when he was training for his role in the Wall Street sequel no one asked for, or saw, Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps.
The Wall Street Journal reported recently that InterOil’s stock is now down 40% from the time the sage of tinseltown picked it.
There’s no shame in that, stock prices and profits around the world have all taken a dive since thanks to the oil wars, but the WSJ now argues that with the clarity befitting a modern day Cassandra, LaBeouf might have tipped a winner after all.
If you accept that argument, there is a bridge in Brooklyn you may be interested in purchasing.
Five years ago, LaBeouf testified to the author of a GQ profile on himself that “IOC’s (InterOil’s) momentum is major, and it will surprise to the upside,” but the media at the time wondered if he’d been hornswoggled by John Thomas Financial, Clarion Finanz, and banned stock promoter Carl Caserta, who had all allegedly teamed up to manipulate the stock market one year earlier.
LeBeouf studied at John Thomas Financial for his film role.
John Thomas Financial denied any suggestions, and that was that.
InterOil had some legal issues at the time – then CEO and chairman Phil Mulacek was accused of filing a bad-faith federal bankruptcy claim to derail a potentially massive civil judgment in a fraud case against him and companies he controlled which claimed InterOil was built on a “foundation of fraud”– and the blip saw critics of InterOil declare the company overhyped, raising worries that the management was unreliable and that the Papua asset’s geology untrustworthy.
Days after the actor made his call the stock lost over $US300 million in market value in a single day.
Since then management has changed, Mulacek has left (and is now a major investor in Kina Petroleum), the old very confused model mixing onshore and offshore LNG projects has been dumped, more promising JV partners have come in in the form of Total and Oil Search, and the junior explorer’s brief brush with fame was forgotten.
Until last week, when WSJ dusted off the topic, saying that with a new management team headed up by ex-Woodside Petroleum executive, Dr Michael Hession, and a board helmed by BG Group’s former chief, Chris Finlayson, and more promising wells in the Elk-Antelope field, InterOil may indeed be one to watch for all the right reasons.
Woodside was recently rebuffed in a takeover offer for Oil Search, but InterOil could make a tempting second prize, although it lacks the immediate upside offered by Oil Search’s more advanced exploration assets.
Woodside, if it were to have a tilt at InterOil, would probably want to be pretty careful on the due diligence, particularly over the exploration risks on offer, because InterOil does not have a deep understanding of the reef plays it has focused on, and would not add immediate production.
Woodside might want to wait until after Elk-Antelope’s reserves are independently certified, although that process will trigger a multi-million dollar payday from Total.
WSJ said Sanford C Bernstein’s Neil Beveridge had calculated the enterprise value of InterOil at $US3.93 ($A5.60), which is about half Woodside’s bid for Oil Search, so perhaps the risk would be worth the headaches.
Of course, Woodside doesn’t speculate on rumours, but the presence of a number of former Woodside executives at InterOil has long set tongues wagging.
The big question is how a suitor would assess Elk Antelope’s undeveloped resources.
Auditors will only officially certify the gas finds around mid-2016, though two early audits point to sizable reserves, and there are two promising discoveries at Triceratops and Raptor that demand appraisal drilling.
Either way, perhaps investors should be prepared for InterOil to play a new role: takeover target.
Perhaps InterOil will “surprise to the upsid
