Based upon the content in this blog, representatives from Forbes.com reached out to Bryce Erickson, ASA, MRICS with an invitation to become a contributor to Forbes.com in their Energy section.
Based upon the content in this blog, representatives from Forbes.com reached out to Bryce Erickson, ASA, MRICS with an invitation to become a contributor to Forbes.com in their Energy section.
This week we take a break from discussing the Permian Basin to feature a topic that touches most of our readers – buy-sell agreements. Almost every privately owned company with multiple shareholders has a buy-sell agreement (or other agreement that acts as a buy-sell agreement).
On May 21, Mercer Capital attended the Minerals Workshop at the DUG Permian Basin Conference in Fort Worth, Texas. The agenda included five presentations and eleven speakers, including royalty brokers, royalty aggregators, and royalty managers. We learned about changes in the royalty market, mineral investor required returns, private equity strategies and due diligence musts for buyers. In light of the information, three themes emerged that mineral owners should know about the royalty market.
On December 22, 2017, President Trump signed The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which resulted in sweeping changes to the U.S. tax code. The Act decreased the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%, in addition to modifying specific provisions around interest, depreciation, carrybacks, and repatriation taxes. The change in tax rate will have the biggest impact on purchase accounting. In the energy industry, this will manifest itself in several different ways. This blog post explores some of the impacts to valuations performed under fair value accounting in ASC 805 and ASC 820.
Travis W. Harms, Senior Vice President of Mercer Capital, wrote a series of whitepapers that focused on demystifying corporate finance for board members and shareholders. The purpose of this whitepaper is to equip directors and shareholders to contribute to capital structure decisions that promote the financial health and sustainability of the company.
In this post, we discuss the 2018 outlook for the refining industry, including the effect of taxes, industry regulation, and oil prices.
This is the second of multiple posts discussing the most important information contained in a reserve report, the assumptions used to create it, and what factors should be changed to arrive at Fair Value or Fair Market Value.
In this post, we discuss two of the most important inputs that go into every reserve report: production and pricing and why it may be appropriate to make adjustments to these inputs for purposes of Fair Value or Fair Market Value.
Mercer Capital again attended the NAPE Expo in Houston this past week. People, information, and ideas abounded with over 11,000 participants and 800 exhibitors. We summarize a few highlights from the conference in this post.
A reserve report is a fascinating disclosure of information. This is, in part, because the disclosures reveal the strategies and financial confidence an E&P company believes about itself in the near future. Strategies include capital budgeting decisions, future investment decisions, and cash flow expectations. This is the first of multiple posts discussing the most important information contained in a reserve report, the assumptions used to create it, and what factors should be changed to arrive at Fair Value or Fair Market Value.
In this post we address why the shift in oil futures from contango pricing to backwardation is a bearish sign for those in crude oil storage.
As business valuation experts, we have to consider the outlook for the economy, industry, and business in every valuation; therefore, we pay attention to the oil and gas regulatory environment to assess what it means for our clients. Given the new administration, there is much to consider.
Royalty underpayment cases are anticipated to remain steady in the current pricing environment. There is an understandable tension between mineral owners’ concern over shrinking payments and operators’ concern over profitability and favorable drilling economics.
Taryn Burgess recently attended the National Association of Royalty Owners (NARO) Appalachia Chapter Annual Conference in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia. Over the two day conference, speakers addressed many topics including certain aspects of lease agreements, current legislation affecting mineral owners, clean water solutions, clean energy programs, legal issues affecting mineral owners, midstream and storage development, and more. Here is an overview of five key takeaways from the conference.
Depending on which side of an oil and gas negotiation one is on, Held By Production (HBP) provisions can be a favorable, or unfavorable, value contributor. We discuss the concept and provide helpful information for mineral owners to consider.
In this post, we consider both the human and industry impact of Hurricane Harvey.
Last week, we analyzed the SEC’s $6.2 million settlement with a Big 4 audit firm relating to auditing failures associated with Miller Energy Resources, an oil and gas company with activities in the Appalachian region of Tennessee and in Alaska. The SEC order determines that the Big 4 audit firm did not properly use the reserve reports conclusion of PV-10 (present value at 10%). This post considers the proper use of reserve reports and risk adjustment factors when determining fair market value.
Originally published on Mercer Capital’s Financial Reporting Blog, Lucas Parris analyzed the SEC’s $6.2 million settlement with a Big 4 audit firm relating to auditing failures associated with Miller Energy Resources, an oil and gas company with activities in the Appalachian region of Tennessee and in Alaska.
Mercer Capital attended the Summer NAPE Expo in Houston this month. We discuss highlights of the expo in this week’s blog post.
The movement in the future spread away from a contango environment and toward backwardation is positive from a supply and demand perspective. Expectations are a backwardation environment will move crude oil prices higher. However, the exact cause of this change is unknown. While this shift is good news for the industry, company specific risk and investor’s fickle attitudes create volatile equity markets.
Travis W. Harms, senior vice president of Mercer Capital, wrote a series of whitepapers that focused on demystifying corporate finance for board members and shareholders. In this whitepaper, he has distilled the fundamental principles of corporate finance into an accessible and non-technical primer. Structured around the three key decisions of capital structure, capital budgeting, and dividend policy, this whitepaper is designed to assist directors and shareholders without a finance background to make relevant and meaningful contributions to the most consequential financial decisions all companies must make. Mercer Capital’s goal with this whitepaper is to give directors and shareholders a vocabulary and conceptual framework for thinking about strategic corporate finance decisions, allowing them to bring their perspectives and expertise to the discussion.
In case you missed it, this week are rerunning a consistently popular post.
Oil and gas assets represent the majority of value of an E&P company. The Oil and Gas Financial Journal describes reserves as “a measurable value of a company’s worth and a basic measure of its life span.” Thus, understanding the fair market value of a company’s PDP, PDNP, and PUDs is key to understanding the fair market value of the Company.
When valuing mineral interests, it is important to consider the nuances of the each type of mineral interest. Given that risk and asset values are indirectly related, it is important to keep in mind the various risk factors which pertain to the mineral interest. We’ll begin by examining the various risks surrounding both types of interests.
The first quarter of 2017 was productive and active for upstream E&P but the change in market capitalizations of many oil and gas companies does not match the reported increase in earnings and production estimates. Looking at our universe of energy companies in the E&P space, over 70% beat earnings estimates. This statistic held true no matter if the energy company was a global integrated operator or a pure upstream producer. To provide a flavor of the attitude, we selected the two largest publicly traded energy companies involved in E&P (STO and XOM) as well as six companies with primary operations in the Permian Basin (PXD, CXO, NBL, XEC, FANG, and RSPP) and reviewed the highlights of their latest earnings releases. As summarized in this post, each of these companies exceeded analyst expectations.
Artem Abramov, of Rystad Energy, recently published an article in the Oil and Gas Financial Journal comparing shale and offshore drilling. He claims, the “Gulf of Mexico [is] as important as [the] Permian Basin for U.S. oil production” but it has been overlooked since the advancement of shale gas. The EIA reports that offshore drilling accounts for 17% of total domestic crude oil production. So, why aren’t we talking more about oil and gas production from the Gulf of Mexico (GoM)?
