Appointment of Canadian CEO and valuation pts
From Pukin on another site (and I am sure that he will not mind me posting it here:
I am getting the feeling that MPO's Canadian play is starting to snowball pretty rapidly, and that is why the share price is showing such strength. With MPO clearly flagging it is pursuing a Canadian Listing, it is pretty clear that finally some serious consideration needs to be given to what the Canadian acreage is worth!
So just using MPO's AGM presentation and the figures from that:
Utica Shale - 375,000 net acres highly prospective x $500US per acre = $187.5m. That leaves approximately 1.8m of the acre out at this stage.
Oil plays - We are seeing deals go through that are 6 times the price that MPO paid for its acreage. MPO got spearfish at C$236/per acre with deals now at C$1300/acre. MPO got bakken at C$321 per acre with deals now at C$2000 per acre, with one at C$4000 per acre! MPO paid C$27.4m for both plays there, so six times that amount is $164.4m.
That gives a total of $351.9m, in a mixture of Canadian / US dollars. Since we are within 10% of parity with each, I haven't bothered converting to Aussie dollars.
With approximately 200m shares on issue, including unlisted, that makes Canada worth $1.76 per share on its own.
Add on Cash of $60m at this stage (after tax on Gloucester paid).
Add on $6m for sale of China.
Add on $7m for sale of NSW.
So Cash of $73m = $0.365 per share.
Mungi/Harcourt/QLD... this is an interesting one. If we assume only $1/GJ of 3P, then it is worth $231m based on current reserves. That IGNORES lilyvale reserves, that have not been proven under the new code. Note that I think it is ok to use a figuer of around $1/GJ as the reality is, reserve exploration is something that MPO has really not targetted of late, rather it has been proving up production. Also I would think that Lilyvale/Oakpark will be upgraded together with Mungi/Harcourt in the reserves upgrade due in the next few weeks.... the previous reserves for Lilyvale/Oakpark are 123PJ 2P and 279PJ 3P... so that will add some serious reserves to the equation. Also it must be remembered that effectively these tenements are pretty advanced given the production currently being extracted. Finally, the location is very very beneficial being so close to a pipeline.
Finally we have South Africa... well, it is treated as the poor cousin by the average joe investor, so we will say it is worth $20m in total, along the lines of NSW/China, but with a bit of a bonus seeing as it is flowing gas already at sustained rates.
Add it all together:
Canada: $350m
Cash: $73m
QLD: $231m (could be lots of upside there!).
South Africa: $20m
Total: $674m = roughly $3.37 assuming 200m shares on issue.
We are currently trading at $1.52... which is a 55% discount to that price.
I think a reasonable discount may be around 20-40%... which would give a price range of $2.02 to $2.70.
Should be pretty exciting for the next few months... Canadian Oil drilling kicking off, Canadian Gas drilling kicking off, a reserve upgrade imminent within a month, Mungi 21 due to be finished soon, further news on the planned power stations are all definates.
Add in speculatives like farm-outs for Canadian Gas (lets face it, we have a lot of acreage there, and 4 or 5 targets), Anglo sale of QLD assets one day (don't hold breath!), corporate action in the CSG sector, or neighbours results in Canada to ignite the Utica players again.
Am a very happy holder at the moment.
Cheers
Pukin