Petrobras: 2 Analysts, 2 Skeptics
Analysts at Raymond James and Barclays think Petrobras' investor day optimism was overdone.
By
Dimitra DeFotis
Oct. 3, 2017 1:12 p.m. ET
Shares of Brazil's state-controlled oil producer and refiner
Petroleo Brasileiro or
Petrobras(
PBR) rose 3.6% in recent trading after an analyst meeting in New York Monday.
But two analysts were largely unmoved by the company's comments, and see political risk ahead.
Raymond James Analyst
Pavel Molchanov, who rates the stock Market Perform, thinks that Petrobras' 2021 oil production projection is too optimistic. Though with the stock trading near $10.44 today, it is still trading below his book value estimate of $11.99 as of June. Molchanov thinks that investors need to include Brazil's October 2018 presidential election outcome in their investment thesis over the next year. He writes:
"Alongside the usual company-specific issues, there is no escaping the macro backdrop – currency volatility and policy uncertainty in the run-up to the 2018 presidential election – that helps make this stock so polarizing, even in the context of other National Oil Companies (NOCs) ...The 2021 domestic liquids production target of 2.77 MMbpd, as spelled out in the year-ago Business Plan, remains unchanged – and, in our view, as unrealistic as before. With production having averaged 2.16 MMbpd from January to August 2017, the targeted net uplift of 600,000 bpd over a four-year period equates to 6.5% annualized growth, which (strikingly) contrasts with a total increase of 6.5% between 2010 and 2017. We would be much more comfortable with a target of around 2.4 MMbpd, and we suspect that it will be revised down over the next 18 to 24 months ..."
Barclays Analyst
Paul Y. Cheng has an Underweight weighting on PBR shares with an $8 price target, and also has an Underweight rating on A shares. He writes:
The "Oct. 2, 2017 Investor Day in NYC ... will ultimately have a neutral impact on the shares' near-term performance. While management provided good detail on a range of important topics and convincingly reaffirmed production growth and deleveraging goals, there were no hints of major breakthroughs on important topics such as the Transfer of Rights negotiation or finding a partner for the downstream. Further, while the potential IPO of a 25-40% stake in BR Distribuidora is still targeted for this year pending suitable market conditions, management spoke plainly of potentially executing the offering in 2018 instead, despite the risk posed by a Brazil election year and what we believe were investors' expectations that it go through by end of 2017. In our opinion, positives in the reaffirmation of the lofty 2018 production growth goal and the announcement earlier in the morning of several billion dollars worth of pre-payments and refinancings were largely outweighed by lack of signal on progress elsewhere.As such, we believe the Analyst Day was neither a positive nor a negative. ... We do not believe the preferred should trade at a discount to the common, since we don't pledge any value to the voting rights given the government's majority ownership ... i.e., it is highly unlikely the government will sell down to a minority ownership in the company. The primary obstacle for Petrobras, in our view, is considerable political risk. Despite the fundamental momentum over the last year as well as any additional near-term potential catalysts, the political environment in Brazil remains foggy until better line of sight is available for the October 2018 Presidential elections - especially given Lula's continued strong showing in recent polls ..."
Petrobras: 2 Analysts, 2 Skeptics