Trevor Scott
Founder & Portfolio Manager of Tidefall Capital Management
Canadian Natural Resources' slowly declining oil and gas reserves will last many years and give it very steady production. It generates a lot of cash even when markets are tough, has raised its dividend for 26 years in a row, and plans to return 100% of free cash flow to shareholders through dividends and buybacks. x.comÂ
Canadian Natural Resources deserves a premium: it has a 30+ year reserve life and grows production every year while spending significantly less on capex than depreciation. x.comÂ
Texas Pacific Land, Canadian Natural Resources and GTT stand out in energy because they have real competitive advantages in a sector of commodity price-takers. Texas Pacific Land owns land and collects royalties at 90%+ margins with almost no costs. Canadian Natural has decades of reserves and the industry's lowest decline rates, so it can generate cash even when oil prices tank. GTT is a true tech monopoly with 90% of its market: anyone moving LNG by sea pays it. x.comÂ
Oil producers and royalty companies such as Canadian Natural, Suncor, Freehold Royalties, Viper Energy and Obsidian Energy can make money without oil going higher, if prices stay elevated longer than the market expects, say through year end. Many are still valued on trailing free cash flow yields, realized prices and production rates, none of which reflect the current elevated spot price. x.comÂ
JEPQ, Canadian Natural Resources, Canadian Pacific Kansas City, Coca-Cola and VICI Properties combine high yield with dividend growth in a simple, diversified income portfolio yielding about 6.17%. JEPQ gives Nasdaq exposure with monthly dividends, Canadian Natural is an energy leader and Canadian Pacific Kansas City a literal railroad monopoly, while Coca-Cola and VICI offer super-predictable cash flows from soda and Las Vegas real estate. x.comÂ
Rogers Communications' roughly 15% selloff is an opportunity because it does not affect management's push to monetize its trophy sports assets. Those assets are worth about 58-98% of the roughly C$24.5B market cap, with management estimating C$20-25B. The drop followed TD Cowen's downgrade of the telecom business on fears of rising pricing competition. x.com x.comÂ
Exxon Mobil and Chevron are among the highest-quality energy stocks and are long-term holdings, so a quarterly earnings decline is just noise while the thesis is intact. In cyclicals like energy, the approach is to buy only at the deepest cycle lows, never chase, and hold until the thesis permanently breaks. x.comÂ
Transocean looks compelling because offshore drillers trade like distressed cyclicals even as they add backlog. It sits near 0.93x book and 1.8x sales, with generalists scarred by 2020-21 bankruptcies, yet it has added about $1.6B of backlog since April, with recent day rates near $550k. Management guides utilization above 90% by late 2026, near 100% in 2027, and approval of the Valaris merger could re-rate it. Oil is the key risk: WTI below about $60 would bring capex cuts. x.comÂ
Exxon Mobil and other critical names that embrace every theme should go vertical, even though hard assets, especially energy, sit in the fog of war and no one wants to chase them. Timing hinges on a late-summer pivot: @radigancarter sees markets front-running it, and winners and losers should be sorted ahead of it. In that shift, duration is torched but bifurcates between abundance and scarcity, convexity is mispriced and beta looks dangerous. x.comÂ
EQT, Range Resources, Expand Energy, Magnolia Oil & Gas and EOG Resources are cyclicals catching an earnings tailwind before the crowd notices, the setup Peter Lynch loved. They passed a screen alongside Coterra, all natural gas or oil producers with disciplined balance sheets and forward P/Es of 9-12. x.comÂ