Commodity Prices Lowered at Canaccord

This article was placed on behalf of the U.S. based equity research effort of institutional broker and investment bank Canaccord Genuity. It was part of a series of articles developed under an agreement with forbes.com to work with a variety of contributors and assist them in delivering actionable investment ideas each week. The site, forbes.com is one of the top 500 sites in the world with nearly 10 million subscribers and approximately 100 million page views a month.

This morning Canaccord Genuity energy analyst John Gerdes lowered his 2011 and 2012 commodity price forecasts. In conjunction with his forecast he also lowered his 2011 and 2012 earnings per share estimates for companies in his coverage universe.

Mr. Gerdes said, “Regarding crude oil, we are lowering our West Texas Intermediate (WTI) forecast ~$5 to ~$91.50 in 2011, $7.50 to $85 in 2012 and $5 to $92.50 in 2013. The lower WTI forecast in 2012 reflects an increase in the projected Brent/WTI spread specific to next year due to delays in pipelines necessary to alleviate the interior North American supply glut. Our overall lower oil price forecast reflects lower economic growth in 2011/2012 than previously anticipated and is modestly amplified by lower developed world oil demand intensity.”

He added, “On the natural gas front, given the likelihood of only modest growth in demand, we believe the shale-driven uplift in gas well productivity compounded by elevated drilling activity and the gas contribution from increased US oil development should leave the gas market meaningfully over-supplied. Consequently, we anticipate a ~$4 average gas price in 2012.”

Amazon Summits A Dow That No Longer Exists

At the end of February Walgreen’s Boots Alliance was unceremoniously removed from the vaunted Dow Jones Industrial Index and Amazon

Financial Institutions Feeling the Crunch in Countdown to CECL Implementation

I was retained by Big Four accounting and consulting firm KPMG to assist them in their thought leadership efforts centered on changing accounting regulations. In this case, the Financial Accounting Standards Board or FASB had instituted new rules on the measurement of current and expected credit losses, i.e. CECL, that would require massive reorganization of financial reporting for the largest financial services organizations in the world. This thought leadership piece concerned the results of a survey among C-suite executives about their state of preparedness in the final countdown to the CECL implementation.

Securitizing Structured Settlement Payment Streams: A Primer

Fall 2012. This article was written with Stefano Sola and Phil Donahue, executives at JGWPT Holdings. We were engaged by JGWPT to assist them
in publishing the article below for The Journal Of Structured Finance.

Is The Media Biased?

This story is from our February 2024 update newsletter that offers communications insights, and hopefully, some amusing diversion.

David R. Evanson, LLC