Every part of the oil and gas business has its strengths and weaknesses. For Canadian oil sands producers, they benefit from oil sands being a long-life oil source that doesn’t need a lot of money to maintain production for decades. The downside is that Canadian crude oil is dirt cheap, so margins aren’t as attractive. That isn’t the case for Canadian oil giant Suncor Energy ( NYSE:SU ), though, as its business model is geared to both insulate the company from cheap Canadian crude prices as well as exploit the situation for higher profits. The best way to see how this works is to go through Suncor’s earnings results. So here is a brief overview of how Suncor turns the idea of cheap Canadian crude on its head and why investors concerns should be focused on something else. By the numbers Metric Q3 2018 Q2 2018 Q3 2017 Revenue CA$10.86 billion CA$10.43 billion CA$8.0 billion Net earnings CA$1.81 billion CA$972 million CA$1.28 billion Diluted EPS CA$1.11 CA$0.59 CA$0.78 Operating cash flow CA$4.37 billion CA$2.45 billion CA$2.91 billion DATA SOURCE: SUNCOR ENERGY EARNINGS RELEASE. EPS = EARNINGS PER SHARE. 1 CAD= 0.76 USD. It’s not surprising that an oil company […]
