LISA CONTE, Founder, President and CEO, Jaguar Health (NASD: JAGX).
Lisa Conte is the founder, president and chief executive officer, and a member of the board of directors, of Jaguar Health, a commercial-stage pharmaceuticals company committed to discovering, developing and commercializing plant-based prescription medicines for urgent global health needs.
Mytesi, the company’s FDA-approved drug product indicated for the symptomatic relief of noninfectious diarrhea in adults with HIV/AIDS on antiretroviral therapy, is a first-in-class, plant-based anti-secretory agent and the first oral drug approved under FDA Botanical Guidance.
In July 2017, two companies founded by Ms. Conte — Napo Pharmaceuticals, a human-focused pharmaceuticals company, and Jaguar Animal Health, the veterinary-focused licensor of all of Napo’s technology — merged and now comprise Jaguar Health.
In 1989, Ms. Conte also founded Shaman Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and has pioneered plant-based prescription medicine investigation and development for more than 30 years, including a recent Entheogen Therapeutics Initiative, looking at psychoactive plants for novel cures for mood disorders and CNS neurodegenerative diseases.
Ms. Conte is currently a member of the board of directors of Healing Forest Conservatory, and serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of Life Science Leader magazine.
She holds an M.S. in Physiology and Pharmacology from the University of California, San Diego, and an MBA and A.B. in Biochemistry from Dartmouth College.
In this extensive and wide ranging 4,170 word interview, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript, Lisa Conte details the prospects for Jaguar Health (NASD: JAGX) and the upside for investors.
“Jaguar Health does all our drug discovery from plants used traditionally in tropical areas. So leveraging the knowledge of shamans and traditional healers to do more efficient drug discovery and development yielded a successful compound called crofelemer, which is commercialized as a product called Mytesi.
It’s a novel way of first-in-class mechanism of action for treating gastrointestinal disorders and normalizing gut function, and that is our mission, to use natural plant-based products to have new ways of treating and curing primarily gastrointestinal disorders.
And a further strategy and mission of the company is to mitigate the considerable risk associated with drug development by taking crofelemer, which is already approved by the FDA for a chronic indication, and looking at follow-on indications, follow-on patient populations, because the product is already approved, it’s already manufactured, it’s already used chronically. So it’s mitigating as much risk as possible to get it into other patient populations.”
Lisa Conte details the status of the novel drug treatmeant that Jaguar Health (NASD: JAGX) is producing:
“In humans, Phase III, as you know, is the final pivotal trial. Sometimes you have to do two, sometimes you have to do one. We had a discussion with the FDA — negotiation really — for about 18 months for a single pivotal trial for cancer therapy-related diarrhea in humans. And that’s what’s going on right now.
And that’s a major transformative moment for the company in support of the potential availability of crofelemer to much larger patient populations, and of course the potential financial return that goes to shareholders associated with that.
On the animal side, the conditional approval, because it’s MUMS, which is considered an orphan indication, the product can be sold right now, only for chemotherapy-induced diarrhea in dogs.
And we need to finish within a five-year period of time the complete approval, and we have to show progress towards that every single year or, at the end of five years, they take your conditional approval away.
And so those are a pivotal trial that will be agreed to with the FDA’s Center of Veterinary Medicine, and we’re in discussions with them now.
So I reserve the Phase I, II, III terminology for the human side and particularly since this is a conditional approval on the animal side, it’s more like conditional approval, pivotal full approval trial.”
Get all the details on the development of these novel drug developments by reading the entire 4,170 word interview with Lisa Conte, CEO of Jaguar Health (NASD: JAGX), exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript.
Lisa Conte, Founder, President & CEO
email: hello@jaguar.health
Jay Roberts, President and CEO, Vyant Bio (NASD: VYNT)
Jay Roberts has been the President and Chief Executive Officer of Vyant Bio, Inc. since 2018.
Mr. Roberts had previously served as the Chief Operating Officer of Cancer Genetics. Prior to joining Cancer Genetics, Mr. Roberts served as the Chief Financial Officer for VirMedica, Inc., an innovative technology solutions company that provides an end-to-end platform that enables specialty-drug manufacturers and pharmacies to optimize product commercialization and management.
Before VirMedica, Mr. Roberts was the Chief Financial and Administrative Officer for AdvantEdge Healthcare Solutions Inc., a global health care analytics and services organization.
Prior to that, Mr. Roberts also served as the Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer for InfoLogix, Inc., a publicly traded, health care-centric mobile software and solutions provider.
He has also held CFO roles at leading public medical device and health care services firms including Clarient, Inc., a publicly traded provider of diagnostic laboratory services, and Daou Systems, Inc., a publicly traded health care IT software development and services firm.
In addition, he has held key senior executive roles with MEDecision, Inc., HealthOnline, Inc., and the Center for Health Information.
Mr. Roberts earned a bachelor of science and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Maine.
He is a member of the Fellows and a former member of the board of directors and Past Chair for the Drug Information Association, a global neutral forum enabling drug developers and regulators access to education and collaboration.
Mr. Roberts also serves on the board of directors of Cohere-Med Inc., a clinical analytics company.
In this 2,291 word interview, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript, Jay Roberts details the recent developments and makes the investment case for Vyant Bio (NASD: VYNT).
“Post merger — March 31, 2021 — throughout the remainder of 2021 and coming into 2022, we have meaningfully focused the business on neurological degenerative and developmental diseases. StemoniX had a very mature and commercially ready iPSC — or organoid screening capability — which now allows us to screen thousands of potential drug candidates to treat very specific biological targets.
This approach allows us to discover drugs that treat neurological diseases. Vyant Bio’s current focus is working on two rare diseases — CDKL5 deficiency disorder and Rett Syndrome.
CDKL5 deficiency disorder affects primarily female infants. CDKL5 is a very difficult disease to treat. It is a terrible disease which currently has large unmet medical needs. Currently, there is no approved drug for this particular disease.”
Vyant Bio (NASD: VYNT) also has a drug treatment in development for Rett Syndrome:
“We are also working to treat Rett Syndrome. Rett affects young children, mostly females similar to CDKL5 including characteristics of the disease phenotype. Rett is first diagnosed in children from the approximate age of six months to about 18 months, but it is a lifelong disease. Currently there are no approved therapeutics for this disease indication.
We also have a broader view toward neurological degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, which can lead into future work for treating Alzheimer’s disease.
We are highly focused on neurological diseases, which is why it is important for us to advance our microBrain organoid technology, and combined with artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data capabilities, our platform then allows us to accelerate and de-risk our decisions to identify novel and repurposed therapeutics.”
The CEO Jay Roberts believes that investors will benefit from taking a closer look at Vyant Bio (NASD: VYNT):
“The upside is that we believe that we have an undervalued stock.
We believe that we have a significant amount of potential as we think about our therapeutic areas of interest.
The drugs that Vyant Bio can get into the clinic and then ultimately into patients, we believe, are greatly valued and will be a large opportunity for investors to join us in that journey.”
Get all the details for the upside in this biotech stock by reading the entire 2,291 word interview with Jay Roberts, CEO of Vyant Bio (NASD: VYNT), exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript.
Jay Roberts, President & CEO
Vyant Bio, Inc.
email: info@vyantbio.com
Pavel Molchanov, Managing Director, Renewable Energy and Clean Technology, Raymond James & Associates
Pavel Molchanov is Managing Director, Renewable Energy and Clean Technology, for Raymond James & Associates, Inc. (NYSE: RJF, Raymond James Financial)
He joined the firm in 2003 and has been part of the energy research team ever since.
He became an analyst in 2006, the year he initiated coverage on the renewable energy/clean technology sector. In this role, he covers all aspects of sustainability-themed technologies, including solar, wind, biofuels, electric vehicles, hydrogen, power storage, grid modernization, water technology, and more.
Within the energy research team, he also writes about the broader topics of geopolitical and regulatory issues, climate change, and ESG investing.
He has been recognized in the StarMine Top Analyst survey, the Forbes Blue Chip Analyst survey, and The Wall Street Journal Best on the Street survey.
He graduated cum laude from Duke University in 2003 with a bachelor of science degree in economics, with high distinction. In the broader community, he is a member of the Board of Visitors at the University of North Carolina’s Institute for the Environment; a member of the Advisory Board at Cool Effect, an environmental project funding charity; and the founder of the Molchanov Sustainability Internship Program at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London.
In this 2,033 word interview, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript, Pavel Molchanov details his top picks including Bloom Energy (NYSE: BE) and the reasoning behind his belief in their value to investors.
“Bloom Energy (NYSE: BE, Bloom Energy Corp) a play on hydrogen, is one that I like a lot.
This company faced margin pressure from higher input costs over the past year. And the stock had been very expensive at the beginning of 2021.
Bloom is the world’s largest provider of stationary fuel cells. This means fuel cells that provide distributed electric power for businesses, such as data centers, hospitals, and office buildings.
Also in 2022, Bloom will be launching an electrolyzer product.
An electrolyzer is quite literally the inverse of a fuel cell. A fuel cell generates electricity, whereas an electrolyzer uses electricity to produce hydrogen, specifically what’s called green hydrogen.
Green hydrogen is a nascent but exciting market, particularly in Europe, where the European Union has ambitious targets for scaling up green hydrogen production.”
The Bloom Energy (NYSE: BE) recommendation is not without its constraints.
“The supply chain problems that reduced the profitability of many cleantech companies in the past 12 months are not going to go away overnight. It will be a gradual process, and investors should be aware of the continuation of COVID-related supply chain risk.
Secondly, we need to watch what happens with public policy. Policy as it relates to climate and sustainability varies a great deal from country to country. For example, in Washington, as 2021 comes to an end, it looks like the Build Back Better reconciliation package is unlikely to pass anytime soon.
This has relevance for cleantech from the perspective of tax credits. In the European Union, we will be watching the implementation of the European Climate Law, which in general, offers much better visibility than climate policy in Washington.”
The politics of hydrogen power are an important driver in the valuation of Bloom Energy (NYSE: BE) as well as all renewable energy stocks.
“China is a crucial variable because it’s the world’s largest CO2 emitter.
Close to 30% of the world’s CO2 emissions come from China, more than the United States and European Union combined.
In July of 2021, China began its national carbon trading program, which is an important step in the direction of decarbonization. China is also the world’s largest solar market, the largest wind market, and the largest electric vehicle market. But on the other hand, the Chinese government continues to remain supportive of coal, despite its very problematic climate impact.
India is somewhat of a mixed bag in its climate policy as well.
There are two other important economies where elections need to be watched in the next 12 months.
In Australia, which is a G20 economy and a large CO2 emitter, the election will be held no later than May of 2022.
If the Labor Party comes to power, that would have a positive effect on Australian climate policy.
The other election coming up is in Brazil, also a G20 economy. The Brazilian election will be in October. If President Bolsonaro loses and is replaced by a more climate-friendly administration, that would be a positive step to making Brazil a player in climate action, especially in preventing deforestation.”
Get all of the top picks from Pavel Molchanov, award winning research analyst from Raymond James Financial, in this 2,033 word interview, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript.
Pavel Molchanov, Managing Director, Renewable Energy and Clean Technology
Raymond James & Associates, Inc.
email: pavel.molchanov@raymondjames.com
Bobby Edgerton, Co-Founder, Capital Investment Companies
Bobby Edgerton is a Co-Founder of the Capital Investment Companies and has served as an executive officer of the companies since 1984.
He is also the firm’s Chief Investment Officer and has been in the financial services industry since 1979.
After winning the North Carolina State High School Golf Championship, Mr. Edgerton accepted both a basketball and golf scholarship from Wake Forest University and graduated with a B.A. in business and finance.
After graduation, he attained a rank of First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, where he commanded a thousand-man training company at Fort Gordon, Georgia, during the Vietnam War. During his amateur golf career, Mr. Edgerton played in four United States Amateur Championships.
In this 2,294 word interview, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript, Mr. Edgerton details his current buy list.
“…In my 20s, I became interested in the stock market. I wanted to be self-sufficient and financially independent. And I figured if you could master the stock market, per se, and you could make enough money and become wealthy before your time.
So you didn’t have to be dependent on anyone, and you didn’t have to work if you didn’t want to.
So I started following the stock market and saw how many mistakes the big institutions would make consistently, and how stocks had these wild fluctuations up and down. And if you just buy when they’re down, buy when everybody else is selling, that would be a key to doing well…
It’s about time interest rates started tracing back up to some normal level. I think low interest rates really benefit the rich, because they can borrow money cheap and go public cheap, but it doesn’t really help the lower half of the population where most are not so much into the stock market as maybe others, and over time are putting their money into CDs in the bank and getting a decent yield.
But they’re getting virtually nothing now for the last four or five years, which is kind of sad.”
The long term vision of Bobby Edgerton has reward his investors:
“I bought Apple in 1995 when Jobs was released — that is, fired — from Apple and John Sculley had come in. So Jobs was fired, and the stock went way down, and everybody was talking about Apple going broke.
Yet back in 1995, they had $1.3 billion in cash and the debt was only $300 million, and everybody loved the Mac and hated IBM (NYSE:IBM).
IBM had lost money for four years in a row. So my instincts told me that if you bought Apple when everybody else was selling it, you probably had a good chance at making money.
And following my instincts we actually bought 500 shares and the stock split two for one.
So I had 1,000. Then, two for one again, I had 2,000. And seven for one, 14,000. And four for one and had 56,000 shares, and I only started out at 500.
So, you know, I got lucky. Jobs came back and the rest is history.”
Bobby Edgerton’s current picks include a defense contractor and a newspaper publisher:
“My number-one stock is a company called Aerojet Rocketdyne (NYSE:AJRD).
Aerojet Rocketdyne was formed back in the 1940s. Their CEO back then owned General Tire Company (OTCMKTS:CTTAY), which had a lot to do with helping us in World War II.
But he saw how important rocketry and rocket technology in space was going to be.
So he sold the tire business and started Aerojet Rocketdyne. And back in the early 1950s, he bought about 12,000 acres of land, 15 miles from downtown Sacramento. And they still own it.
And right now it’s an insanely cheap stock. Here’s a company that has $620 million in cash and debt is $500 million, so more cash than debt. And there’s no telling what that real estate is worth.
And it was Aerojet that really essentially put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and Michael Thompson on the moon.
Michael Thompson was the pilot of the ship, but he didn’t get to fly to the moon.
Currently, Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) has made a $56 a share offer as we speak this morning, but they have officially terminated that offer, due to the FTC assuming it would harm rival defense contractors and further consolidate multiple markets critical to national security and defense.
This is the agency’s first litigated defense merger challenge in decades. So you can buy the stock at $37 and can figure Lockheed Martin has done a lot of the homework for you. They’re a very smart company. And that’s what I’m going to buy some more of this morning. It’s my number-one buy.
And maybe my number-two buy is The New York Times (NYSE:NYT).
The New York Times fell on kind of hard times back in 2012. They had a CEO who borrowed a lot of money, bought The Boston Globe, and bought part of the Boston Red Sox.
They also sold part of The New York Times building.
Then they hired Mark Thompson. He had never run a company before, he was the head of the BBC. He solidified the company, paid off every penny of debt, got the cash up, and no debt. Once he got the job done, he then retired.
And in walks Meredith Kopit Levien who began reading The New York Times when she was in high school in Richmond.
She went to UVA and became a star at The Cavalier Daily. She also shined at a famous consultancy run by David Bradley up in D.C. And she was also a star at Forbes, getting Forbes out of so much print and into more online digital subscriptions.
So The New York Times brought her in. And now she’s the CEO there. And personally, I would vote for her for president if she could run.
So The New York Times is now valued at about $7 billion but it’s worth a lot more than that. They still own 53% of The New York Times building.
And the stock is just numerically down. They now have 10 million subscribers, the majority of which are digital. And she’s doing a lot of interesting things — specialty apps on the web, like cooking and sports, and more.
And so, both of those stocks have been trading at around $40. Today, The Times is about $42 and Aerojet Rocketdyne is $37 and change. So you get all that real estate outside Sacramento, they have 12,000 acres. So they have about 8% of the land that Raleigh has in the whole city.”
Get the full 2,294 word interview with Bobby Edgerton, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript, including all his current stock picks and more, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript.
Scott Slater, President and CEO, Cadiz (CDZI)
Scott Slater is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Cadiz Inc., appointed to the role of President in April 2011 and Chief Executive Officer effective February 1, 2013 with the purposed of fulfilling the company’s California water supply project plans.
Mr. Slater has been a member of the company’s board of directors since February 2012. Mr. Slater is an accomplished water rights transactional attorney and litigator and, in addition to his role at the company, is a shareholder in Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP, the nation’s leading water law firm.
For nearly 40 years, Mr. Slater has focused on negotiation of agreements and enacting policy related to the acquisition, distribution, and treatment of water.
He has served as lead negotiator on a number of important water transactions, including the negotiation of the largest conservation-based water transfer in U.S. history on behalf of the San Diego County Water Authority and is recognized as one of the leading water law and policy lawyers in the United States.
Mr. Slater serves on the Limoneira Company board of directors (NASDAQ:LMNR) and sits on its Executive and Risk Committees.
Mr. Slater also has an extensive background in state, federal and international water policy and is the author of California Water Law and Policy, the state’s leading treatise on the subject.
He has taught water law and policy courses at University of California, Santa Barbara, Pepperdine University, and the University of Western Australia, (China) among others. He is presently advising the nation of Tunisia on water policy.
In this exclusive 5,399 word interview with the Wall Street Transcript, Scott Slater details his company’s quest to develop a water supply project in California.
“…The entirety of my professional life has been in the water space.
I am a practicing lawyer. I’ve got 37 years now — it’s hard for me to believe, but 37 years in the water space.
And in addition to practicing law and negotiating and litigating some of the most high-profile and sticky issues in California, I also wrote a book called California Water Law and Policy, which is a well-known treatise, and taught water law in law schools and graduate schools in the U.S. and internationally.
I’ve worked around the globe in the water area, in Australia, Tunisia, China, and I became aware of Cadiz in my early days of working on the Colorado River in the late 1990s.”
Scott Slater has a wealth of knowledge on the water supply issues and concerns for Los Angeles.
“The project was approved by California in California. So the history of the project was that a former, more impactful form of the project, involving a federal right-of-way permit, was approved by the federal government in 2002.
That project did not get to go ahead in California because the project partner did not want to go forward in 2002, and that was the Metropolitan Water District.
The principal reason that was identified for not going forward was the absence of answers to questions about the ability of the project to operate without causing harm to the environment.
When I came on in 2009, we decided to do something that they hadn’t done in 2002, which was to go to the host county, San Bernardino County, where the water was going to be taken and go through their permitting process.
We re-routed our proposed pipeline and consequently there was no federal involvement; no federal land, no federal issue of any kind involved in 2009 when we started. The County of San Bernardino, in 2012, fully permitted the groundwater use, and at the local level, they permitted the land-use plan, the transportation plan, all of that.
It also went through an environmental review process that was hosted by the principal entity that received the water, Santa Margarita Water District, also in 2012.
So what happened was, the environmental review concluded that, as I said, there were no, not a single adverse environmental impact that was associated with the project — none, not one.
Then, the County of San Bernardino, even with all due respect to what the Santa Margarita Water District did on the environmental review, it then also conditioned the project.
Now both of those entities were sued. They were sued nine times. Six went to trial, and all six in California were validated at trial.
All of the arguments that project owners had were rejected. And then it went to the Court of Appeal. And once again, the Court of Appeal ruled six separate times that all of the approvals issued to the project in California by California entities were proper.
So the Trump administration never gave — there wasn’t even a glimmer of thought in 2012 when it was originally approved in California, and there was no element involving the federal government at that time.
So how does the federal government get involved? We wanted to begin converting a natural gas pipeline to convey water. So in 2011, while President Obama was still serving — in fact, in his first term — we executed an agreement with El Paso Natural Gas to acquire a portion of their 220-mile pipeline and that acquisition was conditioned at closing on the federal government approving the assignment of that pipeline to us.
And the way the bureaucratic world works, that process continued through the end of the Obama administration, and occupied most of the Trump administration, while they were renewing a 1,300-mile pipeline of which we were going to buy a 220-mile segment.
In short, it was processed and the federal government’s approval was for a segment of that 1,300-mile pipeline, a 57-mile stretch over federal land.
We sought the federal approval of a right of way for us to substitute water for natural gas without any surface disturbance and enter the conveyance business.
The federal government approved a right of way for that stretch — not the whole 220, but for that stretch. And that happened under a process which basically took many years to complete — the environmental review of the whole 1,300-mile pipeline — but we had to have the whole review before we could do our segment. And that’s what the Trump Administration approved; it did not approve the use of any water sources of any kind.
When we say administration, that was the sitting president, but it was the BLM office in Needles, California, who approved it. And that’s what happened.
So we don’t view that as the Trump administration had anything to do with the project. It’s pretty much bedrock BLM policy that if there’s no surface disturbance, there are no environmental impacts to study for something that’s happening and many miles away and not in the federal right of way.”
The contrary opinion is espoused by Michael Hiltzik of the LA Times, who shared a Pulitzer Prize with Chuck Phillips in 1999:
“As proposed by Cadiz Inc., the idea was to store surplus Colorado River water under a desert tract owned by the company, pump it out during dry spells and transport it by pipeline or canal to Southern California urban users.
Among the problems is that there isn’t any surplus water in the Colorado. The basin is in a long-term drought, and for the foreseeable future California will be lucky to get its full statutory apportionment of river water. A single extra drop? Forget it.
Furthermore, there’s considerable disagreement over how much groundwater really underlies the Cadiz land, not to mention how much the company is legally permitted to pump out and how much could be pumped before neighboring aquifers become contaminated with carcinogenic minerals.”
Get both sides to this complex topic by reading the complete interview with Scott Slater in his exclusive 5,399 word interview with the Wall Street Transcript.
Scott Slater, President & CEO
Cadiz Inc.
www.cadizinc.com
email: waterinfo@cadizinc.com
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/column-biden-moved-finally-kill-205936343.html
https://www.twst.com/interview/interview-with-the-president-and-ceo-cadiz-inc-nasdaqcdzi
Amanda Brock, CEO & President, Aris Water Solutions (ARIS)
Amanda Brock is the Chief Executive Officer and President of Aris Water Solutions (ARIS), a leading produced water infrastructure and recycling company primarily focused on the Permian Basin which went public in October 2021.
Ms. Brock has been with Aris Water Solutions (ARIS) and its predecessor Solaris Water Midstream since 2017.
She has spent her career focused on the global oil and gas, power, and water sectors. Prior to joining Solaris, Ms. Brock was CEO of Water Standard, a water treatment company focused on desalination, produced water treatment and recycling for both the upstream and downstream energy sectors.
Previously, Ms. Brock was President of the Americas for Azurix, responsible for developing water infrastructure and related services, and prior to that was President of Enron Joint Venture Management, managing Enron’s global power assets and partnerships.
Ms. Brock serves on the public boards of Coterra Energy, Macquarie Infrastructure Corporation, and is the current Chair of the Texas Business Hall of Fame.
She previously served on the Board of Trustees of LSU Law School and Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico.
She was named one of the Top 10 Women in Energy by the Houston Chronicle and in 2016 was recognized both as one of the Top 25 Leaders in Water globally and as a Texas Honoree for Women in Energy. She also facilitated a White House delegation to Abu Dhabi as part of the Obama Administration’s Moonshot for Water Initiative.
In 2017, Ms. Brock was inducted into the Houston Women’s Business Hall of Fame and in 2020 was named one of the 25 Influential Women in Energy by Hart Energy Oil and Gas Investor magazine.
Ms. Brock is originally from Mbabane, Swaziland, and grew up in Zimbabwe. She completed her bachelor’s undergraduate degree at the University of Natal in South Africa and earned her Juris Doctor from Louisiana State University, where she was a member of the Law Review.
She is dedicated to responsible conservation and passionate about elephants, water and energy security.
In her 1,776 word interview, exlusively in the Wall Street Transcript, Ms. Brock details her strategy for maximizing returns for her shareholders in Aris Water Solutions (ARIS):
“Aris Water Solutions (ARIS) was founded in late 2016 and was originally backed by two private equity groups.
We are a growth-oriented environmental infrastructure company with a demonstrated ESG record that delivers full-cycle water handling and recycling solutions to our customers.
Our asset footprint is primarily located in the Northern Delaware Basin in southern New Mexico, with additional assets in the Midland Basin in Texas. Our infrastructure and service offerings help our customers mitigate their environmental impact and water footprints by maximizing the recycling of produced water and minimizing the use of fresh and groundwater.
We are a leader in recycling operations in the Permian Basin.
While we have a diversified customer base, ConocoPhillips is our largest shareholder.
We had a prior relationship and long-term, large acreage dedication with Concho Resources who was purchased by ConocoPhillips in 2021. Since ConocoPhillips inherited this position, we’ve been able to expand our relationship with additional contracts and recycling services.”
Aris Water Solutions (ARIS) provides a vital service to the oil and gas producers in the Permian:
“The Permian Basin is an arid area and every barrel of water we recycle is a barrel of groundwater or fresh water that is not extracted from local water resources.
Our recycling activity has an immediate and long-term benefit for our customers, the communities in which we operate, the environment, and our investors and stakeholders.
In addition, we are very active working with universities, the DOE, private technology companies, our customers, and others focused on identifying and adapting technologies for beneficial reuse of treated produced water outside of the oil and gas industry.
Regulators in both Texas and New Mexico are looking at promulgating regulations governing the treatment and use of this water oiutside of the oil and gas industry, and anticipating these regulations, we’re engaged in several pilot projects.
For example, we are working with Texas A&M University evaluating the use of treated produced water for irrigation of cotton — a non-consumptive crop — which looks promising.
We are also looking at other alternatives which include irrigation of rangeland grass for carbon sequestration. These are all extremely important initiatives, and you will see us continuing to proactively look for other uses for this water.”
Get the complete interview with Amanda Brock of Aris Water Solutions by reading the entire 1,776 word interview, exlusively in the Wall Street Transcript.
Amanda Brock, President & CEO
Aris Water Solutions, Inc.
www.ariswater.com
email: contact@ariswater.com
James West, Senior Managing Director, Evercore ISI
James West is a senior managing director at Evercore ISI responsible for research coverage of the drilling and production of oil and natural gas and detailed fundamental research on companies involved in solar and wind power, battery and power storage technologies, and hydrogen.
The LNG sector of downstream energy is one of the hottest right now due to the global sanctions directed at Russia. This creates an opportunity for North America to support its European allies through increased shipments of LNG to European markets. This in turn will create tremendous demand for support for the extraction of natural gas, processing it to LNG, and efficient delivery to LNG terminals.
“The ones that we think are the best positioned for what’s happening in North America — that would be the companies in the fracturing industry, which would be companies like Liberty (NYSE:LBRT), NexTier Oilfield Solutions (NYSE:NEX).
They are experiencing somewhat of a short squeeze on their equipment where their high-spec equipment, their ESG-friendly dual fuel and electrical equipment are basically sold out and a pricing recovery is underway today.
The other area in North America is the land drillers and we think three of the high-spec land drillers are really best positioned to perform well in here and see increasing day rates.
Day rates have moved from the high teens to the low-20s and now we believe fully loaded including directional drilling services, etc., are now moving closer to $30,000 per day.
That would be Helmerich & Payne (NYSE:HP), Patterson-UTI (NASDAQ:PTEN) and Precision Drilling (NYSE:PDS).
On the flip side, there are a couple of niche technology companies that we like. ChampionX (NASDAQ:CHX) is one of those.
It’s a leader in artificial lift and production chemicals.
Bristow Group (NYSE:VTOL) is the leader in offshore transportation.
And then we do like Chart Industries (NASDAQ:GTLS), which is a leader in cryogenics, which will be heavily used in some of the transition technologies, such as hydrogen, carbon capture and then also in the water treatment area — plus they’re a big player in LNG.
We think LNG is going to be the major transition fuel to move us from a world of hydrocarbons to a world of lower-carbon energy sources.”
Ben Nolan, Managing Director, Stifel Financial
Benjamin Nolan, CFA, is a Managing Director in the Transportation sector, covering Shipping and Energy Infrastructure including LNG shipping at Stifel Financial (NYSE: SF).
“…at the moment, everybody wants LNG.
And the problem is that these export projects take many years to develop and produce. So you can’t just decide that you want more.
It won’t happen overnight.
The good news is that there are a number of projects that are being constructed now.
In fact, one in the U.S. in Louisiana just came on stream and is shipping its first cargo as we speak.
But again, it’s going to be a slow growth process for incremental LNG. So I think, as we look out today, prices are high.
It doesn’t seem as though there’s any real reason that they should be falling back, at least anywhere in the next year or two.”
The process of converting natural gas to LNG is capital intensive:
“Taking that natural gas, condensing it down to a size that makes economic sense to transport it when you refrigerate it and get it cold enough to be a liquid — it condenses down to 1/600th of its size.
And then you can move it and power the world.
The challenge is, it’s really expensive to get something negative 260 degrees. So that’s a challenge.
Again, it takes some time.
It’s pretty expensive to do. But if you’re doing it in scale, then there’s both the resource and the demand.
So LNG is, you might argue, a sort of an old energy, not perfectly clean source of fuel, but it is cleaner, and I think almost definitively is very much still a growth business.”
Mr. Nolan also likes Chart Industries (NASDAQ:GTLS):
“I also think that some of the people who produce the equipment that is used for LNG have some nice tailwinds behind them.
The one that I would call out there is Chart Industries (NASDAQ:GTLS), that makes the equipment that liquefies it, that turns it from a liquid back into a gas, that puts the tanks that would go on trucks on trucks.
And so I think as the volume increases and it’s produced and consumed and everything else, there are the sort of picks-and-shovels type players that would really stand to benefit. Chart is the one I would call out there.”
Sunil K. Siball, Managing Director and Senior Energy Infrastructure/Utilities Analyst, Seaport Global Securities LLC.
Sunil K. Sibal is a Managing Director and Senior Energy Infrastructure/Utilities Analyst at Seaport Global Securities LLC.
He has more than 25 years of progressive international experience in the energy sector, most recently at Seaport Global, which he joined in 2014 to cover and build out the firm’s MLP/midstream infrastructure research.
“…One name I want to highlight is Williams (NYSE:WMB).
They operate and manage a set of infrastructure assets that primarily facilitate the movement of natural gas from wellhead to end users, whether those end users are electricity generation plants in the U.S. or LNG liquefaction plants, which basically export this gas to customers in Europe as well as Asia.
So Williams will continue to play a very pivotal role during this energy transition time, especially as the U.S. production sets to a new norm.
The way WMB is participating with this clean energy transition is they’re reducing their own carbon footprint by increasingly relying on renewable sources of power for their own usage.
So they’ve launched an initiative to use solar power for electricity which basically feeds their compressor machines, etc.
So those have been some of the steps they are taking.
They are also part of a hydrogen initiative, which is one of the cleanest energy sources.
So they’re part of a group of companies that is looking at making hydrogen a more significant part of the energy mix. So I do like Williams in that regard.”
Get all the LNG and Natural Gas stock picks from James West, Benjamin Nolan and Sunil K. Sibal by reading their entire interviews in the Oil and Natural Gas Downstream and Midstream Report, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript.
Gabriele Sorbara, Managing Director & Senior Equity Analyst, Siebert Williams Shank & Co.
In this extensive 3,319 word interview, exclusive to the Wall Street Transcript, Gabriele Sobrara details his top picks among oil and gas production companies and recommends many dividend leaders for investors.
Gabriele Sorbara is a Managing Director & Senior Equity Analyst at Siebert Williams Shank & Co., LLC.
Mr. Sorbara has more than 15 years of research experience covering the oil and gas E&P sector.
He joined The Williams Capital Group in July 2016, which merged with Siebert Cisneros Shank in November 2019, creating Siebert Williams Shank & Co. LLC (SWS).
Prior to joining the firm, he covered the E&P sector at Topeka Capital Markets, Imperial Capital LLC and Caris & Company, as well as over six years at KeyBanc Capital Markets. He received his Bachelor of Business Administration from Hofstra University.
The current situation for the potential dividend leaders has its origins in environmental protections and the last oil and gas production downturn.
“Lenders haven’t been lending money to the fossil fuel companies like they were in the heyday.
Many banks have put restrictions in place to achieve a more ESG-friendly rating. But E&Ps do not need to borrow like they once did.
The balance sheets of these key companies are completely different than they were two to three years ago.
Again, leverage is superbly low. A lot of them are approaching net zero debt and will go into net negative at current commodity price levels.
They are returning massive amounts of cash back to shareholders.
When I look at total capital returns for many of the companies on my list — I cover a lot of the higher-quality names — you are seeing many double-digit capital return profiles.
So what I mean is, dividends plus buybacks divided by enterprise value, with some of these companies reaching 10%, 12% for best-in-class type returns compared to the broader market.
Obviously, these companies are cyclical and they are depleting assets.
So they have to be acquisitive down the road, find new resource plays, and we’ve seen a lot less work being done on the exploration side.
For international projects, which we haven’t talked about, the lead time is years. So those big projects that the majors are doing, those take multiple years before you get that first production…
Over the past month, WTI oil prices have increased over 20%, so E&P margins should continue to improve and translate into higher estimates and stock prices.
Investors will chase oil companies because they are best-known for a hedge against inflation.
While the E&Ps have underperformed oil prices, the fundamentals for the E&P sector are very strong. When the dislocation in the market smooths out, I think people will jump into the E&P sector first and you will see catch-up and outperformance from this group supported by the higher commodity prices.
The sector should gain some strength and stability as the long-only investors increase exposure to the sector.”
Dividend leaders are the sweet spot for oil and gas production investors.
“Investors’ sentiment has been pretty low; I mean again it’s really the hedge funds trafficking in the sector and you can see it with the volatility around earnings periods.
And it’s just on that regulatory side that’s shifting banks away from the sector.
It’s the public demanding certain things on the ESG front. It’s the banks taking on these ESG efforts and that’s really creating the negative sentiment around E&Ps.
I think when people really dig into E&Ps and if they understood oil and gas, they would understand that E&Ps actually do the right thing.
They have reduced GHG and methane intensity; the larger E&Ps are very responsible producers.
A lot are talking about certified responsibly sourced natural gas, responsibly sourced oil.
When you look at some of these renewable companies, people just don’t understand the amount of resources that are required to build a lot of these technologies and facilities that have a life of maybe 20 years and then end up in a landfill somewhere.
For example, these are heavily dependent on rare earths mined and processed in environmentally harmful ways in China.
And these are critical to build expensive electric cars that run on electricity powered by coal and natural gas. Not to mention the challenges in the recycling of the lithium batteries today.
While there are a lot of things going on that people don’t understand or just choose to ignore, I feel like they are starting to get a grasp of it slowly and we are beginning to see a re-rating and a relative rotation to traditional energy companies.
But long-only investors have not made a full turn yet.
The weighting of the S&P is just very low. If you look back 15 years ago when I started, the benchmark weighting to energy in the S&P 500 was at 16% and we are at 3.50% today. So there is a lot of room here to make money and for money to rotate into the sector.
And again, as more of these energy shocks occur around the world, people will realize the value of fossil fuels and how they are reliable and efficient and how they can be produced in a responsible manner.
The energy transition will slowly occur over the next few decades and fossil fuels will be integral to the transition…
Oil and natural gas make the world go round. These products are very important in everyday life. It’s just underappreciated and hated for the wrong reasons.
E&Ps are doing a better job checking off the ESG metrics than they have historically and they aren’t getting credit for it.”
Some of the top dividend leaders are large cap oil and gas producers.
“I think the way you value a company is on free cash flow and the amount of return to shareholders and these are some of the best returns that you see in the entire S&P with dividend yields 8%, 9%, 10% for some companies. I have a dividend yield on Coterra Energy (NYSE:CTRA), 9.8% for 2022; Devon Energy (NYSE:DVN), 6.9% in 2022; Diamondback Energy (NASDAQ:FANG), 5.2%; EOG Resources (NYSE:EOG), 6.4%. And these companies still will have a lot of cash remaining to put on the balance sheet and they can use that for exploration, M&A, or to further reduce debt, but these leverage metrics are approaching zero net debt for many.”
Get all the details on these dividend leaders and many other oil and gas production company stock recommendations from Gabriele Sobrara by reading the entire 3,319 word interview, exclusive to the Wall Street Transcript.
Gabriele Sorbara, Managing Director & Senior Equity Analyst
Siebert Williams Shank & Co., LLC
Randall Neely, CEO, TransGlobe Energy (TGA)
Randall C. Neely, CA, CFA, ICD.D, was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of TransGlobe Energy Corporation (NASDAQ:TGA) in January 2019 and to the board of directors in May 2018.
He was previously appointed as President in January 2018 and Vice President, Finance and Chief Financial Officer in May 2012.
Mr. Neely has 25 years of experience in executive and financial roles, including Chief Financial Officer of Zodiac Exploration, Pearl (Blackpearl) Exploration & Production and Trident Exploration.
Prior to working directly in the oil and gas industry, Mr. Neely spent three and a half years in investment banking with TD Securities and eight years with KPMG LLP.
Mr. Neely holds both the Chartered Accountant and Chartered Financial Analyst designations and has completed his ICD.D.
In his exclusive 3,627 word interview, exclusive to the Wall Street Transcript, Randall Neely explains how a Canadian company produces oil in Egypt.
“TransGlobe Energy (NASDAQ:TGA) is a small-cap or a micro-cap oil and gas company.
We are primarily a producer, although we do some exploration.
We produce between 12,000 and 13,000 barrels of oil equivalent, or BOE — a measure of equivalent energy to a barrel of oil — per day.
In Egypt we produce, call it about 10,000 barrels of heavy oil per day, and in Canada, plus or minus around 3,000 BOE a day. We produce light oil, natural gas liquids, and natural gas in Canada…
Our success in this area has been what we’re known for, which is applying what I’ll call technology, but really is just oilfield best-practices — western oilfield practices — in a new area. In Egypt, for example, the application of water flooding.
When you produce oil, you typically produce water and sometimes a lot more water than oil. Usually, you take that produced water and you dispose of it, typically back down hole or you let it evaporate, but in some sort of environmentally sensitive way you deal with the water.
What we do with the water is reinject it so we actually push it back into the ground.
If you push that water back in the ground, it produces more oil. That application of water flooding has been used for a long time in North America, but in the Middle East, it wasn’t typically used.
Then you have pumping technology — the different types of pumps you would use.
We use progressive cavity pumps or PCP pumps, a pump that was developed in Western Canada probably 30 years ago. We found it to be very applicable to the type of oil development we have in Egypt.
You’re also looking at other things that you might do with drilling technologies that we use in Canada quite successfully, like horizontal drilling and multistage completions.
That’s an approach that isn’t used a whole lot in Egypt, because they’re looking mostly at conventional reservoirs — easier-to-produce reservoirs rather than the harder, denser, unconventional rock that takes more persuasion to produce.
Horizontal drilling opens up more pore space across the rock formation. Then you might apply hydraulic fracturing so you can crack the rock to get more oil out of it.”
Exploiting global oil resources is a lengthy detailed process.
“In Egypt, you work through what’s called production-sharing contracts.
You bid to acquire them in bid rounds or an auction from the government. If you win the bid, you have an agreement between yourself and the government to produce the oil and for the sharing of that oil.
We’ve had contracts in the country for quite a few years. These contracts were aged and not really appropriate contracts for the type of development we had because of the age and costs associated with these fields.
We worked with the government for several years to restructure them and to consolidate them so that they would be more efficient so that we could continue to try to squeeze out more oil from these existing reservoirs.
That deal was approved by the board of the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation in December 2020.
Over the course of 2021, it made its way ultimately to the Parliament of Egypt and was voted on, because each one of these production-sharing contracts becomes a law. That was approved in late 2021.
In December 2021, we announced that we had the approval of the Egyptian government for the ratification of this agreement.
That’s a huge step for TransGlobe [Energy] (NASDAQ:TGA).
It really resets the bar for us in terms of the contracts, and for the profitability and the investability of these contracts.
We’ve always felt there was a lot of opportunity left there but we would only be able to pursue it if we had the right terms that would make it profitable for us and worthwhile attempting.
Not only fiscally, but also we needed to have time, we needed to have additional years.
So this agreement extended this contract for an additional 15 years plus the option to extend it another five years after that, so in total another 20 years to exploit the resources in the ground.
It’s a big turnaround for us in Egypt.
In Canada, we’ve got a nice project there, which we call South Harmattan. We found this new area in late 2019 and released the information on it in early 2020 right into the pandemic and no one really paid any attention to it.
But we came back and drilled three additional wells in the summer of 2021, completed those wells in the fall, brought them on production and they’ve come on really, really well.
We are quite excited about the asset in Canada and what it could potentially become…
I would say our entity is one where we’re focused on cash flow, we’re focused on development; we do very little exploration.
You’re not going to see the company go from 12,000 or 13,000 barrels a day to 20,000 or 30,000 or 40,000 barrels a day, because of some discovery that you were going to make.
We’re really just talking about trying to hit singles and get on base, and make money.
We call it blue-collar oil and gas. It’s not very flashy, but we’re going to make a lot of money.”
Creating value in the deserts of Egypt is not an easy task for TransGlobe Energy (NASDAQ:TGA) and Randall Neely. Read the complete detail only in the 3,627 word interview, exclusive to the Wall Street Transcript.
Randall C. Neely, President & CEO
email: investor.relations@trans-globe.com
Bobby Riley, CEO, Riley Exploration Permian (REPX)
Philip Riley, CFO, Riley Exploration Permian (REPX)
Bobby D. Riley was appointed as the Chairman of Riley Exploration Permian, Inc.’s (REPX) board of managers, President and Chief Executive Officer in June 2016.
Mr. Riley also served as the Chief Executive Officer of REG from when it was founded in 2012 to May 1, 2018.
Mr. Riley began his oil and gas career with Cameron Iron Works in Houston, Texas, in 1974.
Philip Riley was appointed as Exploration Permian, Inc.’s Chief Financial Officer on September 1, 2021.
Previously, he served as the company’s Executive Vice President – Strategy beginning in March 2021. Mr. Riley has more than 20 years of experience across energy and other industries as an executive officer, investor, and strategic advisor.
In this 2,426 word interview in the Wall Street Transcript, these two leaders of Riley Exploration Permian (REPX) detail the investment profile for their company.
“Our company, Riley Exploration, is an oil and gas exploration and production company.
It’s focused in the Permian Basin, specifically on and around the northwest shelf. We are a conventional reservoir-based company.
In other words, we’re not involved in unconventional shale production.
We produce oil, primarily from the San Andres formation, which is a conventional reservoir. This particular reservoir is in Yoakum County, Texas.
We have approximately 25,000 net acres, contiguous to the large Wasson Field, which is operated by some of the majors like Exxon, OXY, Apache, along with a few other independents.
This field is one of the largest conventional fields in the state of Texas that’s been producing since the 1920s. It’s undergone waterflood and subsequently CO2 enhanced recovery. It has recovered approximately 2.3 billion barrels of oil since it started production and is still very active today. We are a direct offset to this field in the same reservoir…
All of our crude is sold through a pipeline system. We don’t truck any of our barrels to market. It all goes through a gathering system, and it has outlets to three specific markets in the Permian Basin and access also to the Gulf Coast.”
The company operates in a disciplined manner to provide consistent divident cash flow to investors.
“…If you look at your total production curve, the sum of all of the wells, basically, because it’s a flatter curve, it takes fewer new wells on a yearly basis to hold that production flat or to even create a slight growth, and it’s well within our cash flow.
And we have a specific financial model where we try to allocate about 65% to 70% of our cash flow to drilling and completion to maintain and grow the “wedge,” roughly 20% of our cash flow to dividend distributions and the rest to slight pay down on what existing debt we do have.
But that PDP wedge basically, year over year, it’s growing with minimal dollar investments.
So I guess it’s been said that in the unconventional world, you’re on a treadmill trying to drill wells fast enough to stay ahead of the rapid decline. So we’re contrary to that. In other words, with the production being flat, it’s easy to grow production with minimal dollars.”
The location in the Permian Basin has significant implications for this production company.
“The Permian Basin, primarily over the last decade, has been developing unconventional shale resources, again, that have a very significant decline curve.
From the first day of production through the first couple of years, you might see 80%, 85%, 90% decline compared to our model; we’re in a conventional reservoir which has a much, much less decline and a much flatter type curve.
When activity stops in the unconventional world, production drops significantly because you’re not drilling fast enough to offset production.
In our model, we’re not an unconventional player but we’re a conventional player.
The production does not fall as fast. And as we alluded to earlier, it takes less capital to hold the production flat or slightly grow production.
Because of the inventory of wells that we have left to drill on our footprint and our disciplined capital allocation from our company, we will continue to grow year over year and with investing well within our cash flow.
That’s different from what the rest of the industry looks like without significant capital spending…
at the end of our fiscal year 2021, we had 72 million barrels of equivalent of proved reserves. For that year, we produced 3.1 million.
And so, that corresponds to over a 22-year life. That’s a ratio R over P — reserves over production — almost a 23-year reserve life.”
These two experienced oil industry executives look at stability into the future as their main priority.
“…We’ve been a conservative developing company that doesn’t get ahead of itself by taking on excessive amounts of leverage.
So our philosophy in the past has always been to minimize leverage, maximize our opportunities by living within cash flow.
We established a dividend payment.
It’s very important to the philosophy and to this company to maintain and grow that dividend going forward. I think it right now represents something like a 5% yield, based upon our current share price. But I think that we’re going to be fairly predictable about what we spend and how our growth looks in the future.”
Get the complete detail on the investor friendly Riley Exploration Permian (REPX) by reading the entire 2,426 word interview, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript.
Bobby D. Riley, Chairman, President & CEO
Philip Riley, CFO
www.rileypermian.com
email: ir@rileypermian.com
