Tag: STO

Santos has moved closer to resuming dividend payouts to the company’s loyal and long suffering shareholders following a solid second quarter.

Santos is moving closer to resuming paying dividends to shareholders.

A week after Santos rejected that $A14.5 billion foreign private equity takeover bid, it has revealed plans to invest more than $400 million in its Arcadia gas development in Queensland’s Bowen Basin to boost guaranteed gas supplies for its Gladstone LNG export project.

Santos shares will fall heavily today when ASX trading resumes after the company rejected the $A14.5 billion final offer from would be suitor, Harbour Energy.

US group, Harbour Energy has bowed to the inevitable and lifted its proposed offer price for Santos which now values the Australian oil and gas group at $A14.4 billion compared to around $A13.7 billion last week when the final, binding offer was proposed.

There’s doubt that the now binding but still conditional $13.7 billion offer for Santos from US group, Harbour Energy, will succeed because the price hasn’t been lifted to reflect the recent rise in world oil price to around $US75 a barrel.

Even though Santos is facing a $13.5-billion offer from Harbour Energy, that hasn’t stopped its campaign of selling unwanted assets.

Santos shares jumped to a three-year high yesterday as hinted at a return to paying dividends after closing in on its 2019 debt target well ahead of time.

Santos looks certain to fall to an American private equity company.

Santos shares dipped yesterday after the oil and gas producer reported a bottom-line net loss for 2017 of $US360 million.

Santos, Australia’s second-largest independent gas and oil producer, has joined rivals Woodside and Oil Search in revealing the benefit of the lift in global oil and gas prices late last year.

Shares in oil and gas group, Santos were nicely goosed by media reports about a possible $11 billion bid for the company.

What a difference a rising oil price is making to the tone and confidence of major oil and energy companies here and offshore. Majors like BP and Shell are not upbeat and talking about expansion – ConocoPhillips has boosted its planned spending, Total is going deeper into LNG, while back home Woodside is looking at expansion on the northwest shelf and Santos, which was up to earlier this year on life support, is now far more optimistic about its future and planning to boost spending in 2018.

No dividend, again for Santos shareholders as the oil and gas group produced a first-half underlying profit, helped by stronger oil and gas prices and lower production costs.

Santos has joined Origin Energy in carving hundreds of millions of dollars off the value of its assets, especially its investment in export LNG in Queensland.

Santos (STO) had wanted shareholders to tip in $500 million, but in the end had to make do with $201 million, from its share plan (SPP) after making an institutional placement to big investors in December.

There’s the likes of BHP Billion and BP committing to plans to spend or support billions of dollars debt on major projects in the Gulf of Mexico, and yesterday we had the straggling Santos revealing yet another strategy to try and rebuild after its near death experience in the past two years as world oil and gas prices plunged, then rebounded.

Santos (STO) shares fell nearly 3% yesterday after Macquarie said it needed to raise billions more in fresh capital to stave off a credit rating downgrade, and doubts emerged about a major Chinese shareholder.

Santos (STO) shares slumped 28% yesterday after trading resumed on a shortfall in the institutional part of the gas player’s underwritten $2.5 billion equity raising.

So will this be enough to isolate Santos’ (STO) mysterious would-be bidder, Scepter Partners?

It has been a while coming, but Santos (STO) finally took its first real takeover approach aimed at exploiting its weakened state, courtesy of the slide in oil and gas prices and the havoc they have caused in the company’s balance sheet and profit and loss account.

Santos (STO) shares ended with a small gain yesterday after the oil and gas group strongly rejected market speculation that it would raise money from investors.

If anything, investors took some heart from yesterday’s surprise statement from Santos (STO) about asset impairments totalling $2.35 billion (before tax).

Embattled energy company Santos (STO) has moved to meet market demands for some radical action in the face of the collapse in its share price and the rapid fall in world oil prices by revealing big cost cuts for 2015.

Another big fall in its share price yesterday has confirmed Santos (STO) as the first significant local victim of the plunge in oil prices.

Investors took a deep breath and returned to Santos (STO) shares yesterday afternoon after a sell off in the morning shattered confidence in the stock for a while and sent the shares to a 10-year low.

Santos (STO) has joined the likes of BHP Billiton (BHP), Rio Tinto (RIO), Woodside Petroleum (WPL) and a host of other resource majors and minors in selling its cost cutting and attempts to improve efficiency.

Santos (STO) has joined Woodside (WPL) in revealing a sharp rise in revenues.

Santos (STO) has nailed the silly argument from The Greens and the Australian Industry Group that we face a gas shortage in the Eastern States in coming years because the rising level of exports, especially by the Queensland coal seam gas sector.

The proposed $700 million Tropicana gold project of AngloGold Ashanti in Western Australia is a step closer to happening after the project got the greenlight from the state’s Environmental Protection Authority (EPA).

So far March quarter production reports from the likes of BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto have been less than positive. "Mixed" is a good way to describe them.

The oil price boom of the past three years has made the managements of every oil company look good.

Australia's third biggest oil and gas producer, Santos survived a slight drop in annual output and an easing world oil price to post a modest 23c gain to close at $12.31 yesterday.

The rising value of the Australian dollar has bitten into the sales revenues (and presumably earnings) of Santos Ltd, the country's third biggest oil and gas group.

Santos is not letting grass grow near any of its plans. The company is a hive of activity, no doubt stimulated by the impending completion of the review of the 15 per cent ownership cap by the South Australian Government.

Santos continues to clean itself up as the South Australian Government ruminates about whether to lift the 15 per cent shareholding cap on the company.

Punters chased Santos shares for all they were worth yesterday after the South Australian Government gave its strongest indication yet that it was considering lifting the 15 per cent maximum cap on shareholdings in the oil and gas producer.