Notes From All Over -- Part 3 -- Friday, August 6, 2021

Today's jobs number / job numbers: link here. Here's yet another article on the "jobs" picture. A lot of hand wringing. Doesn't bother me a bit. I don't think anyone really cares. Don't take that out of context, but by "everyone," I mean investors, federal-level politicians, two-thirds of US senators at any given time. It appears Jay Powell is concerned about the unemployed, but at the end of the day, I think he's more concerned about tanking the stock market.

Best tweet all day; link here.

Dividends vs buybacks: this will be behind a paywall, unfortunately. This is a great, great discussion regarding this subject.

The interesting thing is that about a week ago, or maybe two weeks ago, I brought this up for the first time ever on the blog, after ten-plus years of blogging. I had not seen this discussed before. I thought I was missing something; I felt I was certainly in the minority. But with the huge amount of money the oil companies are making, and even more so, the huge amount of money Apple, Inc., is reporting, it has been amazing to see such little return when it came to dividends. Although the link above is behind a paywall, if you want to see the story, find the 2Q21 COP transcript and go to the Q&A.

COP fumbles the ball on the one-yard line, link here, this may be the same link as above -- and this time I was able to access it (again).

• over the past few years, ConocoPhillips has done a great job at upgrading the portfolio, cutting costs, and generating tons of free cash flow.
• indeed, in Q2, the company generated $2.8 billion in additional FCF and ended the quarter with a massive cash hoard of $9.2 billion in cash and cash equivalents.
• yet, after a one-penny increase in the quarterly dividend last year, the annual dividend remains an unimpressive $1.72/share.
• Bank of America analyst Doug Leggate called out CEO Ryan Lance on the dividend issue, but it is clear from Lance's answer that shareholders can't expect a decent dividend anytime soon.
• it's the equivalent of a football team driving the ball the entire length of the field with hard-fought running and passing plays, only to fumble the ball on the one-yard line.

COP: best quarterly earnings in three years. Link here. One would never know it by its stock price. Geeeee...I wonder why? Oh, see the dividend stories above. To say the least, I'm not happy, either.