Earnings — 1Q23

Locator: 44309B.

Note: this is, hands down, one of the most boring things I to do each quarter. I doubt anyone really looks at it but the day I quit doing this will be the day I miss posting something important. The word "important" is used loosely. Very loosely.

This is so boring that I actually didn't record a thing for 1Q20, but that was threee years ago. Maybe things have changed. LOL. 

This is linked at the top of the sidebar at the right during earnings season. After earnings -- pretty much after XOM and Apple posts their earnings -- this post will move back into obscurity.

Past reports.

Calendar. 

Whisper numbers. 

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.

Earnings -- 1Q23
January - March, 2023

This is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or what you think you may have read here. If this is important to you, go to the source. There will be content and typographical errors on this page. If something looks wrong, it probably is.

DE: 

Tesla: huge miss. Link here.

TSM: missed, beat. Link here.

SCHW: of interest following the failure of Silicon Valley Bank.

• 4Q22 net income: rose 25% to $1.97 billion, 97 cents / share
• one year ago: $1.58 billion, 76 cents / share
• adj earnings: $1.07 / share; short of forecast of $1.09 / share
• 4Q22 revenue rose 17% to just under $5.5 billion; forecast: $5.55 billion
• added 4 million new accounts in 2022, bringing its total to 34 million
• total client assets: $7.06 trillion; down from $8.14 trillion at the end of 2021
• gathered $128 billion in net new assets to bring its annualized growth rate to about 8%
• client allocations to fixed income increased 66% during the fourth quarter against the end of 2021, as investors took aim at self-directed tools and income-focused products such as tax-exempt and taxable bonds.

LNG Exports Set Monthly Record; Largest LNG Terminals In The US -- 2021

Locator: 44308B.

Giant: link here.

LNG: US exports -- record in March, 2023:  

From the linked article article above:

HOUSTON (Reuters) - U.S. producers of liquefied natural gas (LNG) last month regained momentum as the country's second-largest exporter Freeport LNG ramped up output, sending total shipments to an all-time record of 7.73 million tonnes, Refinitiv Eikon data showed on Monday, April 3, 2023.   7.73 million tonnes =  68,589,175 boe (link here) = 2,212,554 bbls/day.

Freeport LNG's facility in Texas, which had suspended operations after a fire last year, exited an eight-month outage in February and on Monday was on track to pull in about 2.2 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) of gas, above its nameplate capacity, pushing up the country's overall processing rates.

A total of 108 cargoes departed U.S. ports last month carrying 7.73 million tonnes of LNG, above the previous record of 7.67 million tonnes a year ago, according to Refinitiv Eikon trade flows data.

Europe was again the main destination for U.S. LNG exports, receiving almost 71% of total cargoes, while Asia received 1.32 million tonnes, or 17%. The production recovery allowed exporters to boost shipments to Latin America and the Caribbean, which last month received 4.5% of U.S. exports, the highest since September.

Average gas flows to all seven big U.S. LNG export plants have risen to 14.1 bcfd so far in April, up from a record 13.2 bcfd in March, signaling the export gains will continue in the weeks to come.

Link here.

Texas Power Adds 1.1 GW Of New Energy To Grid -- More Gas Turbines Outside Houston; Governor Taking Care Of Business -- April 4, 2023

Locator: 44307B.

API weekly data:

• if corroborated by EIA data tomorrow, Katie, bar the doors! [Later: EIA data corroborated but price remained unchanged.]
• link here;

Ford: outsold by GM. Link here. At the blog.

Texas power: nearly 1.1 GW of new capacity starts up in Texas power market in March, 2023. S&P Global.

• includes 199-MW gas plant near Houston
• Brotman Power Station in Brazoria County
• WattBridge Energy building six 60.5 MW gas turbines at the Brotman site
• totaling 363 MW and an estimated cost of $350 million
•  about $1 million / MW
• interconnection queue loses 2.2 GW
• another 855.2 MW of solar neared commercial operation
• battery storage surging: see article for details

Breathlessly reported by media: California grid needs $9.3 billion in upgrades for shift to renewable energy;

• OMG
• $10 billion
• but then we learn, that's over 10 years; link here;
• "they" never report the denominator;
• $10 billion over 10 years = $1 billion / year;
• California annual budget:
• 2023 - 2024
• $296.9 billion
• $1 billion / $296.9 billion = 0.33%
• $10 billion / $296.9 = 3.4%
• $1 billion per capita: $1 billion / 40 million = $25 / person
• but much of that dollar requirement would come from federal government; bonds.
• a lot of the upgrades would benefit all energy infrastructure, not just renewable energy.

*********************************
Back to the Bakken

Active rigs: 45.

WTI: $81.12.

Natural gas: $2.104.

One new permits, #39788:

• Operator: Liberty Resources
• Field: Gros Ventre (Burke)
• Comments:
• Liberty Resources has a permit to drill an Oliver E well, NWNE 20-159-93; 
• to be sited 335 FNL and 1786 FEL

Eight producing wells (DUCs) reported as completed:

• 38742, 1,448, Ovintiv, Sorenson Federal 153-96-9-4-10H,
• 35932, 2,368, XTO, Hovet Federal 31X-29G,
• 38811, 480, Crescent Point Energy, CPEUSC DeFrance 3-12-1-158N-100W-MBH,
• 39263, 1,807, Grayson Mill, Field 18-19F 5H,
• 36999, 976, CLR, LCU Reckitt Federal 8-22H,
• 37000, 1,148, CLR, LCU Reckitt Federal 7-22H1,
• 37001, 921, CLR, LCU Reckitt Federal 6-22H,
• 37002, 490, CLR, LCU Reckitt Federal 5-22H1,

Ford, GM, EVs -- 1Q23 -- April 4, 2023

Locator: 44306B.

Link here.

From the linked article:

GM outsold Ford when it comes to electric vehicles by almost two-to-one in the first quarter of 2023 as production troubles plagued the former No. 2 EV seller behind Tesla.

Ford sold 10,866 EVs in Q1 this year. While that’s up 41% from Q1 2022, it’s about 50% behind GM’s sales of 20,670 EVs.

Ford’s lackluster EV performance can be attributed mostly to a factory outage in its Mexico plant that makes its Mustang Mach-E as it attempts to double the factory’s capacity, as well as five weeks of lost production with its F-150 Lightning EV due to a recall stemming from a battery fire issue.

Despite Ford’s plan to spend $50 billion on its EV lineup acro the next three years, it predicts it will lose $3 billion on EV models in 2023. That’s even with jacking up the price of their F150 by 50% in about a year, from $40,000 last January to $60,000 today.

F, today: up 0.3%; trading at $12.72.

Other EV manufacturers today:

• RIVN: up 1%; trading at $15.38.
• RIDE: down 5%; trading at 61 cents.
• LCID: flat; trading at $7.90
• ARVL: down 6%; trading at 13 cents;
• TSLA: down 1%; trading at $192.58.
• GOEV: down 4%; trading at 59 cents;
• NKLA: down 5%; trading at $1.22;

Ovintiv Raises Dividend Twenty Percent — April 4, 223

Locator: 44304B.

From 25 cents to 30 cents.

Record: June 15, 2023.

Pay date: June 30, 2023.

Nothing About The Bakken -- For The Archives -- April 4, 2023

Locator: 44304B. 

Ennui.

He succumbed to ennui and despair.

A snippet from my own journal:

July 25, 2008: While reading Sylvia Plath’s Journals I came across “villanelles.” I think I had heard of that term before but now that I saw the word again I was curious what villanelles were. I went to wiki, found a short definition, and in the process of “cutting and pasting” that definition on my “Storytelling” chapter, I noted that I had not completed a sentence regarding a newly discovered poem by Sylvia Plath. 

 I “googled” a phrase from the incomplete sentence which took me directly to solving the nano-mystery: the lost Plathian poem was Ennui which then took me to Blackbird: An Online Journal of Literature and the Arts where I found the background of Ennui.

Blackbird appears to be a free site maintained by the Department of English at the Virginia Commonwealth University. This site apparently owns the copyright or has access to much of Sylvia Plath’s works. The site includes the text of Ennui as well as scanned copies of the original typewritten page of Plath’s.

I may or may not get to the daily activity report today. 

I just ordered this book, today, from Amazon. It will likely be the last book for the 2023 winter reading program:

A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, an the Woman Who Stopped Them, Timothy Egan, c. April 4, 2023; in Amazon #1 in "Historical Study."

At Amazon, link here. 

Looking at trailers -- on YouTube -- for Apple TV+ suggests that Apple is looking to become the next Hollywood movie house. Amazing stuff being released. 

A reader sent me this: pizza toast.  there are so many dots for me to connect, it will take awhile.

The Fog Is Starting To Clear -- April 4, 2023

Locator: 44303B. 

See this note also. 

A reader sent me this earlier this morning:

My not-ready-for-prime-time reply: 

Excellent.

That makes a lot of sense.

That was a nice way to state it: triggering event.

Lots and lots of issues but the question I should have asked in my original note (see link above), what was the triggering event or tipping point?

That really, really makes sense. Saudi needed to protect Brent $80-floor at all costs and when SecEnergy Jennifer "no clue" Granholm said she wouldn't refill the SPR this year, and, in fact, she said, it would take years to refill -- the Saudis must have gone ballistic. Especially coming from "no clue" SecEnergy. 

I remember the day when Granholm said the volume of the SPR was measured in bbls of oil per day (bopd). Wow. LOL. 

Again, thank you for that note.

Coming: Water, Water, Water Everywhere -- April 4, 2023

Locator: 44302B.

California hammered by global warming.

From The LA Times today:

******************************
EV Vs ICE

With regard to price of gasoline in California, one can buy a lot of gasoline with the $32,000 -- the difference between an old used ICE and a new EV.

According to GasBuddy, average price of gasoline in most parts of the US, about $3.29. In California, about $4.69. In big scheme of things, not that bad for Californians --

• 4.69 - 3.29 =  $1.40 / gallon
• 12,000 / 30 mpg = 400 gallons
• 400 gallons x 1.40 = $560 for the year or $50 / month
• $50 = sushi dinner with cocktail for one

Or total:

• 400 gallons x $4.69 = $1,876
• $32,000 / $1,876 =  17 years

And the EV battery -- 30% to 50% of price of new EV -- needs to be replaced after about seven years. 

Note: I often make simple arithmetic errors.

The Gingerbread Man: WTI At $81.22; Four Wells Coming Off Confidential List -- April 4, 2023

Locator: 44301B.

Trump: for the archives. Arraigned today. No live cameras.Some think "Rule 25" in play. Until yesterday, I did not even know what "Rule 25" was.

Oil: pre-market, oil gains a little. A bit of a surprise.

Saudi's "surprise cut": still perplexing, but the more one thinks about it, listing pros / cons; likely / unlikely on a yellow legal pad it comes down to a few things:

• Saudi's animosity toward Biden
• the Russian-US proxy war in Ukraine
  
• Ghawar: is it starting to "fail" (don't take out cf context)?
• Credit Suisse
• at all costs, protect that $80-floor

AMC: pre-market, down almost 30%.

UNP: pre-market, wow. Huge swing, from up almost $6.00 to slightly red now (6:23 a.m. CT).

AAPL: a lot of upbeat stories over the past few days.

• Apple is coming after META; headset; AR/VR
• indications AAPL soon to announce additional buybacks; increase dividend

Re-posting: did OPEC+ just  kill the tech rally. A must-read post from Michael Fitzsimmons.

Banking crisis: is Schwab "out of the woods," yet? I don't know. What do traders think?

• Yesterday, SCHW down 1.55%; today, pre-market, up 0.75%. Mixed message. 

Tesla: swelling inventories. Link here.

Movies: top upcoming action movies. Link here.

• it appears "Hollywood" held back a lot action movies until now
• sound tracks awesome -- a lot of 60s music
• sequels abound
• Apple TV: Ghosted -- with links to "Deadpool" and Top Gun: Maverick."
  

Dean Martin: back?

*************************
Back to the Bakken

Active rigs: 44.

Peter Zeihan newsletter.

WTI: $81.23.

Natural gas: $2.100

Wednesday, April 5, 2023: 12 for the month; 12 for the quarter, 267 for the year
38690, conf, Ovintiv, Clear Creek Federal 152-97-36-25-5H,
38627, conf, Whiting, Kannianen 11-4-3H,

Tuesday, April 4, 2023: 10 for the month;10 for the quarter, 265 for the year
38847, conf, Enerplus, Seam 149-93-05A-08H,
38823, conf, Whiting, Ryder Olson 31-1HR,
38605, conf, Hess, EN-Farhart-156-93-0409H-H
38322, conf, Whiting, Braaflat 11-11-2H,

RBN Energy: LIGH2T hydrogen hub seen as platform for industrial-scale decarbonization, part 3. Only because North Dakota is involved am I interested in hydrogen. Archived.

There’s been a lot written about the federal government’s plan to provide billions of dollars in financial support to create a limited number of regional hydrogen hubs but not a lot of insight about how those hub proposals are being crafted to meet the Department of Energy’s (DOE) selection criteria. The details and strategies behind those plans have been hard to come by because few of the initial concept papers were made public while others remain a mystery, even months after the first informal winnowing of candidates. One exception is the Leading in Gulf Coast Hydrogen Transition (LIGH₂T) hub proposal being prepared by a consortium that includes a large group of states, some key commercial partners, several universities and the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). In today’s RBN blog, we look at what we know about the LIGH₂T proposal, which will submit a full application by the April 7 deadline, and how it addresses three key factors likely to play a role in the selection process.