6:17AM Gulfport Energy beats by $0.03, beats on revs (GPOR) 25.37 : Reports Q4 (Dec) earnings of $0.32 per share, $0.03 better than the Thomson Reuters consensus of $0.29; revenues rose 50.6% year/year to $37.5 mln vs the $32.8 mln consensus. For FY11, co sees oil equivalent of BOE 2.2-2.4 mln BOE; projected year-over-year production increase of 16%; total budgeted capital expenditures $127-133 mln.
Gulfport (via Grizzly) hopes to be selling oil by the end of 2012. This project gives investors in Gulfport HUGE upside and is the main reason the GPOR is in our Sweet 16.
Oil Sands Reserves and Resource
Effective October 1, 2010, third party engineers, GLJ Petroleum Consultants Ltd. ("GLJ"), provided an assessment report to Grizzly Oil Sands ULC ("Grizzly"), a company in which Gulfport holds an approximate 25% equity interest, estimating that Grizzly has 98 million barrels of Proved + Probable (2P) reserves attributable to the Algar Lake Project, 1.850 billion barrels of Best Estimate (P50) Contingent Resource and 202 million barrels of Best Estimate (P50) Prospective Resource. Mapping for the independent reserve and resource assessment identified that Grizzly had 14.2 billion barrels of discovered bitumen initially in place and 4.5 billion barrels of undiscovered bitumen initially in place. Grizzly's properties to be explored during the upcoming 2010/2011 winter drilling season were not included in GLJ's evaluation.
This is potentially a HUGE discovery. Gas is currently selling for $7/mcf in Thailand.
Thailand
Tatex III, a company in which Gulfport owns a 17.9% interest, recently concluded drilling operations on TEW-E, the second of two exploratory wells being drilled on an approximate one-million acre concession block in northeastern Thailand. TEW-E was drilled to a total depth of 15,026 feet and logged over 5,000 feet of apparent possible gas saturated column. TEW experienced gas shows and carried a flare measuring up to 25 feet throughout drilling below the intermediate casing point of 9,695 feet. Tatex III is currently in the process of completing the well and preparing it for flow testing. Tatex III's first exploratory well, TEW-B, was temporarily abandoned pending further scientific evaluation.
> Flow test next month.
> Probabliltiy of success on other prospects on the one million acre concession is now significantly higher with this large discovery.
Investors in GPOR should listen to the company's conference call.
C.K. Cooper - GPOR: Raising Target - The firm has a Buy rating and increased its price target on the shares from $25 to $32.
Rodman & Renshaw - GPOR: Raising Target - The firm has a Market Outperform rating and increased its price target on the shares from $28 to $31.
