Using Investor Presentations for Energy Research

#483800823 / gettyimages.com

When researching publicly-traded energy companies, in addition to the usual resources like Dow Jones Factiva for current news events and Capital IQ for financial information, a good place to look is the website of the individual company – and in particular, its investor presentations.

Investor presentations hold a wealth of information, including specific energy metrics not found (or easily found) elsewhere in public documents or filings. Examples for an exploration and production company might include their area of operation, how much acreage the company has, the number of rigs it currently operates and what their net recoverable resources are. It might also have well economic data, for example, metrics like IP rates (initial production) or EURs (estimated ultimate recovery). If the company is currently operating in the Eagle Ford in South Texas, it might break down its production by oil, natural gas or natural gas liquids. A marine vessel operator for offshore construction projects might list all of its vessels, and an oilfield services company that manufactures ceramic and resin proppants might show how their products help improve recovery in the shales.

Investor presentations are generally found on the company’s website, under “Investor Relations”. Sometimes, investor presentations are also filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and may be accompanied by a press release (usually an 8K filing).

A few years ago, Petroleum Listing Service (PLS) in Houston introduced a new database called docFinder which collects and stores investor presentations. I believe at last count, they were almost at the one million mark! It’s important to note that at one time, energy companies would keep most of their presentations available on their website indefinitely but lately, it seems, they don’t keep nearly as many or for very long. That’s one advantage of having a database like docFinder. Another advantage is that if a company is acquired, like when Brigham Exploration was acquired by Statoil in October 2011, all of Brigham’s presentations went away once the deal was completed. Luckily, docFinder has all of Brigham Exploration’s presentations in its database, so notwithstanding the acquisition of the company, the presentations are still available in case historical research needs to be performed.

Twitter Secret S1 Filing

Twitter is going to IPO but why can't you find their SEC filing? Where could that pesky S-1 be hiding? Last year my colleague Ryan Field posted about the looming red herring shortage and his prediction has come to fruition. As Ryan reported, the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act was signed into law in April 2012.  The law is designed to encourage entrepreneurship both by making it easier and safer to go public and by relaxing certain fundraising requirements imposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Under the JOBS act, Emerging Growth Companies (EGCs are those that posted revenues of under $1 billion during their most recent fiscal year) are able to confidentially file drafts of their registration statement (S-1) for non-public review prior to their actual public filing.  An EGC’s S-1 is only made public 21 days before it conducts a roadshow.

Twitter is one of those EGCs so we know their revenue is under $1billion. Luckily, Twitter is expected to release the filing any day (maybe this week). Each S-1 filing contains unique information about each company but you can usually expect to see five years of financials, breakdown of revenues by type,  and other market research on the industry as a whole. Based on the Facebook S-1 we will probably see a lot of Twitter usage information too.

Watch your Twitter feed for exciting SEC news coming soon!

The Arab World Unbound

This week I had the honor of hearing Dr. Vijay Mahajan speak at the Texas Enterprise Speakers Series about his latest book The Arab World Unbound: Tapping into the Power of 350 Million Consumers. Mahajan spent 3 years of traveling the region and interviewed over 600 local and multinational companies like Coca-cola and Unilever already doing business in the large and growing market. He breaks down stereotypes about the people and culture and demonstrates  how globally connected and vibrant the Arab markets are.

The Financial Times says "Prof Mahajan's excitement about the Arab world is almost palpable...he is a fine writer and he presents factual details, statistics and concepts in a breezy, easy to read manner."

This is Mahajan's third book about consumers markets in developing countries. Also check out The 86 Percent Solution: How to Succeed in the Biggest Market Opportunity of the Next 50 Years and Africa Rising: How 900 Million African Consumers Offer More Than You Think.

Introducing Our First Infographic: Researching Private Companies

Since the world has become obsessed with infographics, we decided to try building one ourselves. There are several different services you can use and after reading about them here, we decided to give Piktochart a try. Take a look and let us know what you think. Have you built an infographic yourself? We'd love to hear about your experience. Tweet us @bizologie or join us on Facebook.

International Private Company Data

bizologie has covered how to research US private companies recently, but we know financials are almost impossible to find since US private companies are not required to report their financials with the SEC. Other countries have different requirements for private companies. And, many require full financial info be released. This is great news for business research. Thanks to FreePint and researcher Heidi Longaberger you can easily see what kind of private information is available for private firms in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The FreePint article Private company information outside the US: Western Europe, UK and Ireland has an easy to use chart detailing what private company information is available and links to where the information is provided! Most of the websites are available in English, and best of all most of the data is free or available for a small fee.

Find links to these international private company sources on the new bizologie Favorite Resources page.

Pinterest for Business Research

Clearly, we all love Pinterest. It's the fastest growing social network and shoppers spend more money via Pinterest than Facebook. But can you do more than pin recipes, shoes and interior design? Well, yes! You can do business research! Now of course, it's not the first place we'd turn for business research, but you can still learn plenty of interesting things about a company on Pinterest. You can find out about a company's culture, how they interact with their customers and what things they value. You might even pick up on future company plans. Even venture capital firms have Pinterest pages. Here are a few Pinterest pages and boards we think are good examples of using Pinterest to learn about companies and industries: Bessemer Venture Partners: Bessemer is a large venture capital firm and you can learn a lot about them on their Pinterest page. They've got their portfolios and exits pinned, and they even have boards dedicated to portfolio companies by industry.

Pinterest is a great place to find infographics. Here's a board dedicated to Social Media & Internet Infographics:

HomeAway, a site for vacation rentals, engages their customers not only with vacation homes to stay in, but also, contests and interior design ideas:

This board is dedicated to "Brands, Businesses & Blogs"--this is a quick way to see how lots of different companies are using Pinterest:

There's even a page to help businesses succeed with their Pinterest campaigns:

Social Media for Business Research

As more and more companies are using social media to connect with their customers and spread the word about their products, it makes sense  that as business researchers we need to keep these social sites on our radar. We wouldn't dream of not scouring the company website for insight, and now we should feel the same way about the company presence on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Social Media is extremely important for researching smaller private companies and start-ups because you won't find reports or news on them elsewhere. LinkedIn - Search for the company and link to the "Insightful Statistics about Employees" section to see which employees are on LinkedIn, where they have worked before and where they went after they departed. Look to see what Groups the company belongs to.

Facebook - Look for who the company "Likes" to see find vendors, partners, suppliers, and enthusiasts. Keep an eye on the timeline for product announcements and progress reports.

YouTube - Search for the company channel to see videos. You can see who works there and sometimes their customers. A video can tell you a lot about corporate culture.

Twitter - Consumers are using Twitter as a complaint line, so watch how the company handles those issues and interacts with the customer. You can use HootSuite or TweetDeck to follow multiple companies and/or keywords of interest.

Pinterest - The fastest growing social media site right now! Search for company name under the people search or just Google company name and Pinterest. Companies can show you in images what represents their values and culture.

The Offical Board - Organizational charts of the world's 30,000 largest corporations. Find contacts at companies and see the reporting lines.

CrunchBase - Free database of technology companies, people, and investors. You can find funding information here that you won't see anywhere else.

JCPenney CEO Ron Johnson CBS Interview

In case you missed it, JCPenney's CEO Ron Johnson was interviewed on "CBS This Morning" today. Fascinating interview where he responds to the "controversy" of choosing Ellen as the new face of JCP, their new pricing strategy and plans to skip all that 4AM Black Friday hoopla. We have to say, this makes us wanna shop at JCP: