BP's investor call Friday morning left dividend concerns unanswered, as managers reiterated the need to balance shareholder returns via the dividend against long-term growth investments, and targeted a 20%-30% net debt ratio (net debt/(net debt & equity)). Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg and CEO Tony Hayward held off from analyst attempts to clarify BP's dividend stance, indicating the board is expected to make a decision on the upcoming quarterly dividend in July. This could leave the door open for more dividend-related options.
The managers took pains to stress BP's commitment to meet all obligations in the Gulf of Mexico and will set up a separate business unit headed by Bob Dudley to focus on oil spill issues. This would allow managers outside this unit to focus on operations and projects underway. BP expects to incur most of the oil containment and removal costs by year-end 2010, with environmental clean-up, claims restitution, regulatory fines, and litigation to take several years. A few nuggets from the call include acknowledgement of likely regulatory fines under the Clean Water Act. BP doesn't expect recent debt downgrades to constrain borrowings under current debt facilities and managers reviewed its liquidity and cash resources once again. BP saw nothing unusual with its well design, citing the fact that 30%-40% of the last 80 Gulf of Mexico wells used the same well design. BP's purchase of Devon Energy assets is moving forward with the sale of Gulf of Mexico assets now closed, and closure of the Azerbaijan assets expected in the second quarter and Brazil early in the third quarter.
Read Morningstar's full analysis of the BP stock, including fair value and earnings estimates, here.