Strategic Decisions and Shareholder Value: an Analysis of Conocophillips Michael Miller University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
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University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Accounting Undergraduate Honors Theses Accounting 5-2012 Strategic decisions and shareholder value: an analysis of ConocoPhillips Michael Miller University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.uark.edu/acctuht Part of the Finance and Financial Management Commons Recommended Citation Miller, Michael, "Strategic decisions and shareholder value: an analysis of ConocoPhillips" (2012). Accounting Undergraduate Honors Theses. 3. http://scholarworks.uark.edu/acctuht/3 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Accounting at ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Accounting Undergraduate Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Strategic Decisions and Shareholder Value: An Analysis of ConocoPhillips By Michael Cameron Miller Advisor: Ms. Susan Bristow An Honors Thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in Accounting Sam M. Walton College of Business University of Arkansas Fayetteville, Arkansas May 11, 2012 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................................... 2 METHODOLOGY ..................................................................................................................................................... 3 STRATEGIC DECISIONS AND CONOCOPHILLIPS ....................................................................................................... 4 MERGER BETWEEN CONOCO AND PHILLIPS ........................................................................................................... 5 CONOCOPHILLIPS SPIN-OFF ................................................................................................................................... 7 MARATHON OIL SPIN-OFF ..................................................................................................................................... 9 CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................................................... 11 APPENDIX ............................................................................................................................................................ 12 TABLE 1: LIST OF BENCHMARK COMPANIES ....................................................................................................................... 12 TABLE 2: CONOCOPHILLIPS MERGER BENCHMARK ANALYSIS ................................................................................................ 13 FIGURE 1: CONOCOPHILLIPS MERGER GRAPH.................................................................................................................... 13 TABLE 3: CONOCOPHILLIPS SPIN-OFF BENCHMARK ANALYSIS ............................................................................................... 14 FIGURE 2: CONOCOPHILLIPS SPIN-OFF GRAPH ................................................................................................................... 14 TABLE 4: MARATHON OIL PERFORMANCE ANNOUNCEMENT TO SPIN-OFF .............................................................................. 15 FIGURE 3: MARATHON OIL SPIN-OFF AFTER ANNOUNCEMENT ............................................................................................. 15 TABLE 5: MARATHON OIL PERFORMANCE AFTER SPIN-OFF ................................................................................................. 16 FIGURE 4: MRO AND MPC PERFORMANCE AFTER SPIN-OFF ............................................................................................... 16 REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................................................... 17 1 INTRODUCTION Through the difficult market volatility for investors in the past few years, corporations never settled for allowing the market to completely dictate the share price of their company. During this time period companies strove to create value for their shareholders through making strategic decisions. Many companies utilized strategic decisions to give more value to shareholders of their stock. Extensive research has been done in the field of market returns, especially with spin-offs and the returns they create for investors. The research from Cusatis, Miles, and Woolridge (1993) shows that investors could outperform the market by investing in spin-offs, in some cases the return was 700% the initial investment. If a common investor knew these kinds of opportunities, they could continue to find new ways to invest their money. One company that has consistently striven to create shareholder value for its investors is ConocoPhillips. This Fortune 500 Company was created through a merger in 2002, and began aggressively competing against its peers (ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and Chevron). In 2009 they outlined a detailed asset sale program, and eventually implemented a plan to increase shareholder value in 2010. Their plan included selling $15-20 billion in assets, repurchasing $10 billion in stock, and increased dividends. The final step they took towards creating value was beginning the steps toward a spin-off of their refining business that will be completed in the second quarter of 2012. This commitment to increasing shareholder value is the reason that this study will highlight and analyze a few of the strategic decisions that ConocoPhillips made throughout their existence and provide market comparison for how their shareholder value plan compares against the returns of the market and benchmarked companies. The strategic decisions that will be 2 highlighted will be the merger that created ConocoPhillips, and the upcoming spin-off to create Phillips 66. In the summer of 2011, I interned for ConocoPhillips in their Lower 48 division in Plans and Budgets, specifically the investment and portfolio group. My main project for the summer was to create a database that compared ConocoPhillips’s operations in specific geographic regions to competitors. I analyzed ConocoPhillips and 30 other competitors. This gave me a comprehensive view of the oil and gas industry, ConocoPhillips, and their main competitors. Mid-way through my summer internship, ConocoPhillips announced that it planned to split into two leading energy companies. I remember reading analyst reports that were forwarded to me by my supervisors on the upcoming spin-off. Analysts worked diligently to show the value that this transaction held for shareholders. One of the common things completed was comparing ConocoPhillips spin-off to Marathon Oil’s spin-off of Marathon Petroleum. Marathon Oil was once an integrated oil and gas company, but smaller in size than ConocoPhillips, and spun-off its downstream and midstream parts of the business. Through this thesis, Marathon’s spin-off will be used as a comparison for ConocoPhillips and to demonstrate what investors could expect from the spin- off. METHODOLOGY The main objective of this study pivots on the idea of being able to create a comparison for strategic decisions and how it might benefit an investor. Utilizing a simple view of finance and investing, a comparison a companies’ stock performances on four time dates: day of the decision/implementation, one week afterward, one month afterward, and six months afterward 3 was completed. A timeframe of longer than six months the stock performance could attribute to normal operations and less of the market reaction to the strategic decision. For the Marathon Oil spin-off, the returns that investors had is shown, by demonstrating the return based on if an investor were to purchase two shares on the announcement, and follow his or her returns through different dates. The comparison was exceedingly important for this research, and the three major market indexes that were chosen are: NASDAQ, S&P 500, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average. These three market indices were chosen because they are the most common market indices, and are referenced most when determining how the market moved on a specific day. The list of benchmark companies are in Table 1: Benchmark Companies located in the Appendix along with a brief description of the business, stock price at the close of market on April 9, 2012, and the market value of the company. The benchmark group was selected based on ConocoPhillips current peer group (major integrated) and their new peer group after their spin- off (major independent); as well as Marathon Petroleum to provide insight into what could be expected for ConocoPhillips upcoming spin-off. Information was gathered on the stock’s performance for key dates for ConocoPhillips’ strategic plan to create shareholder value. The gain of the stock is compared then to individual companies in the benchmark, and also a simple mean of the return for each group: market indices, integrated oil and gas, and independent oil and gas. The information gathered should provide insight to whether value was actually created for shareholders through the comparison of ConocoPhillips stock performance to the benchmark. STRATEGIC DECISIONS AND CONOCOPHILLIPS The history of ConocoPhillips has been one of strategic decisions that create value for shareholders and the company. They implemented a plan in 2010 to sell $15-20 billion