| Account | Shares | Price | Value | % of acct | Cost/sh | Gain $ | Gain % | Target |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 401K | 394 | $7.50 | $2,955 | 0.12% | $7.64 | $-53 | -1.8% | — |
In short: Conflict disclosed the other way: "I'm not an Athabasca shareholder." The verdict is genuinely mixed rather than negative — "Athabasca is also attractive, but it's a much less pure play. It is much more difficult for me to generate an earnings model with Athabasca because I have to model eight or 10 different assets. I have to model capital needs and all that kind of stuff" — i.e. he prefers International Petroleum on modellability, not on quality. On the recurring takeover speculation he goes further than the host: "I regard it as icing on the cake, but I also regard it as inevitable," and "I suspect that Athabasca is a prime target… because of its capital efficiency and its very very very broad asset base." The mechanism is structural, not situational: "bigger companies with bigger asset bases have larger trading volumes, attract more passive and ETF flows. The truth is that bigger companies just because they're bigger enjoy a lower cost of capital." He reaches for ARC Resources as the pattern — "my favorite Canadian oil equity for quite some time was ARC, as a consequence of knowing them well and attempting to compete against them for 30 years. Shell noticed the same thing."
Rule discloses immediately that he does not own this one, and the reason turns out to be about his own process rather than the company. Athabasca has eight or ten different assets, each needing its own production profile, cost structure and capital plan before you can build an earnings model. International Petroleum has essentially one. He prefers the one he can model — a preference about analysis, not quality. He calls Athabasca "also attractive."
Where he goes further than the host is on takeovers. Asked whether it might get bought, he answers that he regards it as "icing on the cake, but I also regard it as inevitable." His reasoning is structural and applies well beyond this stock. Bigger companies trade more shares each day, which attracts index and exchange-traded funds that buy mechanically; that steady bid supports the share price, and a higher share price means cheaper equity. So scale itself lowers the cost of capital, and a large company can therefore pay more for an asset than a small company can — which makes buying the small company rational for the buyer and profitable for its shareholders.
He offers ARC Resources as the pattern: for a long time his favourite Canadian oil equity, having competed against them for thirty years, and Shell reached the same conclusion he had. His view here is genuinely two-sided — an attractive, capital-efficient business with a broad asset base and a plausible bid, that he nonetheless has not bought.
38:11It is much more difficult for me to generate an earnings model with Athabasca because I have to model eight or 10 different assets. I have to model capital needs and all that kind of stuff. — At International there's just one challenge. So it's much more attractive to me. As to whether people should buy it, if they like me have a five or six year time frame,
In short: The host's inference from the Greenfire "buy up the block" logic — "that's why everyone thinks you're going to buy Athabasca Oil." He neither confirms nor denies: "people always think I'm buying everything," then restates only that he likes the central-Athabasca neighborhood and wants to see "what else we might be able to aggregate." Speculation flagged, not a stance.
Athabasca Oil comes up only because the host applies his own logic to him: if Greenfire's strategy is to "buy up the block" in central Athabasca, the obvious next block is Athabasca Oil. His answer is a careful non-answer — "people always think I'm buying everything" — followed by a restatement that he likes the neighborhood and wants to see what else he can aggregate there.
Treat this as a flagged possibility rather than a view on the company. Nothing in the interview argues Athabasca Oil's merits; what it does show is which kind of asset his aggregation model points at next.
40:25only just buying the first thing but thinking about what's next you can buy. And we've liked the real estate analogy of you find a good neighborhood, you find a good street, you buy a house, then you buy up the block. — That's why everyone thinks you're going to buy Athabasca Oil. — Well, people always think I'm buying everything.
In short: Recently bought after a conference made the case: "This is the cash machine." He's owned it off and on; the model is the one he backs — repaying debt, excess cash flow now, a long-life asset in a relatively stable jurisdiction — and the excess cash flow goes to buying back shares: "This is what I like, okay? Cannibalization of shares."
Athabasca is a Canadian oil producer with heavy-oil and oil-sands assets in Alberta. Polomny says he just bought it again after a conference convinced him — "this is the cash machine."
The appeal is the financial shape rather than any drilling story. The debt has been paid down, the assets last decades rather than years (an oil-sands project doesn't decline the way a shale well does), and Canada is a jurisdiction unlikely to seize your barrels. That leaves a company producing more cash than it needs — and management is spending it buying back its own shares. Polomny calls that "cannibalization of shares": with fewer shares outstanding each year, every remaining share owns a bigger slice of the same oil and the same cash flow, so the value per share compounds without the company having to grow at all. It's the same "cannibal" template he wrote up in the July issue.
41:17relatively stable jurisdiction, and what's it do with this excess cash flow? It's buying back shares. This is what I like, okay? Cannibalization of shares. And so, in a recent interview I had, this is what I've been pointing out. Being able to buy oil assets — I talked about, I was asked about Latin America.
In short: The long-reserve-life energy "halo" name — the sector trades these on low-single-digit cash-flow multiples, but Athabasca has a reserve-life index of ~90. "Anytime I can pay six or seven times something for 90 years' worth of action, it just seems like a good trade."
Athabasca is a Canadian oil producer whose appeal is its "reserve-life index" of about 90 — meaning at current production rates it has roughly 90 years of oil in the ground. The market values most energy producers at just a few times their annual cash flow, treating the reserves as if they'll run out soon. Larson's point: "anytime I can pay six or seven times something for 90 years' worth of action, it just seems like a good trade." It's a "halo" asset — heavy, hard to replace, and priced as if its decades of future production barely count.
35:16I look at, coming back to the energy trade, Athabasca Energy, every, the sector trades these things as a function of cash flow in low single-digit multiples, I have like reserve life indexes of 90 — like anytime I can pay six or seven times something for 90 years worth of action it just seems like a good trade. I want to end with our final question which is like a hard left in terms of topic but it's about Campbell Soup.
In short: Not owned. Consolidation logic: Athabasca developing a Duvernay asset "that should be sitting in Spartan Delta." The kind of tuck-in that should happen as the industry rationalizes.
45:41Um that that they should that should be going on. There should be others like that. Um you know, we don't own them. But like I don't think there's a good reason that Aabaska is developing a Duivere asset that should be sitting in Spartan Delta, for example, which we don't own either. But again, there's a lot of this that's like cool, really quick.
In short: Not owned. Run through Waterous's public underwriting criteria (low break-evens + high reserve life): Athabasca has reserve life "like very few do," so it "looks obvious" as a natural target if investors ever fall out of love with it. Priced differently than MEG, which is why MEG was the opportunistic bid.
31:48So, not looking at BEX, not one of those stocks. So, what about Athabaska? Question from Mark G on X. Is Athabaska the next takeover candidate? Yeah. Um I I I'll just say this because I haven't said it publicly yet, but um if I was going to use Adam Wattress's underwriting, he uses two factors. And by this is all public. Great great uh great talk he gave at the Ivy School of Business.
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Verbatim excerpts from the public transcripts (auto-pulled at each mention's timestamp, lightly cleaned). Timestamps link into the video; "source page" opens that commentator's full analysis at this row. Click a mention's header line to expand it (one open at a time). For personal study — not investment advice.