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“‘Unconventional’ Homerun Potential… for 75 Cents a Share” (Kent Moors)

Sniffing out some of the stocks teased by the new Micro Energy Trader

By Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe, December 4, 2012

The latest pitch from Dr. Kent Moors is for a new publication, a micro-cap energy stock trading newsletter and alert service called Micro Energy Trader. And though they say they’re restricting their subscriber list to 400 people (list price: $5,000 a pop — it’s “half off” right now), that’s more than enough to make some big waves with some of the teensy tiny picks they’re teasing …

… so I’ll start you off not only with my warning, that the stocks I’m going to try to reveal for you today could easily get all jiggly just because I write about them for you, and add on the fact that this big promotional campaign for the new newsletter, which will probably bring the new subscribers who might want to jump into the shares right away, seems almost guaranteed to distort the market if these are really microcap stocks (ie, stocks with market caps down below a couple hundred million dollars).

In fact, they were worried enough about that that they put it right in the lead of their letter, too — here’s how they put it:

“The firms you’re going to hear about in this presentation are some of the smallest publically traded companies in the stock market.

“So there are two important things you should know right up front:

  • Stocks that trade for less than $1 a share come with some special risks; and
  • Not all companies of this size pan out. To be sure, many penny stocks are penny stocks for a reason…

That said, we believe your odds of success in this powerful universe have just been greatly increased…”

So there’s your “beware, here be monsters!” tease — you’re forewarned, but you almost can’t help but read on to see what those “special risks” are … after all, you’re a clever sort who wouldn’t get sucked in, right? Yep, me too.

The basic idea is that Dr. Moors, who is a political science professor at Duquesne and a well-traveled oil industry consultant, has a special insight into some companies (they call it a “A Top Secret Dossier of Micro Energy Stocks”) that are so very tiny that he can’t recommend them to subscribers of his other, lower-priced newsletters — they would have too big an impact on the price, and it would be too hard for a large group to get in and out of small issues like the ones he’s apparently teasing … which, going by the mentions in the ad, included some absolutely absurdly tiny companies down in the $10-20 million range.

Such stocks are fun sometimes, to be sure, though lots of them probably shouldn’t be public and you often have to be ready for them to move 50% in a day even without news. These are the kinds of stocks that give unsuspecting new investors a lesson in the false comfort of tight stop losses — if no one’s buying the stock, you can’t easily sell it for your price as it’s falling. And trading in and out and paying close attention is always critical with microcaps if you like to keep a grip on your money — even one of the “win” stories they tease in this particular ad was a pick that bounced last Fall and Moors apparently harvested a nice quick gain … but it was bankrupt soon after (that was Ener1, which spiked from 14 cents to 39 cents on a CEO change last September, we’re told … bankruptcy has since driven the shares under a penny).

But anyway, enough about the warnings and dire consequences of mucking around with itsy bitsy stocks — which ones are being teased here? We know you’re among the most discerning and discriminating readers in investordom — you’re here, after all — so we can trust you to make your own choices and not do something crazy to drive the stocks up or down.

Assuming we can identify them for you, that is. So … on to the clues!

“Unconventional” Homerun Potential… for 75 Cents a Share

“The first firm topping his list is an exploration and production company. It specializes in unconventional shale oil.

“And it’s poised for a major swing to the upside.

“That’s because it’s what is known as a ‘resource rich’ operator. It has significant reserves spread out over several different basins – the Bakken and Spanish Three Forks in North Dakota, the DJ formation in Wyoming (the highly promising and much discussed Niobrara basin), and the Haynesville and Cotton Valley in Texas….

“With NYMEX West Texas Intermediate benchmark crude north of $80 a barrel, available shale oil is incredibly desirable. And that puts this small company right in the center of the action – and ready for a sudden pop.

“Now, here’s the amazing part of the story…

“Today shares of this company can be bought for just 75 cents each. That’s 1,000 shares for just $750.

“So how high could it go?

“Back in 2008, when oil prices really skyrocketed, this stock was selling for a high of $84 a share.

“That means that if it runs back up to just a quarter of that, to $21, an initial $750 stake would be worth $21,000.

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“That’s the sort of risk-reward ratio that is possible with these micro energy shares.”

So … who is this? Toss all that into the mighty, mighty Thinkolator and we learn that this is … GMX Resources (GMXR)

A quick look at the financials tells you why this once-$80 stock is trading at 75 cents (OK, it’s not 75 cents anymore either — that was a few weeks ago, it’s now down at 57 cents): They have $400 million in debt, $15 million in cash, and they burn through that cash pretty quickly with investments and oilfield expenses. Oh, and they just approved a reverse split, which is not always a bad thing but it does bring the stench of failure to investors’ noses (it helps to avoid delisting, which I assume is the rationale here — Nasdaq would rather you have ten million $5 shares than 100 million 50 cent shares). The un-split will be something between 5:1 and 13:1, it’s apparently not decided yet (meaning it will take between 5 and 13 current shares to equal one new share, and the stock will reprice immediately to reflect that). With the stock collapsing, I reckon I’d probably go for the 13:1 consolidation, but that’s just me and they haven’t asked my opinion.

The optimistic bit is summed up pretty well by the CEO on their website here — basically, they’re producing in their Bakken holdings now and are hoping to ramp that up to generate cash flow to help retire some debt and do more drilling. They’ve been doing some exchanges with holders of their first tranche of convertible debt that comes due in 2013 and, among other things, issued equity to those debtholders. They seem to have “beat” on revenues in the last quarter (amazingly, there are still five analysts covering this company), which helped to drive the shares up to 75-80 cents, but they’ve given up about half of that gain in the three weeks since. Those same analysts think they’ll book another 15% or so in revenue gains in 2013 and only lose 47 cents per share in doing so (if they lose 47 cents per share, they better hope it’s all depletion and asset impairments and not actual cash losses — that’s more than twice as much cash as they have on hand now).

I have no idea whehter or not GMX Resources will bounce back as Moors seems to think they can — they have apparently had a host of operational problems in North Dakota (equipment availability, electricity problems, high costs) that are waning, they say, and they claim a “proved NAV” of $340 million now. They also throw out a few other valuation arguments, including that their 18,946 net acres in the Bakken should be worth somewhere between $8,000-$20,000/acre going by Statoil and QEP purchases over the last year or so. That would get them to something like $300 million, too. Which is impressive for a $45 million market cap company, but we also have to remember that debtholders really “own” most of GMXR — the enterprise value (market cap plus net debt) is about $450 million according to Yahoo Finance, so that’s what the broad market thinks the whole company is worth right now.

They do have other assets in the Niobrara, Haynesville and Cotton Valley areas, but the focus is on the Bakken and oil right now, that’s where all their capital investment is going because natural gas prices are so low it doesn’t make sense to invest crucial funds in gas-heavy projects. You can see their latest investor presentation here, this is what they’ll be presenting tomorrow at an energy conference (I’d love to say it’s my top-notch connections that get me this early info, for which I’ll charge millions from my retirement hideaway in Grand Cayman, but I’m afraid I just pulled it off their website).

So there you go … a micro cap stock, with assets and lots of debt, trying to get cash flowing. They’re this cheap because, as far as I can tell, they’re teetering and are really owned by the bondholders, but sometimes teetering stocks do recover on the right side of the guardrail. You can sniff around and see if you like what you see, feel free to shout out with a comment below if you’ve got an opinion on GMXR. I did write about this stock a year and a half ago when it was being teased by Frank Curzio for his Penny Stock Specialist newsletter, but he presumably sold out soon after since the stock fell precipitously and he’s a big believer in stop losses, and I haven’t looked at them in the interim. They would, presumably, be pretty well levered to gas as well, given their gas-heavy production profile to this point (the switch to focus on oil is pretty recent) … but with five years of what looks like pretty weak output, when they haven’t been able to generate cash other than through stock and bond offerings, there’s certainly plenty of room for concern, even if it does seem pretty likely that they’re going to be able to get their debt restructured. Even if a stock price is minuscule, after all, you can still lose 100%.

And we’ll sniff out one more for you — here are the clues Moors provides:

“This Shallow Water Drilling Company Could Run from $5 to $38 a Share

“This play involves the fourth-largest shallow water drilling company in the world.

“It has the largest jackup rig fleet in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico with annual revenues of $650 million.

“Since Kent began recommending this micro energy stock, the oil field service (OFS) segment in general, and offshore provisions in particular, have begun moving up smartly. And this company has moved right along with it.

“The stock is up 17% since July, and it’s climbing fast. Its performance is better than offshore shares as a group.

“But it’s not too late to buy it.

“Not even close…

“You can get in for just $5 a share right now. And Kent believes it could run all the way up to $38.

“Odds are, it will.”

This one, sez the Mighty, Mighty Thinkolator, is Hercules Offshore (HERO). And it’s probably still the fourth largest jackup rig fleet operator in the world, and the largest in the US, but there was just a high-profile transaction in this area — Transocean (RIG), the big offshore driller, just sold off 38 jackup rigs, many of them in the Gulf of Mexico and, at a quick glance, comparable to the standard commodity jackups that HERO owns, to a venture-backed new drilling company. That company effectively paid about a billion dollars for the 38 rigs, which are in place and largely under contract around the world (five are “cold stacked” in storage, waiting for demand), though contract lengths are typically fairly short for these kinds of shallow-water rigs (they stand on the ocean floor and, depending on capacity and size, can drill in water depths of 150-400 feet or so) — many contracts are for less than a year and for $50-100,000/day, as compared to the deepwater rigs, which cost hundreds of millions more to build and can get dayrates of $600,000 going out five years in some cases. So these Jackups are the ugly stepsisters of the rig business, they’re more commoditized and a lot of them are still stacked, particularly with the gas activity in the Gulf being a bit light — HERO has 14 of their rigs cold stacked right now, out of a total of 39 owned.

I haven’t checked the age or capabilities of these rigs, but there don’t seem to be many on long-term contracts and the HERO fleet seems pretty comparable to me to to the RIG fleet that was just sold, so if the rigs are comparable, then HERO’s “fleet value” is potentially right around a billion dollars, too — 39 rigs versus the 38 that were sold for a billion bucks by Transocean to the private equity-backed startup Shelf Drilling. Shelf has only five rigs cold stacked right now, versus 14 for HERO, and HERO’s fleet is almost entirely in the Gulf of Mexico whereas Shelf’s is spread across Africa and Asia. HERO also runs a fleet of inland barges, most of which are also cold stacked, and about 60 liftboats which are used to service the jackups (liftboats are boats that can set down feet to perform maintenance, etc. on the rigs).

HERO has pretty high insider ownership, with not a huge amount of buying or selling lately — though lately folks on the inside seem to have bought in the $3-3.50 neighborhood and sold in the $4.50+ neighborhood. Analysts are forecasting a return to profitability next year and earnings of 27 cents a share, which would be a huge turnaround, but there is a wide difference of opinion — it really depends on jackup demand in the Gulf, which depends on exploration activity and, presumably, on improvement (or steadiness, at least) in natural gas prices. If Hercules Offshore gets back to $38 anytime soon I’ll be incredibly shocked, but that doesn’t mean it can’t improve a bit from here — the shares have traded between $4-6 almost exclusively over the last four years, and given the big inventory of rigs in storage and the lack of enthusiasm for offshore gas exploration in the shallow Gulf that seems fair … if we see a big opening up of the continental shelf to exploration that would certainly increase demand, but that’s probably years from happening even if politics moves in that direction, so I think HERO is pretty likely to continue to rise and fall on the prospects for shallow water work in the Gulf of Mexico.

Of course, that’s just my quick opinion based on a few minutes with their filings — there could easily be more to the story, so if you’ve got an opinion on HERO or GMXR, by all means, share it with a comment below. Thanks!

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baygreen
December 4, 2012 5:18 pm

Good job Mr Travis takes my breath away just having a little fun because it takes me hours of due diligence to come up with some of the symbols that you always get using the think machine or the brains in a box . I love it and that is a fact I never was good at cross word puzzles and these guys give more than one clue, I had come across them the other day Ithink it was in the nadaq sector listing which is pretty reliable like you are, and you do it with out even pouring gas on the competitors fire that is cool. But I get a few right but your info resources blow mine out of the water time frame wise. That is why I really like the subscription, I might not have the best writing and grammer but it comes down to the numbers and some times luck with there hints when they throw the drama in the sales pitch for there letters, but even then you compliment the bunch of them by saying when people put the other publications down that you use it as a learning tool and I believe that is pretty professional and that a lot of times it is what keeps your ball rolling. Because a lot of time if you can narrow the sector that they are teasing you can always or 90% of the time just go to that sector and research the top ten or so and get an answer unless it is one off those that they act like is an everyday thing finding ten or twentyor even thousand baggers, but you are darn good at it and do take some of the fun away from the hunt but if you get turned around or just can’t get there pick you can always have that back up the Gumshoe and I thank you for that, I am sure you get surprised now and then but thanks, it makes me feel good when Ido my own due diligence and then when you verify what I have it is cool. But I could see that some don’t have the time to chase every tease or the patience because they make it sound if you don;t get there letter know or they only accept so many I wonder about that and if it is a small volume company that they are on you can tell if they all pull the trigger on the same day and Iam sure that some play that game to because they always use that you can only short them so long phrase but your style is what fits your smile you genuinely look happy so thanks. Question on the same energy sector but I guess a different service of theenergy sector is about the refineries, like right now I have been riding HFC AND DK but did not get on the WNR not enough change to play them all unless pull from other stocks that I like but how long do you think they have left in them and it is nice to see a smaller cap player do well because there are some real big boys up that ladder, and those three are sitting on top pretty much right now of there sector and there location has some thing with that as well but when will the train catch up to them , when will the big refineries an mlp’s and they have some of the pipelines but nowhere near the storage etc. as the kings on the hill and Canada is getting backed up , I was talking to a board director the other day won’t use his name and he said we won’t call it a glut for reasons we know but it is a Canadian glut and he has been around a long time, the Keystone is not the only reason and the politics but when will the rail road tankers get or will they get more monopolized then they already are. There are a lot of Drillers (mice) but the rail (cats) get all the food they want. Does not seem right to push our good neighbor away towards China but the US Govt. seems that is on there agenda and Canada Govt. is voting on that CNOOC pretty soon about NXY take over and it seems like they want there product to go south and this Administration wants it to go west on a tanker and Canada can only hold there breath so long. Hope that made sense and what thoughts the Gumshoe might have on that, heck Obama is making our Navy the biggest fuel user in the world use chicken fuel from SYNTROLEUM in OK. and Tyson foods and the billion dollar refinery Mansfield who is private and those three formed a company called DYNAMIC FUELS and have the US NAVY FUEL contract and i like clean air but at 6 times the price of a gallon and the jobs and the military cuts that is a big picture that the KEYSTONE could have helped and we where told it was the EPA, I COULD SEE IF IT WAS A DOLLAR A GALLON DIFFERENCE BUT THE POLITICS IS GOING TO COST A LOT MORE THAN CASH THAT IS OUR NEIGHBOR AND THE FUEL COULD SAVE JOBS FOR THE MILITARY AND THE CIVILIANS AND ALL THE BI PRODUCTS OF THAT ,it does not make sense and they the Feds said after the election well Canada votes next week. Will NXY stock blend with CNOOC or will it have US on it will affect the gas big time and r&R and jobs and economy and so called global warming, Obama did not buy those Drones from CHINA AVIATION to keep the interest rate down, wait till they hit the US PORTS LOOK UP DRONE IMPORTS THE FEDS BOUGHT FROM CHINA 1 MIL$ A PIECE we should have built those. Something smells bad no matter which way the wind blows. Just want the truth do not know what to believe executive order on everything but the ships are on there way Ports in CALIF, TX. AND NEW YORK and union long shore men will see them we don’t here about that but I have a feeling we will. Check it out in the thinkmachine!

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Hardyandtiny
Guest
Hardyandtiny
December 4, 2012 6:39 pm

Whoa!

frankw17
December 4, 2012 9:03 pm

Travis, I love your service, but you might want to put a limit on your “replies”! This one
from Cathy appears to be the definition of verbosity!

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R M
R M
December 5, 2012 1:33 am
Reply to  frankw17

Frank, I mean no disrespect but I am sure you know how to use the down arrow key. It is like window shopping. If you like what is in the window, by all means go in. If not keep on walking. The point is, why is it necessary to limit the response, when you have that ability yourself? Think of comments as reading the Sunday papers commentary section. Skim over the commentary and if that piece has little interest, skip it. So please consider your request carefully. You could be censored instead. What if Cathy said she did not like your response, should that obligate Travis to curtail your writings as well? I think we can all agree to many progressive (liberals) have forgotten what this country is based on, including the first amendment. More importantly may be its time to reeducate the people in what the founding principles are all about. Hillsdale edu is offering two constitution courses for free online. They are well worth the time!
Cathy I enjoyed your response. Travis is great at what he does. The mighty thinkolator is qtsk or some other package? Care to share Travis?

Joseph E Fasciani
Member
December 5, 2012 4:26 am
Reply to  frankw17

Hello Franklin White!
I say Ditto and Amen to yr comment.

herbalix
Member
December 5, 2012 7:47 am

same here…ditto and Amen is all i can say after that.

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Chris
Chris
December 4, 2012 10:53 pm

(Cathy)- Whoa, what did you smoke. Let me take a breather after that. How about breaking up that novel with a few paragraphs. Made no sense.

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motordoc
motordoc
December 4, 2012 11:16 pm

Cathy was on a roll, would love to read what trvis has to say about it

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Old fat fella
Irregular
December 5, 2012 6:18 am

Now that is one heckuva paragraph Ms Cathy just emitted.

black1brit
Member
black1brit
December 5, 2012 8:41 am

Pardon me, all, for the complete change of subject….I have received a “teaser” from Amy Calistri of Street Authority, talking about what she calls the “Dividend Trifecta”, said to be a “unique investing system”. Can anyone explain (a) what her “system” is – I presume it is more than buying high-yielding stocks/funds & re-investing the dividends, although that is no doubt part of it, and (b) what high-yielding stocks/funds she is referring to (she does give a few examples, GGT MMP & UTG)…

regards

ps: nice going, Cathy… };0)

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Ed B
Member
Ed B
January 7, 2013 3:15 pm
Reply to  black1brit

Hey Gabe Fabe…I was directed to this from my Dividend Trifecta search too and see nothing about the subject nor has anyone picked up on it as you have. Still looking.

The Kent Moors thing has nothing to do with dividends…unless I’m completely out of it today.

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GaryW
Guest
GaryW
December 5, 2012 1:08 pm

I don’t have a problem with verbosity, but irrelevant BS is something else.

misterht01
misterht01
December 5, 2012 2:17 pm

Comments are about everything but nothing for GMXR and HERO.. 😛

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RM
RM
December 5, 2012 2:32 pm

I think we’ve all made our point. So to get back on topic, I am curious, how many of us actually use the data Travis generates into actual trades?
How many of these trades are positive?
My thought here is when these stocks are pumped, how does this affect the actual technical data one would normally investigate vs the emotional response of the stock? Another words do you buy strictly with the pump and dump thought in mind?
When Travis figures out these teaser stocks, how many actually do the research to validate the stock for long term potential investment?

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John M. Chenosky, PE
Guest
John M. Chenosky, PE
December 5, 2012 3:18 pm

Opened today at 0.57 now 0.59. Are we talking about the same stock?

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stockballer
Guest
December 9, 2012 1:10 pm

Great analysis. I just came across an ad for Kent Moor’s site on MSN and was going to look into it myself till I found this article. Pretty brutal that people pay a lot of money for services like this. There have also been a few penny stock promotion sites that have “premium” memberships, who are then are paid by worthless companies to hype up their stock to their subscribers, so people lose money both on paying to join and on buying a stock set to plummet.

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who noze
Member
December 9, 2012 5:39 pm

i was a victim of teaser stocks until Travis put me on the rt. track stay awaw away most are garbage

Philip Mergenthaler
Guest
Philip Mergenthaler
December 9, 2012 9:18 pm

GMXR preferred stock is the highest yielding of all prefer stocks-Would rather own this @ way under par than the common. Has never missed a payment. Would like to find the coffee that Cathy has & invest in their company stock LOL

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Cathy
December 18, 2012 4:34 am

Real sorry about the length just skip over Cathy, Thanks R M but did get long winded and am sorry ! Keep it short bought 500 shares of HFC just got in long day opening mail from my broker Pershing out east says 2 for 1 split on HFC had it for a month bought it $37.70 a month ago now it’s up in mid $40’S AND GOT A .20 CENT AND A SPECIAL .50 CENT DIVY up about 20% in a month end of year tax question take the profit or hold for the Jan 7 record day and takes affect Jan16 and get 1000 shares don’t know best way to play did not read Obama’s short Obama manual yet tax man says that they are still printing it. Again sorry and thanks R M and Happy Holidays to ya all !!!

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herbalix
Member
January 4, 2013 11:08 am

Anybody checked GMXR today??? Up 1100% or something like that: WoW…perhaps Dr. Kent knows something we all did not know!

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herbalix
Member
January 5, 2013 4:55 am

Thanks, Travis!

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