By Michael McDonald – Jul 20, 2016, 2:23 PM CDT
Investors getting cold feet about the spiking price of Big Oil stocks over the last year may risk missing out on further gains, according to one top ranked analyst. Doug Terreson of Evercore, one of the top ranked oil analysts according to Institutional Investor magazine, is recommending that investors stick with integrated oil majors like Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, and Exxon despite the run up in their prices.
Terreson’s thesis is that many of the catalysts for positive price performance remain in place. In particular, integrated oil companies have effectively reduced operating capital costs permanently, which lowers their breakeven expense to produce oil. The retort to this point of course is that Big Oil stocks may have cut costs but frackers have been much more successful than integrated majors in cutting their costs as a percentage of pre-crash production cost.