The oil market has been interesting lately and, to the surprise of many, has been the biggest silent outperformer this year. There is no shortage of geopolitical events to choose from that’s leading to a higher risk premium in oil with Brent breaking $90, whether it’s the Houthis missile attacks in the Red Sea leading to a massive re-route of trade, Ukraine’s drone strikes on Russian refineries, and the latest escalation between Israel and Iran leading to some news outlets using WWIII as click bait-y headlines. Given the run-up in oil prices, Canadian oil equities have clearly benefitted from the much higher torque. But there is a layer of even better news: The Transmountain Expansion (TMX) continues to look to be in operation by May, which would lead to much better pricing on the Western Canadian Select (WCS). With the current setup for the oil markets, some key questions that we often get from investors are: How sustainable is the rally in Canadian energy names? To determine if the oil equities are overstretched, we can look at the debt-adjusted cash flow (DACF) multiples of the major integrated oil names and see how the valuation has shifted in light of the recent oil move. From Exhibit 1, the DACF multiples for the Canadian integrated have been fairly range-bound over the last year, also in line with WTI, which has been in the $70 - $85 range. As a starting point, we can infer that the valuations of the companies have been commensurate with the movements in the underlying oil price deck and in line with where the equities should trade in the cycle historically over the last couple of years. Typically, in the commodities cycle, higher prices are usually coupled with lower multiples as market participants will usually price in lower normalized prices and vice versa, so a cause of concern would be if valuation starts trending towards the 6.5x – 7.0x+ area if oil prices continue to stay in the upper bounds of the $70 - $90 range or higher.

The CAD vs USD exchange rate has certainly been on the move over the past few months, to the detriment of the loonie. After rising into year-end to finish 2023 at about 75 ½ cents, the CAD has fallen down close to 72 ½ cents. The CAD is trading near the lower end of its recent range. Ah, remember the days when the loonie was on par with the U.S. dollar? Disney trips felt cheap, cross-border shopping was all the rage, and oil carried an average price of $96/bbl. Huh, with oil moving from the $70s to the high $80s, that sure doesn't match a 72 ½ cent loonie. Are we no longer a petrol currency? Maybe a decade of underinvestment and uncertainty around takeaway infrastructure can change a currency's stripes. Or there are other factors that are bigger than the oil impact on our currency exchange with the almighty dollar.