Investors should consider buying this energy AIM stock, up 50% in the past year

A excessive danger/reward permutation is just about relevant to each vitality Different Funding Market (AIM) inventory. Many overpromise solely to fizzle out.

So, to select winners in London’s junior market, I undertake a spot of bottom-up evaluation – i.e. place emphasis on the person inventory’s financials whereas lowering give attention to macroeconomic and market cycles to a sure extent.

Among the many many AIM-listed vitality shares that I’ve checked out on this vein, minnow Afentra (LSE: AET) stands out. Its core providing features a portfolio of non-operated mid-life producing oil and gasoline property in Africa that the vitality majors have retreated from.

Nearly all of these holdings – each onshore and offshore – are in Angola. They’re viable hydrocarbon performs that at the moment generate income. On the halfway level of this 12 months, Afentra swung to a $22.2m revenue (versus a H1 2023 lack of $3.1m).

Regardless of a troublesome macroclimate, wider challenges within the vitality sector and oil value declines, this minnow has held its personal due to an astute hedging technique, i.e. defending the bulk its per barrel takings by way of monetary devices at a hard and fast steady degree to handle value volatility.

Operationally prudent

For example, in accordance with the corporate’s newest replace, it offered 1.68m barrels of crude oil at a mean value of $84 per barrel for the primary three quarters of the 12 months. “With the ultimate lifting scheduled for This fall 2024, which is 70% hedged with a flooring of $70 per barrel, the corporate is effectively positioned to proceed its disciplined monetary administration and operational development,” it famous additional. 

Afentra additionally boasts of a FTSE 250 calibre administration for an AIM firm. It’s led by former Tullow Oil chief government and trade veteran Paul McDade. Based mostly on my conversations with McDade, Afentra places operational prudency, transparency and sustaining a low debt profile on the coronary heart of its operations, conscious of detrimental perceptions usually related to AIM useful resource shares.

As of 31 October, Afentra has money assets of $37.4m and internet debt of $4.6m, “whereas upcoming crude gross sales will additional bolster liquidity.” Future earnings stability is predicated on the corporate’s need to double its manufacturing capability to 40,000 barrels per day inside half a decade and add extra barrels by additional acquisitions.

Prospects and caveats

I consider Afentra probably has room for upside from its present vary of 40p to 60p to round 250p to 320p in 5 years. That is primarily based on a calculation of 4 instances its projected present end-year monetary income ($180m) divided by the variety of its issued shares.

The corporate’s efforts to double its manufacturing by 2029 and promoting oil at a mean value of $70 per barrel additionally seems broadly supportive of a 4x income projection as a foundation for the calculation.

After all, foreign money fluctuations and the energy of the greenback can have a say. Have been oil costs to slip progressively additional and quicker to the tip of the present decade, so will Afentra’s earnings. Deliberate manufacturing will increase could not materialise. Such components will impression the corporate’s future share value.

Nevertheless, for me, potential rewards at the moment outweigh the dangers of holding Afentra. The corporate seems to have medium to long-term potential and it’s why I’d be completely satisfied so as to add extra of its shares to my portfolio.