WPL buy, page-286

Hi People, from the WSJ tonight,

Shale Companies Had Lousy Returns. Their CEOs Got Paid Anyway.Some of the biggest raises in corporate America went to the executives in charge of U.S. shale companies, even as their shareholders lost billions of dollars
Shale companies used hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling techniques to unlock a gusher over the past decade, making the U.S. the world’s leading oil producer. But most have struggled to make money. Funded with a wave of Wall Street capital that began flowing in earnest a decade ago, they focused on growth over profit. Journal articles in 2016 showed that the executive bonus formulas used by many shale companies to compensate CEOs rewarded them handsomely for pumping more, regardless of whether they made money.Many companies have since tweaked their formulas to add more financial-performance targets in response to pressure from shareholders. But the current formulas still bear little relationship to companies’ bottom lines, the WSJ analysis found. In many cases, companies boosted the pay of their CEOs because they had performed better than a group of peers that had done even worse. In some cases, boards decided to reward CEOs even when they did not hit their targets.“You’ve had 10 years of consistent value destruction with management teams getting paid for it,” said Ben Dell, managing partner at private investment firm Kimmeridge Energy Management Co."

So, may take out form the above. It is shale that to a large extent lead to oil dropping below $100 per bbl. And, they were not even making great profits anyway. So, going forward, a lot of the shut in and deferred US shale will probably not come back into production. This would have a profound effect on world production going forward. As I have said before, the demise of US shale is $$$ for WPL share holders.

So, you will get that big boat after all. Just make sure that you do not sell in panic.

DYOR IMHO etc etc