To all the nervous Nellies.......Please stop trying to read the tea leaves each and every day.....trying to time the stock movements and extreme in short sightedness. Most good value/growth investors are fairly good as seeing the future (or at least picturing it) through projections and scenarios AND understand the strengths and weaknesses of the company and its fundamental value.
Take Ithaca for instance. It is still, at this price, only trading at 69% of its sum of the parts risked NAV. Also, it is one thing to have reserves (from an assignment of value perspective) but it is quite another to be by the capex to development them and be pumping out free cash flow in the form of "Texas Tea" or "Black Gold".
Seeing the future entails visualizing Ithaca in mid 2014 as Stella commences production at least at the current initial production rate of 30MMBOEPD (16K to Ithaca) and then simply adding on their current production of say 12MMBOEPD for a nice little total of 28 MMBOEPD. Then the next piece of visualization is applying Brent and UK gas prices to this production to determine cash flows expected for each quarter from there on.
Then as you visualize the future you ask yourself ....umm.... I wonder what kind of share price the market will assign to an E&P generating $175 million of cash flow(55 cents per share) on a quarterly basis? Is the market going to allow it to trade at just over 1 times cash flow particularly understanding that the marjority of the cash flow is FREE cash flow. Well if you visualize conservatively and say well I do not see the market assigning a multiple of more than 2 (which would be one of the lowest valuations on the globe for a mid cap generating FCF) then the share price would be expected to be ~$4.50 next year. Logic would tell the intelligent investor that this share price is the floor price if Brent is around $100 or more and the UK gas prices are similar to today's.
So why the daily micro-management and postulizing about A1 A2 A3 A4 etc etc.? A1 was pretty good proof that Stella should at least flow at expectation.
Now things may not turn out as you visualize them. Crude could fall, a recession could materialize, a mammoth storm could wipe out the entire North Sea oil and gas infructure etc. etc.
I would suggest that folks stop trying to read the tea leaves and try to visualize the future and watch that the company is tracking toward this vision. Then make investment decisions. BNN for expample is a money maker for BCE and is completely full of talking heading that hardly know the stocks that they are commenting on and cators to the retail investor