Shareholders should try to remember, this was an ER Beat! From Stockwatch Energy courtesy of loonietunes:
"Earnings season in the oil patch is drawing to a close, but investors still had plenty of numbers to sift through today. Vermilion Energy Inc. (VET) lost 96 cents to $32.52 on 3.39 million shares, despite trying to impress investors with its second quarter financials and a dividend hike. It trumpeted a net profit of $368-million and boosted its quarterly dividend to eight cents from six cents, for a yield of 1.0 per cent. Production of 84,900 barrels a day and cash flow of $2.68 a share were both in line with analysts' predictions.
Investors frowned. A 33-per-cent dividend hike might typically spark more cheering, but in Vermilion's case, the 1-per-cent yield pales next to several of the companies that it considers to be its main competitors (or "peers," as its website prefers to call them). These include Whitecap Resources Inc. (WCP: $9.26), Crescent Point Energy Corp. (CPG: $9.80), Peyto Exploration & Development Corp. (PEY: $13.19) and Paramount Resources Ltd. (POU: $28.84), whose average yield is four times higher (Crescent Point has the lowest at 3.3 per cent and Whitecap the highest at 4.8 per cent).
Vermilion's executive chairman, Lorenzo Donadeo, and its president Dion Hatcher, tried to reassure shareholders that the company has "significant capacity to increase the base dividend" and indeed plan to "provide ratable increases over time." They also have other options such as share buybacks and special dividends. A key goal is to keep the regular dividend "resilient," they emphasized. (This particular emphasis is more understandable in light of the lesson learned in late 2019 and early 2020, when Vermilion's management at the time was stubbornly insisting that the company could make it through 2020 with the dividend intact. The dividend was then gutted in March, 2020, and suspended a month later, not returning until April, 2022 -- over all, a humbling experience that Vermilion is clearly not keen to repeat.)"
GLTA