Mr. Verbonac: The big surprise was the surge in commodity prices. I think that everybody was playing catch-up during the quarter with what happened to both oil and gas prices. That helped the financials in most cases and beat the expectations that we had held earlier in the quarter.
TWST: In general, how did the companies do in holding the expense line and
allowing that top-line growth to show up?
Mr. Verbonac: Expenses have probably grown more rapidly than we had thought;
however, recently with the companies that I follow, the production volumes are
growing fast enough that there are still efficiencies that would be delivered in
terms of overall operating costs per barrel. There is no question, whether it's
for drilling or other service costs, that they have to budget for higher and
higher numbers than they would have done in prior years.
Tickers included in this excerpt: AEN:TSX, IAE:TSX, PDP:TSX, POE:TSX, SLG:TSX
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