UPDATE: Credit Suisse Reiterates On Occidental Petroleum Ahead Of CRC Demerge

In a report published Friday, Credit Suisse analyst Edward Westlake reiterated a Neutral rating on Occidental Petroleum Corporation (NYSE: OXY), but lowered the price target from $105.00 to $100.00.

In the report, Credit Suisse noted, “OXY will demerge its California Resource Co Nov 30th and will start trading ex-div on Nov 17th. Both OXY-W and CRC-W shares have started trading "when issued". In this report, we update our value for OXY by lowering our TP to $100/sh, which is a sum of the two parts. Based on Analyst Day disclosure, we lower the value of CRC that is implicit in our OXY target. We now value CRC in our OXY EV at $12.2bn (at our longer term $80/bbl WTI). Our prior value gave too much upside to the non-booked resource. We like the returns which CRC should generate in its steam floods and waterfloods, even at lower oil prices. Taking cheap energy to extract oil has a good return. However, the disclosed returns on the non-conventional are currently too low for us to ascribe much value. Yes, technology could improve these over time (so too in core of the core shale), but we haircut our overall OXY valuation today. We lower EPS slightly.”

Occidental Petroleum closed on Thursday at $85.61.