Maple Groove Wealth Planners
Designed Securities Ltd.

Market Research · The value board

Which oil and gas model is cheapest, and which one we would actually buy

One square per company: each runs that company's full model at its default dials, compares the value of a share with the price, and prints the gap as a signed percentage, with the colour running from priciest against its own model to cheapest. Click any square for the detail, and every square links to its full model so you can turn the dials yourself. The rules come from the calculations economists and engineers use to decide whether a project is worth building, applied to a whole company.

45 companies · prices close of 28 August 2026 (a square on another date shows its own in the panel) · all 45 histories checked against audited filings
Every cash history on this board has been hand-checked against the company's own audited annual filings, line by line; each model page names its sources.
The board re-prices itself automatically after each trading day's close. The cash histories behind the squares update as companies file their quarters, so the colours are worth a fresh look after each earnings season.

The board

Click a square, or press Enter on it, for the detail; Escape closes it. Cheapest sits first in each box.

Natural gas12 companies
Oil18 companies
Our pick
Oil sands2 companies
Integrated3 companies
Mixed7 companies
Runner-up
Royalties3 companies

Reading the board

priciest against its modelcheapest against its model
The pink ring, the star and the "Our pick" caption mark the one model Maple Groove would actually buy; a thin dotted ring marks the runner-up.

At these conservative settings most of the sector prices above the model, so green means cheapest relative to the others; only a positive percentage is cheap in absolute terms.

Our pick: Baytex (BTE)

+9.5% versus its model value, rank 4 of 45 on the board; runner-up Vermilion (VET). As of 2026-08-30.

Baytex sold its Texas business in December 2025, paid off its debt, and now runs a focused Canadian oil producer with cash in the bank. It is the only company on our board trading below what its cash history says it is worth, and it has beaten its own production promises for two straight quarters while buying back 9% of its shares. Vermilion is the runner-up: the biggest free-cash yield on the board, debt falling fast, and a fifth straight annual dividend increase.

Why this one

  • Intrinsic value: Baytex is the only company on the board priced below its model value, and the discount is confirmed by current results, with $128 million of free cash flow in the second quarter of 2026 alone against a market value near $4.6 billion.
  • Balance sheet: the December 2025 Eagle Ford sale left Baytex with net cash of $566 million at 30 June 2026, the strongest balance sheet on our shortlist.
  • Payout discipline: the payout ratio is 29% of true cash, yet shareholders received $378 million of buybacks, about 9% of all shares, plus a quarterly dividend in the eight months after the sale.
  • Management delivery and MD&A tone: production beat the top of guidance for two consecutive quarters, and 2026 guidance was raised twice, to about 71,000 boe per day, with no increase in capital spending.
  • Outside research: eleven analysts rate Baytex a buy with an average target of $7.73, about 17% above the share price, and Simply Wall St's August 2026 narrative pegs fair value at $7.57.
  • Pro metrics: a second-quarter operating netback of $55.33 per boe, 3% to 5% organic growth guidance and an 11.5 year proved plus probable reserve life describe a healthy business, not a melting one.
  • Governance: an orderly internal CEO succession, with the chief operating officer since 2021 taking over in May 2026, and two new independent directors added in July 2026 point to board renewal, not turmoil.

Watch-outs

  • Baytex no longer hedges its oil after mid 2026, so cash flow swings with the WTI oil price in both directions.
  • Heavy oil sells at a discount to WTI, and a wider Canadian differential would cut netbacks quickly.
  • Its roughly 11 year reserve life is the shortest on our shortlist, so continued drilling success matters more here than for its peers.
  • The model's history still includes the sold Texas assets, so the headline cheapness overstates the go-forward base; our case leans on the post-sale quarters, not the history.

Cheap squares that failed the screens

  • POU: Cheap-looking growth story, but capital spending runs far ahead of cash flow until the 2027 rebuild lands, and the board shows a 697% payout of true cash today.
  • TOU: A quality operator whose share price already pays management's $4.00 AECO gas deck in full; the audited-history floor sits near $24 against a $62 share price.
  • AAV: True cash is negative because Entropy's carbon-capture build-out is consolidated into its spending, so the square measures the project, not the gas business.
  • ARX: Acquired by Shell plc; the takeover closed and the shares were delisted from the TSX on 4 September 2026, so there is nothing left to buy. The square shows its final close.
  • WCP: Not a bad business, but the model's history predates the Veren merger and understates current cash power, so its square cannot be trusted in either direction.
  • PXT: The fat cash yield is Colombia country risk with a balance sheet doubled by the Frontera deal and a payout above 100% of true cash.
  • HWX: Mid rebuild with a 131% payout and a 1.3% free-cash yield; the price pays for growth that has not arrived yet.
  • BNE: Leveraged microcap whose cheap five-year average hides three straight years of falling cash flow; net debt rose through 2025 to 1.6x EBITDA, refinanced at 10.5% on B-rated second lien notes, and shareholders have seen no dividend since 2020, so free cash services lenders, not owners.
  • TAL: One field in remote Peru shipped by river barge: 2025 guidance was missed twice, the dividend was suspended in November 2025, drilling sat paused for 18 months while the erosion project fell behind after a contractor termination, and only one analyst still covers it.
  • FEC: Frontera sold its Colombian oil business to Parex in June 2026 and returned US$430 million to shareholders, so the cash history behind its square describes assets it no longer owns; the company is now infrastructure, not exploration.

Sources

Watch how this call is doing, updated each trading day.

Selected by Claude's research pass at the 28 August 2026 close, re-confirmed against the full board with the cheaper newcomers examined and disqualified, and reviewed and endorsed, pick and runner-up, by Trevor Lawrence, CFP® CIM®

How the board is coloured

The arithmetic

Every square runs the same model its full page runs, at the default dials that page opens with: count the real cash the company kept each year after every bill was paid and every well was drilled, average it, grow it at the company's default rate for ten years and a long-run rate after that, bring every future dollar back to today at the default required return, take off the net debt and the clean-up cost, and divide by the shares. That value per share against the share price is the signed percentage printed on the square. Tourmaline's square likewise runs its model page's own defaults, which start from management's published plan re-priced to that page's default gas price. Some model pages also offer a start built on management's guided plan; the board never uses it, every square stays on the audited-history defaults so the squares remain comparable.

The rank scale

The squares are coloured by rank, not by the raw percentage: all 45 models are lined up from priciest against their own model to cheapest, and each square takes its colour from its position in that line. The scale runs from deep red for the priciest to bright green for the cheapest; in colour-blind friendly mode the same ranks run from vermilion to blue instead. The percentage is always printed on the square, so the colour never carries the story alone.

The quality screens the pick applies

The cheapest square is not automatically the pick. Before naming one, five questions get asked:

  • Intrinsic value: the model value against the price, at the default dials and under harsher ones.
  • Balance sheet: net debt against the cash the business actually produces, and how it holds up in a weak year.
  • Payout discipline: whether dividends and buybacks are paid from real cash rather than borrowed.
  • Management execution and MD&A tone: whether the plans in past reports actually happened, and whether the reporting stays straight when the news is bad.
  • Outside research: analyst targets and third-party work as a sanity check, never the driver.

What would change the colours

Prices move every trading day, and a new filing changes the history, the net debt or the share count, so the percentages will drift. The colours are relative: one company re-rating moves other squares even when nothing about them changed. And every default dial is a judgement, so open any full model and turn the dials to see how quickly a square would change colour.

Maple Groove Wealth Planners · prepared by Trevor Lawrence, Financial Advisor · every number on this board is computed live from the same data the model pages it links to run on. For education, not investment advice.

This page illustrates a research process and is provided for general information only. It is not investment advice and not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Figures are as at the dates shown and will change. Shares carry risk, including the possible loss of capital. Please speak with a qualified advisor about your own circumstances.

Every model on the board

The dock opens on the Value Board; each company and product model also lives at its own address.