This is hopefully a cautious review of the last 50 years of Southwestern Energy.
Southwest Energy is a natural gas exploration team headquartered in Texas HOWEVER, most of their work is in the East Coast of the United States and perhaps they also have some locations of gas/oil properties in the near future located in Canada? SWN reports only having about 900 to 1000 full time employees including both a management team and a board of directors.
What are the most interesting parts of SWN's Stock Timeline?
From 1977 to 2004 the company had a fairly variable and yet stable stock price fluctuating around $1.00 per share. However these years 1977 to 2004 for SWN have also been some of the largest changes on a log or exponential scale. The company is perhaps overly familiar with "huge" changes in "stock price" over these "pre-2004" years.
From 2004 to 2008 Southwestern Energy gained the most value in its history and perhaps some of this growth was questionable as a result the price of the stock fluctuated at an extremely high value of about $40 per share up from a few dollars with the P/E ratio during this time period was about 20.
April 2014 was perhaps one of the most important times in the history of Southwestern Energy. The stock "dropped" to "valuation levels" of the early 1990's. However, the P/E ratio also fell to someplace between 10 and 2 around the year 2017. The financial record for SWN shows "significant" negative "net income" for at least two years in a row of somewhere between 5 to 3 (2015 and 2016?) billion dollars!? With revenues in previous years in the 4 to 3 billion dollar range?
NOTE: The yellow lines are "some estimate" of "how high" or "how low" the company value should be relative to the "vast history".
The company's primary exploration and production activities are in the Appalachian Basin provide mostly "natural gas" and "oil" but mostly "natural gas".
NOTE: Natural gas was the United States' largest source of energy production in 2016, representing 33 percent of all energy produced in the country. Natural gas has been the largest source of electrical generation in the United States since July 2015? However, its difficult to believe that Natural Gas is "electricity" in the US? Or even how this might be related to or compete with hydro electric power (which is much more renewable hydro/solar/wind)?
The United States oil and gas industry is often informally divided into "upstream" (exploration and production), "midstream" (transportation and refining), and "downstream" (distribution and marketing). Petroleum and natural gas share a common upstream (exploration and production) sector, but the midstream and downstream sectors are largely separate.
Most oil fields produce some gas, and vice versa, but the ratio of oil and gas varies considerably. In fields developed to produce oil, the natural gas is in a raw form called associated gas. Some fields, called "dry gas" fields, produce only gas. Of the top ten gas-producing fields in the US, only one, is also among the top ten oil fields. Because most of the fields on the "east coast" are gas that SWN "owns" this suggests maybe a low amount of oil because they are about 90% natural gas and not "oil"?
Interestingly "natural gas" is a different business than "oil" on the East Coast. Most of SWN's facilities are "gas" only with only some "oil" less then 10%... The relative amounts of oil and gas produced vary greatly. Of the top ten natural gas-producing companies in the US, only three were also among the top ten oil producers. Interestingly some of the largest discoveries of Natural Gas have happened recently in the "mid 2000's".
Finally also interesting is that most of the "gas pipelines" in the United States center around 3 main areas. Louisiana, Eastern Texas and the Appalachian Basin where Southwest Energy natural gas exploration facilities are.
Hope this helps and was interesting and useful!
These ideas are open to debate and will hopefully help everyone.
:)