Waited to see if Ryan would touch on the next ECO. But nothing like that in his speech, and we have a lot to do with Alaska and other growth opportunities. So I feel like the axe is put away until he next big dip in oil. Feels nice to be generating a bunch of cash and returning it to investors.
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My impression (actual employee:manager numbers would be insightful) is also that COP is a bit top heavy now, but apparently laying off managers and supervisors can have some less obvious negative impacts.
Laying off someone in a leadership role can cause more hardship for subordinates. Depending on the person, the worker left may not adapt well, and you can end up losing not just the manager/supervisor, but unexpectedly the team members below them too. Some subordinates who stay may end up with a case of "presenteeism" too, which is probably rampant enough already.
I think transition for supervisors and managers will come more naturally through attrition, promotion, or phase out out by moving workers to other groups. As much as I hate to say it, firing someone in management should probably be avoided unless they're a real liability.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4142914-conocophillips-management-juicing-returns
Regardless of oil price, COP still has too many in the wrong skill sets and too much duplication and worthless process and initiatives.... and too much management. Until they fix the excess management, they won’t solve the overhiring due to empire building.
L48 growth could balance out GA cost. Then you would be just looking at slight adjustment from combining headquarters. Ryan predicted we would be back to pre Cenovous and San Juan production level in 3 years. It was really the production drop from sales that threw our GA per barrel out of wack. I think between growth and combining headquarters (slight ECO), maybe the change does not need to be drastic. The current barrel price allows them to take there time. We are far removed from the really scarey times where we had 30B$ in debt and almost 20,000 employees. We are in line to have debt at 15B$ by 2019 and head count of 11000. We will also shoot to have production back to levels before the sale. When you put that in perspective with a structured high 40 profitability, plus sitting in 60-70 range... We get back to printing cash...
So its not that we don't have to stay diligent, but what we have accomplished in a few years is phenomenal. So kudos to fellow employees to going through a rough downturn. I think at this point, I would be more concerned about inflation and no over hiring new head count to accomplish goals.
The ECO changes still need to happen. We need to behave in the good times like we did in the bad. GA bloat is killing the bottom line.