How does the population of the energy capital of the world know that SWN is sinking at the hands of its CEO, yet the Board does not?
I fled SWN post 2016 layoff. Not a week goes by that I do not hear someone new on the street and in the industry disparage Way as clueless and the one who is destroying SWN.
Way remains an idiot. CHK market cap $700MM more than SWN.
Well and the natural layoffs that would follow. .. might even be more devasting in a way.
There’s a chance that if the Fayetteville spun off ; some Houston people might keep a job ( 1/2) .. since essentially no one else works the Fayetteville.
If the Appalachian divisions are bought by another active operator; I would suspect almost no office personnel would survive but a good number of field employees would ...
Seems clear this is the plan.
You certainly would remove Way if you wanted an ongoing entity .. so leave him and helps on say, look if you buy us out, it will be so easy to bring more value than current management.
The CFO - apparently is decent; even with his less than stellar selection of companies like sand ridge to work for..
Corp development guy is from banking world; so maybe that helps
COO is one that doesn’t make sense he’s from a failed company.. but maybe he’s there to just be sure way doesn’t do something stupid
Till the posts in this thread, I didn’t think about the obvious conclusion of selling the whole company, not just Fayetteville .. it brings clarity !
Definitely brought in to clean things up and then sell the company.
Brought in to facilitate a buy out. Pay down debt with Fayetteville sale. Books look pretty good for a takeover.
Does anyone else think some of the executive VP types could have been hired to replace way ... sort of swn palace coup de tat ?
I didn't conclude with anyone. I didn't even collude with anyone. If I did it would have been uuuuge. It would have been the s-xiest most beautiful collusion that you could ever imagine. I would have been the best at it. UUUUUGE
Yeah, I had lunch with Donald Trump. He didn’t conclude with th Russians.
The goats could also be used as part of the ritual to join the ELT “circle of trust”. This is what we call stacked pay potential! Snake, your V+ idea is just what we need!
I actually had lunch with 'ol BW today...charming fella. We were enjoying some of his specially brewed chocolate cinammon tea. He even shared some of his organic creamer with me, processed from grass-fed goats. That's when it hit me. I posited that to help reduce non-personnel costs we should acquire goats to handle lawn maintenance around our campus and get rid of the landscaping crews. He stared at me with those icy blue eyes as he wiped off a little creamer from his upper lip and said, "Snake, now that's a V+ idea! Haters keep coming up with this nonsense about me stepping down or getting rid of the free drinks. But your idea is pure gold, you need to own it!" So here I am now hooking up my trailer to my CNG-run F250, headed towards Cleveland to meet a swell beekeeper that's made me a helluva deal on some goats he's having trouble with. See y'all next week and expect to have fresh goat creamer at the coffee bar!
~Snakebyte
Now ALL PROPERTIES not just Fayetteville, unsellable now, securing note. Just kicking tire forward a year or so.
Yes, there were previous members of the Board and management that had a hand in past decisions. Way was pounding the table with the rest of them, so he gets NO pass on that. Just like everything else, he tries to duck and weave and not have any responsibility for things that do not go according to plan.
He's a shyster and snake oil salesman. He sells "energy" and "words". Not good at anything else.
Certainly our division , back in the day was told to Own a problem. There is some truth to the decisions made being somewhat from a previous group.. but well over 2 years in : its yours.
Not that the herd mentality is correct, but there is routine confusion amongst oil/ gas “money people” about what swn is doing / what they will do ... and they are bringing in a management team from EP that was so bad they were all in mass removed and replaced by there biggest investor - Apollo .
This does probably buy a year — expect a year of torture layoffs, re organizations , new strategy , business double speak .
I hope the morale is not too bad at swn
Last two responses are spot on!
He was here running the same assets, approving the same acquisitions (including New Ventures crap that reported to him) and deciding to do nothing when we in a position of strength.
Last time I checked BW has been here since 2011. He has no problem accepting credit and accolades for that period of time and the bonuses and promotions he received. He likes to blame those that came before him for all of the problems we have today but hasn’t don’t a thing about them since he took over besides spew buzzwords. He also forgets he was in the room as those very decisions he now derides were being made.
I wonder how that crow is going to taste when he has to talk about the layoffs that are about to happen, a few short years after he so arrogantly said it would never happen again while he was in charge.
Actually you are incorrect. He was involved in the transaction and the Board along with him had the opportunity to delay the financing arrangements but BW and the Board decided that things were so good they accelerated the debt which is why the FS assets are now mortgaged. As BW likes to say to others when he is deflecting responsibility , “You need to own this “. It is high time he owns something such as a job elsewhere.
You guys are clueless. BW inherited these assets, and the debt. He has to either reduce debt or grow Ebitda. If someone else was the CEO, they would have the same challenge.
It’s a pretty good sign the board is just as clueless as him, otherwise they would have sent him packing a long time ago. If we are lucky PWC will identify the ELT as the real problem at our company and start the next event with them.