The Charge of the Upstream Brigade

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Acquisition

Rode ConocoPhillips.

"Forward, the Upstream Brigade!

"Charge for the dividend!" they said:

Into the valley of layoffs

Rode ConocoPhillips.

"Forward, the Upstream Brigade!"

Was there a man dismay'd?

Not tho' the employee knew

Someone had blunder'd:

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and to deep water, say goodbye:

Into the valley of layoffs

Rode ConocoPhillips.

$40 oil to right of them,

$40 oil to left of them,

$40 oil in front of them

Volley'd and thunder'd;

Storm'd at with COST imposition,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Acquisition,

Into the mouth of layoffs

Rode ConocoPhillips

Flash'd all their IDPs bare,

Flash'd as they turn'd in air,

Servicing the dividend there,

Charging a market bear, while

All the world wonder'd:

Plunged in the oily-smoke

Right thro' $30-a-share they broke;

Reel'd from the markets

Shatter'd and sunder'd.

Then they rode back, but not

Not the ConocoPhillips explorers.

$30 oil to right of them,

$30 oil to left of them,

$30 oil behind them

Volley'd and thunder'd;

Storm'd at with more COST and stripper-well,

While "fours," "threes" and now "twos" fell,

They that had fought so well

Came thro' the jaws of Acquisition

Back from the mouth of Hell,

All that was left of them,

Left of ConocoPhillips.

When can their glory fade?

O the wild charge they made!

All the world wondered.

Honor the charge they made,

Honor the Upstream Brigade,

Noble two thousand.

Comment! It's anonymous!

11 replies (most recent on top)

Well the dividend is part of has help put us in a hole. At the spin off COP kept the full dividend ($0.66) of the integrated company and P66 added a $0.20 dividend ($0.10 COP equivalent since 1 P66 share for each COP share). Since that time P66 has increased it's dividend 180% to $0.56 and COP has only increase the dividend 12% to $0.74. If some better planning had been done around setting the initial dividend (i.e., lower the COP dividend and increasing the initial P66 dividend) both companies could have been increasing the dividend at a normal pace and COP could have had almost an additional $2B of cash to work with. The dividend also make it very difficult for COP to do a stock acquisition of another company now since would be carrying out high dividend rate into any acquisition.

Also the $0.01 a share increase in dividends during this down cycle in price was a poor decision. This increase is almost the equivalent of what it would have taken to give all employees their normal 3% annual increase or saved $55MM a year worth of job reductions.

An excellent literary effort! Thanks for giving me something to smile about.

With apologies to Tennyson, this is simply OUTSTANDING!!! One thing is for sure--- if this person gets laid off, he/she has a stellar future in the arts!!!

This is an underrated post. Well done.

anonymous 140574, what are you trying to even say?

Individuals deployed to Iraq signed up for service as military service is not mandatory. The chip on the shoulder of the service people is not mandatory.

Classic example of mismanagement, leading the troops to a perfect ambush (twice). A lot of good people will lose their jobs, but they will continue to do great things with other companies. Things could definently be worst. You could be deployed to Iraq reading about people (making 5 times more than you) complain about their jobs. Things are not that bad.

2,000 will be in the first day - try more on the lines of 6,000 and another 2,000 quietly gone over the remainder part of 2015. The company is clear they want to get the headcount under 10,000 to compete as a independent vs integrated business model.

The casualties in COP will be far more than 2,000. Due to a leadership that is even more foolish, and further away from the frontlines.

Impressive!

The Charge of the Light Brigade

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Thread regarding ConocoPhillips layoffs

The Charge of the Upstream Brigade

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