LONDON, Jan. 11 (UPI) — After selling of interest in a lucrative Ugandan oil basin, Africa-focused explorer Tullow Oil said it was tooled for production growth despite a rough year.
« 2016 was another tough year for the oil and gas sector and for Tullow, » CEO Aidan Heavey said in a statement.
The company last year was plagued by equipment and legal issues at some of its prime holdings in Africa. The compounding strains of lower crude oil prices in 2016 forced the company to cut its spending plans , though in October it secured $345 million from lenders to help cover some of its debt, support it said would clear up some space for refinancing in 2017.
Tullow this week secured $900 million after selling a stake in the lucrative Lake Albert development in Uganda to French supermajor Total. Heavey said that deal should be seen as vindication that its focus on African basins is starting to draw wider attention in the industry.
With lender support and many of its recent difficulties in the rear-view mirror, the CEO said the company was in a position now to exploit improving conditions in the energy sector.
« We took action early to deal with lower oil prices and we are now benefitting from the reset and restructured business that we created, » he said.
West African production last year was around 65,500 barrels of oil per day, in line with its most recent expectations. For 2017, the company said it expected its working interests in the region would yield between 78,000 and 85,000 bpd.
Tullow’s operations at the offshore Jubilee oil field, one of its more promising holdings, were restricted last year by technical issues at a gas compression system and the company in early April said part of the so-called Kwame Nkrumah floating production storage and offloading facility positioned off the Ghanaian coast was damaged and no longer functioning as designed
Remediation work continues and the company expects enough progress so that Jubilee will contribute the bulk of what Tullow expects for production this year.
In administrative moves, Tullow said it was reshuffling its top management as Heavey, the company’s founder, starts a slow transition toward retirement.

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European financial technology firm iZettle has raised 60 million euros ($63.4 million) to help fund a recent acquisition and fuel expansion of its new lending product.
The Swedish start-up is a rival to U. S. firm Square, which is run by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
It provides small point-of-sale terminals that connect to apps on a smartphone or tablet allowing small businesses to accept debit and credit cards. But the company has also been growing new areas of revenue and last year introduced Advance – a small business loan service. It allows companies to get access to capital from iZettle which is paid back as a percentage of the firm’s daily card payments.
The 60 million euro round is made of up of equity from existing investors as well as debt funding from U. S.-based Victory Park Capital. Jacob de Geer, founder and CEO of iZettle, said the debt portion of the funding was to fuel the Advance lending product it offers.
« IZettle is moving more into becoming a one-stop-shop for commerce, » de Geer told CNBC via telephone, explaining how the start-up moved from point-of-sale terminals into new products.
Advance has seen « astronomical » growth, de Geer said, after launching the product last August, but added that the company was not releasing figures as it was still a young product.
IZettle also announced the appointment of new Chief Financial Office Maria Hedengren.
« We have been going for over five years, but the company is at a stage where it’s time to grow up even more, to strengthen the core management of the company, to facilitate and enable us to – in 18 to 24 months – to decide on the next step, » de Geer said.
« You see consolidation going on, you see incumbents looking for ways to update their organization, the IPO market is heating up. There are so many different options we need to prepare for.  »
When CNBC asked if the hiring of a CFO meant iZettle was preparing to go public or be acquired, de Geer said he had not decided on the direction of the company in that sense.
« There are a couple of opportunities, one could be to go public or continue to standalone, or another one could be to merge with another company. We don’t have a set agenda where we want to take the company from that perspective, » de Geer told CNBC.
The Swedish firm has begun to become acquisitive too. In September, iZettle bought Intelligentpos , a start-up that turns iPads into sales terminals, which targets more medium-sized enterprises. De Geer said he could not comment on any planned acquisitions but is « constantly scaling the market for complimentary services.  »
De Geer said that iZettle hit its financial targets in 2016, without giving specific numbers as the books have not been closed. The company’s main region is Europe while it also has operations in Brazil and Mexico.
Its closest rival is Square in the U. S. which offers very similar services. For now, iZettle is focused on Europe but is not ruling out expanding to the U. S. if it can meet the right requirements.
« We are keeping our eyes on the U. S. and given the pretty big change that’s ongoing in terms of exchanging the old swipe terminals for chip card terminals, it would make sense to make a move into the U. S., » De Geer told CNBC.
« We have also said however, going into that market with strong competitors like Square would require significant amounts of funding but also, I think, you would need a strong distribution partner or general partner in the U. S. If we can tick those boxes we are definitely up for the U. S., but until we do that I wouldn’t say it’s our primary focus. We have a much smoother expansion path in Europe. « 

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There’s a big difference coming into the fourth quarter of 2016 earnings for banks compared with the prior three — both share prices and sentiment have improved drastically for the sector, so there’s more room for disappointment than there was for all of 2016.
Before the election, the average valuation for the big five banks with both investment and commercial businesses was 1 times price to tangible book — or the banks’ market price in relation to the value reported on their balance sheets. That same measure now stands at 1.3 times. Over the coming quarters, banks need to deliver stronger earnings to justify that higher multiple, and Friday is the first major test of investors’ elevated enthusiasm toward the sector.
On that note, the key things to watch are:
Given the extraordinary change in sentiment since the presidential election, there will be a disproportionate focus on management commentary, not least in terms of what they expect from a Donald Trump presidency in terms of deregulation and tax changes, but also more broadly because most banks will be announcing their 2017 guidance. (Next week from World Economic Forum in Davos , CNBC will broadcast interviews with the CEOs JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citigroup .)
Broadly speaking, the analyst community remains positive on banks, though they expect more steady share price appreciation based on earnings growth, as opposed to the huge gains due to multiple expansion that investors saw in November and early December. But there now appears to be preference for commercial banks based on the fact that markets have already seen rates improve over investment banks, which stand to benefit from deregulation and tax changes that are yet to arrive.
Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo kick off earnings on Friday, with Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup following next week.

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The U. S. dollar is higher against other North American currencies in New York trading.
It’s worth 1.33 Canadian dollars, up from late Tuesday.
And the dollar is trading at 21.87 Mexican pesos, also up from late Tuesday.
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The Obamas leave the White House Jan. 20, but they won’t be going far. See photos of their new Kalorama house, inside and out.

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Local governments routinely spend resources on infrastructure they don’t really need or want simply because available funds are sitting in a federal account and are therefore viewed as “free,” according to Sen. Jeff Flake’s new edition of the Wastebook.
That’s one takeaway from a litany of transportation and engineering boondoggles highlighted by the Arizona Republican Tuesday. Flake is the de facto successor to Sen. Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican who created the first Wastebook and was known by his peers in the Senate as “Dr. No” when he retired in 2014.
Among the transportation and infrastructure examples highlighted by Flake in the latest Wastebook are the “two federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants totaling more than $65 million” supporting a streetcar that no one seems to want.
“I’ve never been on a car with more than 25 other people; it’s usually about a dozen, in a car that can seat 60 and carry up to 195,” a journalist observed, and many passengers are homeless people just looking for shelter, who often “got a little bit rough with the operators” and left it smelling foul, according to the Wastebook.
Low streetcar ridership notwithstanding, Atlanta, Georgia Mayor Kasim Reed bragged that “there have been five rounds of TIGER and we’ve won two. And in the two rounds that we won, we got the largest grants.”
Up north, in the Hamptons of New York, federal officials replaced natural dunes with a sandbag structure that was immediately eroded.
“The Army Corps came in, the funds were available, and this is what they proposed,” said East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell. “We wanted no walkways at all, and we certainly didn’t want the walkways they designed,” but the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and “the [Army Corps of Engineers] insisted that they be there.”
The chief of planning and policy for the North Atlantic Division of the Army Corps said “we were asked to do this work. We don’t just go places and do things,” according to the Wastebook.
An East Hampton resident said “it was disgusting. Half the beach was gone, and there’s this pipe spewing who knows what.” A coastal geologist said “the project will likely result in significant degradation of the public beach, while providing little protection for property,” he said.
In California, federal officials spent $3.1 billion for a bullet train whose first segment was supposed to be completed in 2018, yet no track has been laid. The train was initially planned to drop passengers off in a dusty pistachio field so the project could be called “shovel ready” under President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus program.
That turned out not so easy to do, and taxpayers are consequently now paying to keep construction equipment idle, even as most Californians say they don’t want the train.
“Despite the billions of dollars provided by the federal government, the rail system is struggling to attract capital and is $43.5 billion short. Private investors have shown little interest in the project. Financial support from the state has also been lagging, in part because the federal government waived the requirement for the state to make an upfront dollar-for-dollar match. The unusual agreement allows California to spend federal dollars first before putting up any of its own money,” Wastebook said.
The foreign company building the train said on its bid application that it “will require large government subsidies for years to come,” but California deleted this warning when the proposal was posted online, according to Wastebook.
In Florida, federal dollars bankrolled “golf tournaments, a music and wine festival, holiday wine glasses, and a private boat cruise” by a barely-accountable independent government arm called the Lake-Sumter Metropolitan Planning Organization, which gets $100 million in federal and state funding annually.
Federal money even covers staff who often don’t show up for work. An auditor also found that “mismanagement of grants has occurred consistently.” “I’m unapologetic,” the organization’s director said, claiming that it’s “legally an independent agency,” even though it gets its money from other governments.
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