Is Sandridge Permian Trust Worth a Long-Term Investment?

Source: Eric Kounce via commons.wikimedia.org.

Sandridge Permian Trust's distribution yield of almost 19% is enough to make just about every income investor say, "this is too good to be true." In the case of royalty trusts, that can very much be the case. With Sandridge Energy expected to drill the last well as part of the trust agreement by the end of the year, the Sandridge Permian Trust will go into a state of perpetual decline until Sandridge dissolves the trust in 2031. So, the question for long-term investors is if they can make a decent return on the trust through its distributions before the party is over. To better understand this, let's run through a series of scenarios that will help give a clearer picture of what to expect from this Trust over the long term.

If you are looking at a royalty trust for the first time and are not quite sure what they are and how they operate, check out this quick primer. 

It's not a stock, so change your mind-set
A big trap for investors is to think that a royalty trust is a stock. It's not. Over the long term, share prices in a royalty trust should perpetually be in decline as the reserve base for that royalty trust is diminished. The only way a share price can go up is if the value of that commodity goes up faster than the reserve declines. So, when making an investment in an royalty trust, you should base your decision solely on whether the distributions that the trust will exceed the price you pay for a share. 

The Sandridge Permian Trust is quite possibly the most direct way an individual investor can make an investment on oil in the Permian Basin. Unlike the other trusts that have been issued by Sandridge Energy, the Permian trust is predominately an oil trust. Its current production is more than 85% oil, compared to the Sandridge Mississippian Trust I and Sandridge Mississippian Trust II , which produce about 36% and 45% oil, respectively. 

So, in this specific case, we are making the bet that oil from the wells in this particular part of the Permian basin will generate a return over the life of the wells greater than our original investment, and hopefully that return will be superior to other investment opportunities. 

Breaking down the return scenarios
In reality, we can't really predict the long-term return of a royalty trust because, frankly, we have no way of knowing what the price of oil will be in the future. Instead, we can look at the physical characteristics of the wells and how that will impact the distribution over time. Today, Sandridge estimates that the Permian Trust has about 14.2 million barrels of oil equivalent that can be extracted based on today's oil prices. Based on the most recent production numbers, the trust has a reserve to production ratio of a little more than 8.5 years. For the trust to last, until its terminal date in 2031, though, that would mean today's production would need to decline 9% on average to make the reserve last the entire duration of the trust.

Using this decline estimate and the current annual distribution, we can project a rough estimate of the trust's longtime return. Let's assume the trust's distribution declines at the same rate as production and that when the trust is liquidated at the end of its life, you get 10% of the current value of the trust. Using this assumption, the estimated return over the life of the trust would look something like this:

Source: 10-K via sec.gov, author's calculations.

So, based on those assumptions, and were the price oil to remain constant throughout the life of the trust, then you could potentially double your money over this 17-year period. Of course, there are likely to be some changes on oil prices over this time, so here's what those returns would look like if oil prices were to swing 25% in either direction. 

Based on these projections, an optimistic return on the trust would be an annualized compounded return of 5.51%. While that sounds pretty healthy, it doesn't quite meet the annualized return of the S&P 500 -- since 1871, when records were kept, the S&P has an inflation-adjusted compounded annual growth rate of 6.86%. Also, the downside risk is that over that 17-year period, a sharp decline in oil prices would lead to a compounded annual return of only 2.53%, which isn't a whole lot better than inflation today.

What a Fool believes
If you were to invest in the Sandridge Permian Trust and hold it until its liquidation, it's very likely you won't lose money. So, if you are looking to protect your principal over a 15-year period, then Perhaps the Sandridge Permian trust isn't a bad idea. At the same time, any upside in the trust is completely reliant on oil prices increasing considerably over the next several years. If history has taught us anything, it's that there is no real way for us to know this. So, investors who want to play it safe shouldn't count on oil prices to rise. Based on this, there are probably better opportunities out there.