One Energy Stock to Avoid

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Cheniere Energy Profile

Sources: Capital IQ (a division of Standard & Poor's), Yahoo! Finance, and Motley Fool CAPS.

This Week's Pitch :
Cheniere Energy, Inc has been very volatile the last two years with some 50-100% short term swings. The foray up above ten has been a tough climb with hedge funds and Cheniere trading punches on how some debt is structured between Cheniere Energy and its affiliates. The debt load on Cheniere Energy held it back hard during the peak of the recession. I won't take a stand on the accounting disagreements. My current downthumb is based on the 17% spike Cheniere Energy had today, (I missed its peak near 25%).

The spike was a result of announcement that "U.S. Department of Energy's decision to grant a subsidiary of the natural gas company's general partnership authorization to export domestically produced liquefied natural gas."

Cheniere Energy would be the first one granted this ability, two other company's have pending applications. The approval is great news for Cheniere Energy, the problem I have is that the target date to refit the facility is 2015. While NG prices in the US remain about 40% below some other countries and the new methods to extract it from shale give the US a 100 year plus buffer, Cheniere is cash poor currently and the benefits will not occur quickly enough to support the share price rise. I expect a decay back down as the time to benefit sinks in. Another possibility is for Cheniere Energy to use the spike to do some dilutive stock issues.

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