SHEL
Shell just went shopping — and brought a big cart
Shell said yes to a cash-and-stock deal for ARC Resources, a Montney-focused producer with serious acreage in western Canada. The headline number is chunky: about $16.4 billion enterprise value, or $13.6 billion in equity value once you strip out debt and leases.
For ARC holders, the offer works out to C$8.20 in cash plus 0.40247 Shell shares for each share, which pencils out to C$32.80 per share. That’s a 20% premium to ARC’s 30-day volume-weighted average price — not exactly pocket change, even by energy-deal standards.
Why Shell cares
This isn’t Shell buying random barrels for the sake of having a bigger trophy shelf. The company says the deal adds about 370,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day and helps push production growth to 4% through 2030 versus 2025 levels. In other words: more output, more gas, more Canada, more leverage for its LNG ambitions.
A few things investors will want to keep an eye on:
- Shell plans to fund the deal with $3.4 billion in cash and $10.2 billion in shares
- It expects about $250 million in annual synergies within a year of closing
- The purchase adds roughly 2 billion barrels of proved and probable reserves
- The company says its capital spending outlook and shareholder payout policy stay intact
The stock math gets a little sticky
Shell also said it’ll issue about 228 million shares to help pay for the acquisition, which is corporate finance’s version of “yes, but there’s a catch.” The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2026, assuming regulators and shareholders don’t throw a wrench in the works.
Shell shares were already trading lower Monday, down 2.64% at the time of publication. That doesn’t automatically mean the market hates the deal — but big acquisitions tend to make investors squint a little, especially when the check includes a pile of new shares.
Big picture: Shell is doubling down on North American gas and LNG, and it’s doing it with a deal big enough to move the needle. If the synergies show up and the integration stays tidy, this could look smart in hindsight. If not, it’s the kind of mega-deal that keeps finance teams busy and shareholders mildly stressed.