The Origin Energy Ltd (ASX: ORG) share price is up 3.5% to $7.15 today despite the electricity retailer and oil & liquefied natural gas giant releasing no specific news to the market.
Despite today's share price rise the stock is still down around 25% over the past year on the back of a terrible final quarter of 2018 for global oil prices.
As a supplier of gas and electricity to Australian households Origin has also been vulnerable to government intervention via price reforms and changes to the National Energy Policy.
In FY 2018 Origin reported an adjusted profit of $838 million, which translated into underlying earnings per share from continuing operations of 47.7 cents. However, debt remains a big issue as it still stood at $6.5 billion even at the end of fiscal 2018, even after $1.6 billion in asset sales over FY 2018.
Over the medium-term the direction of the Origin share price is likely to track that of the oil prices, as we saw with today's small bump.
