Renowned activist investor, David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital has increased his holding in CONSOL Energy Inc. (NYSE:CNX) by a massive 43.8%, according to two recent forms filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The current stake comprises 29.61 million shares held indirectly through Greenlight’s affiliated funds, and amasses almost 13% of the $4.04 billion energy company’s outstanding stock.
The New York-based Greenlight Capital has more than $12.3 billion worth of regulatory assets under management. The fund is renowned for its short position on Lehman Brothers before the bank collapsed. According to the fund’s most recent 13F filing, the market value of its public equity portfolio stood at $7.79 billion and 43% of that value was invested in the technology sector.
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Greenlight initiated a stake in CONSOL Energy Inc. (NYSE:CNX) in the third quarter of 2014 and has been adding to the position ever since. The Pennsylvania company, which is also one of the largest natural gas producers in the U.S, has suffered recently owing to lower energy prices and is in the midst of a restructuring program, which revolves around decreasing the company’s exposure to coal. In this regard CONSOL Energy Inc. (NYSE:CNX) recently sold a stake in CNX Coal Resources.
The company recently squashed the hopes of analysts, who expected a profit in the vicinity of $10.4 million for the June quarter, by announcing that it expects to post a loss for the second quarter besides writing down its conventional shallow oil and gas assets owing to slumping NYMEX forward prices. CONSOL is still expecting to hit the production targets for the June quarter that it had previously relayed in April. These involved gas production of 71 billion cubic feet and coal production of 7.1 million to 7.73 million tons. The financial results for the June quarter will be released tomorrow.
So far this year CONSOL Energy Inc. (NYSE:CNX)’s stock price has collapsed by more than 48%, while losses for the last 12 months amount to almost 57%. In comparison, the oil & gas exploration and production industry has managed to produce gains of 2.45% on a year-to-date basis while its one year loss is over 23%. Professional money managers had a mixed outlook towards the company. At the end of the first quarter a total of 20 funds among those that we track, had invested $2.16 billion in the company, compared to 25 firms with $2.0 billion invested at the end of the previous quarter. The increase in investment came despite an 18% drop in CONSOL Energy Inc. (NYSE:CNX)’s stock price in the first three months however, which shows that funds rather bullishly bought shares, despite the number of them with long positions in the stock decreasing by five. Mason Hawkins‘ Southeastern Asset Management was the largest such stockholder of CONSOL among these firms, and recently went activist on it after increasing its holding to 48.21 million shares, representing 21.1% of the company’s outstanding stock.
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