Halcon Resources Corp (HK): Billionaire Ken Griffin’s Citadel Bought More

Citadel Investment Group, a large hedge fund managed by billionaire Ken Griffin, now owns over 18 million shares of Halcon Resources Corp (NYSE:HK) according to a filing with the SEC. Halcon is an oil and gas exploration and production company with a focus on U.S. shale plays including the Bakken, Eagle Ford, and Utica. We track 13F filings from Citadel and other hedge funds as part of our work developing investment strategies (for example, we have found that the most popular small cap stocks among hedge funds earn an average excess return of 18 percentage points per year) and our database shows that the fund owned a little over 12 million shares of Halcon as of the beginning of this year (see more of Griffin’s stock picks).

Halcon Resources Corp (NYSE:HK)’s operating revenues more than doubled last year compared to 2011, but production costs were up as well and SGA expenses grew at a very fast rate. As a result, the company actually reported an operating loss for 2012 compared to operating profits of $20 million the year before. Interest expenses were higher as well. Halcon’s troubles occurred despite the fact that 70% of the company’s production by boe was crude oil, which has seen a more favorable market recently than natural gas, and that that commodity supplied about 90% of revenues. In terms of cash flow, however, the story was better: depreciation accounts for all of Halcon Resources Corp (NYSE:HK)’s net losses, and cash flow from operations soared to almost $120 million in 2012. This was well short of the $1.2 billion in capital expenditures, and even more than that figure in acquisition, that Halcon made during the year.

The stock is down 40% in the last year as the market has reacted to these developments, and the most recent data shows that 14% of the float is held short. In addition, hedge funds other than Citadel have showed little interest in Halcon: at the end of December, the only other funds we track which had more than $10 million invested in the company were Farallon Capital (find Farallon’s favorite stocks) and billionaire Israel Englander’s Millennium Management (check out more stocks Millennium owned). Wall Street analysts are more optimistic about Halcon’s prospects, however. At a market cap of $2.5 billion, Halcon trades at 9 times forward earnings estimates with analyst expectations over the following years implying a five-year PEG ratio of only 0.5.