Posts from the ‘Gastar (GST)’ Category

Sep 15

Week 115: On Purges and Renaissance

Portfolio Performance

See the end of the post for the current make up of my portfolio and the last four weeks of trades.

Recent Developments

I ended the month on a high note, at a new all-time high after gains this week from Gastar, Tronox, and Entrec, and notable gains over the last month from Axia, Novus, Ainsworth, Equal and Monarch Financial.

Gastar’s rise took place after the company announced a major asset purchase in the Hunton I wasn’t as enthused about the purchase as the market because I didn’t see the purchase price, which worked out to a little under $100,000 per flowing boe, as particularly cheap, but I understand that the move further consolidates Gastar’s position in the Hunton, and that the news that the company’s fifth well was producing 160 bopd on 1/3 of the well lateral was another positive datapoint to the field’s potential.

In the case of Tronox, apparently there is some speculation that Huntsman may be about to make a play on the company. This was reported on SeekingAlpha.

I’m not really sure what drove the share price of Entrec on Friday though I think its more of a sector move. The stock had been floating down on low volume for a couple of weeks. It was anything but low volume on the move up on Friday, trading over 1.6 million shares. Read more

Apr 28

8 Comments

Week 95: Setting the table (hopefully)

Portfolio Performance

See the end of the post for a full portfolio breakdown.

Update

Since my last update I exited Radian Group, Arkansas Best and MBIA. The sales reflect a desire to redeploy cash in other opportunities as well as some lingering concerns about each company.

With Arkansas Best, its my uncertainty about the outcome of union negotiations. The negotiations were extended this week for a second time. An escalation to a strike does not seem out of the question. If a strike occurs the stock price may or may not get hit; while a positive resolution could be quite good for the stock in the long-run (see my original post about how Arkansas Best would benefit from a contract structured in a similar manner to the one that YRC Worldwide operates with) the uncertainty may drive panic selling. I’ve decided to wait this one out for a few weeks and see how it plays out. Read more

Apr 22

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A look at the Gastar’s Hunton Play

I took a position in Gastar (GST) as part of a basket of stocks I bought to play the natural gas price recovery (which I wrote about here).

Soon after I added the company released news of a transaction with Chesapeake to acquire a significant amount of acreage in Western Oklahoma. At the same time they unveiled that their secretive mid-continent play was the Hunton in Oklahoma (not an unfamiliar name to us Equal Energy bagholders), and that the acreage being acquired from Chesapeake would expand their position in the Hunton significantly. As it was, I bought more.

This weekend I listened to the Gastar presentation at the IPAA Oil And Gas Investment Symposium and I was happy to hear how well their second Hunton well is performing. Read more