Antero’s stock price performance last 12 months – click for larger version
We spotted a press release from Antero Resources which says, in essence, “We’re working on it.” What are they working on? Antero’s leadership is working on a way to boost the stock price. The press release begins this way: “Antero Resources announced today that the Company and its Board of Directors are working with its financial and legal advisors to evaluate various potential measures to address the discount in trading value of Antero’s stock relative to some of the premier U.S. large capitalization upstream independents that have a similar profile in terms of leverage, capital efficiency, production growth and free cash flow generation.” Translation: We know our stock price isn’t has high as other companies in our league. We’re working on ways to fix it.” What might those ways be? They don’t say. It has been our observation that companies with a perceived “discount in trading value” are often targets of corporate raiders, aka “activist investors,” who buy up 6-7% of a company’s outstanding shares and proceed to bully the company into laying off people and selling assets in an effort to make the stock price pop. We suspect Antero is positioning itself to fend off such an effort. You know, “He who gets there with the bad news first, wins” kind of thing. Antero is admitting there’s a problem and that they’re working on it (and they don’t need the help of someone like Carl Ichan, thank you very much)…
