David Einhorn Follows Mason Hawkins And Dives Into The Slumping CONSOL Energy Inc. (CNX)

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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