Clayton Williams Energy, Inc. (NYSE:CWEI) shares were up 15.51% to $22.95 on Monday after reports of insider trading by Ares Management.
Clayton Williams Energy, Inc. (NYSE:CWEI) shares had been trading between a 52-week range of $6.35 to $73.15 so there’s still significant room to climb if buyers stay in the game. As it turns out, a filing on the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that Ares Management, which owns a 10% stake in the company, purchased 515K shares of Clayton Williams last week.
This purchase was worth approximately $9.3 million based on the share price last Friday, bringing the total ownership of Ares Management to 879K shares. Interestingly enough, this follows a weaker than expected earnings release from Clayton Williams Energy, Inc. (NYSE:CWEI) as the EPS came in at -$2.53 and revenue chalked up a 52.7% year-over-year drop to $30.31 million, short of estimates by $2.18 million. The company reported a net loss of $3.53 million.
The earnings call also revealed that oil and gas sales were mostly responsible for the weak figures, especially since average realized oil prices hit $28.10 for the company in the first quarter. Production was also lower, allowing the company to reduce costs to $17.2 million from $23.4 million in the same period a year ago.
Earlier in the year, Ares Management loaned $350 million to Clayton Williams Energy which agreed to issue warrants to purchase 2.25M common shares at $22 per share for Ares to have two directors on the board.
Clayton Williams Energy, Inc. (NYSE:CWEI) is an oil and gas company engaged in the exploration for and production of oil and natural gas. It operates in Texas, New Mexico, and Louisiana. The company focuses on developmental drilling, with its domestic operations consisting of conducting its drilling, exploration and production activities in the United States. It is also engaged in finding reserves through exploratory drilling.
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