Penn Virginia Exploring Sale of Company -- 3rd Update

By Dana Mattioli and Ryan Dezember 

Energy producer Penn Virginia Corp. is exploring a sale as its stock price has declined, its reserves have lost value and billionaire George Soros has urged the company to find a buyer.

The company, which drills for oil and gas in Texas, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania, has been working with Bank of America Corp. to look for potential buyers, said people familiar with the matter.

Before Wednesday, Penn Virginia's share price had fallen more than 60% since June, battered by the swift decline in oil prices since summer. The Radnor, Pa., company currently has a stock market value of about $444 million, according to FactSet, after its shares rose 11%, or 67 cents, to $6.87 on Thursday following The Wall Street Journal's report on the potential sale.

Late Wednesday, Penn Virginia reported fourth-quarter results that missed Wall Street's expectations. On a call with analysts Thursday morning, Chief Executive H. Baird Whitehead declined to discuss the sales efforts. "It's our policy not to comment on these matters," he said.

Penn Virginia's history dates back to 1882 with its founding as a coal concern in Virginia. It shifted to oil and gas in the 1980s, and more recently has pared its natural-gas holdings in favor of oil fields. Before a collapse in natural-gas prices in 2008, the company's shares traded at more than 10 times their current price.

Penn Virginia reported a fourth-quarter loss of $417.7 million, or $5.90 a share, compared with a year-earlier loss of $4.1 million, or six cents a share, as the company wrote down the value of fields in East Texas and Oklahoma. In all, impairments totaled $667.8 million for the latest quarter.

Revenue fell 13% from a year earlier to $102 million. At year end, debt stood at about $1.1 billion, the company said in a securities filing Wednesday.

Penn Virginia said it would dedicate its 2015 budget to drilling into south Texas shale, where its wells have the best returns. Mr. Whitehead told analysts that the company may be willing to sell some gas fields where it has curbed drilling amid a prolonged slump in prices for the fuel in order to further focus on its south Texas properties.

Mr. Soros's investment fund, Soros Fund Management LLC, has been in and out of Penn Virginia's stock since at least 2009. The New York firm said in a disclosure earlier this month it owned about 8% of Penn Virginia's stock, making it one of the largest shareholders.

In a June letter to the company, Scott Bessent, chief investment officer at Soros, criticized Penn Virginia for selling convertible preferred stock and rejecting the Soros firm's suggestion to offer executives financial incentives to sell the company.

The letter urged the company to find a buyer that could tap Penn Virginia's reserves more efficiently. "The time has come for the company to put itself up for sale as the surest path to maximize shareholder value," Mr. Bessent wrote.

Write to Dana Mattioli at [e-mail] and Ryan Dezember at [e-mail]

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