(Bloomberg News) T. Boone Pickens, the Texas billionaire who spent the past decade promoting U.S. natural gas as an alternative to Middle East oil, has walked away from the nation's second-largest gas producer and the man he calls a friend as Chesapeake Energy Corp.'s value dropped by a fourth.
Pickens's sale of almost half a million Chesapeake shares in the past six weeks comes as the 83-year-old hedge-fund manager maintains his longstanding praise for Chesapeake's "visionary" chief executive officer, Aubrey McClendon. The decision to unload his stake marks the first time Pickens hasn't held shares in the company since 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Both men, born in Oklahoma, have been vocal proponents of gas, joining forces to push for legislation to increase the fuel's use and often entwining their business interests. Chesapeake last year agreed to invest $150 million in a Pickens company that builds natural-gas fueling stations.
"We got out of the natural-gas stocks and Chesapeake was one of them," Pickens said on CNBC yesterday. Even after selling the shares, Pickens said people shouldn't bet against McClendon despite potential conflicts of interest that have caused shares to plunge and triggered Internal Revenue Service and Securities & Exchange Commission probes.
Pickens began dumping Chesapeake shares during the first quarter, when his Dallas-based BP Capital Management LP fund sold 71,000 shares, or 12 percent of its stake, according to a May 15 filing. The remaining 499,055 shares were sold by May 10, when Pickens said he no longer owned any stock.
Buying Encana, Devon
Even as Pickens was trimming his Chesapeake holdings in the first three months of this year, he was accumulating stock in Encana Corp. of Calgary and Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy Corp., two of the largest North American gas producers.
Those stock selections may indicate Pickens's abandonment of Chesapeake had more to do with McClendon's entanglements than the outlook for gas prices, said Tim Rezvan, a New York-based analyst at Sterne Agee & Leach Inc. who has a neutral rating on Chesapeake.
"We know that EnCana and Devon are two of the biggest gas producers in the United States," Rezvan said in a phone interview yesterday. "If you want exposure to gas but one of your biggest holdings has balance sheet and governance concerns, you'll go look elsewhere for companies that don't have those kinds of problems."
'Visionary' CEO