BOSTON (Reuters) - Natural gas and oil firm Gulfport Energy Corp said it would buy back $400 million of shares on Thursday, just hours after a public demand to that effect from hedge fund investor Firefly Value Partners.
After the close of trading, Oklahoma City-based Gulfport announced plans to buy back $400 million worth of shares in the next two years and said it bought $90 million worth of shares in the last weeks of 2018.
“I want to underscore our commitment to further enhancing shareholder value with a newly authorized $400 million stock repurchase program to be executed within the next 24 months,” David Wood, who was named chief executive officer late last year, said in a statement.
On Thursday morning, New York-based hedge fund Firefly had said it wanted Gulfport, which has a market capitalization of $1.5 billion, to buy back $500 million of shares.
Firefly, which owns 8.1 percent of Gulfport, said in a public letter that such a large share buyback could translate to a doubling of Gulfport’s share price.
It criticized how Gulfport had allocated capital and complained that current board members might not be committed to pushing for improvements.
In its statement announcing the share buyback, Gulfport did not refer to Firefly or address its complaints.
But by the afternoon, when the eight member Gulfport board ended its meeting, management and the directors laid out a plan that some analysts said could neutralize the hedge fund’s requests.
Firefly declined to comment on the Gulfport statement.
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