The coal mining business has been worse than problematic for at least four years now. CONSOL made what looked like a smart move into natural gas production a couple of years ago, but natural gas prices have never recovered either, still trading below $3 per thousand cubic feet. Over the past five years, coal-miner Peabody Energy has dropped from more than $72 a share to just over $1 a share. CONSOL has dropped from a peak of near $56 to a current price of around $17.40. That’s the difference that natural gas made to CONSOL.
In a new note from Merrill Lynch today, however, the analysts reiterate the Underperform rating and cut their price objective on the stock to $14 saying they have run a new sum-of-parts computation following the IPO of CONSOL’s thermal energy company CNX Coal Resources LP (NYSE: CNXC) “to reflect lower market multiples on coal and rising skepticism on the value of its Noble carry.”
The bullish case for the stock gives it a value of $17 per share, whereas the bear case caps the value at $9 a share. Merrill Lynch’s new price objective is a compromise between the two amid growing concern by the analysts of commodity price risk and the expected weak quarterly results coming out tomorrow.
Shares traded at around $17.45, down 1.2%, in the mid-afternoon Monday. The stock’s 52-week range is $15.47 to $42.26 and the consensus price target is $33.22 per share.
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