Is the West Wild back in speculative oil and gas stocks? Analyst calls often can exert some power over stocks, resulting in marginal to decent movement. However when you see movement in companies like PetroQuest Energy Inc. (NYSE: PQ) of more than 20%, there would seem to be more to the calls than meets the eye. Raymond James upgraded PetroQuest, as did Iberia Capital. They assigned huge upside target prices on the heels of this speculative company closing on asset sales.

PetroQuest is a small cap oil and gas exploration and production focused on Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico. The company’s market cap was a mere $125 million or so prior to the driving calls here.

Raymond James raised its rating to Outperform from Market Perform and set its price target at $3.00. This was well above the $1.88 prior closing price, implying 60% upside. This is not normal upside for an analyst to assign to an energy stock. Another firm, Iberia Capital, was shown to have raised its rating to Outperform from Sector Perform, raising its target to $3.50 from $3.00 in the call.

These calls come on the heels of last week’s news that PetroQuest closed on the sale of the majority of its interests in the Woodford and Mississippian Lime for gross proceeds of $280 million. That sale is subject to estimated purchase price adjustments between the effective date of January 1, 2015, and the closing date. The company will retain a small working interest in those sold assets and will maintain its working interest in the Woodford assets located on the east side of its acreage position.

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PetroQuest went on to say that its bank credit facility was amended to extend the maturity date from October 2016 to June 2020. Its borrowing base was revised from $190 million to $70 million, with the lender’s commitments fixed at $70 million. PetroQuest also is planning to unwind certain 2015 gas hedge contracts.

Any time a company in the oil and gas sector rallies 20% or more, it will turn some heads. When it is off of two simultaneous upgrades, some investors are going to scratch their heads. After all, it requires serious game-changing news to generally move a stock that much.

The company’s asset sale statement was from Charles T. Goodson, PetroQuest’s chairman, chief executive officer and president:

This asset sale is transformational in terms of its impact to our leverage and liquidity. Additionally, by consolidating down to two primary operating regions we will now be able to focus our efforts on the multi-year development of the Carthage field in East Texas, where we believe based upon outstanding recent results, that we have assembled a premier asset in the core of the Cotton Valley trend. Our Gulf Coast free cash flow can now be redirected to the consistent development of the more than 200 identified Cotton Valley locations, which we expect will provide PetroQuest a long-term platform for substantial growth and strong returns. Our Tulsa team has done an extraordinary job over the last 10 years developing our Woodford asset into one of the leading properties in the Arkoma basin. This group’s experience in delivering value and driving returns is expected to play an integral role in the continued development of these assets.

Shares of PetroQuest were up 23% to $2.32 Monday afternoon. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $3.26 (from only seven analysts) and a 52-week trading range of $1.70 to $7.82.

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