Southeastern Asset Management ups its CONSOL Energy (CNX) stake from roughly 44M shares to 48M and owns 21% of the company. This is also a David Einhorn and Greenlight Capital investment, where he owns roughly 9% of the company [more on CNX and Einhorn’s thesis].
Mason Hawkins and Southeastern applaud CNX on the board actions over the last two years but now wants to see some action on monetization of its E&P assets.
Noting that these assets alone are worth demonstrably more than the toatl equity capitalization of CNX. Also, they are unique qualitatively in comparison to peers given CNX’s fee ownership of many acres. Monetization wise, they are looking at a spinoff or a sale of these assets.
Mason also wants to help realize value for its many other valuable assets: thermal coal, met coal, pipelines, and the Baltimore terminal. Then there’s the need for bond and share repurchase
