What Boosted Chesapeake Shares on Tuesday?

Shares of struggling oil and gas producer Chesapeake Energy Inc. (NYSE: CHK) traded as high as 15% above Friday’s close on Tuesday morning, even though both oil and gas futures were trading softer. The answer appears to be in a 6.5% jump in the face value of a high-yield bond issue that matures on March 15, 2016.

According to a report at Financial Market News, the high-yield bond issue has a 3.25% coupon and traded Tuesday at $95.00, up from $92.75 last Friday. That increase is less than half the share price increase seen on Tuesday, but in conjunction with recent analysts calls that are uniformly negative, it could be that investors think that Chesapeake has fallen as far as it can go.

Here are some recent analyst moves:

• Citigroup reiterated a Hold rating and left its price target at $5.
• Wunderlich lowered its rating from Buy to Hold and reduced its price target from $7 to $4.
• Sterne Agee reiterated a Neutral rating.
• Nomura lowered its price target from $6.50 to $3.
• Deutsche Bank has a Hold rating on the stock and lowered its price target from $6 to $4.

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The consensus price target on Chesapeake from 26 brokers is $4.00, as reported by Thomson/First Call.

Chesapeake’s stock traded up about 16.4% in the mid-afternoon Tuesday, at $1.86 in a 52-week range of $1.50 to $21.29. The most recent trade on the 3.25% debt was made at $94 and with a yield of $90.499.