market folly

Barry Rosenstein's activist hedge fund JANA Partners has filed an amended 13D with the SEC updating their stake in QEP Resources (QEP).  Per the filing, JANA now owns 9.4% of QEP with over 16.875 million shares.

This means they've increased their stake by around 3 million shares in January.  At the same time, they also indicated they trimmed their stake ever-so-slightly more recently (from 16.9 down to 16.8 million shares).  We highlighted when JANA first went activist on QEP back in October of 2013.

JANA also entered an agreement with the company where William Thacker joined the board and will serve until QEP separates its midstream business.

Per Google Finance, QEP Resources is "a holding company. The Company operates in three lines of business: gas and oil exploration and production, midstream field services, and energy marketing. It conducted through three principal subsidiaries: QEP Energy Company (QEP Energy) acquires, explores for, develops and produces natural gas, oil, and natural gas liquids (NGL); QEP Field Services Company (QEP Field Services) provides midstream field services, including natural gas gathering, processing, compression and treating services for affiliates and third parties; andQEP Marketing Company (QEP Marketing) markets affiliate and third-party natural gas and oil, provides risk-management services, and owns and operates an underground gas-storage reservoir."

For more on this hedge fund we've posted up JANA's thesis on Equinix from their Q4 letter.