Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is injecting another $100 million into the Frisco-based natural gas company he controls.
Comstock Resources Inc. said after trading markets closed Wednesday that Jones is acquiring 12.5 million shares of the company’s stock at $8.036 a share. The stock closed at $8.07 on Wednesday. His purchase price represented the average closing prices for the last five trading days.
His investment of $100.45 million boosts his ownership stake to 67% of the company.
Comstock said it will use the money to pay down bank debt partially incurred when it purchased 200,000 undeveloped acres in the Western Haynesville shale play for $58.7 million.
Jones, whose net worth is estimated at $13.7 billion, bought a majority stake in Comstock in 2018 when he swapped $620 million in oil-producing properties for a majority stake in the NYSE-listed company. He put up an additional $475 million the following year when Comstock bought rival Covey Park Energy in a $2.2 billion deal.
The Haynesville Shale in East Texas and northwest Louisiana is the third-largest natural gas producer in the U.S., according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Weakened natural gas prices weighed heavily on the company’s financial results for the last three months of 2023. Natural gas traded as high as $3.57 in October before falling to $1.70 on Wednesday.
Comstock’s quarterly sales took a hit, dropping to $354 million versus nearly $558 million for the same period a year earlier. The company closed out 2023 with $1.56 billion in revenue, down from $3.6 billion in 2022. Profits totaled about $212 million.
