Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is injecting another $100 million into his Frisco-based natural gas company.
Comstock Resources announced after the market closed on Wednesday that Jones would acquire 12.5 million shares of the company's stock at a price of $8.036 per share. The stock closed at $8.07 on Wednesday. His purchase price represented the average closing price over the previous five business days.
His $100.45 million investment increased his ownership to 67% of the company.
Comstock said it will use the funds to pay down some of the bank debt it incurred on its $58.7 million purchase of 200,000 undeveloped acres in the western Haynesville Shale operation.
Jones, who has an estimated net worth of $13.7 billion, bought a majority stake in Comstock in 2018, trading in $620 million in oil-producing real estate for a majority stake in a New York Stock Exchange-listed company. The following year, he poured in another $475 million when Comstock acquired rival Covey Park Energy in a $2.2 billion deal.
The Haynesville Shale, located in eastern Texas and northwest Louisiana, is the third largest producer of natural gas in the United States, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Falling natural gas prices weighed heavily on the company's results for the final three months of 2023. Natural gas prices traded as high as $3.57 in October, but fell to $1.70 on Wednesday.
Comstock's quarterly sales took a hit, falling to $354 million, compared with about $558 million in the year-ago period. The company ended 2023 with sales of $1.56 billion, down from $3.6 billion in 2022. Profits totaled approximately $212 million.
