Finance & Investing | Deals - Acquisition, Mergers, Divestitures | Capital Markets | Capital Expenditure | Private Equity Activity

Chesapeake Eliminates Dividends To Conserve Cash

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   |    Tuesday,July 21,2015

Chesapeake Energy Corporation announced an updated financial strategy.

Highlights include:

• Elimination of common stock dividend effective 2015 third quarter
• Sale of CHK Cleveland Tonkawa LLC properties and adjacent assets anticipated to close in 2015 third quarter; redemption of preferred shares in CHK Cleveland Tonkawa subsidiary

• Declaration of preferred stock dividends

Due to the current commodity price environment for oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids, and the resulting reduction in capital available to invest in its high-quality assets, Chesapeake Energy will eliminate its common dividend effective 2015 third quarter and redirect the cash into its 2016 capital program to maximize the return available to its shareholders.

Doug Lawler, Chesapeake’s Chief Executive Officer, commented, "We received approval from our Board of Directors to eliminate the common stock dividend of $0.35 per share annually, which is applicable to the 2015 third quarter. We believe this decision is prudent as we continue to invest and redirect as much capital as possible into our world-class assets. The elimination of the common stock dividend will save approximately $240 million annually. This, along with the redemption of the preferred shares in our CHK Cleveland Tonkawa subsidiary, is part of a broader disciplined approach that began two years ago to decrease the company’s financial complexity and increase our liquidity. The company’s liquidity position remains extremely strong with more than $2 billion of unrestricted cash on our balance sheet and an undrawn $4 billion revolving credit facility as of June 30, 2015. We continue to move forward with multiple opportunities that will strengthen our cash flow generation capabilities, and I look forward to future announcements regarding the ways we are creating additional value in the months ahead."

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