EQT stock price took a ride Thursday

EQT Corp. started the day with what it said was great news: The Downtown-based natural gas producer — the largest in the country — had secured a 15-year agreement with EQM Midstream Partners to ferry gas from its wells to market.

Long-term certainty — something investors can’t get enough of, right?

Not according to the roller coaster that EQT’s stock endured Thursday.

The news accompanied the financial results of a company that in July emerged from a bruising proxy fight with a team of activist shareholders headed by nowCEO Toby Rice. Renegotiating these pipeline contracts was one of Mr. Rice’s promises when he took the helm.

His tenure was borne out of and has continued during a period of such low natural gas prices that (most) shale drillers have stopped growing production.

Since the day Mr. Rice took over, EQT’s stock price lost 69% of its value, while the S&P index of oil and gas producers tumbled by 41%.

EQT’s stock opened Thursday at $4.85, the lowest in 20 years.

In the first 15 minutes, it plunged so much that trading was halted “due to volatility.” It plunged further when trading resumed and kept sliding all through the company’s morning call with analysts, where EQT’s new chief financial officer, David Khani, explained how the deal with EQM is worth $535 million over the next three years.

Mr. Khani talked about other ways to rein in uncertainty, such as building up a long-term hedge book to secure a price for EQT’s natural gas and avoid commodity volatility.

Jane Trotsenko, an analyst with Stifel, wrote a note to investors titled: “Macro headwinds currently overwhelm what otherwise looks like a neutral to slightly positive press release.”

“It’s just been an ugly day in the markets as a whole,” said Sameer Panjwani, a director at Tudor Pickering Holt & Co., trying to parse the stock price tumble. He had recently gotten off the EQT earnings call and thought what the company put out was “definitely a positive.”

He liked that EQT cut another $150 million from its 2020 capital budget bringing the range to $1.15 billion to $1.25 billion.

He appreciated Mr. Khani’s plan to get EQT back to investment grade. (Moody’s Investor Service downgraded its debt to junk status.)

And once EQT manages to sell its Ohio assets — a deal was reportedly on the table but didn’t pan out — that should help the company’s financial position, he said.

As he spoke, EQT’s stock price was beginning to change direction. By 11 a.m., it was back to where it started Thursday, and at closing, it was up nearly 9%.

EQT posted a net loss of $1.2 billion, or $4.79 per share, for 2019, which actually halved the $2.4 billion loss, amounting to $8.60 per share, reported in 2018.

Anticipating the earnings, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Vincent Piazza wrote in a note to investors this week that there is “little room for excuses” as the company’s leadership enters a “delicate period.”

Mr. Rice, during his call with analysts, leaned on the positives.

He praised his team, much of which he reconstituted from his former company, Rice Energy, for implementing a bunch of cost-cutting measures and retooling the organization.

“I’m very proud of the hard work and results that this team has delivered in such a short period of time despite external challenges,” Mr. Rice said. “While we are optimistic about the future gas price, we recognize the need to run this business in a sustained low gas price environment.”

Natural gas futures contracts dropped another 5% on Thursday to their lowest levels in 4 years.