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The
company's shares were up 4 percent at $4.54 in premarket trading
following news of the privately negotiated deals.
A number of U.S. oil producers have completed debt-for-equity
swaps or bond swaps as they try to reduce their debt and
interest payments as oil prices remain weak.
Chesapeake, whose debt stands at about $9 billion, said it
issued or agreed to issue about 28.1 million shares between May
5 and May 11 in exchange for senior notes worth about $153
million. The notes are due in 2017, 2019, 2037 and 2038.
The company said in February it had tapped legal firm Kirkland &
Ellis for advice as it seeks to bolster its balance sheet to
manage debt maturing in the next 18 to 24 months.
Chesapeake has said it has no plans to seek bankruptcy
protection, as some analysts and investors have speculated.
Chief Financial Officer Nick Dell'Osso said on May 5 that
Chesapeake was considering "the use of additional secured debt,
private transactions with bondholders and other types of
exchange offers and open market purchases."
Up to Wednesday's close, Chesapeake's shares had fallen about 24
percent since then.
(Reporting by Swetha Gopinath in Bengaluru; Editing by Ted Kerr)
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