Stack Play-Focused Tapstone Files For $100 Million IPO

Tapstone Energy Inc. filed for an IPO of up to $100 million, the Oklahoma City-based E&P, which claims to hold the largest contiguous leasehold position in the Northwest Stack Play, said in regulatory filings on April 13.

The company applied to the New York Stock Exchange to be listed under the symbol "TE." Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Citigroup are underwriters to the IPO, according to Tapstone's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Tapstone was formed in 2013 by its former CEO Tom Ward with funding by GSO Capital Partners LP, a subsidiary of The Blackstone Group LP. The company's acreage position in the Northwest Stack Play consists of about 200,000 net acres and is adjacent to Dewey, Woodward, Ellis and Major counties in Oklahoma, SEC filings said.

"We began assembling our acreage position through a grassroots leasing program that we commenced in September 2014. As a result of our early identification of the resource potential of the Northwest Stack, as well as the general weakness in the oil and gas industry at the time, we were able to assemble a large, contiguous block of acreage in the Northwest Stack, which we do not believe would be possible to replicate in today’s market," the company said in SEC filings.

Tapstone also holds an additional 220,000 net acres throughout the Anadarko Basin in Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas.

Steven C. Dixon is the current chairman, president and CEO of Tapstone. Dixon has more than 36 years of experience in the oil and gas industry, according to filings, and was previously with Chesapeake Energy Corp. (NYSE: CHK).

Dixon replaced Ward as Tapstone's CEO in January after Ward left to focus on a new venture to be based in Oklahoma City. Ward is also the founder of SandRidge Energy Inc. (NYSE: SD) and co-founded Chesapeake with Aubrey McClendon. He retained a "large ownership stake" in Tapstone following his departure, according to the company.