As the stock price of Chesapeake Energy continues to slide, this week saw a record low as the price hit $12.09 at Wednesdays close. Many leading investment houses have since downgraded the stock to reflect negative cash flow and lower earnings from its most recent financial reports. The causes are in direct correlation to the lower prices of crude oil, natural gas and from stagnating production as the company continues to dispose underperforming assets.

Bliston Asset Management’s Hong Kong based Senior Commodities Analyst shared his views on the future of Chesapeake and was bullish as the company demonstrates encouraging fundamentals for long-term investment.

“It has been a torrid 12 months for Chesapeake but lets not forget that the energy sector on the whole has been hit very hard. If we analyze some of the key energy assessment metrics we can see that over the last 52 weeks, the average relative strength of exploration and production has declined from 0.015 last year to 0.06 at today’s close, which doesn’t make for great reading.”

“However the rate of decline has flattened out over the past 90 days aligning the exploration and production metric with that of the broader New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) comparable average. With this in mind, considering Chesapeake’s business fundamentals and a 52 week price low, I have no doubt that the company is set for a rebound in the short-term.”

As a company traditionally renowned for repaying healthy dividends, Chesapeake currently offers a forward dividend of 2.62%, which is considerably higher than the general Oil and Gas industry average of 1.25%. Despite its difficult times there has been no indication that the dividend will be reduced during the foreseeable future, especially in light of recent price projections made by the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

“Price forwarding expectations for energy commodities is expected to rise in the second half of 2015 and into 2016. The EIA has estimated the price of Western Texas Intermediate crude oil to hit $65.67 by the end of 2015. This estimation is precisely in line with Chesapeake’s minimum price point for profitability. Combine these figures with those realized by consumption increases in the coming summer months, we can see that the stock price currently presents a value-based opportunity to investors,” continued the analyst.