Westhouse Research, the house broker for US-focused shale oil development and production company Nighthawk Energy, said Thursday morning's poorly received full year results are of historical interest only.

The results cover the period of the transfer between the David Bramhill management and the new team under Stephen Gutteridge and therefore include significant legacy items, Westhouse's Peter Bassett and Andrew Matharu observe.

"The period is also before the results of the John Craig 6-2 drilled with the Gutteridge team as operator, which appears to be much more successful than any of the wells drilled under the operatorship of Running Foxes," they add.

"The initial flow results from the John Craig 6-2 encourages optimism over the current drilling programme under Nighthawk's operatorship. The recent Chesapeake asset sale to Shell and Chevron underlines the continuing interest of majors in shale plays," the broker said.

As one would expect of a house broker, Westhouse has a positive view of the shares and the future outlook for the company. It reiterated its "Strong Buy" recommendation with a target price of 10.7p per share.

The shares were down 0.6p to 5.75p in mid-afternoon trade.

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