Hess mandatory trades around par; LinkedIn falls but not as badly as shares; Workday drops

By Rebecca Melvin

New York, Feb. 5 – Hess Corp.’s newly priced 8% mandatory convertible opened below par but improved in trading on Friday after the New York-based oil and gas producer priced $500 million of the preferred shares at the cheap end of talked terms, market sources said.

The Hess $50.00 par mandatories broke below par but were later quoted at $50.25, a New York-based trader said.

“There were better buyers,” a second New York-based trader said regarding the Hess mandatories, meaning that there were more bidders than sellers.

LinkedIn Corp.’s convertibles were bouncing around at sharply lower levels in very active trade. But the plunge was not as severe as that of the common shares of the Mountain View, Calif.-based business-oriented social networking service, which fell 43.6% after investors were disappointed by the company’s outlook.

LinkedIn’s convertibles were seen just barely holding in on a dollar-neutral, or hedged, basis. One trader said they were positive by about 0.25 point.

The drubbing that LinkedIn’s shares took led to selling in the shares of related companies, including convertible issuers ServiceNow Inc., Workday Inc. and salesforce.com Inc.

Shares of Pleasanton, Calif.-based Workday, a cloud-based computing company, fell $10.60, or 16%, to $54.245 on Friday. Workday’s 0.75% convertibles due 2018 were at 99.288 versus an underlying share price of $54.01 near the end of the day, a New York-based trader said. Those bonds had been at 105.5 previously.

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