Macquarie Equities Research maintained its OUTPERFORM rating for Bellatrix Exploration (BXE:TSX) but reduced its target share price to $6.25 from $7.00. The exploration and production company's stock closed at 4.15 on August 11. The company's stock has had a low of $3.27 and a high of $6.19 in the last 52 weeks.

Bellatrix announced its Q2 results on August 11. Bellatrix reported in its recently released Q2 results that diluted Funds Flow from Operations (FFO) were C$0.20 per share, which was very close to Macquarie's estimated FFO of C$0.21 per share.

Macquarie stated that the company's average production of 15,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day was in line with predictions. The research firm stated that Bellatrix was four weeks behind in its drilling program, which could threaten the firm's production estimates. Macquarie predicted that liquids would account for a smaller share of total output in 2011 and 2012.

The predicted change in liquids production reduced Macquarie's FFO estimates for Bellatrix by 4 percent in 2011 and 5 percent in 2012.