First-quarter income more than doubled for oil and gas company Apache Corp. (APA: sentiment, chart, options) , but the results weren't impressive enough to live up to Wall Street's high expectations. APA pulled in $1.02 billion, or $3.03 per share; with an adjustment for foreign currency gains, the results totaled $2.99 per share. Revenue for the period climbed to $3.19 billion, a year-over-year increase of nearly 60%. However, analysts were looking for a profit of $3.06 per share on $3.05 billion in revenue.

The first-quarter results include an upswing in crude-oil and natural-gas prices. APA's average per-barrel price for crude rose to $89.25, a 60% increase from the year-ago quarter. Natural gas averaged $6.42 per thousand cubic feet, up 23% from last year.

In the wake of the earnings miss, APA is down more than 7% and is testing the support of its 10-week moving average. Options players' expectations were running high ahead of the report. APA's Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio (SOIR) of 0.76 is 4 percentage points away from an annual low, suggesting a strongly bullish bias among short-term options speculators.

In today's trading, at least a few investors are stocking up on APA puts the at-the-money June 125 put has seen 1,475 contracts cross the tape on open interest of 818.