It’s a year until the next presidential election. The S&P500 is making new highs, reflecting the persistence of fund flows into equities. Quarterly earnings have been coming in ahead of expectations, but still down 1% year-on-year. Down less than expected counts as up for traders. It’s also worth noting that expectations are for a 10% […]
Earnings season for pipeline companies has provided few surprises, offering little to offset fund outflows, which continue to weigh on performance. Therefore, the Tallgrass (TGE) call last Wednesday promised to be more interesting than most. Blackstone’s (BX) offer to take private the 56% of TGE it doesn’t already own has focused attention on a sideletter […]
Wildfire season began abruptly in California last week. Bankrupt utility PG&E’s planned widespread power outages are a response to last year’s fires, which were blamed on high winds and faulty transmission lines. Having friends in affected areas, as many of us do, certainly brings home the tragedy and fear that comes when you might lose […]
The Shale Revolution has substantially increased America’s output of oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids. We often use the chart below to highlight this exponential growth. Those exponential curves are going to flatten, not only because nothing can rise that fast indefinitely, but also because of the high initial depletion rates of fracked wells. […]
The rapid transition of WeWork from IPO in early September to almost bankrupt says something about the superficial due diligence of bankers prior to a roadshow. Reports suggest that co-founder Adam Neumann’s $1.7BN million payoff in exchange for much of his stock and his board seat will save him from having to file for personal […]
“Horrific. Terrible. Abysmal. The worst. Those are terms equity analysts are using to describe investors’ attitude toward energy stocks.” This is from a recent Wall Street Journal article (see Energy Stocks Fall Faster Than Oil Prices). Sentiment in the energy patch is poor. Too much spending with too little returned to shareholders is the main […]
Earnings season for midstream energy infrastructure kicks off with Kinder Morgan (KMI) on Wednesday. In April we identified growing free cash flow (see The Coming Pipeline Cash Gusher) as the most important catalyst for higher security prices. We’ll be reviewing quarterly earnings for evidence that the sector remains on track to generate increasing amounts of […]
Wednesday’s blog, Energy Transfer’s Weak Governance Costs Them drew a record number of pageviews within a few hours of being posted. It’s not just because Energy Transfer (ET) is a large, widely held MLP. Much of the writing in the sector is from cheerleaders who don’t criticize the companies they follow, because it’ll hurt their […]
Five years ago Russell Gold published The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World, one of several books that chronicled the Shale Revolution. Gold provided first-hand descriptions of fracking after persuading Marathon Oil to let him visit a site in North Dakota. He offers a fascinating description of the process […]
