This week I felt a pang of pity for a sell-side research analyst. Not an obviously sympathetic constituency, you might well retort. There are many other categories of employment more deserving of such consideration – indeed, probably too numerous to list here. But I did, and here’s why. This particular analyst (he’ll remain nameless because […]
Pioneer Natural Resources (PXD) was dubbed “The MotherFracker” by David Einhorn last May at the Ira Sohn Value Investing Conference. Einhorn is bearish on PXD and other E&P companies that use hydraulic fracturing to release crude oil from shale formations because he calculates that after properly accounting for their capital investment they don’t grow their […]
The 32.6% collapse in MLPs was in many ways worse than the 2008 financial crisis. Although not as bad as 2008 when MLPs lost 36.9%, almost every asset class was down that year so there was little unique about MLP performance. In 2015 MLPs endured their own, private performance disaster. The Energy sector was in […]
Investors are focusing carefully on the response of Master Limited Partnership (MLP) managements to the impact of a higher cost of equity on their growth plans. Those firms that moderate their growth forecasts in response so as to rely less on issuing equity and maintain their distribution coverage are acting thoughtfully with the best interests […]
Thursday saw another example of tone-deaf decision making by the management of an MLP. Teekay LNG Partners (TGP) is an operator of ships that transport Liquified natural gas, petroleum gas and crude oil. Shipping is a horrible business; unlike pipelines, ships are highly mobile and so you’re never the only transport solution from A to […]
This week Kinder Morgan (KMI) did the right thing, after doing the wrong thing last year. By slashing their dividend they finally acknowledged that the MLP model of returning most free cashflow to investors and issuing new equity to finance growth doesn’t work in the C-corp structure they adopted in 2014. The square peg jammed […]
If a banker approaches the CEO of a Master Limited Partnership (MLP) with an offer to help, the CEO should run (not walk) in the other direction. The latest victim is the management of Columbia Pipeline Group Inc (CPGX). A month ago management had indicated that they’d be tapping the markets for equity via their […]
Writing a blog from the vantage point of your own firm is fantastically liberating compared with analyzing markets at a well-known behemoth, where any criticism risks offending a corporate client. Thus it was that in April 2014 I could write ADT and the Ham Sandwich Test, as we invoked Warren Buffett’s advice to only invest in […]
You’d think this would be a pretty simple issue. It’s certainly an important one. Equity investors derive their returns from dividends, dividend growth and capital gains. A simple estimate of long term returns on an equity security is to add the current dividend yield to expected dividend growth to arrive at the expected annual return. […]
Retail stocks have recently taken a pounding. Nordstrom (JWN) fell 15% on Friday following weak earnings. Macy’s (M) fell 14% a couple of days earlier following their earnings. All of a sudden retail is a tough business. Consumers aren’t buying quite as readily as they were. We’re not invested in the retail sector, so as […]
