MLP investors must wish they’d never heard of the Shale Revolution. The consequent growth in volumes of crude oil and natural gas seemed a fairly simple thesis for owners of volume-driven infrastructure assets. Increased demand for pipeline and storage capacity, for gathering and processing networks, ought to be good for the sector. But so far, a dramatically more productive domestic energy industry has driven MLP stock prices relentlessly lower. Moreover, the divergence between the energy sector and the broader averages is a common investor complaint  – the truism that MLPs are a volume business and therefore rising volumes should be good isn’t reflected in recent returns.

Early last week the International Energy Agency (IEA) published World Energy Outlook 2017 which forecasts that the U.S. will become the world’s biggest Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) exporter by the mid-2020s, and a net oil exporter by the end of that decade. Other long term forecasts, including those from the Energy Information Administration, Exxon Mobil and Goldman Sachs are broadly consistent with the IEA. MLPs slumped anyway, perhaps oblivious to the report or maybe because of it.

The Shale Revolution, the paradigm driving America to Energy Independence, has not done much for investors. It’s pressured cashflows and balance sheets of formerly stable businesses. Few management teams seem able to pass up growth opportunities, and the consequent redirection of Distributable Cash Flow (DCF) from distributions to growth projects has alienated those wealthy Americans who accepted K-1s in exchange for steady, growing, tax-deferred income. The evidence of this is most clearly seen in the defiantly high yields of some securities. Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), with its 14% payout, reflects investor disbelief that payments will continue.

Since yield no longer convinces, consider Duke Energy Corp (DUK) which delivers electricity and natural gas to over 9 million customers across the southern and Midwest U.S. It operates a highly regulated, capital intensive business.  Kinder Morgan (KMI) transports, treats and stores natural gas (including now LNG), natural gas liquids and crude oil in a highly regulated, capital intensive business. Debt:Equity at DUK is 5.6X and KMI is 5.3X, so they’re similarly leveraged. But KMI’s multiple to its Distributable Cash Flow (DCF, or Free Cash Flow less growth capex) is 8.8X. The analogous cash flow multiple for DUK is 13.2X (Net Income plus D&A minus maintenance CapEx). DUK is 50% more expensive on a cash flow per share basis.  Furthermore, the value of the land and easements acquired for pipelines appreciates over time whereas power plants eventually depreciate to zero. In this regard, DUK’s $7B/year (11% of it’s market cap) in growth CapEx becomes much more concerning.

The Utilities sector has been strong this year, which has stretched valuations while energy, including infrastructure, has lagged. The question is why investors in DUK and other similar names don’t make what looks like a substantial valuation upgrade by switching from one highly regulated business to another. KMI long ago broke its contract with the original Kinder Morgan Partners investors. When you remove a slide titled “Promised Made, Promises Kept” (see What Kinder Morgan Tells Us About MLPs) there are consequences. Redirecting cashflow from distributions to growth projects necessitated the revision to its investor presentation and took them in search of new investors.

MLPs are a shrinking part of the energy infrastructure landscape. The Shale Revolution is leading us towards Energy Independence, increasingly through C-corps (hence our new American Energy Independence Index). But the sector moves nowadays with the Oil Services sector whose biggest names are struggling with a global slump in spending on conventional oil and gas projects, whereas in the U.S. the strength in volumes and spending continues. The close relationship between oil services and energy infrastructure is not likely to sustain over the long term given their substantially different business models (cyclical versus regulated; global versus domestic).

Recent weakness may also be due to concerns that tax reform could result in lower corporate tax rates with no improvement in rates charged on passive investment income from pass-through vehicles. This would benefit C-corps over MLPs — although details on the plan continue to change, there’s probably less certainty about the ultimate tax treatment for MLPs which could be causing potential buyers to wait for clarity. The news that Norway’s $1TN sovereign wealth fund is planning to divest its oil and gas holdings certainly didn’t help sentiment either.

Returning to the chart, it shows that as growth plans took hold through 2014-15, increasing secondary offerings (how you finance growth if you pay out all your cashflow in distributions) revealed the reluctance of traditional MLP investors to reinvest those payouts. This drove yields up and hurt sector performance. Although they got there in different ways, most big MLPs concluded that the growth capital wasn’t available and so cut payouts, redirecting cash to fund projects instead. Traditional MLP investors felt betrayed and are clearly not rushing to invest in the sector, which has created today’s value opportunity.

MLP investors are well aware that energy infrastructure securities move with crude oil, until that relationship inconveniently broke down during the Summer. Although we move and process far more natural gas (on an energy equivalent basis) than oil, investor sentiment causes the link. Because the economic link is weaker than sometimes implied by moves in the sector, the two can part company with little warning.

Some relationship makes sense, because pipelines and related infrastructure are typically built in anticipation of future demand. Commencing pipeline operations at 100% capacity is of course the best case, but more common is a steady ramp-up of utilization. The rate at which capacity gets used up can depend on production levels in the supplying region, and production is sensitive to price.

Before the Shale Revolution, U.S. crude oil production was heading steadily lower. Today, any forecast of U.S. output must be based in part on commodity prices. The correlation between the two is sometimes higher than it should be, but it’s no longer a commodity-insensitive business.

A recent report from the National Bureau of Economic Research (The Unconventional Oil Supply Boom: Aggregate Price Response From MicroData) seeks to measure the sensitivity of U.S. oil production to price. Among their conclusions is that unconventional drilling is up to six times more responsive to prices than conventional. This is because shale projects are “short-cycle”; the payback time is far shorter. Shale drillers can hedge enough of their expected output to ensure an adequate return, not just because upfront expenses are comparatively low but also because initial production rates are high, relative to conventional wells (see Why Shale Upends Conventional Thinking). Exxon Mobil’s CEO Darren Woods commented earlier this year that a third of their capex budget was dedicated to short-cycle opportunities. It’s because they’re less risky. Conventional projects have far longer payback periods, exposing them to the vicissitudes of prices.

The growing importance of short-cycle projects has a couple of other implications for crude oil. One is that it should reduce market volatility. The greater responsiveness to price of shale production means that supply/demand imbalances are more smoothly corrected. NBER doesn’t go as far as to classify the U.S. as the swing producer (which they define as one able to react within 30-90 days), because such adjustments still take several months. But we clearly have a more sensitive supply response function than in the past. Oil prices are becoming less volatile, as we suggested might happen (see U.S. Oil Output Continues to Grow).

NBER’s conclusions include an additional insight, which is that production from unconventional wells is less variable. Not only do you get your capital investment returned more quickly, but you have greater certainty around output. In combination, these two aspects of shale should lead to lower required returns on capital. All of this is to the enormous benefit of the U.S., since shale drilling is almost exclusively an American phenomenon.

Crude prices have been rising as OPEC’s production curbs gradually take effect. Their decisions will continue to significantly impact prices. But another consequence of shale could be gradually rising prices. NBER estimates that a rise to $80 a barrel would stimulate an additional 2 million barrels a day (MMB/D) of U.S. production within two years. Investing in conventional oil and gas projects has been falling, and it’s generally accepted that we need to produce an additional 4-5 MMB/D annually to offset depletion of existing fields as well as meet new demand. U.S. shale may be part of the solution but the figures above show that other sources will need to provide the lion’s share. Earlier this year Goldman Sachs forecast that at $75 a barrel U.S. production would exceed 20 MMB/D. Cleatly there’s enormous variations in forecasts, and NBER may be overly conservative.

Therefore, gently rising crude oil prices are the most likely outcome. This can only be good for U.S. energy infrastructure. Meanwhile, Liquified Natural Gas exports are set to increase sharply. The constructive analysis on crude oil prices doesn’t apply as readily to natural gas, because global LNG trade volumes are benefiting from several new sources of supply. But as one of the lowest cost producers, the U.S. is in good shape here as well.

The U.S. energy sector has undergone dramatic changes over the past five years. Hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) and horizontal drilling have roiled global energy markets. America has shifted from planning to import Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) to exporting it, with LNG exports expected to more than quadruple over the next three years. Cheap domestic methane has made natural gas the biggest single source of electricity in the U.S., in the process supplanting coal and unexpectedly helping reduce CO2 emissions. Increasing production of Natural Gas Liquids (NGLs) such as ethane are behind close to $200BN of investments in new petrochemical facilities. Propane exports are up five-fold in five years.

In late 2016 OPEC was forced to abandon its strategy of trying to bankrupt U.S. shale oil producers with low prices, because production fell less than needed and many OPEC countries faced gaping budget holes with little to show for it (see OPEC Blinks). Almost 40% of the world’s oil producing nations had tried and failed to kill off the Shale Revolution. American free enterprise triumphed.

The dramatic increase in hydrocarbon production represents one of the greatest examples in recent years of the power of American private sector capitalism. Technological ingenuity and constantly improving productivity allowed costs of production to keep falling. The world’s biggest capital markets provided funding to support a culture of entrepreneurialism and new business formation. Highly developed energy infrastructure networks and a skilled energy labor force were already in place, and other natural resources such as water were conveniently available. Lastly, privately owned mineral rights, a global rarity, allowed individual landowners to profit from the Shale Revolution by signing drilling leases with energy companies. In short, the Shale Revolution leveraged all that’s great about America’s form of capitalism (see America Is Great!).

The changes have been so dramatic that they’re leading us to American Energy Independence. Among the many changes are the positioning of the energy infrastructure business. For years, pipelines were synonymous with reliably stable cashflows that grew modestly and required minimal reinvestment. An entire class of investment, Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs), evolved to provide tax-advantaged exposure for those willing to handle K-1s at tax time rather than 1099s. Over $50BN was raised for deeply flawed mutual funds and ETFs that provide 1099-type MLP exposure while incurring a heavy additional tax burden (see Some MLP Investors Get Taxed Twice).

Energy infrastructure is key to American Energy Independence. Steadily increasing volumes of hydrocarbons are leading to increased investment in infrastructure. Traditional sources of crude oil, such as the Permian in West Texas, are producing more than ever even after almost a century of output. More recent discoveries such as the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania are producing substantial volumes of natural gas where little production existed a decade ago. Although the “toll-model” of pipelines, storage assets and processing facilities still thrives, the long-term growth opportunities in infrastructure are attracting investors willing to reinvest cashflows back into accretive projects.

As a result, energy infrastructure businesses are evolving beyond MLPs, as their need for capital has not always aligned with traditional, yield-oriented MLP investors. Simplification, in which an MLP and its General Partner merge into a single corporate entity, has broadened the investor base. MLPs are nowadays an important but shrinking portion of the opportunity set.

The secular theme of American Energy Independence reaches beyond MLPs, and this is why we’re launching the American Energy Independence Index. It’s designed to incorporate those infrastructure businesses that are critical to supporting our growing energy needs. It includes both MLPs and corporations; some large Canadian companies as well as American ones, since infrastructure is highly integrated between the U.S. and Canada. In fact, the market capitalization of the corporations in the index is $300BN, approximately the same as the Alerian MLP Index. Those investors who seek energy infrastructure exposure via MLPs are limiting themselves to a steadily shrinking subset of the relevant companies. Energy infrastructure today is about growth, and many large businesses have adopted a traditional corporate structure so as to attract global investors, rather than simply those wealthy Americans who will accept the complexity of K-1 tax reporting.

Moreover, investing in MLPs via mutual funds or ETFs usually comes with the substantial tax drag noted above (see Are You in the Wrong MLP Fund?).

The American Energy Independence Index is designed to track the companies of our energy future. The Shale Revolution is bringing the U.S. closer to energy independence. Increasing volumes of hydrocarbons need to be gathered, processed, transported and stored, all of which requires additional infrastructure.

Today the index is almost fully infrastructure supporting oil, natural gas, refined products and NGLs, because those reflect our energy mix and offer reliable cashflows. Hydrocarbons will remain the dominant source of our energy for the foreseeable future, and the index consists of energy infrastructure offering consistent economic returns over the long term. This excludes coal, since it moves by rail and ship where barriers to entry are lower, and so it is not included in the index. Although the transportation and storage of renewable energy isn’t a business today, as these technologies mature and their infrastructure begins supporting similarly stable cashflows, their place in the index will grow. The American Energy Independence Index is designed to evolve with America’s changing energy needs. It is biased towards energy infrastructure that provides reliable cashflows growing over the long term.

Since 2010 the American Energy Independence Index has reflected the performance of the broader energy infrastructure sector. It has moved with the Alerian Infrastructure Index but has performed better because it’s not limited to MLPs. It better reflects the future of financing infrastructure, which still uses the MLP vehicle but relies on it less than in the past. Almost all the ETFs and mutual funds in the sector focus too narrowly on MLPs, instead of covering the entire universe of energy infrastructure opportunities.

In a few weeks we will be making available an opportunity to invest in the index. We think it represents a superior way to participate in our energy future, as America heads towards Energy Independence.

Disclosures:

References to indexes are hypothetical illustrations of aggregate returns and do not reflect the performance of any actual investment. Investors cannot invest in an index and do not reflect the deduction of the advisor’s fees or other trading expenses. Actual realized returns will depend on, among other factors, the value of assets and market conditions at the time of disposition, any related transaction costs, and the timing of the purchase. The Index’s performance does not represent the results of actual trading, but was achieved by means of retroactive application of a model designed with the benefit of hindsight. Results may not reflect the impact that material economic and market factors might have had on adviser’s decision-making if adviser were actually managing client assets.

Ten days ago Enterprise Products (EPD) announced that they may in the future initiate a buyback of units, perhaps in 2019. Bigger news was the moderation in the growth rate of their distribution, so the buyback received less attention. But it highlights an interesting fact about MLPs, which is that they rarely do buybacks.

Part of the reason is taxes. Companies in the S&P500 in aggregate return only 42% of their profits in the form of dividends. From a purely tax-efficiency standpoint they shouldn’t pay dividends at all – profits are subject to corporate tax and then the holder has to pay tax on the dividend income. The distortion caused by taxes means that corporations that pay dividends deprive investors of the benefit of deferring taxes, which they could do if companies fully relied on buybacks to return capital. In this way, investors could choose when to realize a portion of their investment and incur the corresponding tax liability. Don’t expect this to change anytime soon though.

By contrast, distributions paid to MLP investors don’t determine their taxes; Buy and hold MLP investors pay taxes on their proportionate share of the profits of the business, regardless of the distributions received. Because MLPs themselves aren’t taxed, there’s no double taxation of profits to owners. For years the market rewarded steadily rising dividend payments, and so MLPs paid out the substantial majority of their Distributable Cash Flow (approximately equivalent to Free Cash Flow less Maintenance Capex) and raised new equity when they needed capital. Since distributions paid to MLP investors aren’t tax-inefficient, there’s little need for MLPs to use buybacks to return extra cash to investors. Moreover, in the GP/MLP structure in which the GP operates like a hedge fund manager (see MLPs and Hedge Funds Are More Alike Than You Think), buybacks might lower the payments received from Incentive Distribution Rights (IDRs), as IDRs are determined both by the level of dividend paid as well as the number of LP units outstanding. So MLPs don’t do buybacks – they generally pay out most of their cashflow and typically issue new equity for new projects.

Except now, EPD has announced they may initiate buybacks, reflecting another development in the shifting financing model for energy infrastructure. Traditional MLP investors (i.e. the wealthy, taxable Americans who are willing to deal with K-1s) have turned out to be an unreliable source of new capital. They like their distributions but they don’t like reinvesting them through secondary offerings or IPOs. This relative tight-fistedness has exposed the comparative largesse of MLPs in distributing most of their cashflow at a time when the Shale Revolution has created opportunities to put it back into their businesses. This is why many large MLPs have concluded that the structure doesn’t work if you need to raise a lot of money.  Kinder Morgan was the first to pursue “simplification”, which by now is understood to result in reduced payouts, freeing up more cash for investing in new projects and therefore less need to issue equity at high yields.

The point of having a public equity listing is to be able to raise capital. The 7.6% yield on the Alerian Index doesn’t entice investors as much as it should because they suspect further simplifications. But for MLPs, it still represents an unreasonably high cost of financing.

EPD is conservatively run, and a reduced growth rate in their distribution is a modest step to redirect capital internally so as to lessen their need to raise money externally. It’s simplification-lite. Intriguingly though, rather than boost the growth rate back up in a couple of years, they may buy back units. Stable distributions are highly prized and even the best run businesses want to shield investors from variability in profits with highly predictable payouts. EPD is introducing greater capital flexibility, since buybacks are never guaranteed. They’re adopting one feature of a C-corp (lower payout ratios) while retaining the tax-efficient MLP structure.

An interesting debate is whether the large MLPs abandoned the investor (as holders of Kinder Morgan Partners certainly felt) or whether the MLP investors abandoned MLPs (as demonstrated by persistently high yields). Simplification transactions and more minor changes such as EPDs are all a result of MLP investors not wanting to reinvest their cashflows as eagerly as their businesses would like them to.

It’s the best explanation we have to justify continued weakness in the sector, as the investor base migrates (not altogether smoothly) away from the yield-seeking to the growth-oriented buyer.

We are invested in EPD