Investing Topics: Master Limited Partnerships

Earnings season is now underway for the Conrad’s Utility Investor portfolios, with Kinder Morgan Energy Partners (NYSE: KMP) and Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) the first to report full numbers.

At its core, the stock market is about people. The numbers offer clues to the odds of company’s success. But as an analyst for nearly 30 years, I’ve found keeping tapped in to the market mood is no less essential.

Don’t believe everything you hear. The odds are still heavily in favor of enough Democrats and Republicans joining forces to prevent the first bona fide US default since the government operated under the Articles of Confederation.

In the October issue, I added four stocks to the Conrad’s Utility Investor model portfolios.

Distribution growth shapes returns for master limited partnerships (MLPs).

Thus far, my strategy has been to populate the three Conrad’s Utility Investor Portfolios as quickly as I can with high-quality fare, without paying too much.

Who says the bond market is washed out? Certainly not Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ).

The company’s record $49 billion bond sale has not only locked in financing for its $130 billion buyout of Vodafone Plc’s (London: VOD, NYSE: VOD) minority stake in Verizon Wireless. But it was actually doubled, eliminating the need to raise funds in Europe.

There was plenty to talk about this week from telecom to utilities to energy MLPs.

Dominion Resources (NYSE: D) shares hit an all-time high this week. The catalyst: A proposed spin off of the company’s natural gas assets into a master limited partnership (MLP), with an initial public offering in the second quarter of 2014.

When the research firm Hedgeye came out with a report blasting a long-time favorite of mine—Kinder Morgan Energy Partners (NYSE: KMP)—my first question was what have they seen that I have not to date? Is there something most of us who research this master limited partnership have overlooked, some critical Achilles heel that could in Hedgeye’s words make Kinder and related companies a “house of cards?”

Similarly, I wondered why Hedgeye had chosen to pick on Kinder, rather than a master limited partnership (MLP) with more obvious troubles such as NuStar Energy (NYSE: NS). The latter, for example, has failed to cover its distribution with distributable cash flow (DCF) for several quarters now, even leaving aside its extremely aggressive capital spending.