Commodity & Infrastructure Insights

Renewables receive a disproportionate share of media coverage given their still small size. In 2019, less than 9% of America’s power came from solar and wind. Fossil fuels (mainly coal and natural gas) are over 62%. Moreover, electric power is only 37% of our total energy use. Renewables receive outsized attention because of the hope they will lead to lower emissions. A look at recent daily data on U.S. power generation illustrates the challenges we’ll face in relying on intermittent, low-density sources of energy.  

Incoming President Biden is expected to take the U.S. back into the Paris Climate Agreement, which will mean policies to reduce emissions of GHGs (Green House Gases) will figure in Administration policy.

Pipeline companies have been reporting earnings. As has been the case recently, they’ve been generally coming in as expected, reflecting the stability in their underlying businesses.

On Wednesday Exxon Mobil (XOM) declared a quarterly dividend of 82 cents a share. Although this means 2020 will be the first year since 1982 that they haven’t raised it, the bigger question is whether they can sustain it.

Few would believe there’s a midstream energy infrastructure stock that’s tripled this year, but New Fortress Energy (NFE) has done just that. Happily, it’s a component in the American Energy Independence Index (AEITR). This year’s strong performance has NFE approaching a top ten position, since AEITR is market cap weighted. 

Although we rarely write about technical analysis, charts are helpful in showing visually where prices have come from. We also have a good number of clients who use charts to form investment opinions. This is especially true when it comes to changing portfolio allocations. Recently, bullish energy sector charts have come up in conversations.

In recent weeks, 2021 natural gas have been quietly moving higher. November ’21 futures have rallied over 40 cents, to just under $3 per Thousand Cubic Feet (MCF).

The energy sector has long been criticized for reinvesting too much capital back into its business, without ensuring that such investments exceed their cost of capital. No business can survive unless its return on investments is more than the cost of financing them.

Targa Resources, a perennial mis-allocator of capital, is not an obvious candidate to initiate a buyback program. Nonetheless they did on Monday, and the stock rose almost 11% on the news. In February last year, when Joe Bob Perkins was CEO, he responded to questions about their capex plans by arrogantly calling them “capital blessings.” This reflected an attitude that building new infrastructure and buying assets was part of their mission, regardless of whether such projects made financial sense.

With pipeline stocks having their worst month since the depths of Covid-panic selling in March, investors are wondering when the smart money will finally respond to today’s extreme undervaluation and commit capital. Recent price action makes little sense, something that becomes very apparent in discussions with clients. 2Q20 earnings were as expected, and dividends unchanged. The yield on the American Energy Independence Index, the most representative index of North American midstream energy infrastructure, is now over 10%.