ENB smoking hot! These 2 High-Yield Stocks Team Up on a Win-Win Deal
Motley Fool
Matthew DiLallo, The Motley Fool
,Motley Fool•July 5, 2018
This year has been a disappointing one for investors in Enbridge (NYSE: ENB) and Brookfield Infrastructure Partners (NYSE: BIP) as both stocks are down double-digits. Two different factors have weighed on their valuations. In Enbridge's case, investors worried that the Canadian pipeline giant's debt level had grown too high. Meanwhile, Brookfield Infrastructure has been under pressure due to concerns about growth in the near-term after a recent asset sale.
Those issues, however, should fade away after the companies teamed up on a deal where Enbridge will sell a business unit to Brookfield for 4.31 billion Canadian dollars ($3.3 billion) in cash. That's because it should solve Enbridge's balance sheet problems while also addressing concerns about Brookfield's ability to grow. By correcting those issues, the deal makes it increasingly likely that the two companies can increase their high-yielding dividends at a healthy rate in the coming years.
Two people shaking hands with an energy facility in the background.
Two people shaking hands with an energy facility in the background.
More
Image source: Getty Images.
Details on the deal
Enbridge is selling its natural gas gathering and processing assets in Western Canada to Brookfield Infrastructure and its institutional partners in a two-stage deal. This business includes more than 2,200 miles of gathering pipelines and 19 natural gas processing and liquids handling facilities. These assets gather natural gas from wells and transport it to the processing plants, which extract natural gas liquids (NGLs) from the gas. Brookfield will acquire the assets regulated by provincial governments later this year and the federally regulated ones by the middle of 2019.
How this transaction helps Enbridge
For Enbridge, the cash payments will give the company the financial flexibility to address its balance sheet concerns as it funds a CA$22 billion ($16.8 billion) expansion program. It's the third non-core asset sale by the company this year as part of its efforts to accelerate the deleveraging of its balance sheet. With this latest transaction, Enbridge has announced CA$7.5 billion ($5.7 billion) of asset sales, more than double its CA$3 billion ($2.3 billion) target.
Even with those divestitures, Enbridge still expects to achieve its forecast to grow cash flow per share at a 10% annual rate through 2020. That keeps the company on pace to increase its 6%-yielding dividend at the same double-digit pace over that timeframe.
How the deal helps Brookfield Infrastructure
Brookfield, meanwhile, intends on investing $500 million into this transaction to acquire a 30% stake in the business, with its partners acquiring the other 70% interest in the assets. The company will fund its portion of the deal using some of the cash proceeds from the sale of its Chilean electricity transmission business.
These assets are an ideal fit for Brookfield, which has been eyeing energy midstream businesses in North America. "This investment represents an exciting opportunity to invest in scale in one of North America's leading gas gathering and processing businesses based in Western Canada. The business is strategically positioned for the continued development of the prolific Montney Basin," according to CEO Sam Pollock. Not only does it offer growth potential, but it generates stable cash flows underpinned by long-term contracts that have an average remaining life of 10 years.
Continue Reading
And so we are told this is the golden age
And gold is the reason for the wars we wage U2
