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“This CEO takes just a $1.00 annual salary and flies coach… So His Shareholders Can Live the Millionaire Lifestyle”

Teaser for Roger Conrad's MLP Profits says this "dream" pick just got better

By Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe, November 9, 2011

That’s what we all want to see, right? A skinflint CEO who skimps on perks and saves money for shareholders, and who pays out cash to those shareholders (well, that’s what we want to see if we don’t work for him, at least).

And that’s what Roger Conrad is teasing today for his MLP Profits newsletter, a project he co-edits with Elliott Gue that’s focused on, you guessed it, MLPs. Those are Master Limited Partnerships, in case you’re not in the know on that, pass-through entities that usually own energy infrastructure assets and pass their free cash flow straight through to investors in the form of dividend-like distributions.

MLPs are loved by many investors both for these high dividends and their utility-like stability in most market conditions, and for the tax deferral that they provide — we’ve talked about them many times in the past, including a long discussion of the MLP-teasing “10-86 Payback Plans” a month or so ago, but this time we’re getting an exciting tease for one specific company in the sector… so let’s sniff out those clues and identify Conrad’s pick for the legions of Gumshoe Readers, shall we?

That is, unless you’d rather sign up for the newsletter for $497 and get the word straight from the horse’s mouth.

No? OK, moving on …

The intro to the ad focuses on the penny-pinching ways of our CEO:

“He’s management’s worst nightmare… and a shareholder’s dream come true.

“His net worth is over $7 billion, though you’d never know it by looking at him.

“He doesn’t have his own jet… and when he flies, it’s in coach. When he travels, he stays at Red Roof Inns.

“His annual salary? A whopping one dollar.

“Yes, you read that correctly. And it’s just one reason why he’s been able to make so many investors so wealthy.

“In this volatile age of bailouts, bankruptcies and shredded portfolios, he operates one of the safest, surest and most lucrative enterprises in America—without paying a cent in income tax.

“And it’s made many investors up to 2,500% richer.

“In fact, on November 14, you’ll have a chance to share in these riches when he gives away $382,000,000.”

As we noted, he ain’t “giving away” $382 million — these are pass-through entities and they’re designed to funnel free cash to shareholders, so the company is just fulfilling its mandate. It happens to be a big company, so it’s a big number, but we’ll get to the “per share” numbers in a minute to give some perspective.

We get the full story of this CEO’s background, too — something the folks at Investing Daily love to do, pitching us on the CEO’s life to point at the hardships he’s been through and the brass-knuckles choices he’s made … in his case, his initial forays into business were crushed by the Florida real estate crash of the late 1970s, which drove him into bankruptcy … and into the loving embrace of a company that would soon get sucked up into Enron. He was college friends with Ken Lay, and was on track to be Enron CEO, but apparently spoke out against their energy-trading and accounting shenanigans and wanted them to focus on the hard assets … when that didn’t work, he went his own way, bought those hard assets from Enron, and created the company that Conrad is teasing today, a massive pipeline owner.

Here’s how Conrad puts it:

“Shortly after leaving Enron, he would use his skills and commitment to the 3 Rs [real assets, real earnings, real cash] to build himself and others a fortune—right under Enron’s nose.

“You see, as Enron became more enamored of trading rather than distributing energy, it was eager to unload many of its assets.

“One of them was a small natural gas pipeline.

“He knew that such an asset is where the real money lay. So after leaving Enron, he offered to take it off their hands for a mere $40 million—which he was prescient enough to recognize as a total steal.

“The fat cats were too busy lining their own pockets—with total disregard for the interests of their shareholders—to know or care.

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“But due to his experience in the energy industry, our man knew.

“And from this $40 million quickly grew one of the biggest fortunes in America—a $24 billion “recession-proof” enterprise that doesn’t pay a cent in income taxes and gives away its profits directly to investors.

“And it’s all perfectly legal.

“He does it by using a special structure—codified by the U.S. Congress—that not 1 investor in 100 even knows about.”

So that’s probably enough for many of you to come up with at least a solid guess about which company this is … but we get one more little tidbit as well.

The latest iteration of this ad, which I’ve seen off and on for a couple weeks, adds this to our consideration:

“I want to alert you to the news that the company’s general partner recently agreed to purchase 43,000 more miles of gas pipeline, natural gas storage facilities and oil- and gas-producing fields—all of which have little overlap with its existing portfolio.

“This purchase is expected to fuel distribution growth even beyond the impressive record you’ll read about below. We were strongly recommending this company before this news—but the dream just got better. Please read on…”

So who are they teasing us with over at MLP Profits?

This is the big daddy of pipeline MLPs, Kinder Morgan Energy Partners (KMP — free trend analysis from Marketclub, one of our advertising partners).

FYI, Kinder Morgan also has a corporate version of this MLP, Kinder Morgan Management (KMR), which bypasses MLP tax forms and issues distributions in the form of shares instead of cash. KMR trades at a much larger discount to KMP than it did five years ago, I’m not sure why — might be worth looking into if you’re interested in the name.

And yes, Richard Kinder, the CEO we’re teased about, is a very well-known energy name, a former College buddy of Ken Lay and a higher-up early on at Enron before that company went really goofy. And he is a famous corporate skinflint, there are plenty of stories floating around about him, but my favorite quote is this from a recent MoneyWeek profile:

“Forget seeing the company’s name on a stadium – Kinder won’t even pay for a box inside of one.”

The latest big transaction is the deal by their general partner, Kinder Morgan, Inc. (KMI) to buy El Paso, which is what provided the “even more of a dream” add-on tease here — this will bring more assets into the parent that they can pass down into the MLP and make them by far the biggest pipeline company in the country, though they were certainly huge before, and it will provide the next wave of growth in the MLPs — both Kinder’s MLP and El Paso’s MLP, which will continue to exist as a separate entity (El Paso Pipeline Partners, ticker EPB).

KMP currently yields about 6% — a $75 share price and a quarterly distribution of $1.16 (they’ve increased the distribution by one penny each quarter this year, and generally have increased it over time, though it can also sometimes go down). KMI, the general partner, currently yields a bit over 4% — they were taken private in a leveraged buyout back in 2007 and just IPO’d again back in February, the price is down a bit from the IPO and the buyout shops still hold a substantial portion of the shares. KMR, the one which pays distributions in the form of additional shares, is a little tougher to figure out but it looks like the effective yield is somewhere in the 7% range.

You can see the full Kinder Morgan conference call transcript here in case you’d like more of a discussion of their recent results and some chatter about the acquisitions.

I’m actually intrigued by the general partner in this case (KMI) — they’re clearly taking a bit of a gamble levering up to buy such a large company, but being a general partner is a very profitable business … their primary asset is ownership in shares of the limited partnerships, but they usually have incentive distributions that let their income rise more quickly than the MLP distributions, and I like the idea of one company serving as general partner to two large and growing MLPs (part of acquiring El Paso means they get to be the general partner for El Paso’s MLP). But I’ve just started to look at KMI and it’s a very fluid situation, with the large transaction probably not closing for several months and with KMI probably needing to offload El Paso’s production assets to help cope with their larger debt burden.

And as I probably say almost every time I write about these firms, it’s hard to argue against going with a portfolio of a few of the large MLPs if you like the sector, the distribution income, and the general stability they tend to offer — they typically have inflation protection insofar as they’re able to raise rates, and they are not dependent on commodity prices since they operate as toll businesses that are paid by volume, not as a percentage of the gas or oil they transport. There’s also generally a big advantage in having a diversified portfolio of pipelines to make sure you’re not tied just to one production area or one consumption region or one commodity (or one pipe, as we’ve seen with some pipeline-specific spills and controversies over the years).

But MLPs do also trade in line with income investments to a substantial degree (or they have historically done so, at least), so if rates ever do rise on long-term bonds that will be potential competitive pressure for income investments like MLPs and REITs, all else being equal. I don’t currently have any pipeline investments to speak of, but I’d probably still look to the big guys first if this were my intent — and there are also some ETFs, including AMLP, that give you some of the benefit of MLP distributions without single-company risk (and without tax benefits — there’s apparently more of a tax drag on these ETFs than I would have guessed, as per this Motley Fool article).

So there you have it — a teaser for what is probably the largest and best-known of the pipeline MLPs. Think this is the kind of income investment you’d like to have in your portfolio, or do you have others you’d suggest to your fellow Gumshoe readers? Let us know with a comment below.

And if you’ve tried out MLP Profits, we’d love to know what you thought — just click here to submit a short review of the newsletter for your fellow investors.

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Megan Mitchell
Irregular
November 9, 2011 2:58 pm

I ended up getting 200 KMP back in August around 67.50, and this is my first exposure to MLPs, so if anyone has ideas on others that are strong and have good yields I’d appreciate the ticker symbols. Thanks!

Herman the frog
Member
Herman the frog
November 9, 2011 5:48 pm
Reply to  Megan Mitchell

The best brokerage firms with the best research on MLP’s are Stifel Nicholas and Credit Suisse. Find a broker at each firm that will send you the research on a weekly basis with the BUY recommendations.

SRS
Guest
SRS
November 9, 2011 4:22 pm

When Kinder lost his opportunity to become CEO of Enron and left, his advice to one of the disillusioned people left behind was: “The best revenge is living well.”

Great words to live by; and, given both his stunning success AND the subsequent fates of Enron and several of its top execs, he certainly has extracted the best possible revenge he could possibly have hoped for.

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who noze
Member
November 9, 2011 4:43 pm

i had ep whichis take over by kmi- terms are rather vague at this tyme though 5 yr warrents are involved

Ira Cotton
Guest
Ira Cotton
November 9, 2011 6:00 pm

I own and like KMP. Only wish I had bought much earlier. I think growth in dividends will offset the impact of growth in bond yields to a significant extent.
Other pipelines and related stocks:
Atlas Pipeline Partners (APL), Buckeye Partners (BPL), Enterprise Products Partners (EPD), Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), Plains All America Pipeline (PAA), Regency Energy Partners (RGP), Tesoro Logistics (TLLP). Pembina Pipeline (PBNPF or PPL on Toronto Exchange).

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Oliver Stewart
Oliver Stewart
November 9, 2011 6:33 pm

How about some discussion on AGNC, which is yielding about 20% with its income guaranteed by agencies f the U.S/ government?

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Tim
Guest
Tim
December 2, 2011 5:21 am
Reply to  Oliver Stewart

Oliver, I own AGNC as well as various MLP’s but I view it as a very different beast from most MLPs. It is a leveraged Reit and with a yield of almost 20% it is extremely interest sensitive. MLP’s are mostly less volatile as they depend on long term contracts for providing services and have somewhat of a monopoly status. They also have tax and estate planning advantages over reits.
A general comment about MLP’s , I generally prefer ones that are mostly pure service companies rather than ones who actually own some of the commodities they transport. This makes them less dependent on commodity prices. I do own a coal MLP (ARLP) that has been great (500% in 10yrs excl high dividends!), but it is commodity price dependant. There are only a few coal MLP’s.

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Tim
Guest
Tim
December 2, 2011 5:57 am
Reply to  Oliver Stewart

Oliver, not to the point of your direct question about AGNC, but somewhat related : here is an interesting Morningstar article modeling effects of diversifying your portfolio using eithjer Reits or MLPs. The idea being different asset classes have different corellations to overall stock market. MLP’s come out better ( less correlated) in their comparison.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/270714-mlps-reits-and-the-search-for-uncorrelated-returns

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john sloan
Guest
November 10, 2011 2:25 pm

Great again Travis,.
I have held KMP and LINN and Market west partners for some time – the last is especially strong in the Marcellus shale to east coast play
Also have Clearbridge – CEM which is a ETF that holds MLP’s
Another one is Alerian AMJ
Dealing with the k-1is a chore but not too terrible once they send you a full tax package describing where all the boxes on the K-1 go. There are more MLP in addition to those Ira listed above – one way I find them is to call up the S&P report and then look down at the bottom where they list comparative info on similar companies – will have more MLP.
I think a MLP with pipes to the Bakken would be good choice now.
best wishes
john

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kent
Member
kent
November 11, 2011 8:53 am
Reply to  john sloan

I like LINE.

Brian
Guest
Brian
November 25, 2011 9:29 pm

Take a good hard look at Pembina, it is a winner….

sumflow
Member
sumflow
February 4, 2013 4:43 pm

The Insider Report had us in KMR long before this MLP report. Subsequent purchases by management all turned out to be good deals. Very easy to hold long term with a break-even stop. KMR just broke to new highs on ex dividend day 2013, and pays a rising dividend of around 6%.

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