This company has fallen dramatically in unit price and brought on a high yield, however, before jumping at this news, MoneyShow's Jim Jubak, also of Jubak's Picks, wants to inform you of exactly what this means for this company, and for your portfolio.
Units of ONEOK Partners (OKS), a member of my Dividend Income portfolio, have dropped 12.2% from March 28 to the close on August 23. That's brought the yield on this MLP (master limited partnership) to 5.69%.
Tempting, right? Although, you would like to know why ONEOK Partners has sold off before biting at that high yield.
I think three things are responsible for the drop in the unit price.
First, there's the general sell-off in anything in the dividend/income category, as the market braces of some kind of cataclysm, when the Federal Reserve begins to taper off its program of buying $85 billion a month in Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, as early as its September 18 meeting. I think that the Fed is likely to begin a taper in September, that the amount will be relatively modest—to say, $70 to $75 billion, instead of $85—and the market reaction will be chagrin that everybody got so worked up about this. (Which isn't to say that the long-term effects of the Fed's change in policy aren't significant. Just that the short-term effects are more than priced-in at the moment.) In other words, I'm not too worried that an MLP yielding 5.69% will plunge on the beginning of the Fed's taper.
Much more important are sector and company specific trends.
So, second, ONEOK Partners is exposed to the sector-wide drop in prices in natural gas and natural gas liquids, that has resulted from the tremendous jump in supply as a result of the US energy boom. Although about 68% of the company's cash flow is fixed-fee-based and is therefore relatively sheltered from declining prices for natural gas liquids, the company has targeted the natural gas liquids segment for much of its new investment in the last five years or so, until, now, about 50% of its pipeline business is in the natural gas liquids segment. Given that degree of exposure, the plunge in the price of natural gas liquids, such as butane, ethane, and propane has hurt. But it is important to note that even with that problem, ONEOK Partners believes that it will be able to increase its distribution to unit holders by 3% in 2013, with projected 8% to 12% distribution growth over the next three years. (There is also evidence that prices for natural gas liquids have bottomed.)
Third, on July 25, ONEOK (OKE) said that it would spin off its natural gas distribution business into a publicly traded company. I think this has left some investors confused. Notice that this is a spin off by ONEOK OKE and not ONEOK Partners OKS. Before the spin off, ONEOK was engaged in two businesses—natural gas distribution (to homes and factories) and natural gas gathering and transportation through pipelines. The company has decided to spin off the natural gas distribution business into a new company called One Gas, early in 2014. ONEOK will keep its natural gas gathering and transportation business, which amounts to a 43.4% ownership stake in ONEOK Partners and control of the general partnership for the ONEOK Partners MLP. In other words, the spin off will have no effect on the assets that ONEOK Partners owns. Which isn't to say that it hasn't had any effect on the share price for ONEOK Partners. First of all, I think the confusion, created by the spin off, may have led some investors in the MLP to sell. Second, I think that removing the very stable cash flow of the natural gas distribution business from ONEOK has raised fears—made less abstract by alerts from the ratings companies—that ONEOK could see a credit rating downgrade that might increase its cost of capital. The worry for ONEOK Partners is that could raise the cost of capital for ONEOK Partners too. I think that's unlikely or that the increase would be small. And finally, the yield on ONEOK has hovered near 3% recently. (It was 2.93% on August 23.) That creates some competition for investment dollars between ONEOK and ONEOK Partners.
But note that if you're looking to evaluate the ONEOK Partners MLP with its 5.69% yield, that the crucial positive fundamentals for the MLP remain intact. The MLP continues to be able to raise capital at a low cost-a unit offering that closed on August 6 sold for $49.61 and the units have started to recover from the lower prices caused by that supply. And ONEOK continues to be able to identify profitable opportunities for that money. The MLP has $4 billion in projects coming into operation through the first half of 2015. In the second quarter of 2013, ONEOK Partners saw the 600-mile Bakken natural gas liquids pipeline go into service as well as a gas processing plant in Williams County, North Dakota, and an ethane header pipeline along the Gulf Coast.
I'd look to see the units at a target price of $55 within a year.
Which makes that 5.69% yield worth biting at.
Full disclosure: I don't own shares of any of the companies mentioned in this post in my personal portfolio. When in 2010 I started the mutual fund I manage, Jubak Global Equity Fund, I liquidated all my individual stock holdings and put the money into the fund. The fund may or may not now own positions in any stock mentioned in this post. The fund did not own shares of ONEOK Partners as of the end of June. For a full list of the stocks in the fund as of the end of June see the fund's portfolio here.
