SL Advisors Talks Markets

It’s now less than a week until Donald Trump takes over in the White House. The past couple of months have caused many to wonder why there’s such a long gap between the election and the inauguration. It’s a holdover from the eighteenth century when the time was required to allow messengers to travel to […]

Wells Fargo has recently suggested that the market may start paying more attention to the P/E ratios of midstream stocks. The sector has historically been valued using Free Cash Flow or Distributable Cash Flow (DCF), which is FCF less the maintenance capex necessary to preserve the value of existing assets. P/E hasn’t been used much […]

Data center demand for natural gas was the big energy story last year.  Wells Fargo referred to “a momentous year for midstream” with this as the biggest driver. It’s been consistently cited by JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley. Wells Fargo calculated that C-corps outperformed MLPs by 23%. This was a substantial difference and means that the […]

We enjoy the feedback from our blog readers, which along with the pageviews inform future topics. Looking back over last year’s posts, natural gas growth, the challenges facing renewables and obstructionist climate extremists were among the themes that resonated most. The most popular post was The Inflationary Energy Transition, which reviewed how US electricity prices […]

The other day I read a tweet complaining that since 1971 household family income had increased 5.5X (from $10K to $55K) while the median cost of a new car has gone up by 12X ($4K to $48K). It’s not quite correct. Median family income has risen to $101K, so has almost kept up. But it […]

Over the years I’ve developed a few soundbites to help investors remember why they should invest in midstream energy infrastructure. Once it became clear that climate extremists’ efforts to impede new pipeline construction were boosting free cash flow, I proclaimed that we should all hug our local climate protester and drive them to their next […]

Around this time of year, I’ve often indulged myself in writing about Christmas pudding (for more, watch this video). This English dessert is a rich, dark fruit cake best enjoyed heated with heavy cream. It is an acquired taste, and our children were each offered one brief opportunity to develop a taste for it. While […]

For years the center of gravity for global LNG trade was in Asia. China, India, Japan and South Korea were routinely over 60% of global LNG imports. Asia-Pacific was often over 70%, reaching a high of 75% in 2018. Australia and Qatar were geographically better suited than the US to meet this demand, and our […]

With forecasts for power demand growth seemingly increasing every month, it’s clear that part of the solution will be “behind the meter”, meaning new natural gas power plants directly connected to their data center customers without the need to connect to the grid. This also sidesteps potential complaints that existing electricity customers are subsidizing the […]

Last week my partner Henry Hoffman attended the 23rd Annual Midstream, Energy, and Utilities Symposium, held by Wells Fargo. The mood was understandably upbeat, underpinned by strong fundamentals and the more coherent regulatory framework expected following the election. Given our focus on natural gas, we were naturally interested in this element of the energy story. […]