Cash Pipeline is Flowing, But Rates are Up (ETP, KMP)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published

Money_stack_pic_5Energy Transfer Partners L.P. (NYSE:ETP) has priced an offering of $600 million in 9.7% senior notes due 2019, and the paper has been rated ‘BBB-‘ with a ‘stable’ outlook by Fitch Ratings. Earlier this year, Energy Transfer issued $1.5 billion in senior notes in three offerings. The proceeds from those offerings were used to repay existing debt. The new note will pay outstanding borrowing on the company’s revolving credit facility.

The ten-year note Energy Transfer issued in May had a coupon of 6.7%,compared with 9.7% for the new ten-year note. That’s a pretty big jump.

Another pipeline partnership, Kinder Morgan Energy Partners L.P.(NYSE:KMP), today revealed that it has issued $500 million in ten-yearsenior debt at 9%. Kinder Morgan also issued 3.9 million additionalcommon units to raise another $177 million. The company also raisedanother $194 million by reversing fixed to floating interest rateswaps. Kinder Morgan didn’t say what it was planning to do with thenearly $900 million in cash.

Energy Transfer’s total debt-to-market-cap ratio is nearly 1; KinderMorgan’s is less than 0.7. Energy Transfer’s share price is up about 1%this morning; Kinder Morgan’s is down about 1%.

Paul Ausick
December 19, 2008

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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