Williams Partners Prices $1.25B Senior Notes - Analyst Blog

Publicly traded energy pipeline partnership, Williams Partners L.P. WPZ announced that it has priced a public offering of $750 million of its 3.9% senior notes due 2025 at a price of 99.690% of par and $500 million of its 4.9% senior notes due 2045 at a price of 99.229% of par. The expected settlement date for the offering is Jun 27, 2014.

Williams Partners plans to use the net proceeds from the offering to repay amounts outstanding under the partnership's commercial paper program, to fund capital expenditures and for general partnership purposes.

On Apr 30, the partnership reported first-quarter earnings of 36 cents per limited-partner unit, missing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 47 cents. Earnings also deteriorated from the year-ago profit level of 50 cents. Quarterly total revenue also decreased 6.3% year over year to $1,693.0 million and also came in below the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1,800.0 million. However the partnership reaffirmed its guidance for distribution per limited partner unit growth of 6% in both 2014 and 2015.

Williams Partners is an energy master limited partnership engaged in gathering, transportation, treating and processing of natural gas as well as fractionation and storage of NGLs. The partnership owns interests in three major interstate natural gas pipelines that together deliver 14% of the natural gas consumed in the U.S. The partnership's gathering and processing assets include large-scale operations in the U.S. Rocky Mountains as well as onshore and offshore Gulf of Mexico. The general partner of the partnership is owned and managed by Williams Companies Inc. WMB.

Williams Partners currently carries a short-term Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Better-ranked stocks in the same sector include Sprague Resources LP SRLP and Valero Energy Corp. VLO. While Sprague Resources sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), Valero Energy holds a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

 

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