RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:I'd like to be optimistic but.... First of all you seem to jump to a lot of conclusions. I never said that i was against finding a partner
There are others commenting here who think IPL can do it alone - I wasn't accusing specifically you. You review the numbers well - I simply think the uncertainty in the oil market will continue for more years so the storage assets will continue to be highly utilized and IPL could have continued to make good cash flow from it. Which is what we all want.
I repeat - I got into this years ago for income and growth - I had my choice of PPL or KEY or IPL and I chose IPL because they had the possibility of the poly plant when it wsas $3B and not $4B and they had partners lined up. Since then, things have changed and it's no longer a sure thing and still no partners to share the load. One of the things lenders and ratings agencies look at is investor equity - when you start running debt up against equity and it comes out negative they don't like that.
I'm going to repeat the lesson of ENC again - while 9 out of 10 analysts were trumpeting its cash flow, its debt was rising higher and higher til the ratings agencies dropped it two points. investors - for some reason - panicked and fled, though the difference in interest rates on the new ratings would have only been $60 miilion a year, and ENC was making FCF or $1.2B, the market drove the price all the way down to $4.36 wher eI got my stake. Those who were in at $30+ based on the analysts' favourable reports are still underwater.
That's exactly what could happen here. Only IPL is a lot easier to swallow than ENC would have been. Nobody wants to be caught in a takeover where your stake becomes a line item in a bigger entity's report of sub-par performance.