CBRE Global Investors, combined with CBRE Clarion Securities and CBRE Caledon, is one of the world’s leading real asset investment managers providing real estate and infrastructure investment solutions to over 500 clients worldwide.
CBRE Global Investors is the investment management division of CBRE Group, Inc. the world’s premier commercial real estate services and investment firm. The company’s shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “CBRE.”
July 5, 2014
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MLPs had an up and down week. The Alerian MLP Index was up 1.1% Monday and Tuesday to a new all-time high, then down 1.4% Wednesday and Thursday to finish the short trading week down 0.3% overall. Positive jobs data pushed interest rates up in the back half of the week, putting pressure on all yield-based securities, particularly utilities (UTY was down 3.1% from Tuesday’s closing price). The broad equity market continued to march higher, with the S&P 500 up each day of the week, and finished up 1.2% since last Friday.
It’s hard to read much into the price action of 1.5 days of trading in the middle of the summer, particularly after an uninterrupted 4 month rise in MLP indices, but it’s not unreasonable to think that the falling rate tailwind could turn into the rising rate headwind the market thought it would be at the beginning of 2014.
This week could have been the turning point, or it could have been big MLP buyers taking the back half of the week off to beat the traffic to the Hamptons. Or maybe all the little MLP buyers were just too busy mourning the end of U.S. Soccer’s brief World Cup run, performing final stomach stretching exercises in preparation for the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, or decorating those last few dozen American flag cupcakes. Maybe Monday everyone will get back to the profitable business of buying MLPs. Maybe.
What do you think? Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.
June in the Books
We passed through another month early this week, the best month so far this year, with the Alerian MLP Index producing 5.9% total return. The positive June marks the 4th straight positive month for the index, during which time the MLP Index produced 15.8% total return. Also noteworthy, it was the 5th straight positive June for the index.
The second quarter produced 14.2% total return for the index, which was 5th best in the last 10 years (1Q 2013 was the best ever at 19.7%, the last quarter that produced double digit positive returns). Turning to July, last year was negative, but July has on average been the third best month of the year for the MLP Index (at +3.4%), behind January and April.
Winners & Losers
Drop-down growth MLPs popped this week, led by VLP’s 10.9% increase in 3.5 days, followed by TEP and RRMS. TEP’s large distribution increase announcement probably helped its land it among the top performers.
FGP, the MLP with the longest running distribution stream without a single distribution raise (nearly 20 years), was down the most this week. FGP is the most bond-like of all MLPs because of its flat distribution expectation, so it’s a good barometer of the impact of interest rate movements on MLPs. EEP and BWP retraced some of their big gains from last week, while RRMS landed among the top 5 for consecutive weeks.
For the year so far, TEP returned to the top 5 this week, and LGP returned to the bottom 5 this week, but no changes among the top or bottom 4.
News of the (MLP) World
I normally don’t list out when deals close, because it can be confusing as to what’s been announced and what hasn’t, and it is typically the announcement of the deal that moves stock prices around. But this week seemed like a nice quiet week for MLPs to clean up their previously-announced deals and get them all closed, so it’s worth noting them all together. The following deals closed this week:
M&A / Growth
Other / Industry