ENB: Re-Posting This Little Nugget -- November 10, 2020

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From Fitzsimmons over at SeekingAlpha:

Heading into winter season, ENB's underappreciated Union Gas utility - the largest gas utility in North America by volume - will shine.

More from the post:

The Q3 EPS report was solid. Financial highlights included (all figures in C$):

• GAAP earnings of $990 million, or $0.49/share, up two cents per share over the $0.47/share in Q3 of 2019.
• Adjusted EBITDA of $2,997 million, compared with $3,108 million in 2019.
• Cash Provided by Operating Activities of $2,302 million, compared with $2,735 million in Q3 of 2019.
• Distributable Cash Flow of $2,088 million was relatively flat compared with $2,105 million in Q3 of 2019.
• DCF of $1.03/share compares favorably to a quarterly dividend of $0.81/share for a coverage ratio of 1.27x.
• Full-year 2020 financial guidance range is reaffirmed for $4.50-$4.80 DCF/share. At the $4.65/share midpoint, that implies a 1.44x coverage on the current $3.24/share annual dividend obligation.

After suffering a ~400,000 bpd reduction in mainline volumes early in the year due to pandemic demand destruction, Al Monaco, President and CEO of Enbridge, said:

"In liquids, Mainline heavy capacity is now fully utilized and full year volumes are tracking to the guidance range that we provided in May for the remainder of 2020, and we're on track to deliver $300 million of cost reductions in 2020."

As a result, the Liquids Pipelines Segment EBITDA of $2.09 billion was up 27% over Q3 of 2019 ($1.65 billion). That was a positive development considering overall results were down due primarily to an outage on the Texas Eastern mainline due to an explosion in May in Kentucky. 

Monaco gave an update on the repair work on the Texas Eastern pipeline:

"In Gas Transmission, the vast majority of work has been completed on Texas Eastern to ensure safe and reliable natural gas delivery and the system has returned to its normal operating capacity for eastbound service in time for the winter heating season. Construction on the T-South Expansion, Spruce Ridge and our modernization program continue to progress well."

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BLM Basketball

A reader noted that "breaking news" reports that BLM basketball will resume December 22, 2020, on the eve of Festivus. Link here: https://www.foxnews.com/sports/nba-comes-back-on-dec-22-a-72-game-season. The social media comments are better than the story.

My reply:

I've been watching this story on ESPN for the past two weeks. Players did not want to start before Christmas.

Delaying start until after Christmas would result in $600 million loss of revenue for the BLM.

The owners prevailed.

And you are correct. No one is going to be watching BLM basketball over the Christmas holidays, but the networks will sell a lot of advertising.

I could have added the tie-in with Kwanzaa but thought that would be politically incorrect. By the way, Kwanzaa begins on Boxing Day here in the fifty-seven states on December 26, 2020, and ends not a day too soon on January 1, 2021. I have nothing against Kwanzaa; it just seems the festival would do much better in, let's say, October. Or September. Or March. But December is already pretty busy, and squeezing in another festive event during that period just seems ... well ... let's just say, someone should have looked at the calendar. 

It was bad enough when they added Festivus. 

By the way, as noted above, Festivus (for the rest of us) falls on December 23 this year (2020), as it does every year. From the internets:

While the Latin word festivus means "excellent, jovial, lively", and derives from festus, meaning "joyous; holiday, feast day", Festivus in this sense was coined by the elder O'Keefe. ... It is now celebrated on December 23, as depicted in the Seinfeld episode written by the younger O'Keefe.