13 Nov 2015debt financing● Neutral
The credit agreement was amended alongside third-quarter results, the first reporting period reflecting the new midstream business.
Announcements, explained
Each one in plain English, with the numbers worked through for a shareholder.
14 Oct 2015asset acquisition disposition● NeutralMajor
Catarina Midstream closed, together with a fifteen-year agreement under which Sanchez Energy must send all its Catarina production through the system. Stonepeak got two board seats, the right to appoint all three independent directors if its preferred is not redeemed by the end of 2021, and standstill protections. Both halves matter: the partnership's revenue now depends on one customer, and its governance now depends on one preferred holder.
29 Sept 2015capital raising announcement● NeutralMajor
The transformative deal: the partnership agreed to buy the Catarina gathering system from Sanchez Energy for $345.8 million, funded almost entirely by selling $350 million of new Class B preferred units to a single institutional buyer, Stonepeak. It converts the partnership from a marginal producer into a midstream business - and hands an infrastructure fund a claim ahead of every common unitholder.
17 Apr 2015material agreement▼ Bad
A $100 million programme to dribble units into the market through MLV was put in place - continuous dilution as a funding source, at a partnership whose units were already thinly traded.
15 Apr 2015capital raising announcement● NeutralMajor
The partnership sold Class A preferred units privately to fund the Palmetto purchase, with registration rights and penalties if the resale registration was late. Preferred capital ahead of the common units is how this partnership funded every acquisition from here on.
1 Apr 2015asset acquisition disposition▼ BadMajor
The first related-party purchase under Sanchez control: the partnership bought working interests in 59 Palmetto wellbores from Sanchez Energy for $85 million, paying $81.6 million cash and just over a million units, funded with a new credit agreement and a new class of preferred. Money flowing from the partnership to its controlling shareholder's other listed company, on terms no outside buyer negotiated.
19 Mar 2015listing compliance notice▼ BadMajor
Evolve Transition Infrastructure LP terminated the registration of a class of securities, ending its reporting obligation for them.
9 Mar 2015listing compliance notice● NeutralMajor
Evolve Transition Infrastructure LP's exchange filed to remove a class of its securities from listing.
8 May 2014director officer appointment▼ BadMajor
The partnership handed its entire operation to SP Holdings, a Sanchez Oil & Gas affiliate, under a shared services agreement paying a quarterly fee based on asset value - the same external-management structure Sanchez Energy uses. The partnership no longer runs itself, and the manager is paid on size rather than returns.
9 Aug 2013director officer appointment● NeutralMajor
Control passed to the Sanchez family: Sanchez Energy Partners I contributed Texas and Louisiana oil and gas properties for common units, Class A units and the controlling Class Z unit, then immediately removed the two existing Class A managers and installed Antonio R. Sanchez III and Gary Wellinger. The Constellation-sponsored gas partnership became a Sanchez vehicle in a single filing.
31 May 2013debt financing● Neutral
The credit facility was refinanced with Société Générale as agent, again with a $350 million maximum commitment and a 2017 maturity. Put in place three months before the partnership changed hands.
21 Mar 2013auditor change● Neutral
The partnership replaced PricewaterhouseCoopers with KPMG as auditor, a cost-conscious change for a business a fraction of the size it had been a year earlier.
1 Mar 2013asset acquisition disposition▼ BadMajor
The Robinson's Bend sale closed at $63 million plus adjustments. The partnership is now a Cherokee Basin and Woodford gas producer with cash and a much smaller borrowing base, and no obvious reason for anyone to own it.
12 Feb 2013debt financing● Neutral
The lenders consented to the Robinson's Bend sale and released their security over it, with the borrowing base to be cut when it closed. Selling collateral shrinks the credit line - the cash raised does not stay available.
4 Feb 2013material agreement▼ BadMajor
The partnership agreed to sell Robinson's Bend - the Alabama coalbed methane field it was built around - to Castleton Commodities for $63 million. Selling the founding asset is the clearest statement that the original business no longer worked at prevailing gas prices.
5 June 2012director officer appointment▼ Bad
The performance grants made to executives two months earlier were cancelled by mutual agreement and replaced. Targets set in April 2012 had already become unreachable.
6 Apr 2012director officer appointment● Neutral
The four executives' employment agreements were amended and restated - a routine refresh, though the terms of retention matter more at a partnership whose units had just traded under $2.
24 Feb 2012listing compliance notice▼ BadMajor
Evolve Transition Infrastructure LP's securities were notified for removal from listing and registration on its exchange.
15 Feb 2012listing compliance notice▲ GoodMajor
the New York Stock Exchange certified Evolve Transition Infrastructure LP's securities for listing, clearing them to begin trading.
14 Feb 2012listing compliance notice● Neutral
Rather than keep fighting the $3.00 minimum, the partnership moved its listing from NYSE Arca to NYSE Amex, where the standard did not apply. A solution to the symptom.
6 Jan 2012listing compliance notice▼ BadMajor
The units closed at $1.96 against NYSE Arca's $3.00 minimum, having been below it for over thirty days. The exchange waived the requirement this time - the first listing problem in what became more than a decade of them.
3 June 2011debt financing● Neutral
The lenders extended the $350 million facility's maturity by a year to November 2013. Breathing room rather than new money, at a point when natural gas was heading below $3.
1 Dec 2009director officer appointment● Neutral
Unitholders approved a new incentive compensation plan, giving the partnership its own equity currency for the management team it had just hired directly.
16 Nov 2009debt financing● NeutralMajor
The partnership consolidated its borrowings into a single $350 million reserve-based facility led by Royal Bank of Scotland, maturing in 2012. Reserve-based means the banks re-test the collateral twice a year - which is how a gas producer with falling prices loses its credit without missing a payment.
4 May 2009director officer appointment● NeutralMajor
The partnership signed direct employment agreements with its four senior executives - chief executive Stephen Brunner, finance chief Charles Ward, general counsel Lisa Mellencamp and controller Michael Hiney - through its own services subsidiary. With the sponsor's future uncertain, the partnership was making its management its own rather than borrowed.
18 Dec 2008business combination● Neutral
The partnership reaffirmed its 2008 forecast and set out a 2009 plan, an attempt to steady unitholders after a quarter in which its sponsor's ownership had been thrown open and gas prices had collapsed.
23 Sept 2008business combination▼ BadMajor
The partnership's sponsor, Constellation Energy Group, agreed to be taken over by MidAmerican in the middle of the 2008 financial crisis, and had to publicly reaffirm that it would keep providing management services. When a managed partnership's manager is itself in play, its stability is no longer its own to guarantee.
3 Apr 2008asset acquisition disposition● NeutralMajor
The CoLa acquisition closed, funded by drawing on the credit facility. The partnership now holds coalbed methane in Alabama's Robinson's Bend field, gas in the Cherokee Basin, and this new Woodford position - all bought with borrowed money against a fixed distribution.
25 Feb 2008material agreement▲ GoodMajor
Then called Constellation Energy Partners, the partnership agreed to pay CoLa Resources about $53.4 million for interests in 83 non-operated Woodford Shale wells in Oklahoma, adding 13.1 billion cubic feet of proved producing gas reserves. A yield vehicle buying producing assets to support its distribution - the model it followed until gas prices broke it.