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We hosted our annual investor meeting with the Moody’s team to get their latest credit views on the utilities, power and midstream sectors.  For utilities, things have quieted down (ex California) as tax reform impacts have largely played out as expected.  FFO/D metrics have dropped 150-200bps on average due to lost deferred tax cash flows and currently sit in the 15-16% area and likely stay there.  Companies have taken actions to support their metrics (lot of equity) and have better visibility on regulatory treatment of tax reform.  So 2019 is about executing on plans, hitting metrics and sticking to balanced funding plans (ie more equity).  Moody’s still has a negative outlook on the sector but will likely go back to stable with good 2019 execution.                      

PCG’s impending bankruptcy will impact a wide swath of companies especially renewables suppliers.  These include large ones investors are aware of (CWEN, NEE/NEP, ED) and smaller ones not so obvious (NRG, DTE, likely others).  For the other CA utilities, EIX and SRE, investors will be focused on what this means for getting long-term fixes for wildfire risks.  Project risk continues to rear its ugly head as we have seen with ACP pipeline delays.  Key updates this quarter include D/DUK on ACP, SO on Vogtle, AGR on NECEC and Vineyard Wind, and SRE on Cameron.  Pension risk (and OPEBs and NDTs) due to the Q4 market swoon and drop in rates could hurt as D highlighted recently.  NI, ETR and others may face some headwind.

Utilities eked out a small 0.5% gain for 2018 on the heels of a massive Q4 rally as the market turned decidedly defensive ending the year down 6.2%.   Utilities 670bps outperformance came despite a lot of headwinds on the group including higher interest rates (10-yr up 23bps), lack of tax reform benefits, over $15B of equity issuance, and the CA fires impact.  Investors were looking for any place to hide and utilities fit the bill especially given their lack of exposure to tariffs and recession fears.  Utilities came in second among income sectors for the year trailing only Pharma which was up 5.2%.  Interestingly, all other income sectors underperformed the market in 2018 (see Exhibit 1).  We remain cautious on utilities going into 2019 given their heavy dependence on a negative macro call and very high relative valuations (20% adjusted P/E premium vs the historic avg of 3%).  In our view, buying defensive sectors at historically large premiums is not defensive.

Market volatility in October caught many off-guard and the hope was things would settle down post earnings.  Well they got much worse spurred by the disruption of the CA fires.  PCG and EIX ended November down 44% and 20%, respectively, on the heels of the destructive fires.  These were popular value names in the utility space and their sharp stock collapses clearly caused investor pain.  However, the second derivative impact was just as meaningful.  The “Anything but California” trade took over amidst utilities, lifting already expensive low-risk utilities to higher levels.  Many investors got just as hurt by being short or underweight these names as being long CA.  With investors suffering and year end approaching, the last two weeks have showed signs of portfolios shrinking and extreme risk-aversion which has only exacerbated the problem.  Everyone needs a holiday.