Enterprise Products Partners To Hike Quarterly Distribution

Enterprise Products Partners L.P. (NYSE:EPD) recently declared that its board of directors has approved an increase in its quarterly cash distribution. The new distribution of 40.5 cents represents a hike of 1.25% from the prior distribution of 40 cents and 5.2% from the year-ago-quarter figure of 38.5 cents.

The new distribution is expected to be paid on Nov 7, 2016 to the unitholders on record as of Oct 31, 2016. Notably, this is the 58th distribution hike since the partnership’s initial public offering in 1998. This is also the 49th successive quarterly increase. We believe that with its diverse set of natural gas liquid (NGL), natural gas, crude oil and refined products midstream infrastructure assets, the partnership possesses fundamental strength to continue growing distribution.

Enterprise Products Partners, a leading master limited partnership (MLP), is engaged in providing a wide range of midstream energy services to consumers and producers of natural gas, NGL, and crude oil. The partnership has solid organic growth prospects, while an above average coverage ratio adds to its financial flexibility.

Although we believe that the partnership’s massive expansion program will boost growth over the coming years, finding adequate projects of the requisite size in the future could be a problem.

As a result, the partnership currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), implying that it will perform in line with the broader U.S. equity market over the next one to three months. It is expected to report third-quarter results on Oct 27, 2016.

ENTERPRISE PROD Price

Some better-ranked players in the energy sector include NGL Energy Partners LP (NYSE:NGL) , Evolution Petroleum Corp. (NYSE:EPM) and Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc. (NYSE:HLX) . NGL Energy and Evolution Petroleum sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), while Helix Energy carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

NGL Energy Partners’ expects a year-over-year increase of 554% in earnings for the current year.

Evolution Petroleum anticipates earnings to grow 218.2% year over year in the current year.

Helix Energy beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate in each of the last four quarters with an average earnings beat of 31.42%.

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