Dagen McDowell

A new weekly series is headed to Fox Business Network today, opening up the lines to everyday Joe’s like me to call in and discuss personal finance and economics.

The show, Your Questions, Your Money Live,  will air every Saturday from 10am to 2pm Eastern Time, hosted by Dagen McDowell who appears regularly on Your World with Neil Cavuto and Cashin’ In (she actually won the Cashin’ In challenge for the last three years).

The crux of the show is to bring in Fox Business contributors and outside experts to answer viewer questions regarding finance,  markets, real estate and investing.

I’ve been watching the Fox Business Channel more frequently these days, and the Happy Hour show got me hooked.  The channel is not nearly as dry as Bloomberg, more level than most on CNBC, and seems like it’s geared more toward the common investor than the Wall Street suit.

I look forward to the airing of today’s first show, and I suspect it will be a good complimentary fit to the rest of the lineup at the Fox Business Network.

Finance, Stock Research Dagen McDowell, FBN, Fox Business, Your Questions Your Money

Several days ago I asked my buddy MJ over at Dyslexic Research what he thought of Ingersoll-Rand (IR: chart, web, Y!).  I’m not really an industrials guy, as my area of knowledge rests more in energy (specifically oil and gas) and tech.  That said, I’ve been making efforts to broaden my knowledge and diversify my portfolio.

MJ, however, is very much in tune with industrial sector, and I figured he’d have a good opinion on the company.

So it was with great interest that I read his opinion post on the company.

As MJ mentions, Ingersoll-Rand is in early stages of acquiring Trane (TT: chart, web, Y!).  You know, the air conditioner people.  But it turns out that Trane is much larger than I thought, and offer product lines outside of the home HVAC units.

MJ believes that Trane is a stronger company than Ingersoll, and as such, Ingersoll benefits more from the acquisition than Trane does (which is good if you’re looking at Ingersoll stock).  However, he also suggests that this would be a great opportunity for Ingersoll to screw up a fairly healthy company.  And I agree.

I’m not sure I agree with Ingersoll’s sell off of Bobcat, as that seemed to be a very robust product and a fairly bullet-proof brand.  Trane could bring some street-cred back to IR, but it will take some time according to MJ:

After seeing mergers from the inside out, it will take roughly six months to a year for the two companies to properly integrate into one another and see potential synergy savings. After that both companies might be able to flourish. -Source

In my opinion, a lot will depend on how they structure the acquisition.  If Trane operates as a subsidiary, I think the integration process will be fairly smooth, as it will be a matter of book keeping.  However, if it is a merger in the truest sense of the word, I’d look at 18 months before you see signs of a single, well oiled machine.

I’ll let you read about MJ’s outlook on Ingersoll and his official opinion on the stock at his blog, and he’s brought up some very valid concerns.

For now, I’ll keep digging but will keep Ingersoll-Rand on my watch list.

Investing, Stock Research, Stock Thoughts Ingersoll-Rand, IR, Stock Thoughts, Trane, TT

Duncan Energy Partners (DEP: chart, web, Y!) reported Q3 financials today. They reported a net income of $4.5 million for the quarter, which rounds out to $0.22 per unit, fully diluted share, missing Reuters estimates by $0.01 per share.

Gross operating margin was $19.1 million for Q307 as compared to $22.5 million for Q306. The difference can be attributed to business interruption insurance recoveries, startup expenses for 2007 (remember that DEP went public in February of this year) and the write off of conversion costs when they tried to convert a NGL storage cavern to a natural gas storage cavern, and determined the cavern would not be suitable for natural gas storage.

Consequently, if you adjust for these unusual costs incurred in 2007, the gross operating margin was ahead of that in 2006.

Distributable cash flow for the third quarter was $8.7 million.

“We are pleased to increase the cash distribution rate to our partners this quarter for the first time since our IPO in February,” said Richard H. Bachmann, president and chief executive officer of the general partner of Duncan Energy Partners. “Future increases in the quarterly cash distribution rate are expected as the distributable cash flow from our commercial businesses, whether from our existing assets or the acquisition and/or construction of new assets, warrant.” -Source

Higher than expected capital expenditures brought the overall distributable cash flow for the quarter down, part of which was due to a state requirement to have partial pipeline integrity done by the middle of December.

Bachmann went on to say that he expects the capital expenditure levels to drop going through 2008.

Read more…

Energy, Investing, Oil & Gas, Stock Research Dan Duncan, DEP, Duncan Energy Partners, EPD, EPO, natural gas pipelines, NGL storage, NGL transportation