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Just Energy Group’s (JE) CEO James Lewis on Q4 2016 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

Just Energy Group, Inc. (NYSE: JE ) Q4 2016 Earnings Conference Call May 19, 2016 10:00 AM ET Executives Rebecca MacDonald – Executive Chair James Lewis – President and Co-Chief Executive Officer Just Energy Pat McCullough – Chief Financial Officer Analysts Nelson Ng – RBC Capital Market Carter Driscoll – FBR Damir Gunja – TD Securities Sameer Joshi – Rodman & Renshaw Operator Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Just Energy Group Inc. Conference Call to discuss the Fourth Quarter 2016 Results for the period ended March 31, 2016. At the end of today’s presentation, there will be a formal Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the meeting over to Ms. Rebecca MacDonald. Go ahead Ms. MacDonald. Rebecca MacDonald Good morning. Thank you for joining us thing morning for our fiscal 2016 fourth quarter earnings conference. I’m Rebecca MacDonald, Executive Chair, Just Energy. And are here with me this morning, Co-CEO James Lewis and CFO Pat McCullough. Unfortunately, we will not be joined by Co-CEO, Deb Merril, as she is attending funeral services for a family member. Before we begin, let me preface the call by telling you that our earnings release and potentially our answers to questions will contain forward-looking financial information. This information may eventually prove to be inaccurate, so please read the disclaimer regarding such information at the bottom of our press release. Fiscal 2016 was tremendous year or Just Energy from a financial, operational and strategic positioning perspective. Our business continues to perform very well, delivering strong top and bottom line results, while generating meaningful cash flow. In parallel, with delivering strong results we were able to take strategic measures to position the company for continued long-term success in this exciting changing industry. On behalf of the board, I want to extend our appreciation to Deb, Jay, Pat and the entire team for their focus and commitment to driving meaningful change throughout the organization. As I look back over the past three years, essentially the time strains can put this new leadership team together, this is clearly a developing track record of delivering on our promises to our shareholders, customers and all of our stakeholders. In fiscal 2016, we exceeded our own guidance and overcame a very tough comparison to the strong fourth quarter of 2015. Given our world class risk management and our hedging strategy, we were able to drive strong performance in recently completed winter quarter, despite a relatively warm weather. As you’d recall, the winter weather of last year provided a windfall across much of the industry. The recent winter was about 15% milder than normal across Just Energy customer base in North America. Delivering such a strong result is testament to our hedging philosophy and commitment to establishing a stable and predictable earning profile. We feel strongly that our demonstrated ability to consistently deliver performance driven results in our any environment is now the new norm at Just Energy, as a result of our strengthened financial position and improved profitability profile. As you’ve heard us talk about all year long, we’ve taken action to change the business foundation and reposition the company to capture more accretive, profit and cash flow by not allowing our team to chase market share at the expense of margin due to our refusal to engage in risky pricing tactics that would ultimately damage our improved profitability profile. While this strategy will result in a decline in next customer additions from time to time, we feel strongly that our margin for customer improvement initiative is working. The progress is evident in improved scale and leverage in our model that is allowing us to take 5% topline sales growth for the year and deliver 17% gross margin and 15% Base EBITDA growth, while driving a 62% increase in cash flow. Let me be very clear, we are managing this business for the long-term, if that yield shorter negative additions for the sake of long-term accretive profit and cash flow, we will do it every single quarter. Let me also be clear, that we are planning for and we are well positioned for significant growth. We see tremendous opportunities to achieve our goals through the addition of product, markets and partnerships that will deliver value to our customers and growth for our business. Today, we are operating from greatly improved financial position. And our strategy is proving our ability to consistently deliver throughout any cycle. Our financial flexibility combined with the commitment to maintain a capital like model supports our ability to pursue a growth strategy centered on geographic expansion, structuring superior product value proposition and enhancing the portfolio of energy management offering. We feel confident, our strategy will continue to deliver in fiscal 2017 and beyond. With that I will pause, and ask Pat to provide some additional color on the quarter and years financial results. Pat. Pat McCullough Thank you, Rebecca. Overall, it was an outstanding year in terms of both profitability and cash. We’re very pleased with the financial results we’re generating as a results of the actions we’ve taken to reposition the company. The business is performing exceptionally well, and we’re seeing a consistency in our ability to take strong topline performance and deliver even more impressive bottom-line results. Let me cover some of the recent highlights for the fourth quarter and full year, then I’ll add more added color in specific focus areas and provide our outlook for fiscal 2017. In the fourth quarter, sales were $1,075.9 million, a decrease of 11% over the very strong quarter of fiscal 2015. The quarterly decline was a mix of lower commodity prices, lower volume due to warm weather and lower net additions from the year ago period in the consumer division, combined with lower sales prices for variable products in the commercial division. The effect of these items combined with the lower customer base more than offset the positive foreign exchange impact. For the full year, sales were up 5% to $4,105.9 million. The increase is primarily a result of the currency impact of converting US dollar denominated sales into Canadian dollars. Gross margin increased 5% to $204.3 million during the quarter, this is a continuation of the same positive foreign exchange impact and ongoing success of our margin improvement strategies that led to a full year gross margin increase of 17% to $702.3 million over last year. This quarter’s gross margin did not feel the impact of the warm weather that Rebecca mentioned due to our superior weather hedging program. Let me step back to add some color on how far we’ve come along this profitability for customer initiative. Today, we’re signing consumer customers at $207 of gross margin for our RCE, which compares to $191, just one year ago and $166 two years back. Additionally, commercial margins are being added now at $84 for RCE, up from $79 just one year ago, and $67 two years ago. So that’s a 25% improvement in both consumer and commercial over the two year period. We were able to drive these improvements in margin because our new innovative products are gaining more appeal and presenting more value for our customers. This is allowing us to price our energy management solutions competitively without sacrificing customer satisfaction. This satisfaction is evident in the attrition rate remaining flat year-over-year in what we consider a highly competitive market. The improvement in our operating results is also reflected in our cash flow performance. We ended the quarter with $127.6 million on cash and cash equivalents, up 62% from $78.8 million at the end of fiscal 2015. In addition, base funds from operations increased 37% from the same quarter last year and increased 49% year-over-year to $138.2 million. You’ve heard us talk a lot about the changes and repositioning this company has undergone, and this is another great example of delivering on promised change. Today, we’re happy to be able to say that the payout ratio on base funds is 54% for the full year, down from 94% in fiscal 2015 and down from 139% in fiscal 2014. Given the growth we’re projecting moving forward, I’m confident this achievement is sustainable. We’ve also remained committed to reducing debt. At year-end, long-term debt was $660.5 million, a decrease of 2% year-over-year. Despite the higher value of the US denominated debt due to foreign exchange, we successfully reduced debt during the year by $7 million through our normal course issuer bid program and an additional $25 million through repayment of our unsecured senior notes. As a result, book value net debt was 2.6 times the trailing 12 month Base EBITDA, significantly improved from 3.3 times just one year ago and approximately 6 times two years ago. We remain focused on further improvements to our debt position going forward. We were also successful in controlling overhead cost. Administrative expenses for the year increased by 10% to $170.3 million, however this was entirely driven by higher costs required to support customer growth in the UK, as well as the impact of the exchange rate on the US dollar denominated administrative cost. Selling and marketing expenses for the year increased 14% to $257.3 million, due to the impact of foreign exchange on the US base commission and overhead expenses. The start-up cost associated with the residential solar division, as well as the expenses becoming more directly co-related to the growing portion of the customer base for which selling cost are recorded over the life of a contract. In fact, the majority of the year-over-year increase was driven by prepaid commercial commissions. I’d also like to point out that during the recent quarter, we made four strategic sales in energy management solutions hires, whom we’re very excited to have on-board. These new members of the team provide us increased confidence in our ability to execute our growth strategy around solar and broader energy management solutions that will drive future customer growth within existing and new channels. To wrap up the year, the sum of all these activities and results led to strong bottom line results that exceeded even our aggressive expectations. Base EBITDA increased by 10% to $74.7 million this quarter, excluding the additional prepaid commission expense item. It’s important to remember that our reported Base EBITDA in the fourth quarter of this year included $7.4 million of prepaid commission expense, reflecting the change in classification of prepaid commissions to a current asset effective April 1, 2016. Base EBITDA was $67.3 million in the quarter, a 1% decrease from last year when we fully reflect this change in the current period. For the full year, Base EBITDA increased by 25% to $225.5 million in comparison to the fiscal 2015 excluding the additional prepaid commission expense. In fiscal 2016, we incurred $17.9 million of prepaid commission expense. When you include the prepaid commission expense item, reported Base EBITDA was $207.6 million, an increase of 15% over the prior year. While we did benefit nearly $21 million from foreign currency impact on the translation of our US operations, it was still a very impressive year as we posted performance based improvements of $24.5 million for the year. Now let me turn to the outlook for 2017. The improvements we’ve made to the business are here to stay. To reflect the progress in repositioning the business and to build off of our strong 2016, we believe we will achieve fiscal 2017 Base EBITDA in the range of $223 million to $233 million, reflecting continued double-digit percentage year-over-year growth. Fiscal 2017 guidance includes deductions to Base EBITDA of approximately $40 million for prepaid commercial commissions, which were previously have been included in amortization within selling and marketing expenses. This represents a $22 million year-over-year increase in this expense versus 2016, and represents a go forward run rate for this incremental deduction in future years. As you saw this year, we expect to offset this headwind with continued strong gross margin performance and foreign exchange benefit. If you consider the 20% EBITDA growth that we recorded this year, prepaid commission adjusted and on top of that another 25% for next year, this is a very compelling fees. In addition, Just Energy’s solar program continues to show promise, based on the success of the pilot launch in Southern California, operations will continue to grow with further expansion in California and in Northeast United States. In fiscal 2017, our solar and renewables business is expected to contribute $10 million towards the double digit percentage Base EBITDA targets. With that, I’ll turn it over to Rebecca for some concluding remarks. Rebecca MacDonald Thanks Pat. We enter fiscal 2017 well positioned to participate in the significant growth opportunity that exists in our changing industry. The energy management solution industry is in the midst of significant transformation as customers demand value added product that address the changing manner in which energy will be consumed. We embrace this change and feel we are uniquely capable of transforming our vision and insights into action, by delivering effective strategies and compelling product that capitalize on change and deliver real value. Our growth plan is centered on continued geographic expansion, structuring superior product value proposition and enhancing the portfolio of energy management offerings. Geographically, our expansion plan are focused in Europe, where we are actively evaluating new markets. Our UK business is striving and we are successfully adding consumer and commercial customers in a profitable manner. We believe this early success validates our ability to compete outside of North America and we plan to take this experience and expand into two new European nations this year. A large part of our ongoing success is also being driven by our ability to provide innovative product that take advantage of technological advantage and offer a superior value proposition to our customers. New products like our unlimited plan, our bundled product offering, our JustGreen offering, smart stat, thermostat and JustSolar to name just a few exciting opportunities. During the year, we also started [indiscernible] energy efficient LED lightbulbs without commodity product, and we added air filters to our suite of options. Each of those initiative –innovative product gaining more appeal and delivering more values to customer, which in turn is allowing us to price our solutions at premium, while retaining customers for long duration. In summary, this has been an incredible year for our company, and one we feel places us [indiscernible] on the best path of becoming the premium world-class provider of energy management solution. Our business is healthy and growing even stronger. We are committed to delivering another year of double-digits earnings growth, maintain our stable dividend, pursuing prudent geographic expansion and further strengthening the company’s financial and strategic position in the coming year. We would like to thank the employees of Just Energy, for making these results possible. As leadership team, we are very fortunate to have a group of employees who deliver results and believe in the future of Just Energy. Thank you for all you do for the business we operate, the customers we service, and the communities which we live in. With that I would like to open it up for questions. Question-and-Answer Session Operator Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We have a question from Nelson Ng from RBC Capital Market. Nelson Ng Great, thanks. Congratulations on a good quarter. Rebecca MacDonald Thank you very much. Pat McCullough Thank you, Nelson. Nelson Ng My first question relates to the customer margins, in terms of additions and the attrition, so I’m not sure if my math is right, but are the margins for the consumer customers lost higher than the margins for the consumer customers added in Q4? Pat McCullough The margin for… Nelson Ng For the customers lost, for Q4 specifically and not for the year, was it higher than the margins for the customers added? James Lewis No, the margin for the customer for Q4 and full year had [indiscernible]. Now, if we continue to look at those customers the mass markets are – has been added, as Rebecca talked about the bundles there, so that would be the case. Nelson Ng Okay. Pat McCullough So Nelson, we can help you with this offline. I know we put this full year fiscals in our MD&A, but we can pull apart the fourth quarter for you. Nelson Ng Okay, that’s great. And then, just in terms of the fiscal 2017 guidance, like once you back out solar and you kind of back out the – or adjust for the commercial commission prepayments, it implies like a growth rate of above 15% EBITDA for the base energy retail business. I guess, like what’s your expectations in terms of the customer level going forward for the year, compared to I guess the growth in margins? James Lewis Nelson, when you – if you look at it, I think – we’re looking at this from an overall cost perspective, we’re getting more value add, the customers were singing up, or cost selling, up selling investing customers with the filters, with the deck, with the LED lights, so we expect more value under the existing customers. As we bring on new customers, our expectation is that from next year, we’re mostly in the range of 300,000 customers to add. As you go – brings the guidance, typically, and now we didn’t have the other original value in gross margins a little bit. Nelson Ng So you expect modest customer growth than most of the EBITDA growth will come from higher margins per customer? James Lewis Yes. But we are expecting, as Rebecca said to add more customers this year. Rebecca MacDonald I think in the last couple of years, Nelson, what you’ve seen is a, cleaning up our customer base that grew over time with number of unprofitable customers and this theme of change is focused on financial metrics, way more than on actual absolute number of customers. And one thing that we have proven to ourselves is that the margin for customer with the bundled product that is growing, and we don’t expect any change there. Now, would we like to add more customers? Absolutely. But, we have created enormous amounts of discipline around the margin that we will accept for each customer. And if we are not able to get it, we are happy to walk away from it. So what Jay is saying, look at the bundle and look at additions. And, we want to add as many profitable customers as we possibly can. But the key is profitable. Nelson Ng I see. But I guess in terms of your revenue guidance, you’re assuming like a modest customer growth, plus stronger margins per customer to drive growth, right? Pat McCullough Yeah, this is Pat, Nelson. If you go back to our growth strategy, we’re expecting both customer top line and bottom line growth through three main initiatives, geographic expansion, product enhancements to both bundling, but also bringing superior product structures like flat bill products to markets, when volatility returns, we think those are going to exciting products, and then the enhancement of more things sold through the customer at higher value. Nelson Ng I see, okay. And then just kind of moving on to the balance sheet, so you have a $128 million of cash at the end of the quarter, like I presume you’ll allocate some of that to reduce debt, as you’ve done in the last quarter. Can you talk about your – I guess your uses of cash in the next year in terms of what you intend to do with that and also, are there any updates in terms of I guess refinancing or addressing the 2017 maturity? Pat McCullough That was more than one question. Sure, let me start at the top. So, we’re very proud of this quarter based on the cash generated. Not only did we report, as we mentioned a $128 million of cash, we actually paid down $25 million of principal on the high yields senior note. And yes, that remains the priority. As we generate cash and [indiscernible] the dry powder on our balance sheet, we support the restructuring efforts of the business, which we’re very pleased, are right on track and we’re very confident that we’re going to be able to restructure the long-term converts and debt on our balance sheet in a shareholder efficient manner. Nelson Ng And do you have any, I guess updated timing on the solution? Pat McCullough We’re consistent with what we’ve said in the past, we see this getting done this year, this calendar year. We won’t be spilling into the fiscal 2017 calendar year, or the calendar year 2017. Nelson Ng Okay. Thanks Pat. I will get back in the queue. Pat McCullough Thanks, Nelson. Operator Our next question comes from Carter Driscoll from FBR. Carter Driscoll Good morning. So, can you talk maybe just about the competitive situation and maybe in conjunction with some of the changing regulatory in particular, obviously your state had a bit of a hick-up in terms of its curves to the energy retailing market most recently. How do you kind of deal with that from a high level? And then I’ve a couple of follow-up. James Lewis Yes, Carter. We believe the [indiscernible] that’s what they were looking at, whatever the drivers is. And if you look at, historically, when we have those competition, it will drive long-term value. So what we’re doing is we’re working with industry groups, and all the other markets to make sure they have the right market structure in place, that can deliver those types of value. What you’ve seen in place, where you have open access to the bill and you have policy going, you can offer customer innovative products, such as bundle that depends on what you do when you have markets when we only have aligned among the customer bill. Rebecca MacDonald I’m so sorry, I’d like to add to this, management of Just Energy is confident that we would be able to maneuver to any regulatory changes that might show through the year. Being in this for 25 years, I have seen so many different regulatory changes over time, pendulum goes left to the right and back, and our approach by large is conversation with the local environment about moderation, everything has to be balanced. Governments do want to protect the customers, but responsible players want to protect the customers as well. And we see the best protection customer guest is a strong consumer protection act and a very good value proposition to that customer. If you don’t try to drive value then in our opinion you are not going to survive in the business. Pat McCullough And Carter, this is Pat. One of the other enticing things about our strategy is as we move to more off grid or let’s say grid unconnected products, we’ve come a lot less attendant on regulation versus deregulation trends, where some of our competitors are pretty concentrated selling commodity only in deregulated markets. We’re really moving away from that to a broader or more diverse portfolio of products. And if you think about some of the new companies that are selling solar energy storage, they are not constrained by deregulation versus regulated space. Carter Driscoll And to that point Pat, can you talk maybe about your tax rate for some of the new bundled product, maybe quantify a little bit, so we get a sense of how that translate from just commodity offerings? Pat McCullough Sorry, I didn’t understand the beginning of your question Carter. Carter Driscoll I was just saying, can you talk about the attach rates for some of the bundled services, relative to your existing RCE base and how that’s trended over the past few quarters, so we get a sense, or try to quantify going forward as we try to apply some level run rate to, you’re kind of decoupling from the largely dependents on the commodity markets. Pat McCullough Yeah, that’s right. And as we were talking about earlier, and as Jay alluded to. Number of customers versus RCEs, which are commodity equivalent and the products per customer are going to be major drivers of improvement for us in the future. And as we create more of these bundled attach solutions, we’re really piloting first and then scaling into solutions that provide better conversion upfront and then less attrition and longer lifecycles with customers. So if you can get a – obviously stickier, more profitable customer you’re really going to be working both the front end and the back end of those income and cash cycles. And we see evidence of that as we bring differentiated value propositions to our customers. And we’re excited because we’re really starting to get to the point where we can take some of these high levels like LEDs, smart thermostats and solar from tens of thousands of customers to more. Carter Driscoll But quantifying it, is that possible at this point, can you just talk about your tax rate, as from some period, or over a longer period of time, is it 5%, is it 10%? James Lewis I think earlier on, Carter, I think we see in the market where we’re able to deal with and attrition rate, we see attrition, say about 5 percentage points and some like is 10%. What you’ll see in those markets, where you have a control of the bill and you choose the right customer, we’re getting a much this year value composition in those markets. As we look and figure out the ways to deliver this and constrain markets where we don’t have that sort of bill, the stickiness isn’t that strong because the utility determined to win the dropped customers in those markets. So [indiscernible] strong, but in other markets it’s extremely strong. Pat McCullough And Carter, the direct answer to your question is no, we’re not presenting a tax rate at this point in time, but obviously as we move to a broader portfolio RCEs don’t really represent, the strategy what the business will be doing. So you will see us begin to report in a different way in the future where we’re really talking about number of customers and products per customer, so that we can directly to the answer to your question. Carter Driscoll Alright. And then, just maybe a couple of quick ones. On the national side, you talked about kind of the margin expectations as you penetrate and the time to reach maybe kind of, what you’ve earned domestically, and then is there any incremental spend for those two target markets, you’re looking to expand internationally, is that already baked into your EBITDA guidance for the year? Pat McCullough Yes, it is. We’re really looking to address two markets as Deb mentioned on the last call. We’ve put some investor materials out on our investor website, which showed the P&L and the cash over the last four years for our UK organic business development. We’re assuming a similar business case as we enter markets in Continental Europe. Now the difference in Continental Europe and the UK is, UK and Germany are the largest markets by far. So other markets that Deb spoke about, Netherlands, Austria, Ireland are smaller markets. But we do expect to see similar sized customers as the UK, those customers end up being much smaller than North American users of energy, but they end up being much more profitable on a common energy unit basis, meaning gross margin for RCE for example on commodity. So we’re believing, as we’ve said in the past that single-digit millions of dollars to penetrate two new markets, we don’t want to take more than that on in the year, but we expect to have breakeven just after about a year’s time and get a cash on cash return in less than two years, that’s what we experienced in the UK, that’s what we think we can do in the other Continental European markets. Carter Driscoll It’s very helpful. Then just lastly, I’ll sneak one in, on the Resi Solar side, what do you see in terms of pricing, obviously there has been some comments about slowdown in market, I think it’s more unrealistic expectations entering the year, but any kind of feedback you can give, what you’ve learned, whether you can hold EBITDA margins that you thought you would get from those markets and kind of the uptake, I know you reiterated the same contribution you did last quarter, but any incremental color would be helpful? Pat McCullough Yeah, I think we all know with SolarCity and SunEdison that the solar industry is taking some loss. It is impacting the cost of capital of our counterparties, and it’s impacting the cost of capital of financing solar across the industry. So yes, is the answer to your question that there is going to be pressure on our origination income and other parts of the value chain like installation and panels, which we do not participate in. But we really do believe we can hold higher origination income to the industry, but we’re obviously going to feel the same pressure that the industry feels. Rebecca MacDonald And just to add, we have already looked at solar and part of our bundle, because of diversified offerings we have to our customer base, we don’t want to hang our hat on any – not totally on solar and not totally on commodity, and that’s what does give us a real competitive edge. I would definitely, I don’t think this management team would want to be in 100% solar business today, and that’s not the space we would enjoy very much. Carter Driscoll Okay. I appreciate all your responses. I’ll go back in the queue. Thank you. Rebecca MacDonald You’re welcome. Operator We have a question from Damir Gunja from TD Securities. Damir Gunja Thanks good morning. Rebecca MacDonald Good morning. Damir Gunja Maybe can you just confirm the exact level of FX that you’re assuming in your forward guidance? Pat McCullough Yeah, Damir, we’re assuming 1.25 US deal saving. Damir Gunja Okay, that’s great. Thanks. And, I guess just a second one since everything was asked, I just want to confirm you quoted 300,000 customer adds for the coming year, that’s on a net basis? Pat McCullough Yes, Damir. And I think, the way we’re thinking about this, is it comes from geographic expansion, continued improvement in the UK, but also those non-RCE type customers. And I think solar being our energy storage pilot that we talked about in our outlook as well. Damir Gunja Okay. Got it. Okay, thank you. Operator We have a question from Sameer Joshi from Rodman & Renshaw. Sameer Joshi Hey, Pat, good morning. Pat McCullough Good morning. Sameer Joshi Just a quick question on – follow-up on Carter, line of questioning about the solar, is the outlook phase $10 million contribution to Base EBITDA from the solar business, should we expect the top line to be sort of in the same proportion as the $223 million to $223 million would reflect on the top line? Pat McCullough Relative to solar sales? Sameer Joshi Yeah. Pat McCullough Yeah, so I will refresh everyone’s memory on accounting for solar sales given we’re in origination business model. We’ll be experiencing the normal size installation that the industry sees, so I think 5, 6 kilowatts, we’ll be reporting revenue on the basis of the origination income that were paid. There is no cost of goods sold on our transactions, so gross margin will be equal to revenue. And then we’ll be recognizing our direct sales cost, our marketing efforts, our overheads between the gross margin and EBITDA lines. So that’s where you’ll see the fallout. We’ve talked publicly that we know third-parties are paying as much as $1 per watt, excuse me in Southern California, lower amounts closer to $0.50 in the Northeast, but we know that third-parties can hold as much as $1,500 US per transaction. We’re hoping to hold something in that range, but as I mentioned with Carter, there is quite a bit of pressure on those margins and with the heavy margins on the origination side of the business, we don’t think those will be sustainable for the long-term, but in the short-term we hope to experience those type of industry norms. Sameer Joshi Okay. That is helpful. And just two part question. Where there any installations in the – this quarter, in the last quarter, and going forward, are you giving any outlook in terms of solar installations, should we expect total installed base to be in the 5,000 to 7,000 range, and that 5 to 6 kilowatt per residence? Pat McCullough Yeah, if you use the industry norms, that’s the math that you would get to based on our guidance for fiscal 2017. And to answer your question that were limited installations done in fiscal 2016, they’ll become material to us in the coming year, so we’ll start to segment and show the details as to what we’re signing, what we’re recognizing as revenue gross margin needed up. Sameer Joshi Great. Thanks a lot, and good luck. Pat McCullough Thank you. Rebecca MacDonald Thank you. Well, if there are no more questions, I would like to thank you very much for joining us on this call. As management team, we really really appreciate your support, and if there are any other additional questions, all of us are available, you can call us directly. And look forward to talking to you in August when we report our first quarter. Pat McCullough Thank you. Rebecca MacDonald Thanks. James Lewis Thanks. Operator Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference. 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Companhia Energtica de Minas Gerais CEMIG (CIG) Q1 2016 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

Companhia Energtica de Minas Gerais CEMIG (NYSE: CIG ) Q1 2016 Earnings Conference Call May 17, 2016 10:00 AM ET Executives Antonio Carlos Velez Braga – IR Fabiano Maia Pereira – CFO Analysts Carolina Yamaguchi – JPMorgan Pedro Manfredini – Itaú BBA Carolina Carneiro – Santander Antonio Carlos Velez Braga Good morning everyone. My name is Antonio Carlos Velez Braga, Cemig’s Investor Relations Officer. We’ll now initiate our video webcast of Cemig’s results relative to the first quarter 2016 with the presences of Dr. Fabiano Maia Pereira, Chief Officer for Finance and Investor Relations; and Dr. Leonardo Magalhaes, Controller. This broadcast can be received by phone numbers 5511-2188-0155 or 5511-2188-0188, and also through our website ri.cemig.com.br. Let’s then begin our presentation. This first slide shows in a summarized way the results of first quarter 2016 as compared to the same quarter last year. Both revenues and EBITDA and net profit has seen reductions and the main factors affecting results in the quarter include a very important one, change in the allocation of supply in 2016. In 2015, we had as a seasonality factor, we allocated much more for the first semester and in this year, it’s exactly the opposite, less energy in the first half and more energy in the second half of 2016. And if you also add a reduction in average spot price, well, also the sales of gas, natural gas, Gasmig also saw a strong reduction in sales both to thermo plants and industry, the home market for us or resident market is growing, but still not to match two those first one. Also negative equity contribution from Renova had significant effect and because of this acknowledgement of Renova, it showed a negative result which Cemig consolidates directly or indirectly via Light companies that amounts to BRL152 million. Also along the comparison, we can say that we recognized in the first quarter ‘15 a fair value gain of Aliança business with Vale which implied a fair value gain of BRL735 million. And now I hand over to Dr. Fabiano Pereira, our Finance Officer. Fabiano Maia Pereira The quarter highlights. First, the Energy Ministry has set the criteria for indemnity of transmission assets. Leonardo will talk more about that later on. Also Taesa won the auction bid in one of the lots occurred recently. We capitalized Cemig D along the lines of lowering the leverage of the company, also capital increase in Renova through Cemig GT and also we summoned an EGM for later this month related to our negotiation with the banks with regard to FIP Redentor. Also our meeting, our annual Cemig-Apimec meeting is set for May 24 at the same venue. Good morning everyone. A little bit about indemnity of transmission. It’s known by the market that the Ministry of Energy defined criteria for updating and payment of transmission that was remain from the sector. We had been discussing with Aneel ever since 2013 with [indiscernible] These criteria go through the indemnification. The amounts in our balance by 31st March, 2016 is around BRL.1.90 billion as updated by GPM up to this point and according to this order of the Ministry, it was defined and updated by the IPCA. It was going to be remunerated based on the cost of capital which is around 10.44%. But this is just an estimate, initial estimate and it should be – it might be affected other calculations but it had relevant effect to the company showing revenues, financial revenues amounting to BRL500 million this quarter and I believe – we believe that it was really a gain for the sector, although it’s a long period for receiving eight years at least our cash is well defined and I think this was good news that came out in April. A little bit about the disclosed data as Velez had mentioned before. Consolidate net revenue saw a drop of almost 24%, lower volume electricity sold in the first quarter, also associated to the spot price, a little lower than in the previous year. Another point that also impact net revenue is the drop in supply. This situation has come all the way from last year. São Simão is now transferred to the quota regime and these are the main points I believe for revenues. As for operational expenses, we should stress again as we have been doing ever since last year the intention and the planning of the company things as reducing PMS and we keep on bringing it lower than inflation, also lower cost of purchasing supply due to a price drop and supervision that were kept us in the report [indiscernible]. Our main point is with regard to provision, I would like to add anything, well I think as we see the evolution of operation expenses of CEMIG, consolidated is we see our great effort to reduce costs and provisional amounts related to outsource services also highlighting a little increase in personnel. That’s one off effect because it had to do with this collective agreement with the employees and even if we had provisions to cover the effects of that agreement in November as it was signed, it had retroactive effects and it had some effects due to that. This will be diluted throughout the year as we expect 2016 agreement retroactive to 2015. We have seen increments – we’ve seen that part of this effect is associated to tariff impact, almost 50% last year and the other provision is associated to the age of these debts and the company is taking internal measures involving these four issues and how to deal with that, so that it won’t be perpetuated into the coming semesters. And it was more significant in this quarter but it trends to down. We will see already in the next quarter efforts – result of efforts made by the company to reduce default and also costs associated to labor claims. Now about EBITDA that reflects what we’ve been saying so far, reduction in liquidation of spot prices, allocations in the first quarter as compared to last year, the same period. Fair value also increased 643 million or 735 million rather. And if you compare EBITDA to last year, the drop is 75%. These are the diagram by company that’s more like an EBITDA, a managerial EBITDA, it’s not accounting figure but to show the flow, the cash flow of each company of CEMIG, CEMIG GT, CEMIG D, Light and consolidation of Renova, Alianca also contributing to generation of cash of the company. With regard to consolidated net profit, we saw a drop – a 99% drop to 1.4 billion to nearly 500 million that has to do with Renova negative equity method contribution if you compared to last year also considering the stockholding transaction with Alianca that increased first quarter 2013. These are the two main points to be commented upon as for debt profile. During this first quarter, we proceeded to most of the rolling over of the company debt with maturity still to come in 2016. We can say from those 3.9 billion, 600 million have already been rolled over in April. This is partially as a result of the higher interest rate, Selic rate and leverage is now a little above what we saw last year also due to this dip in the figure that should be recovered along the year. As for the CEMIG GT, the debt maturing in 2016 is 2.9 billion, most of it in December. We had to assume that [indiscernible] granting and the banks that we are dealing are already negotiated the take out of that debt. A good deal of the debt is already rolled over to 2017, 2018 and 2019 and this remains our strategy to seek extended tenures to settle that debt. In terms of investments, what has been planned for the year is 4.7 billion, of what we have already done in the first quarter and has mostly to do with the auction that we won last year buying the grant of hydro plant. As for our cash, closer to the end of a quarter that was almost 2 billion, I think that’s more than 2 billion. That’s an important highlight and that helps us to go through this delicate moment from the macroeconomic point of view. Also the net effect of CVA and other financial operations, we have got more from the tariff than from CVA this quarter. Tariff flags also helped and Cemig distribution had less pressure from demand as compared to 2015, the prices were too high that will result in an additional CVA and this reduction of this pressure in the first quarter, we saw it as a positive phenomenon. We are concerned as said before with rolling over our debt and keeping it in tandem with our cash generation. It’s a stable profile, not very relevant variation from earlier this year. And BRL1.5 billion that we applied in our grants, concession granting that’s up to almost – more than BRL2 billion that protected us from many effects from last year. Our main concern is, we are protecting our cash flow and I think that in this year we will keep adequate levels and perhaps even reduce our leverage as we have today. So these were the highlights. Thank you. Question-and-Answer Session Operator [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Ms. Carolina Yamaguchi from JPMorgan. Carolina Yamaguchi Good morning. Thank you. What about the negotiation of the Jaguara and Miranda renewal, and the negotiations with the government, any new date, because it’s being canceled? Fabiano Maia Pereira Thank you, Carolina for your question. Negotiations are still ongoing. We are talking to the government seeking a solution to Jaguara, it’s already at the Supreme Court and to represent the others. We are giving it sometime because of this recent change in power and ministry, which we would resume the talks within short time. Operator Our next question comes from Mr. Marcelo Farah [ph] from UBS. Unidentified Analyst Good morning. Along the lines of this question, and about leverage 4.4 EBITDA, I understand that you must be keeping it below that level from the December position. Then what about the next stockholders meeting, it should be reduced to 4.14 [ph]. Is this really falling down over the year? EBITDA, due to the strong and if you compare with a new basis, our EBITDA, this will make it hard for you – even harder for you to comply. Perhaps, you should renew that and pay some extra to do that. In view of your super high leverage, do you still expect to come to some agreement? Fabiano Maia Pereira Yes, to the agreement, we understand that we have a good conditions reach an agreement. And as for the leverage, we have already mentioned in our last presentation, we mentioned that Cemig D is reassessing its portfolio, which allows us to reduce our debt within the mid-term. In addition, we should remember that specifically with regard to covenant, covenant is a statutory covenant, it’s red in December and as we submit the budget to our general meeting, we have already brought to them a request to keep that covenant a little above the statutory level. Unidentified Analyst Yes, in your remark, you said that, you are considering selling assets for sufficient or stock holding in Taesa could be considered. What exactly on your mind, selling some assets or what? Fabiano Maia Pereira Yes, we are looking at other assets as well, fundamentally assets we have no control over that. Our company’s planning includes focusing on these cases and put them on sale. Of course, to grow the profit to the company. As for the hydro plants auction, what’s the next step for a solution to pay some bonuses or precisely that point is still being negotiated. Unidentified Analyst Thank you. Excellent. Operator Our next question comes from Mr. Pedro Manfredini from Itaú BBA. Pedro Manfredini I have a question on the line of this investment within Cemig, talk about that. It’s a long time, what has evolved in the recent months, we understand that this would be a unique opportunity perhaps to sell assets that you don’t control. What has really evolved over the last six months with that regard? Also another question, related to that, why is it that you took a contrary position instead of disinvesting, you had injected more capital into an order, that’s going against the market trends, putting more money in a company that will not generate cash in the short run. Renova would be perhaps one of the assets to be disinvested given what we’ve heard in some of the media, relationships with Light and Renova and perhaps CEMIG should follow suit and terminate its participation? Fabiano Maia Pereira Well, Pedro, first of all, we must be aware of the fact that CEMIG is a large company with a very complex government. So in recent months, we had very strong work, tried to convincing people internally to the correctness of our strategy. Some projects have already been approved by our board and we’re still negotiating. For Renova negotiations, specifically that contrary to what I’ve just said, in Renova, we’re co-controllers or co-owners. We have an interest to see that it keeps strong and gets stronger. That is not to be mixed with I had said before. So any discussions going on about the portfolio, you have Alianca, you have pretty highly leverage balanced. It was said some time ago that there was this possible arrangement with Light, but you have got to launch it in San Antonio, which is I’m not sure if it’s Alianca, but any other possibilities in perhaps Alianca could absorb some of these assets in the reduced leverage of CEMIG. Well, the strategic planning with Alianca, we’re discussing that with our partners there. We are convinced that they’re an excellent business with a great potential for growth in brownfield rather than Greenfield. We look at Belo Monte, sometimes along that greenfield that will take a while to start generating cash. That’s not the way to follow by Alianca in principle. Pedro Manfredini Very clear. Thank you. Thank you for the answers. Operator Our next question comes from Ms. Carolina Carneiro, Santander. Carolina Carneiro Good afternoon. I’d like to hear your comments on cost performance, especially in the distribution, despite the fact that you have reduced part of the agreement you had for profit sharing, we saw that there was this pressure on supply. I would like to understand better, is cost profile working on any better way to improve cash generation? Thank you. Fabiano Maia Pereira At CEMIG, we’re looking strongly. We have structured resources to reduce the levers of the company. We are focusing now on productivity and operational efficiency. We’ve just completed an internal effort and we’re receiving with that into the next years. We expect that to increase substantially, some studies already demonstrate that this is possible and this is one of the points that we’ve been dealing with. We have additional budget approved by the board taking reduction in that provision. We are seeking also strong reduction in the specific point. Carolina Carneiro That’s all right. If you allow me one more question only, about the impact on the volume of the distributor, especially involving an important industrial client, we have seen that with other distributors, if you see any movement, any expectations from the market with regard to distribution volume for this year. Fabiano Maia Pereira If I’m not mistaking next week, in our general assembly meeting, we’ll produce that to you. Can you wait until there? Carolina Carneiro Yes. Thank you. Operator [Operator Instructions] We now close the Q&A session. I’d like to hand over the floor to our Chief Officer for Finance and Investor Relations, Dr. Fabiano Maia Pereira for his final remarks. Please, Dr. Fabiano, you may proceed. Fabiano Maia Pereira My final message is here, I’d like to reinforce our willingness of our top management, our board, our employees to reduce leverage and to improve operational efficiency. Our focus for the upcoming years and as we’ve said last year, some analysts predicted that we wouldn’t be able to deliver, but we did deliver and we will keep on delivering. That’s our main message. Thank you and see you next time. Operator The video webcast with first quarter 2016 results of CEMIG is now closed. We thank you all for participating. Good afternoon. Copyright policy: All transcripts on this site are the copyright of Seeking Alpha. However, we view them as an important resource for bloggers and journalists, and are excited to contribute to the democratization of financial information on the Internet. (Until now investors have had to pay thousands of dollars in subscription fees for transcripts.) So our reproduction policy is as follows: You may quote up to 400 words of any transcript on the condition that you attribute the transcript to Seeking Alpha and either link to the original transcript or to www.SeekingAlpha.com. All other use is prohibited. 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Optical Illusion / Optical Truth

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. – Saul Bellow, “To Jerusalem and Back” (1976) It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. – Upton Sinclair, “I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked” (1935) Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion. – Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Birth of Tragedy” (1872) To find out if she really loved me, I hooked her up to a lie detector. And just as I suspected, my machine was broken. – Jarod Kintz, “Love Quotes for the Ages. Specifically Ages 19-91” (2013) Edward Tufte is a personal and professional hero of mine. Professionally, he’s best known for his magisterial work in data visualization and data communication through such classics as The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1983) and its follow-on volumes, but less well-known is his outstanding academic work in econometrics and statistical analysis. His 1974 book Data Analysis for Politics and Policy remains the single best book I’ve ever read in terms of teaching the power and pitfalls of statistical analysis. If you’re fluent in the language of econometrics (this is not a book for the uninitiated) and now you want to say something meaningful and true using that language, you should read this book (available for $2 in Kindle form on Tufte’s website ). Personally, Tufte is a hero to me for escaping the ivory tower, pioneering what we know today as self-publishing, making a lot of money in the process, and becoming an interesting sculptor and artist. That’s my dream. That one day when the Great Central Bank Wars of the 21st century are over, I will be allowed to return, Cincinnatus-like, to my Connecticut farm where I will write short stories and weld monumental sculptures in peace. That and beekeeping. But until that happy day, I am inspired in my war-fighting efforts by Tufte’s skepticism and truth-seeking. The former is summed up well in an anecdote Tufte found in a medical journal and cites in Data Analysis : One day when I was a junior medical student, a very important Boston surgeon visited the school and delivered a great treatise on a large number of patients who had undergone successful operations for vascular reconstruction. At the end of the lecture, a young student at the back of the room timidly asked, “Do you have any controls?” Well, the great surgeon drew himself up to his full height, hit the desk, and said, “Do you mean did I not operate on half of the patients?” The hall grew very quiet then. The voice at the back of the room very hesitantly replied, “Yes, that’s what I had in mind.” Then the visitor’s fist really came down as he thundered, “Of course not. That would have doomed half of them to their death.” God, it was quiet then, and one could scarcely hear the small voice ask, “Which half?” ‘Nuff said. The latter quality – truth-seeking – takes on many forms in Tufte’s work, but most noticeably in his constant admonitions to LOOK at the data for hints and clues on asking the right questions of the data. This is the flip-side of the coin for which Tufte is best known, that good/bad visual representations of data communicate useful/useless answers to questions that we have about the world. Or to put it another way, an information-rich data visualization is not only the most powerful way to communicate our answers as to how the world really works, but it is also the most powerful way to design our questions as to how the world really works. Here’s a quick example of what I mean, using a famous data set known as “Anscombe’s Quartet”. Anscombe’s Quartet I II III IV x y x y x y x y 10.0 8.04 10.0 9.14 10.0 7.46 8.0 6.58 8.0 6.95 8.0 8.14 8.0 6.77 8.0 5.76 13.0 7.58 13.0 8.74 13.0 12.74 8.0 7.71 9.0 8.81 9.0 8.77 9.0 7.11 8.0 8.84 11.0 8.33 11.0 9.26 11.0 7.81 8.0 8.47 14.0 9.96 14.0 8.10 14.0 8.84 8.0 7.04 6.0 7.24 6.0 6.13 6.0 6.08 8.0 5.25 4.0 4.26 4.0 3.10 4.0 5.39 19.0 12.50 12.0 10.84 12.0 9.13 12.0 8.15 8.0 5.56 7.0 4.82 7.0 7.26 7.0 6.42 8.0 7.91 5.0 5.68 5.0 4.74 5.0 5.73 8.0 6.89 In this original example (developed by hand by Frank Anscombe in 1973; today there’s an app for generating all the Anscombe sets you could want) Roman numerals I – IV refer to four data sets of 11 (x,y) coordinates, in other words 11 points on a simple 2-dimensional area. If you were comparing these four sets of numbers using traditional statistical methods, you might well think that they were four separate data measurements of exactly the same phenomenon. After all, the mean of x is exactly the same in each set of measurements (9), the mean of y is the same in each set of measurements to two decimal places (7.50), the variance of x is exactly the same in each set (11), the variance of y is the same in each set to two decimal places (4.12), the correlation between x and y is the same in each set to three decimal places (0.816), and if you run a linear regression on each data set you get the same line plotted through the observations (y = 3.00 + 0.500x). But when you LOOK at these four data sets, they are totally alien to each other, with essentially no similarity in meaning or probable causal mechanism . Of the four, linear regression and our typical summary statistical efforts make sense for only the upper left data set. For the other three, applying our standard toolkit makes absolutely no sense. But we’d never know that – we’d never know how to ask the right questions about our data – if we didn’t eyeball it first. Click to enlarge Okay, you might say, duly noted. From now on we will certainly look at a visual plot of our data before doing things like forcing a line through it and reporting summary statistics like r-squared and standard deviation as if they were trumpets of angels from on high. But how do you “see” multi-variate datasets? It’s one thing to imagine a line through a set of points on a plane, quite another to visualize a plane through a set of points in space, and impossible to imagine a cubic solid through a set of points in hyperspace. And how do you “see” embedded or invisible data dimensions, whether it’s an invisible market dimension like volatility or an invisible measurement dimension like time aggregation or an invisible statistical dimension like the underlying distribution of errors ? The fact is that looking at data is an art, not a science. There’s no single process, no single toolkit for success. It requires years of practice on top of an innate artist’s eye before you have a chance of being good at this, and it’s something that I’ve never seen a non-human intelligence accomplish successfully (I can’t tell you how happy I am to write that sentence). But just because it’s hard, just because it doesn’t come easily or naturally to people and machines alike … well, that doesn’t mean it’s not the most important thing in data-based truth-seeking. Why is it so important to SEE data relationships? Because we’re human beings. Because we are biologically evolved and culturally trained to process information in this manner. Because – and this is the Tufte-inspired market axiom that I can’t emphasize strongly enough – the only investable ideas are visible ideas . If you can’t physically see it in the data, then it will never move you strongly enough to overcome the pleasant fictions that dominate our workaday lives, what Faust’s Tempter, the demon Mephistopheles, calls the “masquerade” and “the dance of mind.” Our similarity to Faust (who was a really smart guy, a man of Science with a capital S) is not that the Devil may soon pay us a visit and tempt us with all manner of magical wonders, but that we have already succumbed to the blandishments of easy answers and magical thinking. I mean, don’t get me started on Part Two, Act 1 of Goethe’s magnum opus, where the Devil introduces massive quantities of paper money to encourage inflationary pressures under a false promise of recovery in the real economy. No, I’m not making this up. That is the actual, non-allegorical plot of one of the best, smartest books in human history, now almost 200 years old. So what I’m going to ask of you, dear reader, is to look at some pictures of market data, with the hope that seeing will indeed spark believing. Not as a temptation, but as a talisman against the same. Because when I tell you that the statistical correlation between the US dollar and the price of oil since Janet Yellen and Mario Draghi launched competitive monetary policies in mid-June of 2014 is -0.96 I can hear the yawns. I can also hear my own brain start to pose negative questions, because I’ve experienced way too many instances of statistical “evidence” that, like the Anscombe data sets, proved to be misleading at best. But when I show you what that correlation looks like … Click to enlarge © Bloomberg Finance L.P., for illustrative purposes only I can hear you lean forward in your seat. I can hear my own brain start to whir with positive questions and ideas about how to explore this data further. This is what a -96% correlation looks like. What you’re looking at in the green line is the Fed’s favored measure of what the US dollar buys around the world. It’s an index where the components are the exchange rates of all the US trading partners (hence a “broad dollar” index) and where the individual components are proportionally magnified/minimized by the size of that trading relationship (hence a “trade-weighted” index). That index is measured by the left hand vertical axis, starting with a value of about 102 on June 18, 2014 when Janet Yellen announced a tightening bias for US monetary policy and a renewed focus on the full employment half of the Fed’s dual mandate, peaking in late January and declining to a current value of about 119 as first Japan and Europe called off the negative rate dogs (making their currencies go up against the dollar) and then Yellen completely back-tracked on raising rates this year (making the dollar go down against all currencies). Monetary policy divergence with a hawkish Fed and a dovish rest-of-world makes the dollar go up. Monetary policy convergence with everyone a dove makes the dollar go down. What you’re looking at in the magenta line is the upside-down price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil over the same time span, as measured by the right hand vertical axis. So on June 18, 2014 the spot price of WTI crude oil was over $100/barrel. That bottomed in the high $20s just as the trade-weighted broad dollar index peaked this year, and it’s been roaring back higher (lower in the inverse depiction) ever since. Now correlation may not imply causation, but as Ed Tufte is fond of saying, it’s a mighty big hint. I can SEE the consistent relationship between change in the dollar and change in oil prices, and that makes for a coherent, believable story about a causal relationship between monetary policy and oil prices. What is that causal narrative? It’s not just the mechanistic aspects of pricing, such that the inherent exchange value of things priced in dollars – whether it’s a barrel of oil or a Caterpillar earthmover – must by definition go down as the exchange value of the dollar itself goes up. More impactful, I think, is that for the past seven years investors have been well and truly trained to see every market outcome as the result of central bank policy, a training program administered by central bankers who now routinely and intentionally use forward guidance and placebo words to act on “the dance of mind” in classic Mephistophelean fashion. In effect, the causal relationship between monetary policy and oil prices is a self-fulfilling prophecy (or in the jargon du jour, a self-reinforcing behavioral equilibrium), a meta-example of what George Soros calls reflexivity and what a game theorist calls the Common Knowledge Game . The causal relationship of the dollar, i.e. monetary policy, to the price of oil is a reflection of the Narrative of Central Bank Omnipotence , nothing more and nothing less. And today that narrative is everything. Here’s something smart that I read about this relationship between oil prices and monetary policy back in November 2014 when oil was north of $70/barrel: I think that this monetary policy divergence is a very significant risk to markets, as there’s no direct martingale on how far monetary policy can diverge and how strong the dollar can get. As a result I think there’s a non-trivial chance that the price of oil could have a $30 or $40 handle at some point over the next 6 months, even though the global growth and supply/demand models would say that’s impossible. But I also think the likely duration of that heavily depressed price is pretty short. Why? Because the Fed and China will not take this lying down. They will respond to the stronger dollar and stronger yuan (China’s currency is effectively tied to the dollar) and they will prevail, which will push oil prices back close to what global growth says the price should be. The danger, of course, is that if they wait too long to respond (and they usually do), then the response will itself be highly damaging to global growth and market confidence and we’ll bounce back, but only after a near-recession in the US or a near-hard landing in China. Oh wait, I wrote that . Good stuff. But that was a voice in the wilderness in 2014, as the dominant narrative for the causal factors driving oil pricing was all OPEC all the time. So what about that, Ben? What about the steel cage death match within OPEC between Saudi Arabia and Iran and outside of OPEC between Saudi Arabia and US frackers? What about supply and demand? Where is that in your price chart of oil? Sorry, but I don’t see it in the data . Doesn’t mean it’s not really there. Doesn’t mean it’s not a statistically significant data relationship. What it means is that the relationship between oil supply and oil prices in a policy-controlled market is not an investable relationship. I’m sure it used to be, which is why so many people believe that it’s so important to follow and fret over. But today it’s an essentially useless exercise in data analytics. Not wrong, but useless … there’s a difference! Of course, crude oil isn’t the only place where fundamental supply and demand factors are invisible in the data and hence essentially useless as an investable attribute. Here’s the dollar and something near and dear to the hearts of anyone in Houston, the Alerian MLP index, with an astounding -94% correlation: Click to enlarge © Bloomberg Finance L.P., for illustrative purposes only Interestingly, the correlation between the Alerian MLP index and oil is noticeably less at -88%. Hard to believe that MLP investors should be paying more attention to Bank of Japan press conferences than to gas field depletion schedules, but I gotta call ’em like I see ’em. And here’s the dollar and the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF ( EEM), the dominant emerging market ETF, with a -89% correlation: Click to enlarge © Bloomberg Finance L.P., for illustrative purposes only There’s only one question that matters about Emerging Markets as an asset class, and it’s the subject of one of my first (and most popular) Epsilon Theory notes, ” It Was Barzini All Along “: are Emerging Market growth rates a function of something (anything!) particular to Emerging Markets, or are they simply a derivative function of Developed Market central bank liquidity measures and monetary policy? Certainly this chart suggests a rather definitive answer to that question! And finally, here’s the dollar and the US Manufacturing PMI survey of real-world corporate purchasing managers, probably the most respected measure of US manufacturing sector health. This data relationship clocks in at a -92% correlation. I mean … this is nuts. Click to enlarge © Bloomberg Finance L.P., for illustrative purposes only Here’s what I wrote last summer about the inexorable spread of monetary policy contagion. Monetary policy divergence manifests itself first in currencies, because currencies aren’t an asset class at all, but a political construction that represents and symbolizes monetary policy. Then the divergence manifests itself in those asset classes, like commodities, that have no internal dynamics or cash flows and are thus only slightly removed in their construction and meaning from however they’re priced in this currency or that. From there the divergence spreads like a cancer (or like a cure for cancer, depending on your perspective) into commodity-sensitive real-world companies and national economies. Eventually – and this is the Big Point – the divergence spreads into everything, everywhere. I think this is still the only story that matters for markets. The good Lord giveth and the good Lord taketh away. Right now the good Lord’s name is Janet Yellen, and she’s in a giving mood. It won’t last. It never does. But it does give us time to prepare our portfolios for a return to competitive monetary policy actions , and it gives us insight into what to look for as catalysts for that taketh away part of the equation. Most importantly, though, I hope that this exercise in truth-seeking inoculates you from the Big Narrative Lie coming soon to a status quo media megaphone near you, that this resurgence in risk assets is caused by a resurgence in fundamental real-world economic factors. I know you want to believe this is true. I do, too! It’s unpleasant personally and bad for business in 2016 to accept the reality that we are mired in a policy-controlled market, just as it was unpleasant personally and bad for business in 1854 to accept the reality that cholera is transmitted through fecal contamination of drinking water. But when you SEE John Snow’s dot map of death you can’t ignore the Broad Street water pump smack-dab in the middle of disease outcomes. When you SEE a Bloomberg correlation map of prices you can’t ignore the trade-weighted broad dollar index smack-dab in the middle of market outcomes. Or at least you can’t ignore it completely. It took another 20 years and a lot more cholera deaths before Snow’s ideas were widely accepted. It took the development of a new intellectual foundation: germ theory. I figure it will take another 20 years and the further development of game theory before we get widespread acceptance of the ideas I’m talking about in Epsilon Theory . That’s okay. The bees can wait.