Sunday, November 22, 2015

A few more details on the AEP-ACBL deal

Most guys I knew spent the day watching football or doing interesting stuff. Me, I spent it trying to build an Excel file of some data I'm interested in. This evening, while my Bengals are on TV, I'm here going through documents looking for interesting stuff.

About everyone on here knows AEP has closed the sale of its River Transportation Operations to ACBL. As AEP is a company with publicly traded stock, it has to make certain disclosures to the Securities and Exchange Commission. I took a look at AEP's most recent filings to see if there was anything interesting about the ACBL deal. There were a few things in the quarterly report. I have copied and pasted some of those below.

To see the entire document, click here.

Here are the excerpts for those who are interested:





AEP RIVER OPERATIONS

Third Quarter of 2015 Compared to Third Quarter of 2014

Earnings Attributable to AEP Common Shareholders from our AEP River Operations segment decreased from $11 million in 2014 to $4 million in 2015 primarily due to a loss on AEPRO's equity investment in IMT due to bankruptcy of an IMT customer.

Nine Months Ended September 30, 2015 Compared to Nine Months Ended September 30, 2014

Earnings Attributable to AEP Common Shareholders from our AEP River Operations segment decreased from $17 million in 2014 to $16 million in 2015 primarily due to a loss on AEPRO's equity investment in IMT due to bankruptcy of an IMT customer, partially offset by lower fuel prices and reduced consumption.

--###--

AEP River Operations



Commercial barging operations that transports liquids, coal and dry bulk commodities primarily on the Ohio, Illinois and lower Mississippi Rivers.



In October 2015, we signed an agreement to sell AEPRO to a nonaffiliated party. The AEP River Operations segment is comprised entirely of AEPRO. However, we will retain AEPRO's investment in IMT. See "AEPRO (AEP River Operations Segment)" section of Note 6 for additional information.

--###--


Disposition of AEP River Operations
In October 2015, we signed an agreement to sell our commercial barge transportation subsidiary, AEPRO, to a nonaffiliated party.  The sale of AEPRO is subject to regulatory approval including federal clearance pursuant to the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976.  Upon close of the sale, the nonaffiliated party will acquire AEPRO by purchasing all of the common stock of AEP Resources, Inc., the parent company of AEPRO.  The nonaffiliated party will assume certain assets and liabilities of AEPRO, excluding the equity method investment in International Marine Terminals (IMT) which is a bulk commodity transfer facility jointly owned with Kinder Morgan L.P. "C", pension and benefit assets and liabilities and debt obligations.  We expect to net approximately $400 million in cash after taxes, debt retirement and transaction fees.  The sale is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2015. An after tax gain ranging from approximately $100 million to $150 million is expected from the sale subject to working capital and other adjustments.

--###--

ASSETS AND LIABILITIES HELD FOR SALE

AEPRO (AEP River Operations Segment)

During the third quarter of 2015, we evaluated bids from prospective buyers, selected a buyer and received approval from AEP's Board of Directors to proceed with the sale to the nonaffiliated party.  In October 2015, we signed an agreement to sell our commercial barge transportation subsidiary, AEPRO, to a nonaffiliated party.  The sale of AEPRO is subject to regulatory approval including federal clearance pursuant to the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976.  Upon close of the sale, the nonaffiliated party will acquire AEPRO by purchasing all of the common stock of AEP Resources, Inc., the parent company of AEPRO.  The nonaffiliated party will assume certain assets and liabilities of AEPRO, excluding the equity method investment in IMT, pension and benefit assets and liabilities and debt obligations.  We will retain ownership of our captive barge fleet that delivers coal to the company's regulated coal-fueled power plant units owned or leased by AEGCo, APCo, I&M, KPCo and WPCo.  We signed a contract with the nonaffiliated party to dispatch and schedule our captive barge fleet for the company's regulated coal-fueled power plant units.  We also contracted with the nonaffiliated party to barge coal for AGR. These agreements with the nonaffiliated party extend through the end of 2016.  The sale is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2015.




Friday, November 20, 2015

Robert Murray on the Clean Power Plan

Robert Murray is the head of Murray Energy, which has a fleet of towboats and barges that haul coal on the Allegheny, Monongahela and upper Ohio rivers. Yesterday he gave a speech in Texas with his views of the Clean Power Plan and President Obama. As you might expect, his views were not favorable.

You can read a piece I wrote about his speech here.

You can watch a video of the entire speech here.



Thursday, November 19, 2015

M/V George W. Jones III

As the morning sun rises over the hills, the George W. Jones III heads up the Ohio River at about Mile 302.



Those barges look like ones I saw tied up at Virginia Point Park at the mouth of the Big Sandy River five days ago. Maybe they were. Maybe they weren't. It's not that important, is it?

Thursday, November 12, 2015

AEP completes sale to ACBL (Updated)

AEP news release is here.

As of noon, there were 97 boats listed on AEP's vessel locator site. Most of them were boats the company has sold to ACBL. There was no mention on the ACBL site of when the boats would have their new color schemes, stack logos or names.


M/V Detroit in a favorite spot

So this past weekend, I got a lesson in how much 16-year-old Adam wants to protect me.

While we were at Cheshire, Ohio, getting pictures of two AEP boats over at Lakin, W.Va., we saw the Detroit come down the river. I got a few pictures.



Then we went down the river a few miles to wait for it to pass Addison with the Kyger Creek and Gavin power plants in the background. This was the spot where I had gotten one of my favorite pictures of the Detroit in October 2010. But in the five years since, the vegetation on the riverbank had grown, and we no longer had such a clear shot.

So, I decided to stand on a guardrail post close to the berm of State Route 7, a pretty busy two-lane road. Adam kept protesting that I could fall off and get hurt, especially if some jerk came by in a pickup and tried to startle me by blowing his horn. Soon after he said that, some moron did just that.

So I got down off the guardrail post and we tried to find a place where we could go down to the river and shoot without trespassing on private property. We found none.

So we walked back up to our previous spot, and I tried holding my camera as high as I could for a test shot. But that wasn't high enough. So I talked Adam into standing on the guardrail post for me, and I told him what kind of photo I wanted. He obliged. As we waited for the Detroit to come, I told him I appreciated him watching out for me and not saying something like, if you fall and hit your head on a rock and die, can I have the car?

The boat came, and Adam got off some good shots.


As we walked back to G&G Grocery, or G.G. Grocery, the boat passed us and I got a few more snaps.




Overall, a good day for stalking and shooting towboats.

Plus Adam is coming around to the idea that these new Marathon boats might be more pleasing to the eye than the new AEP boats are. We'll see if that's a long-term change of opinion.


Monday, November 9, 2015

M/V Nell

As seen on the Kanawha River this past weekend.



Sunday, November 8, 2015

AEP boats gather on Lower Miss

AEP has yet to announce it has closed the sale of its river transportation division to ACBL, although it is supposed to happen sometime this month. But a lot of AEP boats are gathered at or near Mile 155 on the Lower Mississippi, so we can assume the signing of the papers is near.

Meanwhile, Adam and I were in the Point Pleasant WV area yesterday, so we decided to head up to Cheshire OH to see what we could see over at the AEP dock at Lakin WV. As it turned out, not a lot other than the motor vessels Roger W. Kenney and the Chuck Zebula doing some kind of dance as the smaller boat appeared to be moving out of the way of the larger one, perhaps by coincidence as it was picking up barges, or perhaps not.


We also got to see the M/V Detroit in a nice spot yesterday. More on that later.