MPLX's strong and stable operations are likely to back the partnership to persistently grow its distributable cash flow in the coming quarters.

MPLX LP (NYSE: MPLX) a master limited partnership sponsored by Marathon Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: MPC), has rescheduled its 2020 first-quarter earnings conference call to Tuesday, May 5, at 11 a.m. EDT. During the conference call, company executives will discuss 2020 first-quarter financial results, which will be released earlier that day, and provide an update on company operations.

The coronavirus epidemic, and the economic and society lockdowns put in place to combat it, have body-slammed the financial world; the S&P 500 is still down 13% even after a 5 week rally, while oil prices are stuck in a doldrums, with Brent trading at just $30 and WTI at $25. Corporate earnings season has been grim, and some 120 S&P companies have rescinded their 2020 guidance while others have canceled dividend payments or stock buybacks.So, investors are confused; they aren’t seeing the usual signals that indicate what the market may do, and opinions are deeply divided on whether we’ll see a true rally or a long-term bear cycle. Writing from Wells Fargo, head of equity strategy Chris Harvey has come down on the bearish side, but with a caveat. “A near-term equity market pullback should not be unexpected – but we believe selloffs will be much shallower than those in the recent past,” he says, and goes on to add, “There still is substantial uncertainty, and the path forward is not set in stone. Market participants are deciphering shades of gray and for now we are accepting of data that is merely less bad.”Looking at possible ways forward, Harvey expects that the ‘shallower’ selloff will find support from dividend stocks. He’s predicting that the equity market’s current upward trend has pushed the dividend future contract up towards $50. He does not expect dividend stocks to falter in CY20; they are the logical defensive move for investors seeking to remain in the market while protecting their income stream.Harvey’s colleagues at Well Fargo are extrapolating from his general stance, and applying it to individual stocks. In a series of reports, the firm’s stock analysts outlined some low-cost, high-return dividend stocks that investors need to consider – and also one that may be too risky to try. We’ve pulled the details from the TipRanks database, so let’s find out what makes these stock moves so compelling.Energy Transfer LP (ET)We’ll start in the energy sector, where strong dividends are common. The collapse of oil prices – America’s WTI benchmark dipped into negative territory for the first time ever on April 20 – hurt the industry, but there is still some resilience there. Energy is a non-negotiable requirement in modern society, and there is always current demand for hydrocarbon products. Energy Transfer, a midstream company, is well positioned to take advantage of hydrocarbon demand; it controls pipelines, terminals, and storage tanks for both crude oil and natural gas in 38 states. The company operates mainly in the Texas-Oklahoma-Louisiana and Midwest-Appalachian regions.ET finished 2019 with a solid earnings report, beating both the EPS and revenue expectations while growing both metric year-over-year. Heading into Q1, the company had also increased its distributable cash flow by 2%, to $1.55 billion, an excellent signal for dividend investors. The company will report Q1 this evening, and the outlook is for 32 cents EPS, down 15.7% sequentially. At the same time, the revenue forecast is looking at a 6.8% yoy increase to $14.02 billion.The cash flow is likely to be the more important figure, as far as investors are concerned. ET has been keeping up reliable payments for the last eleven years, and the current quarterly dividend, of 30.5 cents, is set for payment on May 19. The current payout ratio is high but still affordable – and even if earnings drop to the expected 32 cents, the company will still be able to cover the dividend payment. And at 16%, the dividend yield is simply stellar – far higher than the 2% average among S&P listed companies.Analyst Michael Blum reviewed this stock for Wells Fargo, and took a clearly bullish position. Blum rates ET shares a Buy, with a $12 price target that suggests an impressive 59% upside potential for the coming year. (To watch Blum’s track record, click here)Supporting his stance on ET, Blum looks to the long-term and writes, “[H]ydrocarbon use will [not] dramatically decrease within the next ten years (and beyond) and thus, [we are] not concerned with obsolescence risk for its pipeline assets. The company would consider renewable investments if they met ET’s return thresholds. However, to date, returns for renewable projects are below that of midstream.”Overall, the analyst consensus on ET is a Moderate Buy, based on 13 recent reviews. The breakdown among those reviews skews positive, with 8 Buys versus 5 Holds. Shares are selling for $7.64, and the average price target of $11.85 implies an upside of 55%. (See ET stock analysis on TipRanks)MPLX LP (MPLX)Staying in the energy industry, we’ll look at MPLX. This company was spun off of Marathon Petroleum in 2012, to handle the oil giant’s midstream operations. Marathon still holds a controlling interest in MPLX, which in turn owns and operates assets in pipelines, terminals, inland river shipping, and refineries. MPLX operates in both the petroleum and natural gas midstream segments.MPLX has a seven-year history of growing its dividend, and the current payment of 68.75 cents per quarter is due out on May 15. Annualized, the dividend comes to $2.75 and gives a yield of 16%. Compared to current interest rates, which have been slashed to the bone in an attempt to counter the economic hit from the coronavirus shutdowns, this yield is a clear attraction for investors.The dividend is supported by a cash-rich business model. MPLX generated $4.1 billion in net cash during calendar year 2019, and returned $2.8 billion to shareholders through dividends and buybacks. The company has reduced its capital spending for 2020 to compensate for reduced income during the 1H20 economic downturn. The company a heavy net loss for Q1, of $2.7 billion, but still was able to generate $1 billion net cash.Michael Blum, quoted above, also cast his gaze on MPLX. He wrote, “We entered 2020 with a defensive mindset... We continue to expect near-term volatility as crude storage fills and WTI oil prices likely head lower… the sector is technically oversold, which should create long-term buying opportunities for investors that have the wherewithal to step in... for investors with a bit more risk appetite, [MPLX] appears attractive on a multi-year time horizon…”In line with this stance, Blum gives MPLX a Buy rating. His $24 price target implies a strong upside potential here of 38%.For the most part, Wall Street appears to agree with Blum on MPLX. The stock has received 11 recent reviews, of which 8 are Buys and 3 are Holds, making the analyst consensus rating a Moderate Buy. Shares are currently trading for $17.72, while the average price target of $21.80 suggests a one-year upside potential of 23%. (See MPLX stock analysis on TipRanks)Bain Capital Specialty Finance (BCSF)The world of business development companies (BDCs) has long sparked the interest of investors. These companies invest capital into the business world, earning their own profits on the returns. Bain has $105 billion in assets under management, in real estate, venture capital, and both private and public equity. Current economic conditions have hit Bain hard, as many of the company’s portfolio assets are underperforming due to the coronavirus shutdowns.Despite volatile earnings, Bain is maintaining its dividend. The 41-cent dividend is sustainable at current earnings levels, and has been held steady for the past six quarter – but the payout ratio of 93% indicates that there is not much slack here. The yield, however, is 15.6%, so for investors willing to shoulder the risk, the reward may be substantial.Well Fargo analyst Finian O’Shea sees too much risk here to justify the possible reward. The analyst points out that BCSF has started process to open up a rights offering, putting common stock at a discount. This is a move to raise new capital fast, and shows softness in the stock’s position. O’Shea writes, “…this is the first of what the market speculates as a wave of below-NAV issuance in the BDC industry. We don’t see a big wave noting BCSF was more leveraged, at 1.72x net including revolvers as of 12/31 – so there was not a lot of mark to market leeway.”To this end, O’Shea rates the stock a Sell, predicting it will underperform in the coming year. In line with this, O’Shea cut the price target by nearly half, to $9.50, suggesting an 11% downside from current levels. (To watch O’Shea’s track record, click here)The Wall Street analyst corps, generally, are cautious on this stock. The consensus rating, a Hold, is based on a single Buy along with 2 Holds and 1 Sell. The upside is also modest; the average price target of $10.67 indicates room for just 0.66% growth from the $10.60 share price. (See Bain Capital stock analysis on TipRanks)To find good ideas for dividend stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks’ Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks’ equity insights.

Q1 2020 MPLX LP Earnings Call

The board of directors of the general partner of MPLX LP (NYSE: MPLX) has declared a quarterly cash distribution of $0.6875 per common unit for the first quarter of 2020, or $2.75 on an annualized basis.

The board of directors of the general partner of MPLX LP (NYSE: MPLX) has elected Michael J. Hennigan as chairman, succeeding retiring chairman Gary R. Heminger. Hennigan's appointment became effective April 29. Hennigan is president and chief executive officer of the general partner of MPLX LP, and has been a director since 2017.

While capital expenditures were already moderating, most companies have further reduced growth capital spending to preserve financial flexibility and recalibrate plans for an environment of production declines.On average, growth capex is expected to drop more…

Marathon Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: MPC) today announced that Michael J. Hennigan has been appointed president and chief executive officer, effective immediately, and will join the company's Board of Directors following the company's 2020 annual meeting of shareholders on April 29, 2020.

Moody's Investors Service ("Moody's") assigned a Baa2 rating to Marathon Petroleum Corporation's (MPC) proposed issue of new unsecured notes. "While the notes issue will bolster MPC's liquidity and provide funding for a sharp increase in working capital, it will stress the company's debt metrics," commented Andrew Brooks, Moody's Vice President. "To the extent increased debt utilization becomes a permanent component of MPC's capital structure, ratings could ultimately be downgraded."

A weekly summary of dividend activity for Dividend Challengers.Companies which declared increased dividends.Companies with upcoming ex-dividend dates.Companies with upcoming pay dates.

Both Magellan Midstream Partners (NYSE: MMP) and MPLX (NYSE: MPLX) are top  Master Limited Partnerships that have tumbled lately. Crude oil production in the US is being affected by demand destruction due to coronavirus in an oversupplied market. Midstream operators, including Magellan and MPLX, are sure to face some heat in such a scenario.

Marathon Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: MPC) announced today that board member John P. Surma has been elected by the board of directors to serve as non-executive chairman of the board. MPC also announced today that MPC President and Chief Executive Officer Michael J.…

Marathon Petroleum Corporation (NYSE: MPC) today announced the unanimous decision of its Board of Directors to maintain MPC's current midstream structure, with the company remaining the general partner of MPLX LP (NYSE: MPLX).

The board of directors of the general partner of MPLX LP (NYSE: MPLX) has elected Michael J. Hennigan as chairman, succeeding retiring chairman Gary R. Heminger. Hennigan's appointment became effective April 29. Hennigan is president and chief executive offic…

MPLX LP (NYSE: MPLX) today announced that the company's 2019 investor tax packages are available on its website, http://www.mplx.com. Investors may select the Tax Reporting Package link under the Investors tab, or use the following link: http://www.mplx.com/Investors/Tax_Reporting_Package/.

MPLX earnings call for the period ending March 31, 2020.

This article is part of our monthly series where we highlight five companies that are large cap, relatively safe, dividend paying, and are offering large discounts to their historical norms.These are not normal times, so we adjust our strategy a little bit to…

Marathon Petroleum (MPC) is likely to generate $15 billion from divesting some assets of its pipeline subsidiary, MPLX.

Never in history have so many economies shut down all at once. The result has been an estimated peak oil demand decline of -30% in April.The International Energy Agency estimates that, for Q2, oil demand will decline 25 million bpd or approximately 25%.When i…

Reported net loss attributable to MPLX of $2.7 billion; includes non-cash impairment charges of $3.4 billion primarily related to goodwill, equity method investments, and long-lived assets

Marathon Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: MPC) announced today that board member John P. Surma has been elected by the board of directors to serve as non-executive chairman of the board. MPC also announced today that MPC President and Chief Executive Officer Michael J. Hennigan has been elected to serve as a member of the board. Both appointments became effective April 29.

The midstream energy partnership's units recovered from a massive downdraft in March, but there are still issues to deal with

One of the two MLPs looks better-positioned to handle the current crisis.

Even after a significant increase from recent lows, the firm still offers one of the best risk/reward tradeoffs.MPC has one of the finest assets base in the U.S. petroleum space and is currently significantly undervalued.The two main catalysts are the end of …

Investors need to pay close attention to MPLX stock based on the movements in the options market lately.

MPLX is generating plenty of cash to maintain its high-yielding payout while executing its expansion plan.

On the call today are Mike Hennigan, President and CEO; Pam Beall, CFO; and other members of the management team. It's a reminder that we will be making forward-looking statements during the call and during the question-and-answer session that follows.

DCP Midstream has been punished by the current market environment more so than many other partnerships.The market is clearly expressing fear about the quality of its customers, but most of them are not upstream producers and most of them are investment-grade.…

The board of directors of the general partner of MPLX LP (NYSE: MPLX) has declared a quarterly cash distribution of $0.6875 per common unit for the first quarter of 2020, or $2.75 on an annualized basis.

Downstream logistics MLP Sprague Resources LP recently received an unsolicited buyout offer from its controlling sponsor and GP that represents a substantial discount to its IPO price. Many of the MLP's minority unitholders will find themselves locked…

MPLX is generating plenty of cash to maintain its high-yielding payout while executing its expansion plan.

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- With oil crashing below $25 Wednesday morning, the U.S. exploration and production sector is in critical condition already. Beyond the frackers and the majors, though, the double dose of coronavirus and OPEC disintegration is also tearing at the sinews that power it.Oilfield services contractors were still dreaming wistfully of getting back to their pre-2014 health when 2020 rolled around. Halliburton Co., for example, will have to find a new nickname: “Big Red” now has a market cap of about $5.5 billion, down from roughly $50 billion two years ago. Another sector is in danger of vanishing altogether: master limited partnerships.Technically, MLPs aren’t actually a sector; just a particular financing structure that tends to be used for pipelines and other vital logistical bits of the energy business. Regular readers (hey, a man can dream) know I have one or two quibbles with the MLP structure, mainly due to its weak governance resulting in overleveraged companies with insiders and regular investors often at cross purposes — and evaporating unit prices. As investors have given up, particularly on the institutional side, many midstream companies have abandoned the structure altogether, becoming regular C-corps in order to tap a wider pool of money more comfortable with traditional governance and financial metrics.Last September, I totted up the market cap and free float of a sample of 83 North American midstream firms (many of these companies, apart from the C-corps, have a significant sponsor shareholder). Just six months ago, it was striking that the entire sector had a collective market cap of only $575 billion, of which just $484 billion of was actually traded.Golden memories, it turns out. Since then, a few companies have been acquired, so we’re down to 80. Their collective market cap as of Tuesday’s close: $327 billion. To give a sense of how small that is, it is only slightly bigger than the combined market cap of just three large oil producers, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips — and that’s after their recent, massive sell-offs. The free float of the midstream group is a mere $271 billion. Moreover, C-corps dominate that, accounting for three quarters. You do the math on what that leaves for MLPs.As firms have converted to more-liquid C-corps and the entire sector has dropped, the number of barely-there companies has risen. Six months ago, roughly half the group had an average free float of less than $600 million, already too small for any but the most dedicated money managers to bother with. Today, 58 of the group, or almost three quarters, have an average float of about $400 million.There is a vicious cycle at work here, one which predated the latest crisis but has been amped-up by it. As liquidity in a lot of the sector dries up, so institutional investors are deterred even further, making it worse. At the same time, as bigger companies have converted to C-corps and been withdrawn from MLP indices, so the latter are rebalanced among the remainder — generally smaller companies with weaker performance, making the sector as a whole even less attractive.It has been apparent for a while that the larger remaining MLPs, such as Enterprise Product Partners LP, should convert to C-corps and access a bigger pool of potential investors as their old pool shrinks. For various reasons, usually related to insiders’ control and the tax hit on their low-basis positions in the partnership, some have held out. Yet the collapse in valuations confronts both rationales with a simple question: How much do you really have to lose at this point?Implacable as that is, change is hard. Just on Wednesday morning, Marathon Petroleum Corp. said it had concluded a strategic review of 63%-owned MPLX LP and decided to retain the MLP structure partly on the grounds it “will remain an important, through-cycle source of cash” for the parent. Against that, MPLX currently sports a distribution yield of 29% and has consistently yielded north of 10% since late September, way before coronavirus showed up and OPEC+ imploded.The abrupt shift in oil supply and demand exposes the overbuilding that resulted from midstream’s earlier excesses. That doesn’t mean all assets are suddenly worthless. But the sheer uncertainty about the shape (and scale) of the U.S. energy business that will emerge from this crisis means midstream’s fight for capital, which it was losing already, has become even more desperate. It simply cannot afford to remain chained to a structure whose heyday was more than five years ago and is now evaporating in front of our eyes.This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy, mining and commodities. He previously was editor of the Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Street column and wrote for the Financial Times' Lex column. He was also an investment banker.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

MPC earnings call for the period ending March 24, 2020.

John M. Fox, beneficial owner of 1,427,826 common units of MPLX LP and 62,583 shares of Marathon Petroleum Company, today released the following open letter to the board of directors of Marathon Petroleum Corporation (MPC) and MPLX LP (MPLX) outlining his support of management. Mr. Fox believes that recent decisions to appoint Michael Hennigan as CEO of MPC, maintain the current structure and direction of MPLX, and to downsize capex in line with current industry conditions are keys to generating long-term MPC and MPLX value for shareholders, and that the board of directors is working diligently to ensure all of the above are delivered.

Reported net loss attributable to MPLX of $2.7 billion; includes non-cash impairment charges of $3.4 billion primarily related to goodwill, equity method investments, and long-lived assets

Investors have bailed on these dividend stocks this year, pushing their yields up to eye-popping levels.

Given most midstream dividends for 1Q20 have now been announced, today's piece discusses how payouts are trending amid a challenging macro environment for energy.While there have been a number of dividend cuts to date, the majority of constituents by weightin…

Midstream and MLPs ran their streak of positive weeks to 5, this time trading up with oil prices even as the broader equity market and utilities were negative.Late in the week, the market threw a couple of pails of cold water on the risk-on euphoria, sending …

Moving into the late stages of 1Q20 earnings season for midstream, financial guidance updates have varied, but the overall outlook for midstream has been much better than other energy sectors.Midstream 2020 guidance revisions have not been nearly as severe as…