Williams Partners LP Earnings Call Nuggets: IDR Waivers and the Macro Side

Williams Partners LP (NYSE:WPZ) recently reported its fourth quarter earnings and discussed the following topics in its earnings conference call.

IDR Waivers

Christine Cho – Barclays: How are you guys planning to fund a coverage shortfall at WPZ in ’13? Is it going to be with debt or are you going to do IDR waivers? And can you just remind me what has been disclosed to-date for IDR waivers? Is that $105 million in ’13 and $16 million in ’14?

Don R. Chappel – SVP and Chief Financial Officer: Christine, this is Don Chappel. In terms of the exact funding plan and we’ve not disclosed that, but we do have a lot of flexibility around that. It will be a combination of debt and equity. Certainly, Williams is well positioned to support WPZ in many ways, but we have no additional IDR waivers contemplated at this time. The IDR waivers that currently have been granted are very modest and I think you mentioned those numbers, and they just go out for two years.

Christine Cho – Barclays: Can you just talk about what your plans are for the extra cash at WMB otherwise, especially with the…

Don R. Chappel – SVP and Chief Financial Officer: We have a number of investment opportunities in the NGL pipeline, petchem pipeline space where Alan has laid out strategy earlier about building that business and Alan can speak to that again, so that’s an opportunity, and the balance, we have some flexibility and so we’ll look at the fact and circumstances and determine what the best use of that excess cash is.