Chesapeake Energy is planning a stock spin-off of its midstream natural gas operations. Apparently they haven’t said exactly what they are going to do or in what form it will occur. What they did say was that it was intended to “extract value from assets”, whatever that means.

Whether this will result in an attractive investment remains to be seen. I guess it is back to the old Joel Greenblatt question of what’s in it for whom. For that, as always, we are going to have to read their official filings of just exactly what they are going to do.

On the surface of it, midstream operations can provide good cash flow and stability since owning the pipes and storage and delivery facilities means you collect your fees no matter what the stuff going though them is costing at the moment. If you don’t screw it up, you should be able to keep cashing the checks for a long time. That should be good.

Will we get a chance to get in on this stock spin-off at a good price? Only time will tell.

At the moment, I can’t see why the new company should be undervalued out of the box. Maybe just size or energy investors not really wanting to be in the midstream part of the business will cause them to unload the new shares. Maybe if it comes out at an MLP that structure will depress the early prices. Who knows? Keep watching.

As so often happens, maybe I’m missing something. Read the story about the Chesapeake Energy stock spin-off plans.

Tags: CHK, mlp, stock spin-off, stock spin-off investing, Value Investing