No. of Recommendations: 6
All the bear claims are being dismissed as not credible but this can bring down entire BROOKFIELD complex if not addressed.
I am assuming you are referring to the short report. From what I could gather, the author is not alleging fraud or anything illegal. His main contention is that only a portion of BIP distributions are covered by actual cash dividends received by BIP. The rest is covered by asset sales and sale of (overvalued in his opinion) BIP units. The author is saying that BIP portrays FFO as free cash flow generated from operations, but in reality FFO includes BIP's share of earnings from its equity accounted investments which are not actual cash dividends received by BIP. More than half of BIP's investments are equity accounted.
Zooming out and looking at the big picture, BIP has been around for more than a decade. For such a long period of time, it is not possible to distribute more than value created without debt increasing to unsustainable levels. This has not happened. BIP is rated BBB+ which is investment grade.
At least for the past decade, it looks like distributions have been covered by overall value creation (cash dividends + asset sales + unit sales) and not increasing debt. Of course this may change because there has been a regime change. In the new era of higher interest rates, BIP can no longer depend on ever increasing asset and share prices. The declining share price reflects all these concerns.
Earnings call is only a couple of days away. Even though they may not formally acknowledge the short report, I am sure they will address the questions raised.
