Mr. Watson: SteelPath is a money manager with a complete focus on energy infrastructure, primarily by investing through master limited partnerships. We run a family of mutual funds, as well as privately available products. In total, we have about 2.2 billion of AUM.
TWST: When you say primarily through MLPs, what other investment vehicles do you use?
Mr. Watson: We look at the corporate holders of those assets as well, when it makes sense. The majority of pure-play energy infrastructure opportunities are MLPs, but we will look outside of those if the value proposition is there.
TWST: How and why did you get into the MLP space? I understand you first started offering funds in 2010.
Mr. Watson: The mutual funds were launched in 2010. The firm was launched in 2004. The story behind the firm is that our founder, Gabriel Hammond, was covering MLPs for Goldman Sachs and realized that there was an opportunity here to build a business and not just write about it. So he went out and launched the firm - originally under the name Alerian - managing private investments in the MLP space. Really, the big picture there is that, starting in 2004 and earlier, it became clear that the MLP structure was going to be to energy infrastructure what the REIT structure is to real estate. So as those assets migrated into the structure, it presented a really interesting opportunity, and that opportunity continues today.
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