Marathon Petroleum Corp (NYSE:MPC) shares were up 0.40% on Thursday when approximately 4.15M shares were traded, against the average daily trading volume of 5.84M. Analysts at Credit Agricole recently upgraded the stock to Underperform from Buy. Marathon Petroleum Corp (NYSE:MPC) has a consensus Strong buy rating, according to Zacks Investment Research. No analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, 4 have assigned a hold rating, Zero says it’s a buy, and 10 have assigned a strong buy rating to the company.
Analysts have a consensus target price of $61.97 in the 12-month period. The price objective is 29.37% higher than the recent closing price of $47.90. The 52-week price range is $28.20-$54.59 and the company has a market capitalization of $25.28 billion.
Marathon Petroleum Corp (MPC) on February 1, 2017 announced the significant acceleration of dropdowns to MPLX. MPLX now expects to acquire assets with approximately $1.4 billion of annual earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) from MPC in 2017, including $250 million by the end of the first quarter. The partnership expects to finance the dropdown transactions with debt and equity in approximately equal proportions, with the equity financing to be funded through MPLX LP units issued to MPC.
In conjunction with completion of the dropdowns, MPLX also expects to exchange newly issued common units for MPC`s economic interests in the general partner, including incentive distribution rights.
These actions are expected to reduce MPLX`s cost of capital and enhance its long-term distribution growth capabilities. All transactions are subject to requisite approvals, market and other conditions, including tax and other regulatory clearances.
“Following the dropdowns, the partnership`s size and scale would be among the largest in the industry with nearly equal contributions from the Logistics and Storage and Gathering and Processing segments,” Heminger said. “With a simplified structure, full alignment with our sponsor and additional visibility to an attractive distribution growth rate, we are confident about MPLX`s compelling value proposition to our investors.”
The Gathering and Processing (G&P) segment continues to deliver strong volume growth and provides exceptional organic growth opportunities. In 2016, processed gas volumes exceeded 5.7 billion cubic feet per day, a 13 percent increase over the full-year 2015 and a new record for the partnership.
