The current industry downturn hasn’t meant a slowdown in the workday for Emily Newport, a vice president in energy investment banking with Jefferies LLC in Houston. Rather, as the firm’s more bread-and-butter M&A work slowed this year, it has continued to expand its work in private capital raises and complex structured financings to meet the needs of E&Ps in the current environment. Upstream clients are the focus of most of Newport’s work to date.

A native of St. Louis, Missouri, Newport has lived in Houston for over 10 years. She graduated from Rice University with a degree in economics and managerial studies before joining Jefferies as an analyst in 2007, as the shale plays were revolutionizing the domestic industry. She was promoted to associate in 2010 and to vice president in 2013.

Rice is a smaller school than many, and Jefferies has provided the same “right fit” for Newport, with the ability to have an impact early on. “I was drawn in by the challenge and fast-paced environment,” she said.

Through the years she has worked on a number of deals that have been transformative, whether for the companies involved or the evolving industry. These include Apache’s $1.4 billion sale of its deepwater assets; Woodbine Acquisition’s $535 million sale to Meidu Holdings; Cordillera Energy Partners III’s $2.9 billion sale to Apache; and numerous others.

In her spare time, Newport enjoys travel and generally has an exciting destination on her radar screen. This month, it’s South Africa.

In a recent interview, she discussed a couple of the recent deals she has worked on and the creative approach Jefferies has become known for.

Emily Newport

Investor Tell us about a couple of deals that reflect recent industry trends.

Newport Two private capital raises come to mind. In April, we closed a deal for Breitburn Energy Partners, the upstream MLP. We began a dialog in late 2014- early 2015 after the company had closed the acquisition of QR Energy. Breitburn was looking for a timely solution to term out a portion of its revolver debt, in an environment of lower commodity prices. We worked closely with the company to put together a plan highlighting the drilling opportunity set, even at lower commodity prices. We contacted a group of energy savvy investors and Breitburn sold $350 million of perpetual convertible preferred units and $650 million of senior secured notes, in simultaneous private offerings, to investment funds managed by EIG Partners and other purchasers.

We partnered with Breitburn to position the technical story and created a unique capital structure solution to provide liquidity for the company. We advised and guided the transaction on an accelerated time frame and assisted the company through the entire process.

Investor Are there new entrants in this private capital space?

Newport Yes. Despite the downturn in commodity prices, institutional investors understand the opportunity in oil and gas investing, particularly around the onshore resource plays.

We work with a wide spectrum of potential investors, including energy focused investors, generalist private equity, hedge funds, pension funds, family offices and sovereign wealth funds. These entities have or are developing more technical understanding as they seek to deploy more capital into our industry. With the public capital markets undergoing significant volatility, we expect these investors to be an increasingly important source of capital for our clients.

Investor The FourPoint capital raise was also interesting, wasn’t it?

Newport Yes. After selling its Cordillera entity to Apache, the management team was looking for a different structure for its new venture. For FourPoint, we helped arrange a $1 billion capital raise, including an $800 million debt commitment from EIG Partners and GSO Capital and $200 million of equity from private investors.

One of the most interesting aspects of the transaction was that FourPoint was acquiring $270 million in assets from EnerVest as part of the deal, but most of that capital was designated for assets that were not identified at close. Figuring out an appropriate structure that aligned FourPoint and the investors was, again, outside the box. There were structural complexities to work through given that most of the capital was not for a specific asset—unusual in the debt world.

Investor What makes these investors and structures different?

Newport These strategic investors are willing to be more constructive than a generalist investor, which might simply look at leverage multiples. These investors take a more technical view of assets and look beyond debt-to-Ebitda metrics to give companies value beyond the proved reserve report. We’re also seeing more creative structures, like the DrillCo and AcqCo structures. That’s the type of work we do here.

Investor What aspect of your work do you enjoy the most?

Newport I enjoy working with the client to tell their story in a compelling and interesting way. It requires critical thinking, and also figuring out how to make it understandable and simple. You have to get the investor excited about the team and the assets to be willing to do the hard work to structure these complex deals.

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