Twas 4Q of ’14, when all through the sector, not an investor was happy, the stocks needed a corrector. The deals were assembled by the wonks with such care, in hopes that the billions for Atlas soon would be there.

By the time this Midstream Business hits your desk, your biggest fear may be going anywhere near the mall. But back at the start of the quarter, investors were running scared of midstream stocks. Then Targa Resources Corp. (TRGP) and Targa Resources Partners LP chose a direction and bought themselves an Atlas for $7.7 billion.

“Market hated just about everything midstream yesterday,” read Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co.’s research note on Oct. 14, “but deal is in fact massively accretive for [TRGP] (greater than 30% cash flow per share) even after modest [general partner] giveback to [Targa Resources Partners LP], who also benefits ~10% on per- LP [discounted cash flow] metrics.”

J.P. Morgan’s Jeremy Tonet mentioned that he liked what was missing in the deal: Atlas’ divestment of non-Atlas Pipeline Partners assets before the deal is completed. No reason to gum up the works by diluting what he called Targa’s “solid organic growth midstream story.” But the best part is Targa’s much larger footprint in the Permian Basin, where the Atlas assets provide it with processing capacity that will rank second in the play at around 1.44 billion cubic feet per day.

The season also greeted the announcement of The Williams Cos. Inc.’s $50 billion merger with good cheer. “We expect the merger to be a game-changer for [Williams Partners LP],” said J.P. Morgan. “We see a clean Williams Cos. story that should achieve attractive yield compression as investors regain confidence in a simpler, healthier and faster-growing company.”

Happy investing to all, and to all a good deal.

Joseph Markman can be reached at jmarkman@hartenergy.com or 713-260-5208.

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