Momentum Midstream at five and a half billion — and somebody's about to call gathering-and-processing pipe a core infrastructure asset. Let's see how straight they can say it. This is Infrastructure Secondaries Daily. Today — a Williams-sized LNG target, and a union pension out shopping for managers. Two stories; we're asking who's setting the terms, and who's stretching what. And whether the growth pitch and the duration pitch are actually the same story. Daniel says no. Let's get into it. Tap follow so the next episode finds you. PitchBook, with Benny Wong:
Williams Co., one of North America’s largest midstream companies with a market cap of over $90 billion, is reportedly in advanced discussions to acquire PE-backed Momentum Midstream for around $5.5 billion, according to Bloomberg.
Williams and Momentum: five and a half billion, with PitchBook slotting it right inside the LNG buildout thesis. So now a gathering-and-processing operator gets wrapped in the LNG growth story. Here's the number that matters — 22 to 25 times EBITDA. Public midstream peers trade at 10 to 14. So someone's paying nearly double, and the justification on the page is that global LNG demand has doubled since 2010. A fifteen-year doubling in demand gives you a growth curve. It doesn't give you a contracted, take-or-pay cash-flow schedule. Those are two very different arguments wearing the same suit. Exactly. Demand growth supports a volume story. It doesn't come with the utility-style predictability that earns a core-infra discount rate — and at 25x, someone's pricing this like it has both. And note who's cashing out — EnCap Flatrock, in since 2022. That's the liquidity event: a four-year PE hold exiting to a strategic at an LNG-narrative multiple. Alternatives Watch's Susan Barreto has that one. Thirty-five million dollars. A union pension in Chicago is going to market for global infrastructure managers — live procurement, real beneficiaries, happening right now. And here's what I keep circling: how much leverage does a thirty-five-million-dollar mandate actually have when it walks into a room with global infra managers? You're the small check at that table. The RFP dropped June 29, per Alternatives Watch — pin that date, because whoever wins this is setting terms against a market that's already moved underneath them. Single-asset continuation vehicles are now twenty to thirty percent of GP deal flow, up from about five two years ago. So a new LP walking in today is buying into a recycling machine that barely existed at the last vintage. Right — so this pension picks a manager, and a chunk of what that manager does is roll assets into continuation vehicles the LPAC has to bless on a clock. Chicago's beneficiaries are signing up for that dynamic whether the RFP spells it out or not. If you track private-market infrastructure, you might also like SpaceX IPO Watch — daily SpaceX valuation, stock news, and investor analysis, following the numbers before the ticker exists. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
You'll find links to all of today's stories in the show notes, so if one of them is useful for your day, it's there to dig into. That's Infrastructure Secondaries Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.