The Williams Companies Inc (WMB.N): You Can Call It Equity If You Want To

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The Williams Companies Inc (WMB.N): You Can Call It Equity If You Want To

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14 Jul 2026 17:40:59 ET │ 11 pages

The Williams Companies Inc (WMB.N)

You Can Call It Equity If You Want To

CITI'S TAKE

BuyWMB announced an agreement for Blackstone, Apollo, and KKR to acquire

a 49% non-controlling interest in its five sanctioned BTM power projects Price (14 Jul 26 16:00) US$75.98

for $5.34bln with a buyout right for WMB to acquire the assets back after Target price US$83.00

year 7 at Blackstone's investment balance. Here are our takeaways from Expected share price return 9.2%

the announcement. Expected dividend yield 2.8%

Expected total return 12.0%

What are the implied economics of the deal? WMB fell up to 3% on initial reaction Market Cap US$92,923M

largely on the implied transaction multiple (~6x) from the deal. That said, we believe

this deal structure resembles an amortizing bond which makes an equity valuation

multiple approach inappropriate, in our view, for this kind of financial structure.

Blackstone's stake has a target return 6.35% but distributions to Blackstone in Spiro DounisAC

excess of this amount reduce Blackstone's capital account. After the 7th year, WMB +1-212-816-6926

has a buyout right to purchase the 49% interest at the outstanding capital balance spiro.dounis@citi.com

which could eventually be reduced to zero by year 11. We calculate the IRR to Douglas Irwin

Blackstone to be ~7.5% which translates into an implied ~13x multiple. But once +1-212-816-9525

again, it's difficult to apply a multiple to this deal given equity multiples are applied douglas.irwin@citi.com

with perpetuity in mind whereas this structure could "amortize" to zero and appears Charles Bryant

more debt-like than equity-like. +1-212-816-3284

charles.bryant@citi.com