Investment in the Environment

The Supreme Court has now stepped into the debate over global warming via a lawsuit filed by 12 States and 13 environmental groups against the EPA, charging that it is the EPA’s duty to regulate greenhouse gasses (Article). Initial debate as been over whether or not the EPA has the right or the responsibility to limit greenhouse gas emissions, but at some point the debate will ultimately have to be changed to how to limit greenhouse gas emission. All this got me thinking; what will be the implications on private investment if any sort of law or regulation is put into place?
We’re all aware of the huge push that has been made already into alternate fuels such as ethanol, but those investments have not been as profitable as first imagined and demand could be wavering. Consider the recent ethanol IPO withdrawals. What I’m more interested in is how investments in environmental companies have fared in the recent past. That is, companies that are engaged in promoting the preservation and protection of the environment and wildlife by addressing issues such as clean air and water, global warming and conserving and developing natural resources. According to my sources, since 2000, $1.04 billion of PE money and $120 million in venture funding has gone towards such companies (in the US). And since 2000, these combined investments have had an unexciting return of -3.98%. Now, obviously, any sort of regulation would most likely have a positive effect on overall number of dollars invested and future returns, but since the turn of the century, investment in the environment has not been profitable. Since 2000 investment in environmental companies by VC and PE firms as accounted for just four-tenths of a percent of all total investments. What can be done to increase this number? In an ideal world, these are the sort of investments that would yield the most profit, where environmental profit and monetary profit would go hand-in-hand. I really hope I live to see such a day.

Pastics

I was looking through some random statistics today and found that in Q2 the largest end-to-end growth in terms of dollars invested in private equity came in the chemicals and material focus group. Growth was up over 225%. I took a closer look and the majority of companies that were bought out within this focus group during Q2 were companies that dealt with plastics, including the forming, molding, coloring , etc. of plastics. Not sure why this would be, but I was thinking it may be linked to oil prices. I’m not quite sure, but I think oil plays a large part in the manufacturing of plastics. So, either lower oil prices are predicted by PE firms, which would reduce the cost of production and thus increase profits. Or, it might be looked at from the opposite viewpoint, where higher oil prices would increase the cost of plastics and there could be an opportunity or a bit of price gouging. Just some thoughts, not sure which train makes more sense.

WAYN

Not sure if anyone out there uses the service WAYN (www.wayn.com). I joined over a year ago after I was traveling around in Australia and many of the people I met there recommended it to me. Now, I was doing a lot of backpacking, so keep in mind these are people that travel a lot more frequently. The service is very much like Facebook, or MySpace, but with an added twist. The site focuses on younger people who travel a lot by allowing them to, in addition to maintaining a profile, list paces that they will be traveling to in the future and then being able seeing who else within the network be at that same location when they will be visiting. To be honest I haven’t used this feature to meet people in places that I have traveled to, but more so to keep track of where my friends will be traveling to. The reason I bring this up is that yesterday the site received $11 million in funding from Esprit Capital Partners. Makes me wonder if Esprit is trying to cash in on the web 2.0/user generated content craze much like Sequoia did with Youtube, VantagePoint and Redpoint did with myspace and Accel and MeriTech hope to do with facebook. I absolutely hate the commercialization of all these social networking sites. I do believe WAYN is and can be valuable however, given its broader market scope, but its important to keep in mind that its much more of a niche market so to speak because of its focus on travel. Surely will be interesting to see where this all goes. I’ll try to get an update in a few months.

Bain

So in today’s PE Week Wire, Dan reports that Bain Capital is “running out of money.” He’s alluding to the fact that Bain’s latest fund is over 30% committed already and it does not look as if they will have enough money to keep making the large-scale deals they have been recently and expect the fund last 3 to 4 years. In Q3 alone, 20% of total committed capital was called according my sources. This along with the fact that OSI and Clear Channel are still not accounted for, leads me to believe that they might have to raise a new fund sooner than expected, or, possibly open up another co-investment type fund. I think its pretty funny that when the figures for the fund (fund XI) were first floated, people were skeptical if the amount raised was actually going to be able to be invested effectively. I guess Bain, and the rest of the industry, has answered that question. Undoubtedly more and more record sized funds are going to be raised by the likes of Bain, Blackstone and Carlyle with no signs of PE bubble burst in the near future.

Carlyle/Club Deals

So, I just read that Carlyle is going to make a $5.46 billion bid for Advanced Semiconductor Engineering. Obviously they are not the sole bidder, but there's a consortium. I haven't a clue who the other firms involved could be. Just recently I did a research piece on these so called club deals where these larger firms are coming together to conduct these huge scale buyouts. Carlyle was somewhat of a late entrant into these larger club deals, but recently I believe that they have teamed up with J.P. Morgan, Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, KKR, Providence Equity Partners, and Bain Capital in such deals as Hertz, PanAmSat, and AMC Entertainment. I'd imagine they'd be teaming up with at least one of the aforementioned firms. Now I know the offer has not yet been made, but I wonder what the implications will be give that Carlyle was one of the firms named in the suit against larger private equity firms by investors in the companies they bought out.
In this case it doesn’t seem as if there are any other bidders, however the offer price is clearly a premium over the current stock price. The question is that if there was another group bidding for the company, would the price have been higher? Who knows. I would think yes, but there has to be some ceiling and having done their homework I would think that no one would bid much higher than what they perceive the worth to be. OR it could be because the so called collusion the lawsuit mentions where the firms all agree to not bid above an agreed-upon price. I find this hard to believe. And so I also believe the lawsuit has no merit. It should be interesting to see what happens with this deal and who the other firms involved are. I’d appreciate some feedback, or especially if someone has some further insight.