The growing company is exploring relocating from downtown to the CORTEX technology district. If so, they will build a new headquarters. The current headquarters is two blocks north from Peabody Energy - the world's largest private sector coal company.
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Laclede to Buy Assets From Energy Transfer for $1.02 Billion
Bloomberg
Jim Polson and Mike LeeDec 17, 2012 4:24 pm ET
(Updates with closing share prices in 11th paragraph.)
The LaClede Group, Inc. headquarters in downtown St. Louis.
Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Laclede Group Inc., owner of Missouri’s largest natural gas company, agreed to buy utility assets from Energy Transfer Partners LP and Energy Transfer Equity LP for $1.02 billion in cash to almost double its customer base as it seeks more acquisitions.
Laclede, based in St. Louis, also agreed to assume $20 million in debt to purchase Missouri Gas Energy and New England Gas Co., according to a statement today. The $898 million market value company plans to issue debt and equity to finance the deal, executives said today on a conference call.
“This investment is transformative,” Laclede Chief Executive Officer Suzanne Sitherwood, 52, said in the statement. The purchase “will effectively double our size by increasing our utility customer base from approximately 630,000 to nearly 1.2 million.”
Laclede will become the fourth largest U.S. gas distributor by customers, behind Atlanta-based AGL Resources Inc., Dallas- based Atmos Energy Corp. and Las Vegas-based Southwest Gas Corp., Chief Financial Officer Mark Waltermire said today on a conference call with investors.
Missouri Gas and Northeast Gas are the first attractive gas distributors up for sale since Sitherwood’s arrival last year from AGL Resources Inc., which became the largest U.S. gas distribution owner in a series of transactions capped by the $3.2 billion purchase of Nicor Inc. a year ago, said Timothy Winter, a St. Louis-based analyst for Gabelli & Co.
AGL Strategy
“She’s sort of applied the AGL strategy to Laclede,” said Winter, who rates Laclede shares at hold and owns none himself. “She outlined that she was putting a system and personnel in place to accommodate the acquisition of additional gas utility properties.”
Laclede’s acquisition team will continue to examine each of the two or three U.S. gas utilities that come up for sale each year while today’s takeover is pending, Sitherwood said today in a telephone interview. While the Midwest is a “better place for us,” the company will look nationally, she said.
Missouri Gas supplies about 500,000 homes and businesses in the state’s west, including Kansas City and Joplin. New England Gas has 50,000 customers in southeastern Massachusetts.