Williams Companies (WMB)
Energy · NYSE · US
Fundamentals
Valuation and ratings
Williams Companies trades at $74.73, which is 17% below the $87.78 our discounted cash flow model puts on the business. On that measure alone it screens as undervalued, though a DCF is an argument rather than a measurement, and the market is frequently right about why something is cheap.
Our moat model scores it 75 out of 100, which is a wide moat. A moat is a structural reason competitors cannot take the profits away, and it matters more to a long holding period than any single quarter's numbers do.
It changes hands at 32.9 times earnings. Be careful reading that in isolation: for a cyclical business a low P/E arrives at the top of the cycle, when profits are peaking and about to fall, which is exactly when the shares look cheapest and are not.
About Williams Companies
The Williams Companies, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates as an energy infrastructure company primarily in the United States. It operates through Transmission, Power & Gulf, Northeast G&P, West, and Gas & NGL Marketing Services segments. The Transmission, Power & Gulf segment comprises Transco, NWP, and Mountain West interstate natural gas pipelines, and their related natural gas storage facilities, as well as natural gas gathering and processing; and crude oil production handling and transportation assets in the Gulf Coast region. The Northeast G&P segment engages in the midstream gathering, processing, and fractionation activities in the Marcellus Shale region primarily in Pennsylvania and New York, and the Utica Shale region of eastern Ohio. The West segment consists of gas gathering, processing, and treating operations in the Rocky Mountain region of Colorado and Wyoming, the Barnett Shale region of north-central Texas, the Eagle Ford Shale region of South Texas, the Haynesville Shale region of northwest Louisiana, the Mid-Continent region that includes the Anadarko and Permian basins, and the DJ Basin of Colorado; and operates natural gas liquid (NGL) fractionation and storage assets in central Kansas near Conway. The Gas & NGL Marketing Services segment provides wholesale marketing, trading, storage, and transportation of natural gas for natural gas utilities, municipalities, power generators, and producers; asset management services; and transports and markets NGLs. The company owns and operates approximately 32,000 miles of pipelines. The Williams Companies, Inc. was founded in 1908 and is headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
WMB passes 4 of our 30 screens today
Each screen prints the exact criteria it used, and the circumstances in which it is wrong.
Smart money ownership
15 of the funds we track reported a position in their latest SEC 13F filing. Largest first:
- Steve Cohen, Point72 Asset Management, L.P.$176.02M · 0.2% of book
- Ken Griffin, CITADEL ADVISORS LLC$171.70M · 0.0% of book
- Israel Englander, MILLENNIUM MANAGEMENT LLC$145.52M · 0.1% of book
- D. E. Shaw, D. E. Shaw & Co., Inc.$141.82M · 0.1% of book
- AKO Capital, AKO CAPITAL LLP$129.25M · 2.5% of book
A word of warning on reading these figures: a 13F reports the market value of a holding, so a fund that traded nothing at all still appears to have sold when the price fell. We found 102 companies where the standard reading gives the opposite answer. Only the share count is honest.
Common questions
Is Williams Companies (WMB) undervalued?
Against our discounted cash flow estimate of $87.78, WMB at $74.73 is 17% below fair value. That is one model's answer, not a recommendation, and most of a DCF's output sits in a terminal value nobody can forecast.
Which funds own WMB?
15 of the institutions we track reported a position in WMB in their most recent SEC 13F filing. A 13F is filed up to 45 days after quarter end, so it tells you what a fund held then, not what it holds now.
What is WMB's P/E ratio?
WMB trades at 32.9 times earnings. A low P/E is not automatically cheap: on a cyclical company it is usually a warning that earnings are at a peak.
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Data from company filings, exchange quotes and SEC EDGAR 13F disclosures. Quotes are delayed. Metrics we do not have are left out rather than estimated. Educational information, not financial advice.