This morning I had a pleasant conversation with Brian Begley, Vice President, Investor relations for Atlas Energy Resources (NYSE: ATN), a gas exploration company set up as a Limited Liability Company. Although it is an LLC it operates similar to a Master Lease Partnership (MLP); according to their website: ATN pays cash distributions each quarter, which represent a return of invested capital to each common unit-holder. Therefore, these distributions are tax-deferred until the units are sold or the unit-holder's basis goes below zero, whichever occurs first.In English this means that if you were to invest $10,000 in the shares you would not pay taxes until you sell the shares or get back in excess of the $10,000 and only pay taxes on the overage.
Brian gets high marks for being very straight forward in answering all of my questions. He was upbeat about the company as you would expect but I do not think he was sugar coating anything nor was he ever evasive and I asked some very direct questions. I have to give credit for my initial attraction to this stock to the Motley Fools and their story 5-Star Stocks Poised to Pop: Atlas Energy
The 5-Stars refers to the sites "Caps" rating system by participants that vote for the stocks they favor. A majority of the stock pickers on this site believe there is a high probability the stock will be a winner. I was drawn to it for more practical reasons then looking for ratings systems or analysts calls. The stock has been paying about a 20% yield and that's some serious cash even if it goes nowhere.
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