It's the debt vs equity argument. At the moment equity for WES...

It's the debt vs equity argument. At the moment equity for WES would appear to be very expensive and debt likely to be getting cheaper. Issue for WES is they traditionally have very high dividend payout ratio (to distribute franking credits) and rely on dividend re-investment to fund ongoing capital requirements.

At the end of the day it is all about performance. If majority of WES businesses are performing then interest cover multiples will be good, credit rating will be maintained or improved and interest rates will trend lower.

Today's announcement indicates they are on track with satisfactory or improving performance in most businesses. In this case I believe they won't do a capital raising at the current large discount and the main issue is whether they fund ongoing capital requirements from profits or continue with dividend reinvestment.