Warren is the chairman and largest shareholder of Energy Transfer LP, a U.S. energy and pipeline company. The Dallas-based business has assets in 38 U.S. states and reported revenue of $55.3 billion in 2018. It was formed in the same year following the merger of Energy Transfer Partners and Energy Transfer Equity.
Kelcy Warren's net worth of $4.59B can buy ...
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The majority of Warren's fortune is derived from his stake in Energy Transfer LP, formerly called Energy Transfer Equity until it merged with Energy Transfer Partners on Oct. 19, 2018. It has assets in 38 states, according to its website.
Warren owns a 9 percent stake in the company, according to its 2018 annual report.
The billionaire collected about $700 million in incentive distribution rights and payouts from Energy Transfer Partners between 2004 and 2006, following ETP's initial public offering. Applicable taxes are applied on distributions because the founders of master limited partnerships don't receive the preferential return of capital tax treatment MLP investors do, according to Tim Fenn, a securities attorney at Latham & Watkins in Houston.
His cash holdings are valued based on proceeds from distributions according to company filings and an analysis of Bloomberg data. Taxes and market performance are applied to these proceeds.
Warren owns other assets, including real estate in Dallas, Austin, Colorado and Roatan, Honduras. These properties are valued at about $100 million, based on purchase prices and assessor records, when available.
He also owns 52 percent of the Roatan Electric Company, which he purchased in 2007 for $15 million in assumed debt and cash, according to the Bay Islands Voice newspaper.
Vicki Granado, a spokeswoman for Warren, declined to comment on his net worth.
Kelcy Warren grew up in White Oak, Texas, a town in east Texas outside the city of Longview. His first exposure to the energy pipeline business came during a summer job as a welder's assistant with his father.
He studied pipelines at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he received a degree in civil engineering in 1978. Warren's first job was designing pipelines for Lone Star Gas, a position he left after two years because he wanted to be rich, he told the UT Arlington Magazine in 2007. His next job, at Endevco, enabled him to rise from an engineering position to president of the company, specializing in commercial energy development. In the early 1990s, he served as the CEO of Crosstex Energy and president of Cornerstone Natural Gas.
Warren partnered with Ray C. Davis in 1996 in a propane pipeline investment, La Grange Energy L.P. They became billionaires as the partnership grew through mergers and acquisitions into LE GP, the closely held general partner through which the pair hold stakes in more than 56,000 miles of pipeline.
In 2004, Energy Transfer Partners sold shares in an initial public offering after Warren and Davis, through La Grange, bought propane transmission lines in Texas. The company had about 7,750 miles of pipelines at the time. In 2006, Energy Transfer Equity, the partnership that held the general partner rights to ETP, staged an IPO. Acquisitions became a hallmark of the company, underscored by a period between April 2011 and May 2012 when it paid $12.6 billion for three businesses, including Sunoco Logistics.
Warren lives in the Preston Hollow section of Dallas with his wife and son. He owns a record label in Austin, Texas, Music Road Records, that he co-founded in 2007. Warren also owns 52 percent of Roatan Electric Co., the power company of the Honduran island, where he and his family often vacation. His real estate holdings include BootJack Ranch, a 3,500-acre spread in Colorado that he paid $47.5 million for, according to the Wall Street Journal.