Tortoise Slowing Down (TYY, TYG, TYN, TTO)

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Feb 13, 1:47PM EST · Published Feb 13, 10:39AM EST

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Tortoise Energy Capital Corp. (NYSE:TYY) has cut its first quarter 2009 distribution from $0.43/share to $0.40/share. For the full year, Tortoise expects to be able to pay investors at least $0.38/share quarterly.

Tortoise Energy Capital is one of four investment vehicles managed by Tortoise Capital Advisors LLC. Each of the others also announced distribution decreases. Tortoise Energy Infrastructure Corp. (NYSE:TYG) decreased distributions by $0.02 to $0.54, and expects at least $0.52 for the rest of 2009. Tortoise North American Energy Corp. (NYSE:TYN) reduced distributions by $0.05/share to $0.37 and expects a floor of $0.36 for the rest of the year. Tortoise Capital Resources Corp. (NYSE:TTO) dropped its distribution by $0.035.

Tortoise Energy Capital’s CEO put it this way, “While we expect the next year to be challenging for almost every industry, including the energy infrastructure sector, we continue to believe the flow of energy commodities remains critical to our economy and that the long term prospects for MLP investments are attractive.”

He’s probably right, but remember Keynes: “In the long term, we’re all dead.”

Paul Ausick

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.