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Morningstar | Dominion hopes MLP unit price recovery will allow future drop-downs.

Dominion Energy changed its name from Dominion Resources in 2017. More importantly for investors, however, the company has also made a strategic pivot. Since 2010, it has focused on the development of new wide-moat projects with conservative strategies, exited the exploration and production business, sold or retired no-moat merchant energy plants, and made significant investments in moaty utility infrastructure.We expect wide-moat businesses to generate roughly half of Dominion's operating earnings by 2020, up from 30% in 2016. The remaining earnings primarily come from narrow-moat regulated gas and electric utilities in states with long histories of constructive regulatory frameworks, solid sales growth, and high-return investment opportunities. We believe Dominion's businesses will earn a material spread over our estimate of the company's cost of capital through the next decade.Dominion created Dominion Energy Midstream Partners as a financing vehicle to provide low-cost equitylike funding for new wide-moat development projects. However, unit prices of master limited partnerships, including DMP, have taken a beating since a surprise regulatory notice in March that puts restrictions on the ability of MLPs to recover an income tax allowance in their cost-of-service rates. The underlying fundamentals for Dominion are basically unchanged, and we believe the decline in the company's share price following the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission decision creates an opportunity for long-term investors.We believe Dominion's moaty conservative growth opportunities, unimpaired by the FERC decision, should drive high-single-digit earnings per share growth. We think the dividend yield and earnings growth could deliver double-digit returns through the next decade.