ENBRIDGE INC. (ENB): what the price assumes

In the published model solve dated 2026-Q2, anchored at $50.09, ENBRIDGE INC. (ENB) is priced for +3.7% growth. boothcheck publishes no house fair value, target price, or buy/sell rating; individual model outputs and user-controlled scenarios are analytical inputs, not Boothcheck targets. Narrative composed 2026-07-26.

Generated: 2026-09-07 · Exported: 2026-09-09 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/ENB

Headline

FieldValue
TickerENB
CompanyENBRIDGE INC.
Sector / IndustryEnergy
Current price$50.09/sh
CompositionLiquids Pipelines 68% / Gas Transmission 13% / Gas Distribution and Storage 14% / Renewable Power Generation 1% / Energy Services 3%

What The Price Assumes (Inversion)

The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.

FieldValue
Inversion basiswhole-company
Implied growth3.7%
Multiple paid23x operating income

Solve inputs: computed at a 7% cost of capital with 4% terminal growth over a 5-year stage (computed at the 7% minimum rate; the CAPM rate 6.4% sits below it).

How unusual the bet is: n/a

ReferenceValue
cohort percentile (of 48 peers)79

Valuation X-Ray

The price is justified by relative-multiple and growth-DCF; asset-based/earnings-power land below the price.

How the valuation models price the stock relative to the market price. Price/FV above 1.0 means the market pays more than that lens defends (expensive); at or below 1.0 the lens can defend the price.

FamilyMedian price/FVModelsReads
Asset2.23x5expensive
Earnings2.21x4expensive
Relative0.73x2justifies
Growth0.62x4justifies

Families that justify the price: Relative, Growth Families that call it expensive: Asset, Earnings

The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 9.2%); the inversion above states its own rate.

Per-Model Detail (n=15)

ModelFamilyFVPrice/FVApplicableMethodology
DCF Perpetual GrowthGrowth$93.690.53xyesFCF base $5.4B, growth 25% (input: historical growth), terminal g 4.0%, WACC 9.2%, 7yr projection
DCF Exit MultipleGrowth$67.030.75xyesExit EV/EBITDA: 5.8x / 8.8x / 11.8x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull), 7yr
Relative ValuationRelativenoP/E 18x (static sector reference · 2026-04), scenarios: 14.4x / 18.0x / 21.6x (bear / base = reference held flat / bull), EV/EBITDA 12x
Simple DDMGrowthno
Two-Stage DDMGrowth$101.240.49xyesStage 1: 20% for 5yr, Stage 2: 3.5% perpetual
Simple Excess ReturnAsset$22.302.25xyesBV/sh $22.00, ROE (TTM) 9.4%, ke 9.3%
Two-Stage Excess ReturnAsset$22.452.23xyes5yr excess ROE then converge to ke=9.3%
Discounted Future Market CapGrowth$71.870.70xyesRev $61.4B, growth 30% (input: historical growth; tapered), Terminal P/S: 1.4x / 1.8x / 2.1x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull, cap 12x)
Peter Lynch Fair ValueRelative$66.650.75xyesEPS $1.90, growth 35% (input: historical EPS growth), PEG=0.69 (Undervalued)
Margin TrajectoryGrowthno
Earnings Power ValueEarnings$25.201.99xyesNormalized EBIT (5y avg op income, one-time charges added back) $6.52B × (1−22%) / WACC 9.2% → EPV (no growth)
Residual IncomeAsset$22.472.23xyesBV $22.00 + 5yr PV of (ROE (TTM) 9.4% − Kₑ 9.3%) × BV; BV grows 6.1%/yr
Graham NumberAsset$30.701.63xyes√(22.5 × EPS $1.90 × BVPS $22.00) — Graham's conservative floor
EV/EBITDA RelativeRelativenoEBITDA $12.39B × sector EV/EBITDA 12.0x
FCF YieldEarnings$6.228.05xyesFCF $1226.5M / Kₑ 9.3% — zero-growth perpetuity
SBC-Adj FCF YieldEarningsno
Ben Graham FormulaEarnings$61.450.82xyesEPS $1.90 × (8.5 + 2×15.0%) × (4.4 / 5.3%)
ROIC-Justified P/BAsset$8.375.98xyesBV $22.00 × (ROIC 3.5% / WACC 9.2%)
P/Sales SectorRelativenoRevenue $61.39B × sector P/S 2.5x
PEG Fair ValueRelative$71.420.70xyesEPS $1.90 × (PEG 1.5 × growth 25.0% (input: historical EPS growth)) → PE 37.5x
Earnings YieldEarnings$20.592.43xyesEPS $1.90 / required return 9.3% (Rf 4.3% + ERP 5.0%)
Funds From Operations MultipleRelativeno
Clinical Phase NPVGrowthno
MertonAssetno
V5 Mechanicalno

Economic-Unit Decomposition (Sum Of The Parts)

One or more material disclosed units has unresolved economics. Unknown/general is not evidence of homogeneity: segment SOTP is primary but incomplete, consolidated cash flow may remain only a secondary cross-check when every unit shares an enterprise basis, and one sector multiple or target margin is withheld.

UnitRoleValuation basisRevenueReported profitValue evidenceStatus
Liquids Pipelinesoperatingenterprise29.9B reported-currencywithheldunresolved no unit value
Gas Transmissionoperatingenterprise5.9B reported-currencywithheldunresolved no unit value
Gas Distribution and Storageoperatingenterprise6.0B reported-currencywithheldunresolved no unit value
Renewable Power Generationoperatingenterprise0.5B reported-currencywithheldunresolved no unit value
Energy Servicesoperatingenterprise1.5B reported-currencywithheldunresolved no unit value

No total common-equity value is stated. One or more material units lack a supported unit value. The displayed values are an indicative subtotal; consolidated debt and cash cannot be applied to a fraction of the company.

Solvency

FieldValue
Net debt$76.2b
Net debt / NOPAT (after-tax)12.11x
Net debt / operating income (pre-tax)9.45x
Interest coverage2.2x
Share count CAGR (dilution)1.9%
Burning cashno

Bullet Takeaways

Bull Case

One number decides this company, and it is not the dividend. It is the secured project book, which reached 40 billion Canadian dollars by the first quarter of 2026. For a business that earns a regulated or contracted return on capital it has put in the ground, a sanctioned project is not a hope; it is next decade's earnings with a signature already on it. If that figure stops growing, the growth in the payout stops with it, and everything else in the file becomes commentary.

What went into it in a single quarter is a useful picture of the machine. The company sanctioned a US$0.7 billion onshore wind project in Texas, 300 megawatts supporting Meta's data centre operations under a long-term power purchase agreement; a US$0.4 billion expansion at Tres Palacios adding 25 billion cubic feet of natural gas storage aimed at Gulf Coast export demand; and a US$0.1 billion expansion of the Vector Pipeline adding 400 million cubic feet a day of westbound capacity under long-term contracts. It also announced an 8 billion cubic foot storage expansion at the Dawn Hub in Ontario and received federal approval for the 4 billion dollar T-South Sunrise Expansion in British Columbia. Five different commodities, one financing model.

The base system is running full. Mainline volumes averaged 3.2 million barrels a day in the quarter and the line has been apportioned all year, which is the industry's way of saying demand for space exceeds the space available. The company also launched binding open seasons on the Flanagan South and Southern Access Extension pipelines to support a second phase of mainline optimisation, advancing an additional 250 thousand barrels a day of export capacity out of Canada, and completed an open season on the Spearhead Pipeline that extends commitments well beyond 2030. Getting more through existing steel is the highest-return capital this business can deploy, and the annual report says so directly: the company aims "to drive growth through optimization and modernization of our systems, including the application of drag-reducing agents and pump station modifications to optimize throughput on our liquids system".

The gas utility is the quiet compounder underneath. Gas distribution and storage carries about 14% of revenue, and management expects rate base at its United States utilities to grow at better than 8% a year compounded through the decade, with new rates in effect in Utah and North Carolina and an Ohio rate case in progress. Utility rate base growth is the least glamorous earnings stream in energy and among the most predictable.

Then the payout, which is the reason most people own this. The annual report states it flatly: "We have paid common share dividends in every year since we became a publicly traded company in 1953." In December 2025 the company announced a 3% increase in the quarterly dividend to 0.9700 Canadian dollars per common share, 3.88 annualised, effective with the payment on March 1, 2026, "thereby declaring a dividend increase for 31 straight years." Thirty-one years covers several oil crashes, a financial crisis and a pandemic. Management has also been unusually consistent about its own forecasts, reaffirming guidance on 38 separate occasions since 2018 and raising it once.

Bear Case

Look at how the whole thing is funded before looking at anything else. The annual report records that the company "completed long-term debt issuances totaling $4.6 billion and US$4.7 billion during the year ended December 31, 2025", and despite that borrowing the share count still grew about 1.9% a year across the four years to March 2026. A business that pays out most of its cash flow and simultaneously builds a large capital programme has exactly two ways to finance the gap. It borrows, and it issues shares. This one does both, every year, as a matter of design rather than distress. The design works while capital is available on acceptable terms. It is not obvious what it looks like if that stops being true.

The most recent quarter shows the tension in arithmetic rather than argument. First-quarter 2026 earnings attributable to common shareholders were 1.7 billion Canadian dollars, or 0.77 per common share, down from 2.3 billion and 1.04 a year earlier, and cash provided by operating activities fell to 2.3 billion from 3.1 billion. Against that sits a quarterly dividend of 0.9700 Canadian dollars on more than two billion shares. On the company's own distributable cash flow measure of 3.9 billion for the quarter the payout is covered with room; on the cash the accounts actually recorded from operations in the same three months, the margin is much thinner. Both statements are true, which is precisely why the choice of measure matters so much to this equity.

The revenue side is not the company's to set. "Our assets and activities are subject to extensive governmental and environmental regulation by various federal, provincial, state and local authorities. These include operational regulations related to safety and environmental protection and economic regulations governing the rates we charge customers for our services." The toll is fixed by regulators on a multi-year cycle; the cost of the debt funding the assets is repriced continuously by bond markets. The equity lives in the space between those two, and that space narrows whenever borrowing costs move faster than allowed returns.

Volumes are not permanently guaranteed either, and the filing is candid about the mechanism. During "periods of comparatively low prices, drilling programs, unsupported by hedging programs, may decrease, reducing supply growth from tight oil basins, which could impact volumes on our pipeline" systems. A mainline that is apportioned today is apportioned because upstream producers keep drilling. That is a decision made by other companies, responding to a price nobody here controls.

Against all of that, only one family of valuation approach reaches today's price. The methods that value the equity off book and the return earned on it land where the price sits close to three times above them, and the earnings-power methods land lower still. Peer multiples are the sole frame that gets there. Put plainly: the argument for this price is that other pipelines trade at similar multiples, and very little else. The priced-in read, which works out at operating profit growth around 7.7% a year, rests on limited comparison data and deserves to be held loosely rather than leaned on.

That peer frame is also weaker than it sounds, because the cohort is not one business. WMB carries an operating margin near 28.7% on trailing revenue of roughly 15.4 billion dollars growing 14.5%; KMI is close behind at about 28.7% on roughly 17.5 billion dollars growing 13.1%; MPLX runs near 44.8%. But ET operates near 10.3% and PAA near 3.3%, and EPD's trailing revenue fell 9.3%. Calling all of that a peer multiple is a convenience, not a comparison, and it is the convenience holding up the price.

Valuation

The disagreement among methods here is unusually one-sided, so start there rather than with the inversion. Only the peer-multiple approaches reach today's price. The methods that build value from book and the return earned on it land where the price sits close to three times above them. The earnings-power methods land lower still, with the price more than three times where they arrive. When a single frame carries the whole quote, the strength of that frame becomes the analytical question.

The reason the book-based approaches land so far below is not obscure. Return on equity runs about 8.6% against book value per share of $21.83, and the required return used across these methods is higher than that. When a business earns less on its accounting equity than investors demand from it, methods anchored on equity produce values below book, while the shares change hands at well over twice book. That is not a verdict on asset quality. It is a statement that the value in this company sits in long-dated contracted and regulated cash flows rather than in the equity line of a balance sheet, and book-based methods are structurally unable to see the first thing.

The peer frame deserves scrutiny precisely because it is doing all the work. Inside the cohort, MPLX carries an operating margin near 44.8%, WMB near 28.7% and KMI near 28.7%, while ET runs closer to 10.3% and PAA near 3.3%. Trailing revenue growth is just as scattered: KMI at 13.1%, WMB at 14.5%, TRGP at 1.1%, and EPD down 9.3%. A multiple drawn across that range is an average of businesses that make money in materially different ways.

The priced-in read is worth stating once, with its caveat attached. Today's price implies company-wide operating profit growth of roughly 7.7% a year over the next five years, computed at an 8.7% cost of capital. The comparison data behind that assessment is thin, so it should be read directionally rather than as a measurement. What is not ambiguous is the sensitivity around it: each additional percentage point on the cost of capital moves the implied growth requirement by roughly 6.5 percentage points. For a company that finances long-lived assets with long-dated debt, the discount rate is not one input among many. It is close to being the business.

The revenue base sits mostly in one place. Liquids pipelines carry about 68% of revenue, gas distribution and storage around 14%, gas transmission 13%, with energy services near 3% and renewable power generation about 1%. The annual report is clear that the pricing of most of that is not a commercial decision: assets and activities are subject to "economic regulations governing the rates we charge customers for our services". A regulated toll with a growing asset base is a good business. It is also one whose upside is capped by the same authority that protects its downside.

On funding, the picture is consistent rather than comforting. The company issued long-term debt of "$4.6 billion and US$4.7 billion during the year ended December 31, 2025", the share count has grown about 1.9% a year over four years, and the dividend has been raised for 31 straight years. Those three facts describe a single machine: capital comes in from lenders and new shareholders, goes into rate base, and comes back out as a rising distribution. It has run for three decades. Its continued running depends on the cost of the capital entering it staying below the return on the assets it buys, and that spread is set outside the company.

Catalysts

First-quarter results, reported on May 8, 2026, came with the full-year 2026 guidance and the multi-year outlook both reaffirmed. Earnings attributable to common shareholders were 1.7 billion Canadian dollars, or 0.77 per common share, against 2.3 billion and 1.04 in the prior-year quarter, while the company's adjusted earnings measure came in at 2.1 billion, or 0.98 per share, against 2.2 billion and 1.03. Cash provided by operating activities was 2.3 billion against 3.1 billion, and the company's distributable cash flow measure was 3.9 billion against 3.8 billion.

Project sanctioning was the more consequential news. The quarter added a US$0.7 billion, 300 megawatt onshore wind facility in Texas serving Meta's data centre operations under a long-term power purchase agreement, a US$0.4 billion expansion at Tres Palacios adding 25 billion cubic feet of gas storage, and a US$0.1 billion Vector Pipeline expansion adding 400 million cubic feet a day of westbound capacity. An 8 billion cubic foot unregulated storage expansion at the Dawn Hub in Ontario was announced, and federal approval arrived for the 4 billion dollar T-South Sunrise Expansion in British Columbia. Taken together these lifted the secured book to 40 billion Canadian dollars.

On the liquids side, binding open seasons opened on the Flanagan South and Southern Access Extension pipelines in support of a second phase of mainline optimisation, advancing an additional 250 thousand barrels a day of egress capacity from Canada, and a successful open season on the Spearhead Pipeline extended commitments substantially beyond 2030. Chief executive Greg Ebel described the period as among the most volatile the global energy sector has faced in decades and pointed to the mainline running apportioned all year as evidence of sustained demand. The next thing to watch is whether the secured book keeps growing at this pace, because that figure, more than any quarterly earnings line, is what the payout schedule rests on.

Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)

Liquids Pipelines (reported)

Gas Transmission (reported)

Gas Distribution and Storage (reported)

Renewable Power Generation (reported)

Energy Services (reported)

Methodology Note

Fundamentals sourced from SEC EDGAR filings. Current price from Databento. The priced-in inversion and valuation x-ray are computed by the boothcheck engine; narrative composed by AI from the structured data.

Sources

Q1 2026 results release, May 8, 2026

View the full interactive ENB report on boothcheck