In Part II of i3’s interview with senior editor Drew Campbell and Ron Fleming, chairman, president and CEO of Global Water Resources, the discussion focuses on the question of investors transacting in water infrastructure and the key pillars investors should look for in a successful enterprise. The first part of the interview published in the July-August issue of i3.

Just over a year ago, COVID-19 plunged the world into severe economic downturn as governments across the globe turned to lockdowns and mobility restrictions to tackle an unprecedented public health threat. The pandemic has left its mark on credit conditions — in 2020, we took negative rating actions on 27 percent of our corporate and infrastructure ratings and slightly less than 20 percent of project finance ratings.

The GLIO Index of infrastructure companies continued its track in August, gaining 2.1 percent during the month. Year-to-date the GLIO Index is up 10.4 percent.

The increasing use of data continues to transform businesses and consumer behavior around the world. Whether it is the rollout of 5G, the growth of ecommerce, our increased reliance on the cloud or the development of artificial intelligence across industries, our need for data is always increasing, as we have seen in the management of our energy assets, or greater connectivity in the workplace and at home.

Led by [gatherers and processors] and natural gas pipeline operators, midstream names delivered strong second quarter 2021 results that largely beat expectations and led to improving outlooks in 2021 and 2022.

Private-infrastructure assets are often considered to act as inflation-hedged high-income bonds, whose risk and correlation can be modeled using the returns from smoothed, lagged valuations or investment-grade public bonds.