I tend to be highly skeptical of any claim that an acquisition is creating shareholder value. You should be too — even if the transaction is not a dropdown from a sponsor entailing an obvious conflict of interest.

Even arms-length transactions require an investor to ask why no one in the known universe offered to pay more. Winners of competitive auctions are often afflicted by the Winner’s Curse — the notion that often the only way to outbid everyone else is to overpay.

But that risk looms largest when the item up for bid is of the same value to all the bidders. And that’s just one reason I’m willing to make an exception for Rice Energy’s (NYSE: RICE) $2.7 billion acquisition of privately held Vantage Energy, a deal that just closed.

The leaseholds held by Vantage in the liquids-rich core of the Marcellus natural gas shale basin were more valuable to Rice than anyone else – including their previous owners. To see why, start with the map of the Rice acreage and the additional territory it’s just acquired.

Source: Rice Energy

As you can see, they’re highly complementary. That will allow Rice to maximize output while holding down well and pipeline costs.

The deal increased Rice’s acreage by 56% and its potential drilling locations by 65% providing years of additional growth runway. Crucially, Vantage’s 72 producing Marcellus wells have proven just as bountiful as Rice’s, which have been among the industry’s most lucrative.

Source: Rice Energy

At recent futures strip prices, Rice’s wells have produced at internal rates of return near 100%, rich even by the inflated standards of such projections from energy producers. And because Vantage was a couple of years behind Rice in developing its turf the combined company is expected to grow that much faster, increasing its production 70% next year from the two companies’ aggregate 2016 output, based on projections made when the deal was announced a month ago.

Better still, nearly $2 billion of the $2.7 billion purchase price was financed with equity, with $1 billion raise from a RICE equity offering and another $980 million in stock issued directly to the Vantage sellers. Rice’s sponsored Rice Midstream Partners (NYSE: RMP) MLP is contributing $600 million in stock and debt in exchange for Vantage’s midstream infrastructure. That leaves Rice with plenty of liquidity to quickly exploit its expanded footprint.

With natural gas trading barely above the level needed to incentivize production growth nationwide, the market has been placing a premium on growth stories like Rice, and in fact its shares have handily outperformed those of other gas-focused drillers since the summer. Rice has been a portfolio pick in our sister Energy Strategist publication since shortly after its early 2014 IPO, and investors looking for a high-growth prospect among Appalachian drillers won’t find a better one.

But for our focus here at MLP Profits is on the Rice Midstream Partners MLP.  The Vantage acquisition has extended its plans to increase the distribution 20% annually through 2023. At a recent price a bit below $23 units yield an annualized 3.9%. RMP generated a second-quarter distribution coverage of 1.86x, and because its tab for the Vantage acquisition will be financed mostly via debt the deal is expected to be accretive by 5-10% to next year’s distributable cash flow. Leverage is estimated at a modest 2.25x debt/EBITDA at the end of 2016.

At an enterprise value of 16 times its 2016 pro-forma EBITDA, RMP isn’t exactly cheap. But that EBITDA is expected to increase 30% next year as Rice ramps up operations on the leaseholds acquired from Vantage.

With a solid balance sheet and excellent visibility from a sponsor delivering best-in-class growth, Rice Midstream Partners has all the ingredients needed to provide excellent returns over the next few years. We’re adding it to the Growth Portfolio. Buy RMP below $27.