Tag Archives: Barrons

This week's Barron's showed utilities some love, with two of them, Sempra (SRE) and NextEra Energy (NEE), discussed in the cover article on dividend paying stocks that could be used for some defensive positioning.  (See article here.)  The article says that if the Fed is not going to raise rates i

Recently Barron's ran an article saying that investors should be looking at preferred stocks today because yields have increased a half-percentage point on a number of issues over the last month.  (See article here)  The article list a number of preferreds, but none of them were from utilities. 

This week's Barron's had an article discussing how stocks have performed during periods of rising interest rates. (See article here)  With utilities commonly thought of as a bond substitute, there was a bit of a discussion about the sector.  The article put out the interesting statistic that over

The latest issue of Barron's had an article discussing "Baby Bonds".  These bonds typically have a $25 par value, and most trade just like stocks on the New York Stock Exchange. (See article here.)  Two electric utility bonds were actually mentioned in the article, one by the Tennessee Valley Auth

This weekend’s Barron’s had a large article on utility stocks and their current attractiveness.  (see article here) A lot of the article discussed utilities and their relationship to bond yields.  Yields have not moved up as much as investors expected over recent times, which has helped utili

The latest issue of Barron's recommended the purchase of Pacific Gas and Electric (PCG). (See article here)  The stock has been pummeled since October as wildfires in the state put the company at risk for some liabilities from the blaze.  An additional drop came when the company decided to suspend

Page M4 of this week's Barron's had a discussion about tax reform, and the fact that it will not provide much benefit to utility companies.  (See article here)  The problem is that since the industry is regulated any benefits will eventually get passed on to customers with lower rates.  Of course

Utilities made a few appearances in this week's Barron's.  Page M2 had a chart with EIX's stock price and mentioned the impact that the latest California wildfires have had on the stock, which was down almost $9/share last week.  There is a Los Angeles Time article (see here) that has some good ba

The Commodities Corner article in this past week's Barron's (see here) discussed the increase in coal usage for electricity generation.  As mentioned in our latest Utility Stats Monthly, the Barron's article brought up the EIA's expectations that coal will be the biggest source of electricity gener

The Speaking of Dividends column in this weekend's Barron's (see here) talked about stocks with high dividend yields, and the possibility that the high yield could mean something other than a cheap stock.  When you look at a list of the largest US electric utilities you can see that there are nam

Page 40 of last weekend's Barron's (see here) discussed credit ratings as something to consider when looking at company dividends.  The article presented a table with a number of industrial companies all with credit ratings above A-.  I recreated the table for North American utilities with credit

The ETF Focus column on page 29 of this weekend's Barron's (see here) discussed the ETF Deathwatch list maintained by Ron Rowland. (You can find the latest list here.)  The basic criteria to get on the list are under $25M AUM and average trading volume below $100,000.  The latest list has 468 name

Just a few weeks ago I commented about how Barron's had not picked a single utility in all of 2016. (See here)  This past weekend they wrote a full page article about Vistra Energy (see here).  (You can also see a short video from Barron's discussing the stock here)  Vistra Energy came out of the

Only one mention of utilities in this weekend's Barron's, in the Q&A column on page 27. (see here)  This was an interview with David Kotok, who owns a money-management firm in Florida.  In the article he said he was worried about utilities because of their sensitivity to rising interest rates,

On page 18 of this weekend's issue, Barron's reviewed the performance of their 2016 picks.  (see here)  One thing that is interesting to note is there was not a single utility in this list.  One explanation could be the big run that the group had early in the year.  Also, the threat of higher in

The Speaking of Dividends column on Page 30 of this weekend’s Barron’s (see here) discussed companies in the S&P 500 that have free cash flow (FCF) yields higher than their dividend yields. I thought I would recreate the table shown with the article, but show the results for all of the utili

Page 9 of the 12/26/16 issue of Barron's (see here) discussed share buybacks in the third quarter in the S&P 500.  The S&P 500 companies bought back $116B of stock during the period, which was a 28% drop below Q3 2015 according to Factset.  It turns out that utilities were a minuscule cont

Page 23 of the latest issue of Barron's had an interview with Shawn Driscoll, the portfolio manager of the T. Rowe Price New Era fund (PRNEX). (see it  online here)  While the article was primarily about the oil industry, three utilities were mentioned, Atmos Energy (ATO), Edison International (EI