Roger S. Conrad

Since World War II, no regulated utility has ever failed to make its bondholders whole from disaster. That gives utility bonds a level of safety no other sector can match, particularly after 11 years of systematically cutting debt and operating risk.

Utility bonds’ years of being under-rated may be coming to an end, now that Moody’s is considering a sector-wide upgrade. But for now, they’re under-priced and therefore yield more than debt of equivalent real risk.

Australia is blessed with immense resources wealth, geographic proximity to emerging Asia, a pro-business government in rough fiscal balance, conservative banking policies, a corporate ethos for paying generous dividends and a currency that keeps pace with global inflation pressures over the long haul.

In short, it’s ripe with high-income opportunities for discriminating investors. And with the US dollar up 14 percent against the Australian dollar this year, great companies are selling at a discount.

Barring a real financial earthquake, this will be the ninth year of rising interest rates since 1992.

2013 will also be the eighth of those nine that utilities and other dividend paying stocks finished in the black. The only exception was 1994, when deregulation fears upended electricity and communications.

Utilities also rose eight years when rates fell. All their biggest declines, however, were during years of falling interest rates, particularly 2008.

Utility stock prices ultimately reflect the health of underlying companies. Stocks of financially healthy companies with growing dividends always move higher. But when an economic calamity brings interest rates lower quickly, they can drop in a hurry.

No group of dividend-paying stocks has been more profitably shorted the past few years than high yield telecoms. Short sellers make their money when stock prices fall. And sector companies have not only cut dividends eight times since 2009, but we’ve seen a pair of bankruptcies as well.

Shares of transmission line operator ITC Holdings (NYSE: ITC) have dropped more than 14 percent from the all-time highs reached in early November. The immediate catalyst: A group of industrial users have demanded the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission cut its allowed returns.

24.

That’s how many stocks we track at Energy & Income Advisor and Conrad’s Utility Investor that yield more than 10 percent.

Taper talk is heating up again as Federal Reserve Chairman-in-waiting Janet Yellen’s fate is debated on Capitol Hill. Rate hike speculation, however, is having much less impact on essential services stocks than it did this past spring. And one big reason is strong third quarter results.

Taper talk is rife again in the financial media. And the all-too-familiar consensus is still that the Federal Reserve will abandon cheap money in the near future, driving up interest rates and sending dividend-paying stocks plummeting.

Only three of the 28 current Conrad’s Utility Investor Portfolio recommendations have yet to report calendar third quarter earnings. That’s plenty of data to identify relevant sector trends, while we assess the health of individual companies.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for an official retraction. But after the past few days’ events, arguments made by Hedgeye and Barron’s against oil and gas producer master limited partnerships are effectively in tatters.