Roger S. Conrad

How many companies can one private capital firm successfully take on all at once? Paul Singer’s Elliott Management seems determined to find out.

Vietnamese demand offers a massive opportunity for North American natural gas producers, power generators and LNG transportation and infrastructure.

Wall Street consensus projects utility sector earnings growth will reach 6 percent in 2020. That’s triple this year’s anticipated 2 percent.

Accelerating sector growth is in marked contrast to diminished expectations for most industries. But even more impressive is how well insulated the primary drivers are from the macro environment.

For example, many companies will get a boost because they no longer have to issue equity to compensate for lower cash flow due to reduced tax pass throughs. They’ll get another lift from the massive decline in corporate borrowing rates since the start of 2019.

Carlos Slim’s America Movil (Mexico: AMXL, NYSE: AMX) today is a global powerhouse serving nearly 280 million wireless and 85 million wireline customers in more than a dozen countries. Mexico is most important at a third of revenue, followed by Brazil at 20 percent and the US at 15 percent.

Outside of regulated utilities, no group of companies has demonstrated greater long-term resilience than super oils like Top 10 DRIP Chevron Corp (NYSE: CVX). That’s still true despite what many consider their greatest challenge yet: Global decarbonization.

There are about three months remaining in 2019, and much can still happen. But up to now, it’s been a quite profitable year for Conrad’s Utility Investor Portfolios.

Buckeye Partners (NYSE: BPL) exited the Endangered Dividends List last spring, following its all-cash takeover offer of $41.50 per share from Australia’s IGM Investors in May. Last week, the deal inched closer to a fourth quarter 2019 close, as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US and Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission signed off.

The Dow Jones Utility Average has returned 15.1 percent annually since the start of the bull market in March 2009. So far in 2019, the pace has been twice that.

Utility stocks have benefitted from the desire to buy American in a trade challenged world, their reputation for solid defense, falling interest rates’ positive impact on borrowing costs and yield appeal, and the outlook for accelerating earnings growth next year while other industries stall.

The strong US dollar, worries about slowing global growth and disruption from uncertain politics and trade policy: That trio of entrenched trends continues to fuel investor appetites to “buy American,” dividend-paying stocks of US-based companies that generate all or mostly all of their sales within our borders.