Roger S. Conrad

For those who want a play on solar and energy storage, there are better choices than Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).

Barron's is piling on with an article concerning AT&T Inc’s (NYSE: T) loss of DirectTV subscribers, following up on a cover story critiquing the telecom giant's acquisition of Time Warner last year. Investors, however, saw the situation quite differently, pushing the stock to solid gains on earnings day, despite media mono-focus on the pay television unit.

Wall Street consensus is the U.S. Federal Reserve will officially close the book on three-and-a-half years of monetary tightening next week, by cutting its benchmark Federal Funds interest rate. But our focus needs to be on earnings and guidance, not headlines.

It seems California Governor Gavin Newsom will not preside over a utility collapse as former Governor Gray Davis did almost 20 years ago, thanks to a legislative fix to state utilities’ bottomless liability for wildfire damages.

Kinder Morgan Inc (NYSE: KMI) has kicked off earnings reporting season for the US energy midstream sector. The most noteworthy takeaway: No real surprises.

The Dow Jones Utility Average hit an all-time high in late June, backed off and is rallying again. The price-weighted index now sells for nearly 22 times trailing 12-months earnings and yields barely 3 percent.

The last time utilities yielded this little was just before the 2007-09 bear market. The only time since the early 1960s the P/E was this high was at the end of 2000, before a nearly 60 percent crash in the wake of Enron’s collapse.

Utility sector business fundamentals have rarely if ever been more secure. That’s the clear message from the break down of my five-part Quality Grade system, which I present in the Utility Report Card. The latest shot in the arm is a steep drop in essential service companies’ borrowing costs.

It’s three and a half years since Kinder Morgan Inc (NYSE: KMI) shocked its investors with a 75 percent dividend cut. And it’s a fair bet many former shareholders are still steering clear. That’s a shame, given the stock’s nearly 40 percent return so far in 2019.

Communications has been a tough business throughout North America for years. But Conservative Holding BCE Inc (TSX: BCE, NYSE: BCE) has consistently gained revenue and market share. The company today operates Canada’s Best in class network on the verge of 5-G adoption.

No stock is a buy at any price. And even the best-run company can get so expensive that realizing additional upside becomes an almost impossible slog. That’s not been the case so far this bull market for the top players in the US utility sector. But if we’re not there yet, we’re getting very close to it.