Conservative Income Feature

The customer is always right regardless of what business you’re in. And for regulated energy utilities like Dominion Energy (NYSE: D) now, that means using more wind and solar to generate electricity.

It’s one thing to grow when your industry is booming. It’s another entirely when almost every company is crawling into its shell, if management still has one—but that’s exactly what TC Energy (TSX: TRP, NYSE: TRP) is doing with sub-$5 oil prices in some regions it serves.

Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) expects its revenue growth to accelerate to “mid single digits” in 2020 from last year’s 0.8 percent. That’s based on three drivers.

First is continuing Q4’s favorable trends in wireless and broadband customer additions. The second is accelerating growth in business revenue, as advanced services adoption speeds up with 5-G. And the third is stabilized media services sales, following recent streamlining.

Intense competition, hefty capital spending needs and erratic regulation have made the communications sector an investment minefield. But Conservative Holding Comcast Corp (NSDQ: CMCSA) remains a model of consistency, adding new business while growing cash flow and dividends.

In February 2018, I recommended Edison International (NYSE: EIX) as a new Aggressive Holding. Shares had taken just a big hit on concern the company would be held liable for billions in 2017 wildfire damages under the state’s “inverse condemnation” law.

After a decade as the primary focus of utility M&A, regulated assets don’t come cheap. But when a high flyer drops back to a good entry point, we jump. And that’s now the case for natural gas distributor South Jersey Industries (NYSE: SJI).

Sustainability worries about North American shale oil and gas production, governance concerns and an ugly half-decade of dividend cuts convinced many investors to flee the midstream energy sector and never look back.

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.

Over the past 15 years, Conservative Holding Pembina Pipeline Corp (TSX: PPL, NYSE: PBA) has endured two wholesale depressions in Alberta’s energy patch—and the Canadian government’s death sentence on its former income trust structure.

In summer 2013, Exelon Corp (NYSE: EXC) cut its quarterly payout from 52.5 cents to 31 cents per share. The 41 percent reduction was a tacit admission that no US carbon tax would save the nation’s largest nuclear power fleet from falling wholesale electricity prices.