Alliant’s green energy gives it an edge

Article Excerpt

The shares of these two utilities has moved up sharply in the last year. That’s partly because new datacentres will need large amounts of electricity to power artificial intelligence applications. That should continue to spur their earnings and dividends. However, we still prefer Alliant for your new buying due to its lower reliance on coal. ALLIANT ENERGY CORP. $64 is a buy. This utility (Nasdaq symbol LNT; Income Portfolio, Utilities sector; Shares o/s: 256.7 million; Market cap: $16.4 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 4.1; Dividend yield: 3.0%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.alliantenergy.com) sells power and natural gas to 1.43 million customers in Wisconsin and Iowa. In the three months ended December 31, 2024, Alliant’s revenue rose 1.6%, to $976 million from $961 million a year earlier. Its higher electricity rates helped offset lower demand due to warmer-than-usual weather. The company recently cut 5% of its workforce. If you exclude severance payments and other unusual items, earnings jumped 45.8%, to $0.70 a share (or a total of $182 million)…