These buys have income & spinoff potential

Article Excerpt

We’ve long recommended Canadian Utilities as a top pick for income seekers when you consider its high-quality assets that provide plenty of cash flow for dividends. We also like its parent company, ATCO. Essentially, it lets you buy the same businesses as Canadian Utilities but at a discount. However, the parent pays a smaller dividend. ATCO has sold some of its smaller businesses in the past few years, and could further simplify its operations. That would help shrink its holding company discount and push up its share price. CANADIAN UTILITIES LTD. (Toronto symbols CU [class A non-voting] $38 and CU.X [class B voting] $38; Income Portfolio, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 268.6 million; Market cap: $10.2 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 3.0; Dividend yield: 3.8%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.canadianutilities.com) distributes electricity and natural gas in Alberta and Australia. It also operates 15 power plants, in Canada (13) and Australia (2). ATCO Ltd. (see page 36) owns 52.8% of the company. In 2016, the company spent $1.3…