Green shift will benefit Alliant

Article Excerpt

ALLIANT ENERGY CORP. $47 (New York symbol LNT; Income Portfolio, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 237.4 million; Market cap: $11.2 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 3.1; Dividend yield: 3.0%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.alliantenergy.com) sells power and natural gas to 1.4 million clients in Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota. Alliant expects to complete several projects over the next few years. Those include a new natural-gas-fired power plant in Wisconsin and a wind farm in Iowa. Thanks to projects like those, the company now gets 37% of its power from coal, down from over 50% in 2005. Overall, new projects should increase Alliant’s earnings by 6.2%, from $2.11 a share in 2018 to $2.24 in 2019. The stock trades at a reasonable 21.0 times this year’s forecast. The company also recently increased its quarterly dividend by 6.0%, to $0.355 a share from $0.335. The new annual rate of $1.42 yields 3.0%. Alliant Energy is a buy. buy…