Two ways to buy Canadian Utilities

Article Excerpt

Canadian Utilities is a long-term favourite of ours, mainly due to its stable cash flows and annual dividend increases. We also like its parent company ATCO (see box), which gives you a way to buy Canadian Utilities at a discount. However, ATCO pays a lower dividend. CANADIAN UTILITIES LTD. (Toronto symbols CU [class A non-voting] $36 and CU.X [class B voting] $36; Income Portfolio, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 267.0 million; Market cap: $9.6 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 3.1; Dividend yield: 3.6%; TSINetwork Rating: Above A v e r a g e ; 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 box) owns 53.1% of the company. Earnings in the second quarter of 2016 rose to $108 million, or $0.34 a share, from $43 million, or $0.12 a year earlier. If you exclude unusual items, earnings gained 29.7%, to $131 million from $101 million. That’s…